326 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSAnd Jeremiah the prophet went his way.(^12) Then the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah after Hananiah the prophet
broke the yoke bar from upon the neck of Jeremiah the prophet:^13 'Go and you
shall say to Hananiah:
Thus said Yahweh:
Yoke bars of wood you have broken, but you have made in their place yoke
bars of iron.
(^14) For thus said Yahweh of hosts, God of Israel:
A yoke of iron I have put upon the neck of all these nations to serve Nebu-
chadnezzar, king of Babylon, and they shall serve him; even the beasts of
the field I have given to him.
(^15) And Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah the prophet: Do listen, Hana-
niah, Yahweh has not sent you, and you, you have made this people trust in a
lie.
(^16) Therefore thus said Yahweh:
Look I will send you away from off the face of the earth. This year you will
die, for you have spoken rebellion concerning Yahweh.
(^17) And Hananiah the prophet died in that year, in the seventh month.
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
MT chapter 28 = LXX chapter 35. This chapter is paired with chap. 27 in a
"Zedekiah Cluster" of narrative prose consisting of 24 and 27-29 (see Rhetoric
and Composition for 24: 1-10). Its upper limit is marked by the superscription
of v 1, before which is a petubah in MA, ML, and MP, also the chapter division.
Its lower limit is marked by a petubah in MA and ML and a setumah in MP after
v 17, which is also a chapter division. A new superscription and introduction
follow in 29:1-3. The MA and ML have another petubah and MP another setu-
mah after v 11, where the narrative breaks at Jeremiah's departure from the
Temple and before he receives a final word regarding Hananiah.
The chapter has been widely attributed to Baruch or another intimate eye-
witness and accepted as historically authentic. Scholars (Giesebrecht; Duhm;
Mowinckel 1914: 24; Volz; Rudolph; Weiser; Bright) assign the narrative to
Source B (=Baruch I biographical prose), which is further strengthened when
the first-person "to me" in v 1 is eliminated or reinterpreted (see Notes). Actu-
ally, the shift from the first person in v 1 to the third person in v 5 is no prob-
lem, bearing little if at all on the judgment that the narrative emanates from
Baruch (Weiser). Holladay, too, takes the narrative as historically trustworthy,
and Jones says it stands squarely in the Jeremiah prose tradition. The literary
genre is surely not "legend,'' such as we have in the traditions of Elijah and Eli-
sha (Muilenburg 1970a: 233; pace Koch 1969: 201), much less a "story" with-
out historical basis (pace Carroll). McKane sees in the chapter an interweaving