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

394 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS

(^15) Why do you cry over your brokenness
your desperate pain?
Because your iniquity was much
your sms were numerous
I did these things to you.
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
MT 30:12-15 = LXX 37:12-14. This poem is delimited at the top end by
the messenger formula at v 12, before which comes a petu~ah in ML, Mr, and
4QJerc. The verses are not extant in MA. The next section in all three texts fol-
lows v 17, strengthening the impression that vv 16-17 are meant to be joined
with vv 12-15. The two are in fact companion poems but most likely at one
time were independent of one another (see Rhetoric and Composition for
30:4-7). Some commentators take one or both as originally addressed to
Northern Israel (Volz and Holladay: vv 12-15; Rudolph, Weiser, and Hertz-
berg 1952: 597, vv 12-17), but more likely both addressed Judah from the
start, sometime around the fall of Jerusalem. The wounds of vv 12-15 are
Zion's recent wounds, not ancient wounds sustained by Israel in its fall to the
Assyrians in 722 B.C. Furthermore, "Zion" in v 17 identifies the addressee of
vv 16-17 as Jerusalem. But in the poetic core the two poems expand their au-
dience to both Israelite and Judahite exiles (30:4).
Almost all commentators (Duhm; Volz; Rudolph; Weiser; Hyatt; Bright;
Holladay; and others) attribute the present poem to Jeremiah. Peake and Cor-
nill were tentative about authenticity, but not McKane, who cites both in sup-
port of his view that the whole of vv 12-17 derives from a later imitator who
plundered the Jeremiah vocabulary. McKane is driven to such an uneconomi-
cal view because he wants to keep vv 12-17 together and cannot attribute the
salvation preaching of vv 16-17 to Jeremiah.
The poem comprises three stanzas, having the following repetitions and bal-
ancing terms (cf. Lundbom 1975: 58 [= 1997: 78-79]):
Your brokenness is desperate
your blow ...

There is none .............

............. there is not ...

II ... the blow ... I have struck you

Because your iniquity was much

your sins were numerous

III .............. your brokenness

your desperate pain

Because your iniquity was much

>anus lesibrek

makkatek

)-en ...

... )-en

makkat ... hikkftfk

sibrek

>anus mak'obek

v 12

v 13

v 14

v 15