Book of the Covenant (30:1-31:40) 423"Your people" in T and LXX also becomes "his people." Most commentators
therefore repoint the Heb to h6sia< ("!te has saved" written defective) and
emend "your people" to "his people." Thus, the RSV (following Moffatt and
AmT): "The LORD has saved his people," with most other modern Versions
translating similarly. The AV had "O LORD, save thy people," which is retained
by NJV and NIV and reappears in the NRSV. Kim}:ii sees no problem with an
imperative following an acclamation; nor does Bright, who although he goes
with the LXX and T, concedes that the MT reading is not impossible. Nothing
precludes a cry of gladness occurring simultaneously with a plea for salvation,
because the human soul is fully capable of such a mixing when great moments
occur. But new support for the LXX and T renderings comes from the reading
hwsy< in 4QJer°, which, if pointed h6sfa< (scriptio plene), yields "he has saved."
4QJerc follows with "your people" (<mk), suggesting that the correct reading is
probably "Yahweh has saved your people." Since these are words put into the
mouths of the people, a shift to the second person is not a problem. Jeremiah
is telling Judahites to address their kinfolk in the North with the words "Yah-
weh has saved your people!" The verb is a prophetic perfect, i.e., "Yahweh will
(indeed) save your people" (Streane). Many of those arguing for a perfect verb
form wanted a postexilic date for the oracle, assuming that a return had already
taken place. But the return is still anticipated for the future.
the remnant of Israel. Hebrew si?erft yiira)el. The term originally meant
the remnant of Northern Israel (Cornill), then later the remnant of all Israel
(=Judah), as in 6:9. The idea of a surviving "remnant" for Israel is given prom-
inence in Isaiah (Isa 7:3 and elsewhere), but it appears also in Jeremiah, where
se)erft has multiple meanings (see Note for 23:3). The term in the present verse
need not be taken as a late gloss (pace Giesebrecht; Duhm; Cornill; Rudolph;
Carroll; McKane). The article by Heaton (1952) on the root's eris valuable in
showing how in the OT the term "primarily directs attention not forward to the
residue, but backwards to the whole of which it had been a part" (p. 29), and
that a doctrine of the Remnant such as one finds in the NT writings of Paul
(Rom 9:27-29; 11:4-36) is nowhere present in the OT prophets. But Heaton
dates far too many relevant passages in Isaiah 1-39, Micah, Zephaniah, and
Jeremiah to the exilic or postexilic periods, which leads him to negative con-
clusions about there being seeds of later doctrine in the preexilic prophets. On
the origin and development of the remnant idea in the OT, with parallels in
other ANE literature, see Hase! 1972. On the "remnant of Israel" as it devel-
oped after the prophets, see de Vaux 1933.
- Look I will bring them from the land of the north, And I will gather them
from remote parts of the earth. The opening hinenf mebf) ("Look I am bringing/
will bring") in the mouth of Yahweh is a signature expression of Jeremiah (see
Note for 39: 16). Yahweh now answers the joyful outburst over Israel's deliver-
ance by disclosing his plan for dispersed Israel. He will bring the remnant
home from their northern exile and also gather others from the distant places
where he scattered them (cf. 31: 10). The dispersion as described is exten-
sive, but this is no proof that the passage is late (pace Duhm). In Jeremiah's