The Cost of Prophetic Preaching (26:1-24) 289
7:4). Another reason for such a hostile response to preaching Temple destruc-
tion was that now, since the Josianic Reform, this had become the sole place of
legitimate Yahweh worship. Assuming that Jeremiah had supported the Re-
form, as I think we must, an oracle now of judgment against the Temple would
constitute a major turnaround in his preaching (Wilcoxen 1977: 164-65).
this city. On the Kt reading of the demonstrative hazzt/ta ("this"), see GKC
§34b. The T follows the Q, hazzo't. The LXX has "the city."
a swearword. Hebrew qelala. One of many curse words in Jeremiah, occur-
ring often in a string of curses (see Note for 24:9).
- the priests and the prophets. LXX has pseudoprophetai ("false prophets"),
as it does also in vv 8, 11, and 16 (for other occurrences in Jeremiah, see Note
on 6: 13). Aquila and Symm in these verses have simply "the prophets."
- And it happened as Jeremiah finished speaking everything that Yahweh com-
manded him to speak to all the people. It appears as though Jeremiah was able
to finish what he had to say, which corresponds to the account in chap. 7,
where the word about Shiloh ends Oracle III.
the priests and the prophets and all the people then laid hold of him. The
priests and prophets lead the attack on Jeremiah, and here the people are said
to be with them. But "all the people"? Possibly many of the people; certainly
some of the people. One Hebrew MS (H rk) omits "all the people" (F. S.
North 1956-57: 79-80), which is said to alleviate two problems: 1) since the
people crowd up to Jeremiah later (v 9), they should not now be grabbing
hold of him with the priests and prophets; and 2) since the people later side
with the princes who want to acquit Jeremiah (v 16), why are they now join-
ing the priests and prophets in the attack? Many commentators (Hitzig;
Duhm; Peake; Cornill; Rudolph; Bright; Holladay; McKane) therefore take
"(and) all the people" as a secondary intrusion from v 7, even though both
MT and LXX have the words here. Volz retains. The problem about the
people first grabbing hold of Jeremiah and only later crowding up to him is
scarcely a problem in narrative writing, least of all in ancient Hebrew narra-
tive writing, where reporting things in chronological sequence is not re-
quired. In Hebrew thought and in Hebrew rhetoric, as we have said many
times, things do not necessarily follow in sequence or in logical progression
(see Note on l:l 5). The shifting allegiance of the people is even less a prob-
lem, for one of the sure things the narrator here wants to report, and a univer-
sal phenomenon amply documented at all times and places, is the fickleness
of crowds. In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," after the assassination is carried
out by Brutus and his fellow-conspirators, Brutus gives a speech justifying the
action, which is accepted by the crowd. Then Marc Antony gives his speech,
which turns the crowd around and has them wanting now to take vengeance
against Brutus and his fellows. That the crowd in the present situation might
have changed sides after Jeremiah's testimony is apparently not thought pos-
sible by Carroll, among others, who imagines instead a contrived complexity
in the literary work. It is true that when the trial is over there were still hostile
people from whom Jeremiah had to be protected (v 24), but this does not
