122 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSBut I will surely make you a wilderness
cities that are uninhabited^2(^7) So I am sanctifying destroyers against you
each person with his axes
And they will cut down your choicest cedars
and fell them upon the fire.
(^8) And many nations will pass by this city, and they will say each person to his
fellow, 'Why has Yahweh done thus to this great city?'^9 And they will say,
'Because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh their God and wor-
shiped other gods and served them.'
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
These verses consist of an oracle with expanded messenger formula (vv 6-
7), followed by a wisdom comment later added (vv 8-9). The oracle is in po-
etry; the wisdom comment in prose. The upper limit of the unit is marked
by a petubah in MA and 4QJerc and a setumah in ML and MP before v 6.
Marking the lower limit is a petubah in 4QJer^2 and MP and a setumah in ML
and MA after v 9. Shifts from prose to poetry in vv 6 and 10 corroborate this
demarcation.
The oracle of vv 6-7 leads off a rhetorical structure in 22:6-23, which forms
the core of the King Collection (see Rhetoric and Composition for 21:1-10).
This core consists of three "Lebanon-cedar" poems, within which are inter-
spersed an oracle and lament, and an oracle of nonlament. The poems are
linked by key words, the whole forming a large chiasmus (Lundbom 1975:
101-4 [=1997: 133-36]):
A
Gilead you are to me
the top of Lebanon (halleban6n)
And they will cut down your choicest cedars (' iirazeyka)
and fell them upon the fire
Weep not for the dead ....
........................ .. Uos~h]
(22:6-7)B weep continually for the one who goes away.............................. [Jehoahaz]
(22: 10-12)"Reading the Q, n6sabU, "they are (un)inhabited"; Kt is a third-feminine singular, "it is
(un)inhabited," or "each one (un)inhabited" (see Notes).