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

238 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS

forever.^13 And I will bringd against that land all my words that I have spoken

against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied

against all the nations.^14 Indeed many nations and great kings shall make

them serve-even them! And I will repay them according to their deeds

and according to the work of their hands.

RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION

MT 25:1-Ba = LXX 25:1-Ba; MT 25:13b = LXX 32:13; MT 25:14 = LXX 0.

Chapter 25 at an earlier time was the first of four Jehoiakim prose narratives, 25,

26, 35, and 36, arranged in a chiastic structure. Chronology was broken so that

the first narrative would balance the last. This configuration we have called

"the Jehoiakim Cluster," and it matches a similarly-structured "Zedekiah Clus-

ter" comprising chaps. 24, 27, 28, and 29 (see Rhetoric and Composition for

24: 1-10). On how chaps. 24-36 may have achieved their present sequence, see

"Excursus III: The Composition of Jeremiah 24-36," at the end of the present

unit. The chiasmus of the present cluster is created, as is the case also with the

Zedekiah Cluster, primarily from introductory dates that double as

"catchlines" linking the narratives (Lundbom 1975: 107-9 [= 1997: 140-43]):

A Chap. 25-4th year of Jehoiakim

B Chap. 26-in the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign

B' Chap. 35-in the days of Jehoiakim

A' Chap. 36-4th year of Jehoiakim

The correspondence between the beginning and ending chapters, 25 and 36, is
exact; that of the center chapters, 26 and 3 5, inexact. However, as is true also in
the Zedekiah Cluster, common subject matter unites the middle chapters:
both are incidents occurring in the Temple.
Chapter 25 (or 25: l-13a) is not, then, a concluding narrative, so far as com-
position is concerned (pace Duhm; Birkeland 1939: 44-45; Rudolph; Weiser;
Hyatt; Bright; Thompson; Boadt; Zimmerli 1982: 110; Holladay; Jones). Birke-
land and Weiser took 25:1-13/14 as a conclusion to the Urrolle ("original
scroll") of chap. 36. The entire chapter, as we have said, was once the lead nar-
rative in a prose cluster that reported Jeremiah's preaching and activity during
Jehoiakim's reign. For a different compositional view of chaps. 25-36 but one
which takes chap. 25 as a beginning and not a conclusion, see Rofe 1989: 394-

95. The idea that 25:1-13a (or the whole of chap. 25) concluded an early Jere-
    miah book develops from 1) a misinterpretation of "this book" in v 13, viz., that
    it refers back to a scroll of Jeremiah's collected preaching between 627 and 605,
    thought to be contained within 1: 1-25: l 3a; 2) a disproportional emphasis on
    the divergence between the MT and LXX after 25:13a; and 3) an exaggerated

dKt whb'yty is a scribal error for wehebe'tf (Rudolph; cf. Num 14:31 ); Q is wehebe'tf. M\ Mc,
and earlier Rabbinic Bibles have a whb'wty spelling for the Kt, which was the spelling carried
over into BH^1 •