The Cost of Prophetic Preaching (26:1-24) 285place. As for vocabulary and phraseology, the narrative is written in typical Jere-
mianic prose, such as one finds elsewhere in the book (Jones).
Some commentators (Duhm; Volz; Weiser; Hyatt) have taken the Uriah in-
cident in vv 20-23 as an attachment, but Holladay believes it is well integrated
into the narrative, which it is. However, it is not integrated to the extent that it
reports something more said at Jeremiah's trial. Uriah's prophecy and subse-
quent execution by Jehoiakim are not being cited by the elders who have just
remembered the Micah prophecy, nor by a hostile element in the crowd that is
responding with a "counterprecedent" (pace Rashi, who follows Midrash Sifre
Numbers 11:7; Fishbane 1985: 246) but, rather, by the one who is narrating the
whole. The Uriah segment is connected to what precedes by catchphrases:in the name of Yahweh
in the name of Yahwehin the name of Yahwehv9
v 16v 20The narrator brings in the Uriah incident to tell his audience about another
prophet who spoke in Yahweh's name but who did not escape Jehoiakim's
wrath as Jeremiah did. The closing word in v 24 contrasts this tragic outcome
with Ahikam's protection of Jeremiah, serving also as a quiet reminder of
the divine promise to Jeremiah-in his call, in his commission, and later on
in ministry-that he would be delivered from all his enemies (1:8, 18-19;
15:20-21).
Jeremiah's speech to the court is tied together by this inclusio:
Yahweh sent me ... all the words... v 12
... Yahweh sent me ... all these words. v 15NOTES
26:1. In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim. Hebrew re>Sft mamlekut is
used here in a nontechnical sense to mean "beginning of the reign"; it does
not mean "accession year," as does the Akk term res forrilti (M. Cogan,
"Chronology, Hebrew Bible," ABD 1: 1006; cf. Althann 1988). Cogan points
out that the equivalent of Akk res forrilti is Heb senat molk6 (2 Kgs 25:27).
This nontechnical meaning applies also to the comparable expressions in
27:1; 28:1; and 49:34. Mesopotamia employed an accession-year (postdating)
system, whereby the elapsed time between a king's accession and the following
New Year was counted as an "accession year," not the first year of his reign.
Egypt for most of its history employed a non-accession-year (antedating) sys-
tem, which did not reckon an accession year, but counted the first year of a
king's reign from the time he actually took the throne. Early on, Israel and
Judah employed the non-accession-year system, but toward the middle or end
of the seventh century B.C., beginning with Manasseh or Amon, Judah appears
to have adopted the accession-year system under Assyrian and Babylonian