Book of the Covenant (30:1-31:40) 451of virgin Israel as a people who turns here and turns there. This epithet occurs
one other time, in 49:4, where reference is to Ammon. The LXX translates with
thugater etimomene ("dishonored daughter"). Aquila is closer to the Hebrew
with he rembeuousa ("the roaming woman"); also Symm with he hypostre-
phomene ("the turnable woman").
For Yahweh has created a new thing on earth: the female protects the man! Be-
cause the verb br' ("create") and the noun neqeba ("female") are found in the
Genesis 1 account of creation, which according to source critics belonged to a
postexilic P (priestly) source, Duhm took the present line to be a postexilic
gloss. Neither term appears elsewhere in Jeremiah. Today, however, P material
is believed by many to be older, and a date for the P document has been
pushed back to preexilic times (Milgrom 1991: 12-13). All indications are that
Jeremiah in his chaos vision of 4:23-26 was well acquainted with the Genesis
1 creation story. There is no reason, then, to take the line as a later add-on; it
belongs with the rest of vv 21-22 and can be attributed to Jeremiah (Holladay
l 966c: 236). The verb hara' is a perfect form that should be translated "has cre-
ated." Yahweh is not about to create something new in the future, as most com-
mentators assume, but has created something presently that Jeremiah finds a
wonderment.
the female protects the man. Hebrew neqeba tes6beb gaber. The phrase is a
crux interpretum, even though translation of the Hebrew poses no problem.
4QJerc in a partial reading supports MT. There is also general agreement that
what is stated here in some way points to a reversal of the natural order of
things (Streane; Jones). The suggestion has been made that the climactic line
is a proverb. The verb tes6beb is a Polel of sbb, meaning "she surrounds, pro-
tects," the sense being basically what we have in Deut 32:10, where Yahweh is
remembered as having protected Israel during the wilderness wanderings. The
verb provides assonance with hass6beba ("turnable") in the previous line (Hol-
laday). Jeremiah says that the neqeba ("female") is protecting the geber, who is
a "man," but more specifically a strong man, a warrior. The gender of the
woman is emphasized (cf. Gen 1:27), though not to the extent imagined by
Carroll, and the fighting ability of the man is the second thing that receives the
accent. If the gender of the man were being emphasized, zakar ("male") would
be used. A suggestion I made nearly thirty years ago (Lundbom 1975: 32-34
[= 1997: 47-49)) is the one I would still propose as yielding the best sense for
this phrase in the immediate context: Jeremiah is expressing shock and sur-
prise at the weakness of Judah's soldiers in defeat. He is saying, "My, a new
thing on earth! the woman must protect the (fighting) man." Needless to say, it
should be the other way around. But Jeremiah, being keen on inversions and
expressions of incongruity, is simply exclaiming over a sight that results from
Judah's defeat at the hands of the Babylonians in either 597 or 586 B.C. Also,
and this is a key element in the interpretation, the line here in 22b is structur-
ally connected to 30:6 (see Rhetoric and Composition), creating an associative
link of similar ideas and recurring irony. In 30:6 Judah's defending soldier, who