Jeremiah 21-36 A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by (Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries)

144 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS

words. Kiml;i views the laments in the first line as those uttered by the king's

relatives, in the second those of the king's subjects. All the laments are stereo-

typical. Gaster (l 969: 604) cites an ancient text of the Babylonian Akitu (New

Year's) Festival where, at a certain point in the proceedings, wailing women

begin parading around, crying, "Woe brother! Woe brother!" Also, in the

balag laments of ancient Mesopotamia (M. E. Cohen 1988: 245, 335), which

are even older, these lines appear:

She who has a new spouse says, "My spouse!"

She who has a newborn child says, "My child!"

My young girl says, "My brother!"

(In) the city my mother says, "My child!"

The young child says, "My father!"

Other recurring lines in the balag laments (pp. 438, 590, 662, et passim):

... "My house! ... "My city!"

... "My spouse!" ... "My child!"

... "My cella!'' ... "My treasure house!"

... "My property!" ... "O my possessions!"

... "O my young maidservant!" ... "My slave girl!"

See "Lamentations over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur" inANET^3 460-61,

613; cf. CS I 537-38.

19. The burial of an ass he will be buried. On the cognate accusative, see
    Note for 22:16. The expression here is oxymoronic (Watson 1984: 312-13; cf.
    Chotzner 1883: 14), for as the verse goes on to state, dead asses receive no
    burial; they are dragged off and left on a dungheap. Jerome adds that unburial
    means being "torn by beasts and birds" (a bestiis avibusque lacerandum).
    Whether such a thing happened to Jehoiakim has been much debated, par-
    ticularly in view of the LXX reading of 2 Chr 36:8 and the reading of GL for
    2 Kgs 24:6, both of which report a burial for Jehoiakim in the Garden of Uzza,
    where Manasseh and Amon were buried (2 Kgs 2l:l8, 26). The MT of 2 Kgs
    24:6 and 2 Chr 36:8 says only that Jehoiakim "slept with his fathers," although
    this is the normal euphemism for burial in one's ancestral tomb. Judah's kings
    were entombed in the City of David, i.e., within the inner citadel of Jerusa-
    lem, probably at the southern end (Yeivin 1948). Ussishkin (1970) found some
    50 tombs opposite the City of David, across the Kidron in the modern town of
    Silwan, which he thought were for "nobles and notables" of the kingdom of
    Judah. But it is unlikely that any of Judah's kings (including Hezekiah, Ma-
    nasseh, Amon, and Josiah) were buried outside Jerusalem. According to Yeivin
    ( 1948: 38-39), biblical and postbiblical tradition are one in placing the burial
    of Judah's kings within the walls of the capital city, which was the custom also
    in neighboring countries. An eventual burial for Jehoiakim may have taken
    place, but we know nothing about how this king met his end and whether, in