200 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS5. Am I a God Nearby and Not a God Far Off? (23:23-24)
2 3^23 Am I a God nearby
-oracle ofYahweh-
and not a God far off?(^24) 1£ a person hides himself in secret places
do I myself not see him?
-oracle of Yahweh.
The heavens and the earth
do I not fill?
-oracle of Yahweh.
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
Here at the close of the King and Prophet Appendix is a collection of oracles,
many of them very brief, like those in 3: 12, which seem to derive from dispu-
tations between Jeremiah and other prophets. We note that in other collec-
tions within the book, e.g., 10:22-25 and 17:9-18, prophetic utterances of
brief and miscellaneous character are brought together at the end. Then ex-
pounding two polemics against (lying) dreams and the phrase "the burden of
Yahweh" are speeches by Yahweh and Jeremiah in highly repetitive prose,
which begin the first polemic (vv 25-28a) and constitute all of the second
(vv 33-40). In vv 23-40 there are no catchwords; were it not for the messenger
formulas, of which there are quite a number in the MT, we would not know
how to divide the units. Sections in the medieval codices (in MA and ML at
v 29; in MP at vv 30 and 38) are of no help. Divisions must be made largely on
the basis of content, which fortunately in this case is not difficult. Commenta-
tors and the modern Versions all break between v 32 and v 33, the former dis-
course being the polemic against (lying) dreams, and the latter the polemic
against "the burden of Yahweh." The only uncertainty is whether to group
vv 23-24 with the polemic against (lying) dreams (Rudolph; Bright; Jones) or
to keep them separate (Holladay; Carroll; McKane). The decision here has
been to keep them separate; if they connect at all, it is secondarily with the
"heavenly council" image in vv 18 and 21-22. The connection made by some
commentators to the polemic against dreams (e.g., by Cornill and others, who
discuss issues of immanence and transcendence, familiarity with the divine
and holy respect) is nonexistent.
The unit here consists of three oracles in a cluster, all of them rhetorical
questions. The messenger formula of Oracle II (v 24a) is lacking in the LXX
but should be retained (Rudolph). The modern Versions (except RSV and
NRSV) all take the verses, with BHS, as poetry, even though Oracle III (v 24b)
has two occurrences of the nota accusativi.