162 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
a jar in which no one takes delight? Hebrew kelf >en ~e{Je$ b8. The phrase (in
simile) occurs in a Moab oracle in 48:38b and also in Hos 8:8, from which it
may derive (K. Gross 1930: 4).
So why are he and his offspring thrown and cast away to a land that they do
not know? The LXX lacks "he and his offspring" and contains singular verbs:
"he is thrown," "he is cast away," and "he does (not) know." Although once again
many commentators delete (Giesebrecht; Duhm; Cornill; Volz; Rudolph;
Weiser; Bright), this omission, as Holladay points out, can be due to haplogra-
phy (homoeoteleuton: w ... w). To show how biased modern scholarship is in
favor of the shorter LXX text, we quote Wessels ( 1989: 239), who says: "The fact
that something is lacking in the Septuagint, but appears in the Massoretic text,
is an indication that it is a later addition." Bias has now become fact! If the ex-
pression is retained, as I think it should be, we can assume that Jehoiachin had
children at the time he was exiled (Malamat 1951: 84). 2 Kings 24: 15 mentions
the king's wives but says nothing about children. There is also a chronological
problem further complicating matters. 2 Chr 36:9 states that Jehoiachin was
eight years old when he began his three-month reign, whereas 2 Kings 24:8 says
he was eighteen years old when taken into exile. According to 2 Chr 3:17-18,
Jehoiachin had seven sons, and the Babylonian cuneiform text listing his
prison rations, which dates from the 10th to 35th year of Nebuchadnezzar II,
lists rations also for five of his sons (ANET^3 308). In the NT, see Matt 1:12. It is
not necessary to argue that all of Jehoiachin's sons were born in captivity, as
some do. He could have had one or more sons while still in Jerusalem. Jehoi-
achin was put on the throne in Dec 598 B.C., and reigned until March 597.
Jerusalem surrendered on March 16, 597 B.C. (Bright 1981: 327; Tadmor 1956:
230). On Jehoiachin's capture, exile to Babylon, and later release from prison,
see 2 Kgs 24:10-15; 25:27-30 = Jer 52:31-34. Lamentations for an exiled king
are contained in two of the Mesopotamian city laments (Dobbs-Allsopp 1993:
72). See also Lam 2:9 and 4:20.
- Land, Land, Land. The repetition is for emphasis (geminatio ), similar to
the threefold "temple of Yahweh" repetition in 7:4 (see Note there). Calvin
says that in repetition "the hardness of iron is overcome by the repeated strokes
of the hammer." The LXX has only two occurrences of "land," which could, as
Janzen (1973: 117) notes, be due to haplography (whole-word). The same re-
duction from three terms to two occurs in the LXX of 7:4. It is also possible that
in both cases the reduction is due simply to the LXX's aversion to repetition,
which is well-attested in the book of Jeremiah. There is scant justification for
the reduction to only one "land," as proposed by Volz. Reference is sometimes
made to the "earth, earth, earth" repetition in the Gilgamesh Epic (Maqlu I
37: ir$itum, ir$itum, ir$itum; Meier 1937: 8; J. Herrmann 1949-50; Gaster 1969:
605, 707); however, since this is an incantation, the parallel is not particularly
compelling. Jeremiah is here calling on the land to hear and be witness to the
divine word spoken against J ehoiachin. By personifying the land, he engages in
apostrophe. In 2: 12 a personified heavens was summoned to witness against the
apostasy of Judah, and more apostrophe appears in the verse following.
