168 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
You, you have scattered my fiock and dispersed them. The verbs are plural.
Kings, along with others in the royal house, are here held responsible for the
exile that has just occurred.
and you have not reckoned them. Look, I will reckon upon you .... A wordplay
in the Hebrew: welo> peqadtem >otam ... hinenf poqed 'alekem. On the verb
pqd, which occurs often in Jeremiah and means "to pay a visit, reckon (upon,
with)," see Note for 5:9. Here the shepherds are indicted for not calling the
sheep to account, for which reason Yahweh says that he will reckon with them.
This visitation will result in punishment and exile (cf. 22:22). The punishment
will befit the crime. Samuel delivered this word to the disobedient Saul: "Be-
cause you have rejected (ma>asta) the word of Yahweh, he therefore has rejected
you (wayyim>aseka) from being king" (1Sam15:23b).
your evil doings. Hebrew roa' ma'allekem. A stereotyped expression in Jere-
miah poetry and prose, on which see Note for 21:12.
- And I, 1 will gather the remnant of my fiock from all the lands where I dis-
persed them, and I will bring them back to their pasture, and they shall be fruit-
ful and multiply. This oracle focuses on divine initiative and divine action and
shifts to a word of promise. Yahweh admits now to having dispersed the cove-
nant people (cf. Deut 28:64) but says he will bring them back to "their pasture"
(newehen), which is the land of Israel (Calvin; cf. 50: 19), where they will be
fruitful and multiply. The same message was conveyed to Judahite exiles in
Babylon (29:10-14). In 31:10, Yahweh is celebrated among the nations as the
God who scatters (mezareh) but then gathers (yeqabbe$ennu).
The idea of a remnant, expressed often but not exclusively in the OT by the
terms se>ar, se>erft, does not originate with Jeremiah. It is at least as old as the
Song of Moses (Deut 32:26-27, 36) and appears often in the eighth-century
prophets, particularly Isaiah, in whose time Judah was nearly exterminated by
Sennacherib's army (Isa 1:9; 4:3; 7:3; 10:20-23; 11:1-9; 37:4, 31-32; Mic 2:12;
4:6-7; 5:6-7[Eng 5:7-8]; 7:18). In Jeremiah, the remnant idea first appears
. with reference to Northern Israelites who survived the Assyrian destruction of
722 B.C., to whom Yahweh gave the hope of a return to Zion (31:7-9; cf. Isa
11:16). Jeremiah also uses "remnant of Israel" to include those who survived
the Assyrian invasion of 701 B.C. (6:9; cf. 50:17). Judahites who survived Jeru-
salem's destruction in 586 B.C. and remained in the land (39:9-10; 40:6; 41:10)
butthen wentto Egypt are called the "remnant of Judah" (40:11, 15; 42:15, 19;
43:5; 44:12). Jeremiah says most of these people will die in Egypt, though a
small number will return to Judah (44:11-14, 27-28). Judahites exiled to Baby-
lon were the favored remnant, according to Jeremiah, and to them was given
an unqualified word about eventual return to their homeland (24:4-7; 29:10-
14; 50: 19-20).
from all the lands. The LXX has "from the whole earth," apo pases tes ges; Aq
has "from all the nations," apo pason ton gaiOn (cf. 29:14).
and they shall be fruitful and multiply. Hebrew D.parD. weriibD.. The phrase is
stock, appearing often in Genesis (Gen 1:22, 28; 8:17; 9:1, 7; and elsewhere)
and in the so-called P material (Lev 26:9; cf. S. R. Driver 1913: 131 ). Having a
