Jeremiah 21-36 A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by (Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries)

Indictment of Judah and the Nations (25:1-38)

He has entered into judgment with all flesh

as for the wicked, he has given them over to the sword

• oracle of Yahweh.

RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION

269

MT 25:30-31 = LXX 32:30-31. Here at the conclusion of the present chapter

are added judgments against the nations, all of which are poetry except v 33,

which is later prose comment (pace Condamin, Weiser, and Holladay, who

attempt to make it poetry). Duhm correctly discerns in the verses three sepa-

rate units: vv 30-31; vv 32-33; and vv 34-38. The same divisions are made by

Castellino ( 1980: 404-6), but his progression from "the setting of the stage"

(vv 30-31) to "the threats" (vv 32-33) to "the carrying out of the punishment"

(vv 34-38) is contrived and does not find support in the text. More convincing

is Castellino's observation that the whole of vv 30-38 is bound together by im-

ages of Yahweh as a lion, which make this inclusio:

I Yahweh will roar from on high

III Like a lion he has left his den

v 30

v 38

At the beginning, the lion is identified indirectly by his roar; at the end he
makes his appearance. This tie-in between end and beginning is noted by
Cheyne, Cassuto ( l 973c: 226), and others.
There is a problem about the presumed speaker in vv 30-31. These verses
contain two references to Yahweh in the third person, yet at the conclusion is
an "oracle of Yahweh" formula, which would indicate Yahweh as the speaker.
Since Yahweh can be expected to speak in the first person in a divine oracle,
some commentators judge the messenger formula to be late and misplaced
(Duhm; Cornill; Volz; Rudolph; Holladay; McKane). McKane points out how
the Vg converts the final colon of v 31 into a first-person statement: Impios tra-
didi gladio ("The wicked I have handed over to the sword"), which accommo-
dates the "oracle of Yahweh" formula by making Yahweh the speaker.
However, Jeremiah oracles can contain the divine name, e.g., 2:3, 15-19; and
5: 10-11; which means that vv 30-31 could be a divine oracle, even though Yah-
weh names himself. The speaking voices in the core poetry are then Yahweh in
vv 30-31 and v 32 and Jeremiah in vv 34-38. Inv 33 Yahweh is again referred
to in the third person, but this is later expansion.
Here, as elsewhere in the chapter, questions have been asked about whether
this poetry can be attributed to Jeremiah. Schwally ( 1888), Giesebrecht (p. xxi),
and Cornill denied all of vv 30-38 to the prophet, saying that the tone was dif-
ferent and the content spurious. But Mowinckel ( 1914: 21) assigned the verses
to Jeremiah (Source A). Some commentators have talked too about this poetry
being eschatological or apocalyptic (e.g., Duhm; Peake; Cornill; Streane;
Hyatt; Carroll), which is wide of the mark. The language and ideas are what
we find throughout the book and very different from what is found in later