182 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
all my bones waver. Hebrew ra~apu kol-<a?m6tay. The Qal of r~p does not
otherwise occur in the OT, but the Versions all translate "tremble" or "shake,"
which is the meaning given the Qal in KB^3. Rashi says the verb means "to sway
like the wings of a bird hovering over its nest," a meaning that the Piel has in
Gen 1 :2 and Deut 32: 11. The image here is one of weakness and instability. A
drunk individual cannot hold a cup in hand or maintain balance while walk-
ing. Such a one staggers and falls.
I have become like a drunken man, and like a mighty man whom wine has
overcome. Calvin says the prophet was stunned, all his senses taken from him.
It is doubtful that Jeremiah is reporting the reception of a divine word while in
a state of ecstasy, although this cannot be ruled out. Lindblom ( 1965: 216-17)
says that in the great prophets one finds "elevated inspiration," not so much a
state of ecstasy, and that Jeremiah's excited feelings upon receiving a revelation
were caused more by the contents of the revelation than by any psychical expe-
rience that the prophet may have undergone. In the NT, men filled with the
rush of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost were thought to be drunk on new wine
(Acts 2: 12-15).
before Yahweh, and before his holy words. Jeremiah, unlike the false prophets,
has stood in Yahweh's council and heard his holy words (v 18), which, because
of their immense power, have now overwhelmed him (6: 11; 20:9; 23:29; cf.
Rabinowitz 1972-73: 133-34). The LXX's final "and from before his beautiful
glory" (kai apo prosopou euprepeias doxes autou) is not right (Rudolph).
- Indeed of adulterers the land is full! This bicolon is lacking in the LXX
and is probably another loss due to haplography (whole-word plus: ky-m ...
ky-m). Aquila and Theod have it. The bicolon is short if the scansion of BHS
be accepted, and the stanza is also short compared with the two stanzas follow-
ing. But if the confession be taken with only the first oracle as forming the
original dialogue, then we could have a short center such as the ones that oc-
cur in other Jeremianic poems (see Rhetoric and Composition for 22:28-30).
There is no need, in any case, to take 1 Oa and 1 Ob as textual variants and delete
one or the other, whether because of alleged dittography in 1 Ob or because 1 Ob
is thought to have intruded from another context, or for some other reason
(pace Giesebrecht; Duhm; Comill; Volz; Rudolph; Bright; Janzen 1973: 12;
Holladay). The MT makes perfectly good sense, and its reading should be re-
tained. Jeremiah states in 9: 1 [Eng 9:2] that the entire population consists of
adulterers, where "adulterers" (mena)apfm) appears to be a more general term
for an apostate people. Blayney thinks the term here has general meaning. But
it should probably be taken in a specific-and also hyperbolic-sense (Peake;
Rudolph). False-speaking prophets in Babylon are commiting the real thing
with their neighbors' wives (29:23). Adultery and lying commonly go together,
and they are the chief acts of wrongdoing assigned to the (false) prophets in the
book of Jeremiah (v 14). Compare also the indictment against Jerusalem's
male population in 5:7-8.
Indeed before the curse the land mourns. In place of )ala ("curse") a few Heb
MSS, the LXX, and the S have )elleh ("these"), which attributes a land in
