Speaking of Prophets (23:9-40) 201NOTES
23:23. Am I a God nearby ... and not a God far off? Hebrew ha'elohe miqqarob
'anf ... welo' 'elohe mera~oq. The twice-occuring construct form with a
preposition following is unusual but no doubt an indication that the line is po-
etry. The terms are spatial (qarob ="nearby" and ra~oq ="far off"), not tempo-
ral, and the question is rhetorical, requiring a "No" answer. Yahweh is not just
a God nearby, but a God both near and far (Ps 138:6). If the accent is anywhere,
it is on Yahweh's distance from earth and the things of earth. The LXX, Theod,
and S have a statement, "I am a God nearby ... and not a God far off," which
reverses the meaning. Yahweh is now simply a near God, which cannot be
right, even though other OT texts do support the idea of Yahweh's nearness to
his people (Lemke 1981: 5 51-5 3). If this oracle is taken together with the other
two, particularly Oracle III affirming that God fills heaven and earth, the MT
has to be read: God is both near and far (Calvin).- If a person hides himself in secret places, do I myself not see him? On the
all-seeing eye of Yahweh, see 49: 10 and Note for 7: 11. Pharaoh Amenophis IV
(= Akhenaten), in a mid-fourteenth-century B.C. hymn to Aten, praised his pa-
tron god, who saw all from the distant heavens ("The Hymn to Aton," ANET^3
371; CS I 46):
Thou hast made the distant sky in order to rise therein,
in order to see all that thou dost make.The heavens and the earth do I not fill? Yahweh says in Isa 66: 1: "Heaven is
my throne and the earth is my footstool." See also 1 Kgs 8:27; Ps 139:7-12; and
Amos 9:2-4. From the library of Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.c.) comes a hymn to
Shamash, the sun god, who was said by the worshiper to look over everything
"above and below" ("Hymn to the Sun God," ANET^3 387-88):The people of the world, all of them, thou dost watch over ... those en-
dowed with life, thou likewise dost tend; thou indeed art their shepherd
both above and below. Faithfully thou dost continue to pass through the
heavens. The broad earth thou dost visit daily.MESSAGE AND AUDIENCE
These rhetorical questions are general and could have been uttered at any
time. But as a group, and in their present context, they critique prophets whose
God is too small, too localized, and who are themselves far distant from Yah-
weh God (Overholt 1970: 64). Yahweh is a God both near and far, one who
sees in darkness and light, and who fills heaven and earth. In disputations with
other prophets, Jeremiah probably uttered these oracles during the early years
of Zedekiah's reign. That these questions, which are in fact affirmations, would
have spoken to an exilic audience in Babylon goes without saying-when