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

246 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS

Judas ... kann nur Judah gestraft werden" ("For the sins of Judah, only Judah

can be punished"), a comment echoing those made by Schwally (1888: 181)

and Cornill earlier. Rudolph's solution and that of others (Schwally; Duhm;

Volz; Weiser; Thiel 1973: 271; Holladay) is to delete "and against all these

nations round about" in v 9. There is no textual support for this deletion, since

the LXX has "all the nations" (panta ta ethne) in its text. The aim of the dele-

tion apparently is to make the oracle one in which only Judah is addressed. But

on balance it seems more likely that the nations were included in the judg-

ment from the beginning. The entire chapter speaks of judgment on the na-

tions. It must then be concluded that the reason given for the judgment in v 8,

which may be a later addition providing linkage to the previous oracle (see

Rhetoric and Composition), simply lacked precision in introducing the oracle,

or else that it actually intended to say that Judah's sins were of such a great mag-

nitude that they would bring about a worldwide judgment. Cassuto ( l 973c:

208) says that,

if Judah's punishment can only come within the framework of a world catas-

trophe, which must necessarily overwhelm other peoples too, the prophet

cannot differentiate between the two details of one event and assign two dif-

ferent causes to them, and the problem of the sources of the disaster that

will trouble the gentiles will not even enter his mind.

Yahweh of hosts. The LXX lacks "of hosts," as elsewhere (see Appendix VI).
Aquila, Symm, and Theod all have ton dunameon.

9. Look I am sending and I will take all the tribes of the north ... also to
   Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, my servant. Yahweh will summon the pun-
   ishing agent, which at first will be tribes of the north, then Nebuchadrezzar
   and the army of Babylon. Within a few short years, in 599-597 B.C., this was
   precisely the sequence of events for Judah: Yahweh sent marauding bands
   from "the north" to ravage the land (2 Kgs 24:2), after which came Nebucha-
   drezzar in 597 to capture Jerusalem. And in 599-598, just before Nebucha-
   drezzar came to Jerusalem, the Babylonian king was raiding desert camps of
   Arabs from his base in Syria. One must keep in mind that Nebuchadrezzar's
   broader aim was to subjugate all nations in the west, not just Judah. As the
   present oracle was spoken, he was in Philistia destroying Ashkelon and Ekron.
   In 601 B.C., he was fighting Egypt on its own frontier and a couple decades
   later would be campaigning again in Egypt, as well as in Ammon and Moab.
   The aim of the Babylonian king was to destroy or subjugate all the nations of
   the former Assyrian Empire.
   all the tribes of the north. Hebrew kol-mispebot $ap8n. An enemy coalition
   (cf. 1:15 ). The LXX lacks "all" and has patrian singular ("clan, tribe"). The
   MT presupposes two separate though not mutually exclusive enemies,
   which is the better reading (Peake). The T has "all the kingdoms of the
   north." On the proverbial "north" where powers of disaster are bred, see
   Note for 1:14.