Indictment o!Judah and the Nations (25:1-38) 239connection between chaps. 25 and 36, both of which are dated in Jehoiakim's
fourth year, and the latter of which reports the preparation of the Urrolle. "This
book" in v 13 originally looked ahead (and still does look ahead) to a scroll
originally containing only the Babylon oracles and later all the Foreign Nation
Oracles, which even yet follow v l 3a in the LXX (Blayney; Cheyne; Peake;
McKane). In the MT the Foreign Nation Collection follows chap. 45, where it
was subsequently relocated. So far as a connection to the Urrolle is concerned,
Mc Kane rightly says that "all the theories about the relation of 25 .1-13 or 25 .1-
14 to the [original] scroll should be discounted" (p. 631 ). The only sense in
which chap. 25 can be termed a conclusion, and this would apply also to chap.
36, is that it reports Jeremiah's activity just before he winds up an early stage of
his public career. A year later he is sent into forced retirement (36: 19, 26) and
does not reemerge while Jehoiakim is king.
The whole of chap. 25 is commonly taken to consist of three sections: 1) vv
1-14; 2) vv 15-29; and 3) vv 30-38. With this division I am in basic agreement,
except that I take vv 30-38 to be a three-oracle cluster against the nations. The
first two sections are narrative prose; the third, except for v 3 3, is poetry. Giese-
brecht takes vv 1-14 as emanating from Baruch (Source B), then later revised;
Rudolph takes the verses as Source C. Mowinckel ( 1914: 31) takes vv 1-11 a as
Source C and vv 11 b-14 as a later addition. The chapter has its own integrity,
and can be taken, in the MT at least, as an essential unity (Peake). This does
not, however, preclude subsequent expansion, although I would limit such to
a minumum and do not believe the claims made for two editions (pace
Schwally 1888; Duhm; Cornill; Thiel 1973; Tov 1985; Carroll; Holladay),
which rest largely-but not exclusively-on divergencies between the MT and
LXX and the supposition that the LXX preserves the better and more original
text. The two-edition theory also builds on textual deletions and emendations,
many of which are unsupported by manuscript evidence and are frequently
made when both MT and LXX agree on the reading in question. The "fourth
year of Jehoiakim" (25: l ), however, will not cover the Babylon oracle in vv 12-
14, the reason being that "this book" in v 13, which looks forward not back-
ward, cannot precede the writing of the Babylon scroll to which it makes refer-
ence (51 :60). The Babylon scroll was written a decade or more later in the
reign of Zedekiah (594/3 B.C.). It is not necessary then to take (with Comill) all
of 25: 1-13 as originally an introduction to the Foreign Nation Collection. This
collection needs only to be prefaced by vv l 2-l 3a of the Babylon oracle. Peake
questioned whether 25:1-13 introduced the Foreign Nation Oracles, saying it
was improbable that the LXX placement after v l 3a was its original position.
His objection was that this would tear chap. 25 in two, which he found un-
acceptable. The cup of wrath vision in vv 15-29, said Peake, could not have
followed the detailed Foreign Nation Oracles, where its effect would be com-
pletely lost. In this he is quite right. But everything else in the chapter, except
vv 12-14, is datable to Jehoiakim's fourth year, at which time anxiety would
have been widespread that all nations-not just Judah-faced danger in the
wake of Nebuchadrezzar's victory over the Egyptians at Carchemish.