320 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
here with political adroitness; he is simply a prophet driven by the conviction
that Yahweh is Lord of all history (Rudolph; Kraus 1964: 74-75). For a later
variation of this same exhortation, see Bar 2:21.
and serve him and his people, and live! The priests and people are told the
same thing in v 17. Reuven Yaron, in a lecture given at the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, on June 6, 1977, said that the expression "serve him and live"
is probably very old, since it appears in the fourteenth century B.C. Amarna
Letters (EA 162: 39; Knudtzon 1964: 656-57: Unterwirf dich denn dem Konig,
deinem Herrn! Dann lebst du ["Submit yourself then to the king, your lord!
Then you will live"]).
12b-14a. him and his people, and live! Why should you die, you and your
people, by sword, by famine, and by pestilence according to what Yahweh has
spoken to the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon? And do not listen to
the words of the prophets who are saying to you: 'You shall not serve.' This large
LXX omission is recognized by many (Hitzig; Peake; Cornill; Bright; Janzen
1973: 118; Tov 1979: 87; Carroll; Holladaya) as a loss due to haplography
(whole-word: 'bdw ... 'bdw).
- Why should you die ...? The king and his royal house are here given the
way of life and the way of death, which Jeremiah laid before the people in
21:8-10.
- And do not listen to the words of the prophets who are saying to you: 'You
shall not serve the king of Babylon.' Indeed a lie they are prophesying to you. As
Yahweh's messenger, the prophet must above all be true. Nothing less was ex-
pected of messengers generally, as S. Meier ( 1988: 22-24, 168-79) points out
in his study of messengers throughout the ancient world. From the Bible he
cites the example of Ahimaaz, a messenger sent to David after Absalom was
killed, who was willing only to tell the king the good news, that his enemies
had been defeated, and not the bad news, that Absalom had been killed (2 Sam
18: 19-30). Meier cites also the following passage from the Amarna Letters (EA
I: 81-88), where the Egyptian Pharaoh complains to the Babylonian king
about a breakdown in communication due to "apple-polishing" on the part of
the king's messengers:
Your messengers don't speak truly to you .... Don't listen to your messen-
gers whose mouths are false .... I swear they have not served you and so
they told lies in order to escape your punishment. (p. 169)
a lie. Hebrew seqer. The LXX has adika, "a wrong," rather than pseudos, "a lie."
14-15. prophets ... prophets. T: "prophets of falsehood" (2x); LXX:
prophetai in v 15. These are the optimistic Jerusalem prophets.
- for I have not sent them. A recurring disclaimer by Yahweh (see Note for
23:32).
"Holladay claims (p. 116) to support haplography but makes no mention of it in his textual
notes (p. 113).
