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126 views

Python Interviews Discussions with Python Experts 1st Edition Mike Driscoll download

The document is a promotional and informational piece about the book 'Python Interviews: Discussions with Python Experts' by Mike Driscoll, which features interviews with key figures in the Python programming community. It highlights the importance of the individuals behind Python, their contributions, and insights into the language's development and future. The document also includes links to other related eBooks and information about the publisher, Packt Publishing.

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Python
Interviews

Discussions with Python Experts

Mike Driscoll

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Python Interviews
Copyright © 2018 Packt Publishing

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Foreword

Welcome, all, to Python Interviews!


People often get confused about open source programming
languages, focusing merely on the technology behind the language
— be it the language itself, the libraries available for it, or the
impressive products that are built with it — and not on the
ecosystem of individuals that are responsible for the language
existing in the first place.
Python is an open source language, driven mostly by volunteer
efforts from all around the globe. It's important to focus not only
on the technology behind what makes Python great, but also the
individuals that make it great as well.
The world of Python is not one comprised merely of code, but of
a community of like-minded individuals coming together to make
the world a better place through the open source ethos. Thousands
of individuals have contributed towards the success of Python.
This book contains interviews with an excellent selection of the
individuals that power Python and its wonderful open source
community. It dives into the personal backgrounds of these
individuals and the opinions they have about the community, the
technology, and the direction we're headed in, together.
But, must importantly — it exposes that Python, the programing
language, is indeed comprised of persons, just like you, trying to
make a difference in the world, one step at a time.

Kenneth Reitz
Director at Large for the Python Software Foundation
Contributor

About the Author


Mike Driscoll has been using Python since
April 2006. He blogs for the Python Software
Foundation. Other than blogging, he enjoys
reading novels, listening to a wide variety of
music, and learning photography. He writes
documentation for the wxPython project's wiki
page and helps wxPython users on their mailing
list. He also helps Python users on the PyWin32
list and occasionally the comp.lang.py list too.

Packt is Searching for Authors Like You


If you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please
visit authors.packtpub.com and apply today. We have worked
with thousands of developers and tech professionals, just like you,
to help them share their insight with the global tech community.
You can make a general application, apply for a specific hot topic
that we are recruiting an author for, or submit your own idea.
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Chapter 1: Brett Cannon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: Steve Holden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Chapter 3: Carol Willing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Chapter 4: Glyph Lefkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter 5: Doug Hellmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Chapter 6: Massimo Di Pierro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Chapter 7: Alex Martelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Chapter 8: Marc-André Lemburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 9: Barry Warsaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Chapter 10: Jessica McKellar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 11: Tarek Ziadé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 12: Sebastian Raschka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Chapter 13: Wesley Chun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Chapter 14: Steven Lott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Chapter 15: Oliver Schoenborn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Chapter 16: Al Sweigart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Chapter 17: Luciano Ramalho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Table of Contents

Chapter 18: Nick Coghlan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297


Chapter 19: Mike Bayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Chapter 20: Jake Vanderplas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Chapter 21: Other Books You May Enjoy . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Artificial Intelligence with Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .346
Understanding Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .347
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think . . . . . . 348

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Page ii
Preface
Near the end of 2016, I was brainstorming with my editor about
the kinds of books might be of interest. I had been doing a series
of articles on my blog called PyDev of the Week that inspired us into
crafting a book based on interviewing core members of the Python
community. I spent some time hashing out 20 names of people that
I thought would be good for the book and then I started contacting
them in 2017.

Over the course of about 8-12 months, I ended up interviewing


20 pillars of the Python community, although my list changed
several times over that period. Some people weren't available or
couldn't be reached. But I persevered and managed to pull together
a well-rounded set of representatives of the Python programming
community.

In this book, you will get interesting anecdotes about the history of
Python and its creators, such as Brett Cannon and Nick Coghlan.
You will discover why Python didn't have Unicode support in its
first release, and you'll hear from core developers about where they
think Python is going in the future. You will also hear from some
well-known Python authors, like Al Sweigart, Luciano Ramalho, and
Doug Hellman.

I also spoke with some of the creators or core developers of


popular third-party packages in Python, such as web2py (Massimo
Di Pierro), SQLAlchemy (Mike Bayer), and the Twisted Framework
(Glyph Lefkowitz), among others.
Preface

My interview with Carol Willing was a lot of fun. She is also a


core developer of the Python language itself, so learning her views
on women in technology and Python was quite enlightening. She is
also a contributor to Project Jupyter, so learning more about that
project was exciting.

I think you will find Alex Martelli and Steve Holden's interviews
to be especially compelling as they have been working with Python
for a very long time and have many interesting insights.

There is a lot to learn from all the individuals that I spoke with.
If you happen to know them, you know that even better than I
do. All of them were great to chat with and very responsive to me
even on the shortest of timelines. If you happen to meet them at
a conference, be sure to thank them for their contributions.

Special thanks go out to all the people I interviewed. They took time
out of their lives to help me with this project and I truly appreciate
it. I also want to thank my editors for keeping this project on
track. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Evangeline, for putting
up with me interviewing people at random times throughout the
summer. And finally, I want to thank you, dear reader, for checking
out this book.

Page iv
1
Brett Cannon
Brett Cannon is a Canadian software
engineer and Python core developer.
He is a principal software developer at
Microsoft, where he works on editing
tools. Previous roles include software
engineer at Google and creator at
Oplop. Brett became a fellow of the
Python Software Foundation (PSF) in
2003 and served as a director of the
PSF between 2013 and 2014. He is a former PyCon US committee
member and was conference chair of PyData Seattle 2017. Brett
led the migration of CPython to GitHub and created importlib.
Among his open source achievements is caniusepython3 and he is the
co-author of 17 successful Python Enhancement Proposals.

Discussion themes: core developers, v2.7/v3.x, Python


sprints.
Catch up with Brett Cannon here: @brettsky
Brett Cannon

Mike Driscoll: Why did you become a computer programmer?

Brett Cannon: I always found computers interesting, as far back as


I can remember. I was lucky enough to go to an elementary school
with a computer lab full of Apple IIes, back when that was the
cutting edge, so I was exposed to them relatively early on.

In the year between junior high and high school, I took a computer
class over the summer and that included a little bit of Apple BASIC.
I did it and I excelled at it, to the point that I think I finished the
entire class in the first week. It hadn't really clicked that I could do
that for a job at that point.

This continued through high school, and then when it came time
to pick courses for junior college, my mom had me promise her
two things. I agreed that I would take a course in philosophy and
I would take a course in computer programming. So that's what I
did and I loved both.

Once again, I read my introductory C book in the first two weeks,


which was supposed to last for the whole semester. I remember
the first time I finished it, I sat down and implemented tic-tac-toe
one day after class. I even forgot to eat dinner! It was just one of
those eureka moments. The feeling of boundless creativity that this
tool provided just engulfed me. That's how I got into programming.

Brett Cannon: 'The feeling of boundless


creativity that this tool provided just engulfed
me. That's how I got into programming.'

Page 2
Brett Cannon

I knew that tic-tac-toe was a solved problem, so I thought that I


could actually write the logic so that I could play tic-tac-toe perfectly
as a program. I spent something like six hours one evening doing
it, and I was utterly blown away that I was actually able to do that.
It opened up the possibilities of what computers could do, and the
freedom of it and the ability to think about the problems just really
grabbed me. I've been doing it ever since.

Driscoll: What led you to becoming so involved with Python and


its community?

Cannon: Well, I ended up going to Berkeley and getting a degree


in philosophy, but I kept taking computer science courses. The
introductory computer science course at Berkeley had an entrance
exam, and I was worried that I didn't know object-oriented
programming, since I only knew C. So I looked around for an
object-oriented programming language. I found Python, learned it,
loved it, and kept writing personal programs in it.

At some point along the way, I needed time.strptime , the


function to take a string that represents a datetime and parse it
back into a time tuple. I was on Windows at the time, and time.
strptime wasn't available on Windows. As a result, I came up
with a way to parse it where you had to still plug in the locale
information but it would still parse it.

Page 3
Brett Cannon

Back then, ActiveState's cookbook site was still a thing, so I posted


my recipe of how to do strptime up on ActiveState. Later,
O'Reilly published the first edition of Python Cookbook, and Alex
Martelli included that recipe as the last recipe in the book, which
also happened to be the longest recipe in the book.

Brett Cannon: 'So I posted my recipe of how


to do strptime up on ActiveState.'

It still ticked me off, though, that people had to input their locale
information. I was frustrated that I couldn't solve that. So in the
back of my mind, I was continuously thinking about how I could
get that locale information out. Eventually, I solved it. It was actually
the week after graduating from Berkeley, and I gifted myself the
time to write up the solution, so that you didn't have to enter locale
information anymore.

After I did that, I emailed Alex Martelli, since we'd exchanged emails
a couple of times at that point, and I said, "Hey, I've fixed this so
it's not necessary to input the locale anymore. How do I get this
upstream?" Alex Martelli said, "Oh, well you just email this mailing
list, Python-Dev, and you can submit the patch."

Brett Cannon: 'Alex Martelli said, "Oh, well


you just email this mailing list, Python-Dev,
and you can submit the patch."'

Page 4
Brett Cannon

So, I emailed the list and I think Skip Montanaro was the first
person to respond. Skip just said, "Yeah, that's great, just upload the
file and we'll work at it and accept it." I thought that was awesome.
I was able to contribute to this project and this language, which I
thought was really interesting.

Brett Cannon: 'I was able to contribute to this


project and this language, which I thought
was really interesting.'

All of this happened during a gap year I was taking between


undergraduate and graduate school. I was trying to get into graduate
school for computer science and I knew that I was going to need
some more programming experience, beyond the courses I was
taking. I thought that I could contribute to Python and help out.
I had all the time in the world back then, so I decided I'd get
involved.

Brett Cannon: 'I decided I'd get involved.'

I got on the mailing list and I lurked around asking questions.


Then in that same year, I offered to start taking up the Python-Dev
summaries, which had stopped at that point. Once again, I figured
I had the time to do it, and I realized it was a good way for me
to learn, because it forced me to read every single solitary email
in Python-Dev.

One interesting side effect was that I got to know about any small
issues that nobody had time to take care of, so I saw anything that
cropped up before almost anybody else. I was able to very easily
pick up small issues to fix and learn, and I was able to continually
do that.

Page 5
Brett Cannon

In the guise of the Python-Dev summaries, I got to ask more and


more questions.

At some point, I knew enough, and I became a core developer right


after the first PyCon (at least the first conference labeled PyCon),
in 2003. At that point I was hooked. I'd got to know the team and
the people had become friends of mine. I just enjoyed it so much
and it was fun, so I stuck with it and I've never really stopped for
longer than a month since.

https://wiki.python.org/moin/GetInvolved

That doesn't mean that you have to be a core developer to get into
the Python community. As long you enjoy it, you can get hooked
however it makes sense to you.

Driscoll: What then made you decide to start blogging and writing
about Python?

Cannon: Blogging is one of those ways to get involved and since


I enjoy writing, that medium happened to fit the way that I like to
communicate. I started doing it way back when, and I've more or
less consistently done it ever since. I always enjoy that aspect of
dispensing knowledge to the world as best as I can.

Driscoll: Was it important that you got into Python at just the right
time? Do you recommend getting in early on projects?

Cannon: Yes, it was one of those situations where I was in the


right place at the right time, and with the free time I needed to get
going. I managed to start when I had enough time to contribute
as much as I wanted.

Page 6
Brett Cannon

I also got started when the Python project wasn't that big. I
remember when I started my master's degree, people would ask
what I did in my spare time. When I said I contributed to Python,
they'd reply, "Is that the language with the white space?" So I've
just been doing this for a long time.

So yes, I got involved in the project at an ideal point, before interest


in the language surged around 2005. I sometimes wish that I'd
been able to get started with it earlier somehow, but I'd have been
younger, so that might not have worked. So it was serendipitous
that it all just came together when it did.

Driscoll: What parts of Python have you actively contributed to? Is


there a module that you helped start or you had a major influence
on, such as the datetime module?

Cannon: My influence was actually the time module. I predate the


datetime module! The first modules that I ever authored were
the dummy_thread and dummy_threading modules that were
in Python 2.

That was another one of those instances where someone came


forward and recommended it as a cool thing to do. They said they'd
get to it, but over time they didn't get to it, so I emailed them
saying, "Hey, are you going to get to this?" They said no, but that
it would still be a useful thing to do, so I did it. Those were the
first modules that I ever authored from scratch.

Page 7
Brett Cannon

I've essentially touched, I think, everything in the Python language


at this point. I've even touched the parser, which very few people
ever have to touch. I think that I helped to write warnings for some
tokenization thing at one point. I played a big part in the compiler,
when we switched from going from a concrete syntax tree to byte
code, to then having a proper concrete syntax tree, to an abstract
syntax tree to Python.

Brett Cannon: 'I've essentially touched, I


think, everything in the Python language at
this point.'

Jeremy Hilton had started that project, and Guido van Rossum
basically gave everyone an ultimatum, because the project had been
taking years to finish. So Guido said, "You have until the next
release to finish this."

Brett Cannon: 'So Guido said, "You have


until the next release to finish this."'

I jumped in and helped Jeremy to carry it the last half of the way.
I did a similar thing with the warnings module. Neil Norbits had
started to implement it, but he kind of drifted off the project, so I
picked it up and finished it the rest of the way. That's how I ended
up being one of the people who knew the warnings module a
little too well!

Page 8
Brett Cannon

What else has led me to becoming so involved in Python? Probably


the one thing that I'm most known for is importlib. I wrote most
of the current implementation of import (all of it for Python 3.3)
and then Nick Coghlan and Eric Snow helped a lot subsequently,
but the whole importlib package was my doing. Those are the
ones that come to mind in terms of what came directly from me,
but I've basically just touched everything everywhere. I can't keep
track anymore after 14 years!

Driscoll: I know what you mean. I hate it when I come across


some code and I think, "Who wrote this, and why is it so bad?" I
then remember that I wrote it a good two years ago!

Cannon: Yeah, if you manage to read your own code from six
months ago and it still looks good, then there's probably something
wrong. It usually means you haven't learned something new yet.

Brett Cannon: 'If you manage to read your


own code from six months ago and it still
looks good…it usually means you haven't
learned something new yet.'

Driscoll: What do you consider to be the best thing about being


a core developer of Python?

Cannon: Probably just the friendships that I've made through being
one. A lot of the core developers are friends of mine.

Page 9
Brett Cannon

We get together once a year and I get to spend almost 24 hours a


day for a whole week with a lot of these people. That's on top of
the time I get to spend with them online throughout the rest of
the year. It's probably more time than I get to spend with a lot of
my friends, because how often do you actually get to take basically
a full week of vacation with good friends of yours?

So yeah, it's honestly the friendships at this point. It's being able to
hang out and work with these people, learn from them and enjoy
what we do and keep doing that.

I don't think about the impact of Python very often. It's a little
mind-boggling sometimes to think about, so I try not to dwell on it.
I don't want any form of an ego because of it, so I try to actively
not think about it too much. If I do just sit here and think about
working on this language that's used by however many millions of
developers, then that's a bit of an eye-opener. It's kind of cool to
be able to say that I work on that, but primarily it's about getting
to work with friends.

I still remember very clearly when I first joined the team, and even
further back when I joined the mailing list, so although people say
I'm one of these big high-up leads on the Python developer team,
I've never fully acclimated to that idea. I just don't think of myself
that way. Guido famously was once asked at Google, "On a scale
of one to ten, how well do you know Python?" He said an eight.

'Guido famously was once asked at Google,


"On a scale of one to ten, how well do you
know Python?" He said an eight.'

Page 10
Brett Cannon

No one knows the entire system, because it's way too big a program
to know. We can all fit the basic semantics in our heads, but not
all the intricate details of how it actually works. How many people
know descriptors or meta classes like the back of their hand? I
have to look up that stuff on occasion, so nobody knows the
whole system.

Driscoll: So where do you see Python going as a language, as a


whole? Do you see it getting more popular in certain fields, or is
Python getting into legacy status like C++?

Cannon: Python is in an interesting position today, where there


are very few places where Python hasn't penetrated into as a major
player. Sure, there are certain areas, like low-level operating systems
and kernel development, that don't suit Python, but otherwise it can
feel like Python is pretty much everywhere.

The one place I know we're still second with Python is in data
science. I think our growth trends project that Python won't
immediately overtake R as a data science language in the next couple
of years at least. But long term, I do think that Python will catch
up. Otherwise, I just don't know very many other fields, that don't
require a systems language, where we aren't competitive for first
place with Python.

Page 11
Brett Cannon

I suppose another area, where Python isn't so strong, may be


desktop apps, to a certain extent. Even on the desktop, people use
us, so it's not like it's devoid, but there's just a lot of competition
in that space. In the long term, and we might even be there already,
we will hit the tipping point where there's so much Python code
everywhere, that Python itself will probably never go away.

Brett Cannon: 'In the long term, and we


might even be there already, we will hit the
tipping point where there's so much Python
code everywhere, that Python itself will
probably never go away.'

Hopefully, Python will never be uttered in the same passing breath


as COBOL, and maybe we'll be loved a little bit more and for
longer, but I don't see us ever really going anywhere. I think there's
just too much code at this point to have us ever disappear.

Driscoll: Python is one of the major languages in the current AI


and machine learning boom. What do you think makes Python such
a good language for this?

Cannon: I think the ease of learning Python is what makes it good


for AI. The people currently working in AI has expanded beyond
just software developers, and now encompasses people like data
scientists, who do not write code constantly.

That means that there is a desire for a programming language that


can be easily taught to non-programmers. Python fits that need
nicely. You can look at how Python has garnered traction with
people in the sciences and in computer science education, to see
how this is not a new trend.

Page 12
Brett Cannon

Driscoll: Should people move over to Python 3 now?

Cannon: As someone who helped to make Python 3 come about,


I'm not exactly an unbiased person to ask about this. I obviously
think people should make the switch to Python 3 immediately, to
gain the benefits of what has been added to the language since
Python 3.0 first came out.

Brett Cannon: 'I hope people realize that the


transition to Python 3 can be done gradually,
so the switch doesn't have to be abrupt or
especially painful.'

I hope people realize that the transition to Python 3 can be done


gradually, so the switch doesn't have to be abrupt or especially
painful. Instagram switched in nine months, while continuing to
develop new features, which shows that it can be done.

Driscoll: Looking ahead, what's happening with Python 4?

Cannon: The Python 4 thing is a whole conversation of its own,


of course. I haven't heard much about Python 4, and I'd be happy
to hear about it. It's mythical and it doesn't exist. Python 4 is like
Py4k dreaming versus Py3k. Just where could the language go?

Page 13
Brett Cannon

When it becomes time to do Python 4, we'll probably clean up the


standard library a good amount and strip it down. There are some
language elements we'll probably finally get rid of, instead of leaving
them in there for compatibility with Python 2.

Brett Cannon: 'When it's time to do Python


4, we'll probably clean up the standard library
a good amount, and strip it down.'

For Python 4, we'll likely have a tracing garbage collector, instead


of reference counting to get that parallelism. I don't know yet, but
that's where I see it going: more or less the same, especially because
we've come to rely more on the things that the community has
built up around Python. I mean, one of the reasons we have huge
standard libraries, is because it negates the internet, right?

Python itself predates Unicode as an official standard, because


Python first went public in February 1991 and Unicode 1.0 went
final in October 1991. I wasn't aware of that. I had to look it up,
because it's one of those things where people ask me, "Hey, why
didn't you do Unicode from the beginning like Java?" It's like, well,
we predate Unicode, so that's why!

So in the future, I don't think the standard library will need to be


quite as big as it is today. We don't need it to be if you can just
pip install the equivalent libraries.

Page 14
Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
"Thus saith Jehovah:
Behold, they to whom it pertained not to drink of the
cup shall assuredly drink.
Art thou he that shall go altogether unpunished?
Thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt
assuredly drink" (12).

Ay, and drink to the dregs:—

"If grape-gatherers come to thee, would they not leave


gleanings?
If thieves came by night, they would only destroy till
they had enough.
But I have made Esau bare, I have stripped him stark
naked; he shall not be able to hide himself.
His children, and his brethren, and his neighbours are
given up to plunder, and there is an end of
him" (9, 10).
"I have sworn by Myself—is the utterance of Jehovah—
That Bozrah shall become an astonishment, a
reproach, a desolation, and a curse;
All her cities shall become perpetual wastes.
I have heard tidings from Jehovah, and an
ambassador is sent among the nations, saying,
Gather yourselves together and come against her,
arise to battle" (13, 14).

There was obviously but one leader who could lead the nations to
achieve the overthrow of Edom and lead her little ones away captive,
who could come up like a lion from the thickets of Jordan, or "flying
like an eagle and spreading his wings against Bozrah" (22)—
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who had come up against Judah
with all the kingdoms and peoples of his dominions.[233]
In this picture of chastisement and calamity, there is one apparent
touch of pitifulness:—
"Leave thine orphans, I will preserve their lives;
Let thy widows put their trust in Me" (11).

At first sight, at any rate, these seem to be the words of Jehovah. All
the adult males of Edom would perish, yet the helpless widows and
orphans would not be without a protector. The God of Israel would
watch over the lambs of Edom,[234] when they were dragged away
into captivity. We are reluctant to surrender this beautiful and
touching description of a God, who, though He may visit the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation, yet even in such judgment ever remembers mercy. It is
impossible, however, to ignore the fact that such ideas are widely
different from the tone and sentiment of the rest of the section.
These words may be an immediate sequel to the previous verse, "No
Edomite survives to say to his dying brethren, Leave thine orphans
to me," or possibly they may be quoted, in bitter irony, from some
message from Edom to Jerusalem, inviting the Jews to send their
wives and children for safety to Mount Seir. Edom, ungrateful and
treacherous Edom, shall utterly perish—Edom that offered an asylum
to Jewish refugees, and yet shared the plunder of Jerusalem and
betrayed her fugitives to the Chaldeans.
There is no word of restoration. Moab and Ammon and Elam might
revive and flourish again, but for Esau, as of old, there should be no
place of repentance. For Edom, in the days of the Captivity,
trespassed upon the inheritance of Israel more grievously than
Ammon and Moab upon Reuben and Gad. The Edomites possessed
themselves of the rich pastures of the south of Judah, and the land
was thenceforth called Idumea. Thus they earned the undying
hatred of the Jews, in whose mouths Edom became a curse and a
reproach, a term of opprobrium. Like Babylon, Edom was used as a
secret name for Rome, and later on for the Christian Church.
Nevertheless, even in this prophecy, there is a hint that these
predictions of utter ruin must not be taken too literally:—
"For, behold, I will make thee small among the nations,
Despised among men" (15).

These words are scarcely consistent with the other verses, which
imply that, as a people, Edom would utterly perish from off the face
of the earth. As a matter of fact, Edom flourished in her new
territory till the time of the Maccabees, and when the Messiah came
to establish the Kingdom of God, instead of "saviours standing on
Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau,"[235] an Edomite dynasty
was reigning in Jerusalem.
CHAPTER XXII
DAMASCUS
xlix. 23-27.

"I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall devour
the palaces of Benhadad."—Jer. xlix. 27.

We are a little surprised to meet with a prophecy of Jeremiah


concerning Damascus and the palaces of Benhadad. The names
carry our minds back for more than a couple of centuries. During
Elisha's ministry, Damascus and Samaria were engaged in their long,
fierce duel for the supremacy over Syria and Palestine. In the reign
of Ahaz these ancient rivals combined to attack Judah, so that Isaiah
is keenly interested in Damascus and its fortunes. But about b.c.
745, about a hundred and fifty years before Jeremiah's time, the
Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser[236] overthrew the Syrian kingdom and
carried its people into captivity. We know from Ezekiel,[237] what we
might have surmised from the position and later history of
Damascus, that this ancient city continued a wealthy commercial
centre; but Ezekiel has no oracle concerning Damascus, and the
other documents of the period and of later times do not mention the
capital of Benhadad. Its name does not even occur in Jeremiah's
exhaustive list of the countries of his world in xxv. 15-26. Religious
interest in alien races depended on their political relations with
Israel; when the latter ceased, the prophets had no word from
Jehovah concerning foreign nations. Such considerations have
suggested doubts as to the authenticity of this section, and it has
been supposed that it may be a late echo of Isaiah's utterances
concerning Damascus.
We know, however, too little of the history of the period to warrant
such a conclusion. Damascus would continue to exist as a tributary
state, and might furnish auxiliary forces to the enemies of Judah or
join with her to conspire against Babylon, and would in either case
attract Jeremiah's attention. Moreover, in ancient as in modern
times, commerce played its part in international politics. Doubtless
slaves were part of the merchandise of Damascus, just as they were
among the wares of the Apocalyptic Babylon. Joel[238] denounces
Tyre and Zidon for selling Jews to the Greeks, and the Damascenes
may have served as slave-agents to Nebuchadnezzar and his
captains, and thus provoked the resentment of patriot Jews. So
many picturesque and romantic associations cluster around
Damascus, that this section of Jeremiah almost strikes a jarring
note. We love to think of this fairest of Oriental cities, "half as old as
time," as the "Eye of the East" which Mohammed refused to enter—
because "Man," he said, "can have but one paradise, and my
paradise is fixed above"—and as the capital of Noureddin and his still
more famous successor Saladin. And so we regret that, when it
emerges from the obscurity of centuries into the light of Biblical
narrative, the brief reference should suggest a disaster such as it
endured in later days at the hands of the treacherous and ruthless
Tamerlane.

"Damascus hath grown feeble:


She turneth herself to flee;
Trembling hath seized on her.

How is the city of praise forsaken,[239]


The city of joy!
Her young men shall fall in the streets,
All the warriors shall be put to silence in that day."
We are moved to sympathy with the feelings of Hamath and Arpad,
when they heard the evil tidings, and were filled with sorrow, "like
the sea that cannot rest."
Yet even here this most uncompromising of prophets may teach us,
after his fashion, wholesome though perhaps unwelcome truths. We
are reminded how often the mystic glamour of romance has served
to veil cruelty and corruption, and how little picturesque scenery and
interesting associations can do of themselves to promote a noble
life. Feudal castles, with their massive grandeur, were the
strongholds of avarice and cruelty; and ancient abbeys which, even
in decay, are like a dream of fairyland, were sometimes the home of
abominable corruption.
CHAPTER XXIII
KEDAR AND HAZOR
xlix. 28-33.

"Concerning Kedar, and the kingdoms of Hazor which


Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon smote."—Jer. xlix. 28.

From an immemorial seat of human culture, an "eternal city" which


antedates Rome by centuries, if not millenniums, we turn to those
Arab tribes whose national life and habits were as ancient and have
been as persistent as the streets of Damascus. While Damascus has
almost always been in the forefront of history, the Arab tribes—
except in the time of Mohammed and the early Caliphs—have
seldom played a more important part than that of frontier
marauders. Hence, apart from a few casual references, the only
other passage in the Old Testament which deals, at any length, with
Kedar is the parallel prophecy of Isaiah. And yet Kedar was the great
northern tribe, which ranged the deserts between Palestine and the
Euphrates, and which must have had closer relations with Judah
than most Arab peoples.
"The kingdoms of Hazor" are still more unknown to history. There
were several "Hazors" in Palestine, besides sundry towns whose
names are also derived from Hāçēr, a village; and some of these are
on or beyond the southern frontier of Judah, in the wilderness of the
Exodus, where we might expect to find nomad Arabs. But even
these latter cities can scarcely be the "Hazor" of Jeremiah, and the
more northern are quite out of the question. It is generally supposed
that Hazor here is either some Arabian town, or, more probably, a
collective term for the district inhabited by Arabs, who lived not in
tents, but in Hāçērîm, or villages. This district would be in Arabia
itself, and more distant from Palestine than the deserts over which
Kedar roamed. Possibly Isaiah's "villages (Hāçērîm) that Kedar doth
inhabit" were to be found in the Hazor of Jeremiah, and the same
people were called Kedar and Hazor respectively according as they
lived a nomad life or settled in more permanent dwellings.
The great warlike enterprises of Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea during
the last centuries of the Jewish monarchy would bring these desert
horsemen into special prominence. They could either further or
hinder the advance of armies marching westward from
Mesopotamia, and could command their lines of communication.
Kedar, and possibly Hazor too, would not be slack to use the
opportunities of plunder presented by the calamities of the
Palestinian states. Hence their conspicuous position in the pages of
Isaiah and Jeremiah.
As the Assyrians, when their power was at its height, had chastised
the aggressions of the Arabs, so now Nebuchadnezzar "smote Kedar
and the kingdoms of Hazor." Even the wandering nomads and
dwellers by distant oases in trackless deserts could not escape the
sweeping activity of this scourge of God. Doubtless the ravages of
Chaldean armies might serve to punish many sins besides the
wrongs they were sent to revenge. The Bedouin always had their
virtues, but the wild liberty of the desert easily degenerated into
unbridled licence. Judah and every state bordering on the wilderness
knew by painful experience how large a measure of rapine and
cruelty might coexist with primitive customs, and the Jewish prophet
gives Nebuchadnezzar a Divine commission as for a holy war:—

"Arise, go up to Kedar;
Spoil the men of the east.
They (the Chaldeans) shall take away their tents and
flocks;
They shall take for themselves their tent-coverings,
And all their gear and their camels:
Men shall cry concerning them,
Terror on every side."[240]
Then the prophet turns to the more distant Hazor with words of
warning:—

"Flee, get you far off, dwell in hidden recesses of the


land, O inhabitants of Hazor—
It is the utterance of Jehovah—
For Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon hath counselled
a counsel and purposed a purpose against
you."

But then, as if this warning were a mere taunt, he renews his


address to the Chaldeans and directs their attack against Hazor:—

"Arise, go up against a nation that is at ease, that


dwelleth without fear—it is the utterance of
Jehovah—
Which abide alone, without gates or bars"—

like the people of Laish before the Danites came, and like Sparta
before the days of Epaminondas.
Possibly we are to combine these successive "utterances," and to
understand that it was alike Jehovah's will that the Chaldeans should
invade and lay waste Hazor, and that the unfortunate inhabitants
should escape—but escape plundered and impoverished: for

"Their camels shall become a spoil,


The multitude of their cattle a prey:
I will scatter to every wind them that have the
corners of their hair polled;[241]
I will bring their calamity upon them from all sides.
Hazor shall be a haunt of jackals, a desolation for
ever:
No one shall dwell there,
No soul shall sojourn therein."
CHAPTER XXIV
ELAM
xlix. 34-39

"I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might."—Jer.
xlix. 35.

We do not know what principle or absence of principle determined


the arrangement of these prophecies; but, in any case, these studies
in ancient geography and politics present a series of dramatic
contrasts. From two ancient and enduring types of Eastern life, the
city of Damascus and the Bedouin of the desert, we pass to a state
of an entirely different order, only slightly connected with the
international system of Western Asia. Elam contended for the palm
of supremacy with Assyria and Babylon in the farther east, as Egypt
did to the south-west. Before the time of Abraham Elamite kings
ruled over Chaldea, and Genesis xiv. tells us how Chedorlaomer with
his subject-allies collected his tribute in Palestine. Many centuries
later, the Assyrian king Ashur-bani-pal (b.c. 668-626) conquered
Elam, sacked the capital Shushan, and carried away many of the
inhabitants into captivity. According to Ezra iv. 9, 10, Elamites were
among the mingled population whom "the great and noble
Asnapper" (probably Ashur-bani-pal) settled in Samaria.
When we begin to recall even a few of the striking facts concerning
Elam discovered in the last fifty years, and remember that for
millenniums Elam had played the part of a first-class Asiatic power,
we are tempted to wonder that Jeremiah only devotes a few
conventional sentences to this great nation. But the prophet's
interest was simply determined by the relations of Elam with Judah;
and, from this point of view, an opposite difficulty arises. How came
the Jews in Palestine in the time of Jeremiah to have any concern
with a people dwelling beyond the Euphrates and Tigris, on the
farther side of the Chaldean dominions? One answer to this question
has already been suggested: the Jews may have learnt from the
Elamite colonists in Samaria something concerning their native
country; it is also probable that Elamite auxiliaries served in the
Chaldean armies that invaded Judah.
Accordingly the prophet sets forth, in terms already familiar to us,
how Elamite fugitives should be scattered to the four quarters of the
earth and be found in every nation under heaven, how the sword
should follow them into their distant places of refuge and utterly
consume them.

"I will set My throne in Elam;


I will destroy out of it both king and princes—
It is the utterance of Jehovah."

In the prophecy concerning Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar was to set his


throne at Tahpanhes to decide the fate of the captives; but here
Jehovah Himself is pictured as the triumphant and inexorable
conqueror, holding His court as the arbiter of life and death. The
vision of the "great white throne" was not first accorded to John in
his Apocalypse. Jeremiah's eyes were opened to see beside the
tribunals of heathen conquerors the judgment-seat of a mightier
Potentate; and his inspired utterances remind the believer that every
battle may be an Armageddon, and that at every congress there is
set a mystic throne from which the Eternal King overrules the
decisions of plenipotentiaries.
But this sentence of condemnation was not to be the final "utterance
of Jehovah" with regard to Elam. A day of renewed prosperity was to
dawn for Elam, as well as for Moab, Ammon, Egypt, and Judah:—

"In the latter days I will bring again the captivity of


Elam—
It is the utterance of Jehovah."

The Apostle Peter[242] tells us that the prophets "sought and


searched diligently" concerning the application of their words,
"searching what time and what manner of time the Spirit of Christ
which was in them did point unto." We gather from these verses
that, as Newton could not have foreseen all that was contained in
the law of gravitation, so the prophets often understood little of
what was involved in their own inspiration. We could scarcely have a
better example than this prophecy affords of the knowledge of the
principles of God's future action combined with ignorance of its
circumstances and details. If we may credit the current theory,
Cyrus, the servant of Jehovah, the deliverer of Judah, was a king of
Elam. If Jeremiah had foreseen how his prophecies of the restoration
of Elam and of Judah would be fulfilled, we may be sure that this
utterance would not have been so brief, its hostile tone would have
been mitigated, and the concluding sentence would not have been
so cold and conventional.
CHAPTER XXV
BABYLON
l., li.

"Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in


pieces."—Jer. l., 2.

These chapters present phenomena analogous to those of Isaiah xl.-


lxvi., and have been very commonly ascribed to an author writing at
Babylon towards the close of the Exile, or even at some later date.
The conclusion has been arrived at in both cases by the application
of the same critical principles to similar data. In the present case the
argument is complicated by the concluding paragraph of chapter li.,
which states that "Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should
come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written against
Babylon," in the fourth year of Zedekiah, and gave the book to
Seraiah ben Neriah to take to Babylon and tie a stone to it and
throw it into the Euphrates.
Such a statement, however, cuts both ways. On the one hand, we
seem to have—what is wanting in the case of Isaiah xl.-lxvi.—a
definite and circumstantial testimony as to authorship. But, on the
other hand, this very testimony raises new difficulties. If l. and li.
had been simply assigned to Jeremiah, without any specification of
date, we might possibly have accepted the tradition according to
which he spent his last years at Babylon, and have supposed that
altered, circumstances and novel experiences account for the
differences between these chapters and the rest of the book. But
Zedekiah's fourth year is a point in the prophet's ministry at which it
is extremely difficult to account for his having composed such a
prophecy. If, however, li. 59-64 is mistaken in its exact and
circumstantial account of the origin of the preceding section, we
must hesitate to recognise its authority as to that section's
authorship.
A detailed discussion of the question would be out of place here,
[243] but we may notice a few passages which illustrate the
arguments for an exilic date. We learn from Jeremiah xxvii.-xxix.
that, in the fourth year of Zedekiah,[244] the prophet was
denouncing as false teachers those who predicted that the Jewish
captives in Babylon would speedily return to their native land. He
himself asserted that judgment would not be inflicted upon Babylon
for seventy years, and exhorted the exiles to build houses and
marry, and plant gardens, and to pray for the peace of Babylon.[245]
We can hardly imagine that, in the same breath almost, he called
upon these exiles to flee from the city of their captivity, and
summoned the neighbouring nations to execute Jehovah's judgment
against the oppressors of His people. And yet we read:—

"There shall come the Israelites, they and the Jews


together:
They shall weep continually, as they go to seek
Jehovah their God;
They shall ask their way to Zion, with their faces
hitherward"[246] (l. 4, 5).

"Remove from the midst of Babylon, and be ye as he-


goats before the flock" (l. 8).

These verses imply that the Jews were already in Babylon, and
throughout the author assumes the circumstances of the Exile. "The
vengeance of the Temple," i.e. vengeance for the destruction of the
Temple at the final capture of Jerusalem, is twice threatened.[247]
The ruin of Babylon is described as imminent:—

"Set up a standard on the earth,


Blow the trumpet among the nations,
Prepare the nations against her."

If these words were written by Jeremiah in the fourth year of


Zedekiah, he certainly was not practising his own precept to pray for
the peace of Babylon.
Various theories have been advanced to meet the difficulties which
are raised by the ascription of this prophecy to Jeremiah. It may
have been expanded from an authentic original. Or again, li. 59-64
may not really refer to l. 1-li. 58; the two sections may once have
existed separately, and may owe their connection to an editor, who
met with l. 1-li. 58 as an anonymous document, and thought he
recognised in it the "book" referred to in li. 59-64. Or again, l. 1-li.
58 may be a hypothetical reconstruction of a lost prophecy of
Jeremiah; li. 59-64 mentioned such a prophecy and none was
extant, and some student and disciple of Jeremiah's school utilised
the material and ideas of extant writings to supply the gap. In any
case, it must have been edited more than once, and each time with
modifications. Some support might be obtained for any one of these
theories from the fact that l. 1-li. 58 is primâ facie partly a cento of
passages from the rest of the book and from the Book of Isaiah.[248]
In view of the great uncertainty as to the origin and history of this
prophecy, we do not intend to attempt any detailed exposition.
Elsewhere whatever non-Jeremianic matter occurs in the book is
mostly by way of expansion and interpretation, and thus lies in the
direct line of the prophet's teaching. But the section on Babylon
attaches itself to the new departure in religious thought that is more
fully expressed in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. Chapters l., li., may possibly be
Jeremiah's swan-song, called forth by one of those Pisgah visions of
a new dispensation sometimes granted to aged seers; but such
visions of a new era and a new order can scarcely be combined with
earlier teaching. We will therefore only briefly indicate the character
and contents of this section.
It is apparently a mosaic, complied from lost as well as extant
sources; and dwells upon a few themes with a persistent iteration of
ideas and phrases hardly to be paralleled elsewhere, even in the
Book of Jeremiah. It has been reckoned[249] that the imminence of
the attack on Babylon is introduced afresh eleven times, and its
conquest and destruction nine times. The advent of an enemy from
the north is announced four times.[250]
The main theme is naturally that dwelt upon most frequently, the
imminent invasion of Chaldea by victorious enemies who shall
capture and destroy Babylon. Hereafter the great city and its
territory will be a waste, howling wilderness:—

"Your mother shall be sore ashamed,


She that bare you shall be confounded;
Behold, she shall be the hindmost of the nations,
A wilderness, a parched land, and a desert.
Because of the wrath of Jehovah, it shall be
uninhabited;
The whole land shall be a desolation.
Every one that goeth by Babylon
Shall hiss with astonishment because of all her
plagues."[251]

The gods of Babylon, Bel and Merodach, and all her idols, are
involved in her ruin, and reference is made to the vanity and folly of
idolatry.[252] But the wrath of Jehovah has been chiefly excited, not
by false religion, but by the wrongs inflicted by the Chaldeans on His
Chosen People. He is moved to avenge His Temple[253]:—

"I will recompense unto Babylon


And all the inhabitants of Chaldea
All the evil which they wrought in Zion,
And ye shall see it—it is the utterance of Jehovah" (li.
24).
Though He thus avenge Judah, yet its former sins are not yet blotted
out of the book of His remembrance:—

"Their adversaries said, We incur no guilt,


Because they have sinned against Jehovah, the
Pasture of Justice,
Against the Hope of their fathers, even Jehovah" (l.
7).

Yet now there is forgiveness:—

"The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there


shall be none;
And the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found:
For I will pardon the remnant that I preserve" (l. 20).

The Jews are urged to flee from Babylon, lest they should be
involved in its punishment, and are encouraged to return to
Jerusalem and enter afresh into an everlasting covenant with
Jehovah. As in Jeremiah xxxi., Israel is to be restored as well as
Judah:—

"I will bring Israel again to his Pasture:


He shall feed on Carmel and Bashan;
His desires shall be satisfied on the hills of Ephraim
and in Gilead" (l. 19).
BOOK III
JEREMIAH'S TEACHING CONCERNING ISRAEL
AND JUDAH
CHAPTER XXVI
INTRODUCTORY
"I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be
My people."—Jer. xxxi. 1.

In this third book an attempt is made to present a general view of


Jeremiah's teaching on the subject with which he was most
preoccupied—the political and religious fortunes of Judah.
Certain[254] chapters detach themselves from the rest, and stand in
no obvious connection with any special incident of the prophet's life.
These are the main theme of this book, and have been dealt with in
the ordinary method of detailed exposition. They have been treated
separately, and not woven into the continuous narrative, partly
because we thus obtain a more adequate emphasis upon important
aspects of their teaching, but chiefly because their date and
occasion cannot be certainly determined. With them other sections
have been associated, on account of the connection of subject.
Further material for a synopsis of Jeremiah's teaching has been
collected from chapters xxi.-xlix. generally, supplemented by
brief[255] references to the previous chapters. Inasmuch as the
prophecies of our book do not form an ordered treatise on dogmatic
theology, but were uttered with regard to individual conduct and
critical events, topics are not exclusively dealt with in a single
section, but are referred to at intervals throughout. Moreover, as
both the individuals and the crises were very much alike, ideas and
phrases are constantly reappearing, so that there is an exceptionally
large amount of repetition in the Book of Jeremiah. The method we
have adopted avoids some of the difficulties which would arise if we
attempted to deal with these doctrines in our continuous exposition.
Our general sketch of the prophet's teaching is naturally arranged
under categories suggested by the book itself, and not according to
the sections of a modern treatise on Systematic Theology. No doubt
much may legitimately be extracted or deduced concerning
Anthropology, Soteriology, and the like; but true proportion is as
important in exposition as accurate interpretation. If we wish to
understand Jeremiah, we must be content to dwell longest upon
what he emphasised most, and to adopt the standpoint of time and
race which was his own. Accordingly in our treatment we have
followed the cycle of sin, punishment, and restoration, so familiar to
students of Hebrew prophecy.

NOTE
SOME CHARACTERISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF JEREMIAH
This note is added partly for convenience of reference, and partly to
illustrate the repetition just mentioned as characteristic of Jeremiah.
The instances are chosen from expressions occurring in chapters
xxi.-lii. The reader will find fuller lists dealing with the whole book in
the Speaker's Commentary and the Cambridge Bible for Schools and
Colleges. The Hebrew student is referred to the list in Driver's
Introduction, upon which the following is partly based.
1. Rising up early: vii. 13, 25; xi. 7; xxv. 3, 4; xxvi. 5; xxix. 19; xxxii.
33; xxxv. 14, 15; xliv. 4. This phrase, familiar to us in the narratives
of Genesis and in the historical books, is used here, as in 2 Chron.
xxxvi. 15, of God addressing His people on sending the prophets.
2. Stubbornness of heart (A.V. imagination of heart): iii. 17; vii. 24;
ix. 14; xi. 8; xiii. 10; xvi. 12; xviii. 12; xxiii. 17; also found Deut. xxix.
19 and Ps. lxxxi. 15.
3. The evil of your doings: iv. 4; xxi. 12; xxiii. 2, 22; xxv. 5; xxvi. 3;
xliv. 22; also Deut. xxviii. 20; 1 Sam. xxv. 3; Isa. i. 16; Hos. ix. 15;
Ps. xxviii. 4; and in slightly different form in xi. 18 and Zech. i. 4.
The fruit of your doings: xvii. 10; xxi. 14; xxxii. 19; also found in
Micah vii. 13.
Doings, your doings, etc., are also found in Jeremiah and elsewhere.
4. The sword, the pestilence, and the famine, in various orders, and
either as a phrase or each word occurring in one of three successive
clauses: xiv. 12; xv. 2; xxi. 7, 9; xxiv. 10; xxvii. 8, 13; xxix. 17, 18;
xxxii. 24, 36; xxxiv. 17; xxxviii. 2; xlii. 17, 22; xliv. 13.
The sword and the famine, with similar variations: v. 12; xi. 22; xiv.
13, 15, 16, 18; xvi. 4; xviii. 21; xlii. 16; xliv. 12, 18, 27.
Cf. similar lists, etc., "death ... sword ... captivity" in xliii. 11; "war ...
evil ... pestilence," xxviii. 8.
5. Kings ... princes ... priests ... prophets, in various orders and
combinations: ii. 26; iv. 9; viii. 1; xiii. 13; xxiv. 8; xxxii. 32.
Cf. Prophet ... priest ... people, xxiii. 33, 34. Prophets ... divines ...
dreamers ... enchanters ... sorcerers, xxvii. 9.
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