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

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

Bring me back so I may come back

for you are Yahweh my God

(^19) For after my turning away
I repented
And after I came to understand
I hit upon my thigh
I was ashamed and also disgraced
for I bore the reproach of my youth.'
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
441
MT 31:18-19 = LXX 38:18-19. The present verses are delimited at the top
end by a setumah in ML (only) before v 18. 4QJerc upon reconstruction ap-
pears to lack a section here. There are no sections in the medieval codices fol-
lowing v 19, indicating that the poem was taken together with its companion
piece in v 20. Both poems are generally attributed to Jeremiah, being seen
by many as more early preaching to Northern Israel, at which time Hosea's
influence was the greatest (see Rhetoric and Composition for 31:15). We
have here another dialogue, with Jeremiah first hearing and then repeating
Ephraim's mournful confession of sin and disgrace (vv 18-19) and Yahweh
answering with an extraordinary outpouring of divine mercy (v 20). The pro-
portions are reversed from vv 15-17, where the divine answer (in three ora-
cles) was twice the length of the lament. Here the divine answer is half the
length of the lament. Erbt (1902: 291) took vv 18-20 to be a liturgy, which
probably it was.
This poem has two stanzas with repetition and balancing grammatical
forms:
You disciplined me and I was disciplined
Bring me back so I may come back

for ..........................

II For after my turning away

And a~er ..................

yissartanf wa>iwwaser

hasibenf wif'asuba

kf ...

kf-> al:zare subf

we>al:zare

for........................ kf ...

Catchwords connecting to the companion poem following:

v 18 Ephraim v 20 Ephraim

v 18

v 19