Indictment of Judah and the Nations (25:1-38) 255vants, and his princes, and all his people,^20 and all the mixed races; and all th~
kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, that is,
Ashkelon, and Gaza, and Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod;^21 Edom, and
Moab, and the Ammonites;^22 and all the kings of Tyre, and all the kings of Si-
don, and the kings of the coastlands that are across the sea;^23 and Dedan, and
Terna, and Buz, and all who crop the hair at the temples;^24 and all the kings of
Arabia, and all the kings of the mixed races who dwell in the desert;^25 and all
the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media;^26 and
all the kings of the north, those near and those far, one to another; yes, all the
world's kingdoms that are on the face of the earth. And the king of Sheshak
shall drink after them.(^27) Then you shall say to them:
Thus said Yahweh of hosts, God of Israel:
Drink and be drunk, yes, vomit and fall, and you shall never rise before the
sword that I am sending among you.
(^28) And it will happen that they will refuse to take the cup from your hand to
drink; then you shall say to them:
Thus said Yahweh of hosts:
You shall certainly drink!^29 For look, if I am beginning to work evil in the
city upon which my name is called, then for you, shall you assuredly go
unpunished?
You shall not go unpunished, for I am calling a sword upon all the inhabi-
tants of the earth-oracle of Yahweh of hosts.
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
MT 25:15-29 = LXX 32:15-29. The present verses are delimited at the top end
by the messenger formula in v 15, before which comes a petu~ah in MA and a
setumah in ML and M~ At the bottom end delimitation is by an "oracle of Yah-
weh of hosts" formula at the end of v 29 (MT only) and a shift to poetry in
v 30b, after a new introductory directive to Jeremiah in v 30a. There are no sec-
tions in the medieval codices after v 29. A space exists in 4QJerc after v 26, but
Tov (1997: 181, 193) fails to identify it as a section. If the space is a section, it
would mark a break between the end of the litany of nations, where Jeremiah is
the speaker, and the divine oracle beginning in v 27. The petu~ah in MA and se-
tumah in ML after "then you shall say to them" in v 27 appear to be misplaced.
The passage is entirely in prose (pace DeRoche 1978, who tries to make
vv 15-19 and 26-29 into poetry), containing as it does an extraordinary num-
ber of prose particles (69 in 230 words, according to D. N. Freedman ['aser: 7;
'et: 39; ha-: 23], which is 30%, significantly above the 20% benchmark set by
Andersen and Forbes for prose in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the historical narra-
tives of Kings and Chronicles; cf. Andersen and Forbes 1983: 166). Giese-
brecht (p. xxi) and Rudolph, nevertheless, take this as genuine preaching