198 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
A comparable Akk expression, an( a) a!J-rat iimi, means "in future days" or "for
(all) the future" (CAD 111: 193-94; AHw 1: 21).
you will consider the meaning in this. The Hebrew titbOnenu bah bfna em-
ploys a cognate accusative: "you will understand the understanding in it"
(GKC § l l 7p-r; see Note on 22:16). Calvin translates: "you shall know what
this means." The LXX omission of bfna ("understanding, meaning") can
probably be attributed to haplography (homoeoteleuton: h ... h), even
though the term is also lacking in the duplicated verse of 30:24. Theodotion
has the term here. The point being made is that only with the passage of time
will people come to understand what this judgment will mean. There is a
sense in which this bit of wisdom is a reversal of the rhetorical question of
5: 31: "But what will you do at the end of it?" But people engaged in wrong-
doing and all sorts of foolishness do not think about the ends to which these
will bring them, and when those ends come, they are shocked, disillusioned,
and unaccepting. But when truth is spoken and the wicked are punished, at a
later time some-though not all-will consider, understand, and accept what
has happened.
- I did not send the prophets, yet they, they ran; I did not speak to them, yet
they, they prophesied. The verbs "send" (slb) and "speak" (dbr) are bedrock in-
dicators that Yahweh views the prophet as a royal messenger (cf. 1:7; 26:12,
15). In one of the Mari texts (ARM X 8), a messenger to the king is told: "Now
go, I have sent you! To Zimrilim you shall speak thus" (Beyerlin 1978: 125).
Yahweh speaks to prophets in the heavenly council (v 18), after which they are
sent forth with a message to be delivered to the people. Note that the divine
actions here invert the normal sequence, which occurs elsewhere in the Jere-
mianic poetry and demonstrates once again how Hebrew rhetoric does not fol-
low logical progression (see Note for 1:17). In actual fact, the speaking comes
before the sending. This double antithesis contains the heart of the present in-
dictment. Yahweh says prophets are running who have not been sent and
prophesying without his having spoken to them. The repetition of the pro-
nouns emphasizes the point. The text does not specify it, but these are the false
prophets with whom Jeremiah and a confused population had to contend
(Kim}:ii). For prose versions of the present indictment, see 14:14 and 23:32.
- Now if they had stood in my council and caused my people to hear my
words. The protasis contains two conditionals, both of which went unmet by
these would-be prophets. They had not stood in the divine council and had not
brought Yahweh's word to this people. Here the verb yasmi'u is correctly
pointed as an H-stem, "(they) caused to hear." But it is not a jussive, "let them
proclaim" (pace NEB, JB, and NJV; but abandoned in REB and NJB). The
LXX's eisekousan mistakenly takes the Hebrew verb as a Qal: "they heard"
(Giesebrecht). The remainder of the verse tells what would have happened (or
should have happened) had these prophets preached Yahweh's word of judg-
ment. People would have been turned from their evil. As it was, they were
lulled into believing that all was well and that no evil would come.
