176 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSin the days of this king Judah and Israel will be delivered (from enemies) and
will dwell in security. The mention of both Judah and Israel indicates that the
kingdom will be reunited, as it was formerly under David. The name of the
future king, "Yahweh is our righteousness," is an indirect censure of King
Zedekiah, whose name is nearly the same in reverse. The audience must now
realize that Judah's last two reigning kings are castoffs in Yahweh's eyes, no
better than Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin, and that his sights are now set upon the
future. Will they know that this future is a future on the other side of judg-
ment? This oracle is best dated early in Zedekiah's reign (Bright), i.e., soon
after 597 B.C.
When the present oracle is heard following the oracle in 23:3-4, it will be
clear that the future king will reign after Yahweh has gathered a remnant of
covenant people from countries far and near. This makes it clear that the com-
ing days are indeed a ways off.13. New Exodus, New Oath (23:7-8)
23 7 Look, hereafter, days are coming-oracle of Yahweh-when they will
no longer say, 'As Yahweh lives who brought up the children of Israel from
the land of Egypt,'^8 but 'As Yahweh lives who brought up and who brought
in the offspring of the house of Israel from a land to the north and from all
the lands where I scattered them.' And they shall dwell on their own soil.RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
This oracle ends the King Collection, which began at 21: 1. That the oracle is
self-contained may be concluded by its duplication in 16: 14-15 and by its ill-
suited placement in the LXX after v 40 of the present chapter. The oracle is
prose, separated from a previous oracle in poetry and from a confession and or-
acle beginning the Prophet Collection in v 9, which is also poetry. At the top
end is a petubah in MA and a setumah in ML and MP before v 7. At the bottom
end is a petubah in MA and a setumah in ML and MP after v 8.
The LXX omission of these verses after v 6 and their insertion after v 40 call
for special comment. It is widely agreed that the placement after v 40 is ill
chosen. The Hebrew Vorlage to the LXX obviously did not have the oracle
after v 6, since the LXX combines the introductory words of v 9 with the last
words of v 6, translating: ''And this is his name which the Lord will call him,
Iosedek among the prophets." The omission is best explained as another loss
due to haplography (homoeoarcton: l ... l). What seems to have happened is
that in the Hebrew Vorlage, or else in the LXX text, the verses were later in-
serted after v 40, supplied perhaps from another Hebrew manuscript
(Cheyne). The thesis of Janzen (1973: 93, 220-21 #17), quoted approvingly by
Holladay, is that originally this oracle stood between vv 1-4 and vv 5-6, and
that it fell out from here by haplography ("Look, days are coming" begins v 5
and v [7]). Then at a later time it was reinserted where it now appears in the