Book of the Covenant (30:1-31:40)30:6 Ask, would you, and see
if a male can bear a child?
So why do I see every man
his hands on his loins like a woman in labor?31:22b For Yahweh has created a new thing on earth:
the female protects the man!zakar
geberneqeba ... gaber
381In mood also, the end is a return to the beginning. The opening poem talks
about battle-weary men acting like women in labor, whereas the closing line
says that females must protect the men, an ironic reversal of how things should
be-particularly in wartime. So, although the collection as a whole has an
overriding theme of salvation, the beginning and end reflect the anguish of a
more recent judgment.
The present poem is demarcated at the top end by a petubah in ML and MP
before v 4. Neither codex has a section after v 7, but 4QJerc does, marking the
poem's conclusion with a petubah. The beginning of the unit is also marked by
the superscription in v 4 and the messenger formula in v 5; at the end there is
additionally a shift to prose in v 8. This poem and the one following in vv 10-
11 have been deliberately juxtaposed, as the above structure indicates. In my
view, vv 5-11-with or without vv 8-9-were not originally a unified composi-
tion (pace Boadt; Becking 1989). They, like the poems in 20:7-10 and 11-12
and other poems here in chaps. 30-31, were originally self-standing and have
been brought together into a larger composition. Section markings after v 7
(4QJerc) and v 9 (ML and MP) are a further indication that breaks belong at
these two points.
The present poem has three stanzas with the following repetitions and bal-
ancing terms:............ and no .......
................. and see
II .... do I see every man
all faces ..............
III .......................
there is none .............
we' en
ure'ura'ftf kol-geber... kol-panfm
me A) ayzn • ...
v 5v6v7The structural significance of 'en ("no") and me'ayin ("there is none") in I and
III is noted by van der Wal (1996: 82), but vv 5-7 do not have the chiastic struc-
ture that he claims for them.