Jeremiah 21-36 A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by (Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries)

Book of the Covenant (30:1-31:40) 369

3) the covenant promises that bind Yahweh to Israel and Judah through the

tragedy of 586 B.C. and ensure an even grander relationship in the days to

come. The Book of Restoration is then an integral part of the completed Jere-

miah book, fulfilling as nothing else does Yahweh's early promise to Jeremiah

that his prophetic mission to Israel and the nations would be "to uproot and to

break down ... to build up and to plant" ( 1: 1 O; cf. Childs 1979: 3 51).

The first Book of Restoration (30-31) frames the material it adds and the

book as a whole with the key phrase "(For) look, days are coming," as well as

verbs joined with "again" ('od) or "not again" (lo^1 'Od). The former is an

opening formula; the latter a closing formula (see Rhetoric and Composition

for 31:23-26). The opening formula here in the introduction makes an inclu-

sio with the closing formula at the end of chap. 31(Lundbom1975: 35-36

[= 1997: 51)):

30:3 For look, days are coming ...

31 :40 and it shall not again be overthrown ...

kf hinneh yamfm ba^1 fm

weli5^1 -yehares 'od

The superscriptions in 30: 1 and 32: 1 (expanded), "The word that came to Jere- J

miah from Yahweh," also point to the conclusion that ch~ps: 39-:-3! <lre .an

original compositional unit (Bozak 1991: 18; Becking 1998: 3-4). 11

The enfai~a· B"oa.E~c?!..~~-~!<?!<I.!!.<:>.~ Qg::2.3.) is tied together by the key phrase

"I will (surely) restore the(ir) fortunes," which functions as another inclusio:

30:3 when I will restore the fortunes of my people

33:26 (Q) for I will surely restore their fortunes ...

wesabtf 'et-sebut 'ammf

kf-^1 asfb^1 et-sebatam

Here again the superscriptions in 30:1 and 34:1 (expanded), "The word that

came to Jeremiah from Yahweh," point additionally to chaps. 30-33 being a

compositional unit. Mowinckel ( 1914: 46) identified "I will restore their for-

tunes" as a Stichwort ("key word") in chaps. 30-31; Volz took the phrase in v 3

as being thematic for chaps. 30-31. On the basis of this phrase, which may

have been lifted from the poetry in 30:18, the "Book of Restoration" is given its

present name. The phrase occurs also in an oracle in 29: 14 and at two other

strategic points in chaps. 31 and 32:

1) At the beginning of the added material in chap. 31:

when I restore their fortunes

2) At the conclusion of the narrative in chap. 32:

for I will surely restore their fortunes

31:23

32:44

Other occurrences are in 33:7 and 11, making it a key word for all of chaps.
30-33.
Interpretation of the Book of Restoration has followed a path similar to the
one taken in interpreting the Foreign Nation Oracles (chaps. 46-51 ), particu-
larly the oracles against Babylon in chaps. 50-51. Critical scholars of the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries denied the foreign nation oracles to