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

Good Figs Gone for Export (24:1-10) 227

II And like the bad figs... wekaWPenfm hara'ot v 8

indeed thus said Yahweh: koh^1 amar yhwh

So will I make Zedekiah, king of Judah^1 etten

and his princes

and the remnant of Jerusalem se^1 erft

the ones who remain in this land hannW arfm

and the ones who dwell in the land of Egypt

Yes, I will make them a fright unetattfm v 9

a calamity to all the kingdoms of the earth lekol

a reproach and a proverb

a taunt and a swearword

in all the places where bekol

I shall disperse them

And I will send against them v 10

the sword

the famine

and the pestilence

until they are consumed from upon the soil

that I gave to them natattf /ahem

and to their fathers

The messenger formulas in vv 5 and 8, one or both of which are deleted by cer-

tain commentators (Giesebrecht; Cornill; Volz; Rudolph; Weiser; Holladay;

McKane) who believe that vv 5-10 are spoken only to Jeremiah, are integral to

the structure and vary their positions at the beginning of each oracle:

I Thus said Yahweh, God of Israel ...........

II ..................... indeed thus said Yahweh

v 5

v8

Holladay and McKane say the formula in v 8 interrupts the comparison, which

it does. But variation in repetitive discourse, even when-and sometimes be-

cause-it disrupts, is effective rhetorically. Both formulas should be retained,

because they make it clear that the message to Jeremiah is for the people.

NOTES

24:1. Yahweh showed me, and there! two baskets of figs. The rhetorical particle
wehinneh, which the AV renders "and behold," goes untranslated in the more
recent Versions, perhaps because it is lacking in the LXX. But its omission
there, as Janzen ( 1973: 119) points out, could be attributed to haplography
(homoeoteleuton: h ... h). The term suggests that sudden awareness known
to artists of something in the physical world that might go unnoticed by
others. Rather than the usual "and look!" wehinneh is here translated "and
there!" meaning "and there, before my very eyes!" This statement with minor
variation introduces visions seen by the prophet Amos (Amos 7:1, 4, 7; and