254 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTScomprising chaps. 30-31, and finally to a book comprising chaps. 30-33 (see
Rhetoric and Composition for 30:1-3).
' With the aid of rhetorical criticism, which, it should be noted, here func-
f J tions as a diachronic method, we can identify two earlier clusters of narrative
prose: a "Jehoiakim Cluster" (chaps. 25, 26, 35, 36), and a "Zedekiah Cluster"
(24, 27, 28, 29). The one remaining chapter of Zedekiah prose in chaps. 24-36
is chap. 34, which has been inserted into the place it occupies for polemical
purposes. Reporting on how Zedekiah and the people of Jerusalem reneged on
a covenant made to release Hebrew slaves, it is juxtaposed to the report of faith-
ful Rechabites in chap. 35. Together the two narratives make the single point
that marginal Rechabites showed themselves to be more faithful to their cove-
nant than Zedekiah and the people of Jerusalem showed themselves to be to
theirs (Lundbom l 997b: 46-47).
The main question to be answered, then, is how such carefully-wrought
clusters of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah prose could have been undone, leaving us
with the disarray we now have? Why, we may ask, were not the clusters kept to-
gether when integrated into an expanded Jeremiah book, and placed one
after the other? The answer given in my earlier work (Lundbom 197 5: 110-11
[= 1997: 144-45]) is one I would still put forward as best explaining the mate-
rial as we have it. When a decision was made to integrate the two clusters into
a larger Jeremiah book, chap. 24 of the Zedekiah Cluster was chosen as a suit-
able beginning because it was programmatic for Zedekiah's reign and con-
tained a vision account similar to the vision accounts in chap. 1, which began
the existing book. The most suitable conclusion was chap. 36 of the Jehoiakim
Cluster, vv 1-8 in particular, which served as a colophon reporting the role
that Baruch played in writing down the first Jeremiah scroll (Lundbom I 986b:
104-6). If chap. 24 was the chosen beginning and chap. 36 the chosen conclu-
sion, it was inevitable that the two clusters be undone and that the chronology
be broken. This, I believe, is what happened, and it explains the present se-
quence of chaps. 24-29 and 34-36, where Zedekiah prose and Jehoiakim prose
are interspersed. Even so, we should note that chaps. 25-26 and 35-36 of the
Jehoiakim Cluster and chaps. 27-29 in the Zedekiah Cluster were left undis-
turbed. The W_?rk o~:?_mpjl~!i~n, he ~!i.c:J!1.l1arrativ~ ~Jμ,sterna.1!?_
their par'tiarulliloing to create a larger Jeremiab b.c:>?L\¥as]ikely the work of
J~~?.~.!r1~1-ill3.ai:~lh~~scri~ · ··· · ···--·-----
2. A Wrath-Filled Cup of Wine for the Nations (25: 15-29)
25 15 For thus Yahweh, God of Israel, said to me: Take this wrath-filled cup of
wine from my hand, and make all the nations to whom I am sending you drink
it.^16 And they shall drink and retch and go mad before the sword that I am send-
ing among them.^17 So I took the cup from the hand of Yahweh and made all
the nations to whom Yahweh sent me drink:^18 Jerusalem and the cities of
Judah, and its kings, its princes, to make them a ruin, a desolation, an object of
hissing, and a swearword, as at this day;^19 Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and hisser-