376 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSThe poetry and prose in these chapters is all arguably Jeremianic in origin,
whereas hardly any can be convincingly claimed for Second Isaiah.
One may also conclude with Volz and Rudolph that some-though not
all-of the material in 30-31 is early preaching by Jeremiah to Northern Israel
during the reform years of Josiah, i.e., 622-609 B.C., after which it was recycled
to address Judah or a united Israel-Judah. The first Book of Restoration was
brought together after 586 B.C., but nothing requires a date in the middle-or
postexilic periods for this composition (pace Smend 1899: 250-51 n.; Duhm;
Peake; Mowinckel 1914: 46-47; Schmid 1996; and others). Jones (p. 372) says:
"The conclusion that this is a late compilation is altogether too facile." This
first Book of Restoration could have been prepared during the Mizpah sojourn,
once thought to have lasted only a few months but now lengthened to four
years, i.e., frnm586Jo 5~2]3.C., due to a revised chronology that places the 582
B.C. exile (52:30) in ;~sponse to Gedaliah's murder. Erbt (1902: 287-91) ex-
pressed the view that 31:2-6, 15-17, and 18-20 could come from the period of
the Mizpah sojourn, and it makes sense now for all of chaps. 30-31. During
this sojourn-and even afterwards-Jeremiah counseled the restless remnant
to remain in the land, perhapsthinking they could live there until Yahweh
brought the exiles home. ·
On the relative merits of chaps. 30-31 in the MT and LXX, Becking ( l 994a:
169) says there is no indication that the LXX has intentionally abridged its Vor-
lage or that MT has expanded a superior text of earlier date. In his view it is not
possible to decide which text is a deviation of the other, a refreshing evaluation
in light of the current scholarly bias in favor of the shorter LXX text. G. Fischer
(1995: 129) has argued that in chaps. 30-31 the MT is the more original text.
Supporting this view are 20 arguable cases of LXX haplography in chaps. 30-
31; another 18 occur in chaps. 32-33.
The present introduction is delimited at the upper end by a setumah in ML
and a petu~ah in MP before v l, which is also the chapter division. Jerome rec-
ognized a major break at 30: l by beginning Book VI of his commentary there.
Delimitation at the lower end is by a petu~ah in ML and MP after v 3. The MA
of 29:9b-3 l: 3 Sa is not extant. Based on these sections, one should not take
vv 1-4 as the introduction, as some commentators do (e.g., Streane; Volz; Con-
damin; Rudolph; Weiser; Carroll; Keown et al.). This introduction is the typi-
cal prose found elsewhere in the book, likely the work of Baruch (Weiser),
who perhaps wrote this scroll, as he did the slightly earlier one, in 60 5 B.C.
(Holladay).
NOTES
30:1. The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh. On this superscription, see
Notes for 7:1 and 21:1. The T expands to "word of prophecy."
- 'Write for yourself all the words that I have spoken to you into a scroll.' Jere-
miah was directed to write up an earlier scroll of his prophecies, the purpose of
which was to gain the people's repentance (36:2-3). Here, to judge from the or-