420 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSthe pregnant and woman in labor together
a great assembly shall return here(^9) With weeping they shall come
and with supplications I will lead them
I will bring them to streams of water
on a level path, in which they will not stumble
For I am as a father to Israel
and Ephraim, my firstborn is he.
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
MT 31:7-9 = LXX 38:7-9. The present verses consist of a single hope oracle,
the second of three that form a unit within the poetic core (see Rhetoric and
Composition for 30:4-7 and 31:1-6). The oracle is delimited at the top end
by a "for thus said Yahweh" formula beginning v 7, prior to which is a petuf:zah
in ML and a setumah in MP. Upon reconstruction, 4QJerc also has a setumah
before v 7 (Tov 1997: 197-98). Delimitation at the bottom end is marked by a
setumah in ML and a petuf:zah in MP and 4QJerc after v 9. Some commenta-
tors (Giesebrecht; Duhm; Hyatt; Thompson; Keown et al.; McKane) take all
of vv 7-14 as a unit, which ignores this latter section. Verses 10-14 have their
own "oracle of Yahweh" formula at the end. The present verses are then a
self-contained oracle (Condamin; Rudolph; Weiser; Bright; Boadt; Carroll;
Jones). There is no justification for selecting out v 9b and combining it with
vv 2-6, as Volz and Holladay do (Duhm and Cornill had earlier biases regard-
ing v 9b). It is the climactic line of the oracle, similar to 6b in vv 2-6.
Commentators and others are divided over questions of date, authorship,
and provenance of these verses. Some, because of a similarity in ideas and
phraseology to Second Isaiah, deny the verses to Jeremiah and date them in
the postexilic period (Giesebrecht; Duhm; Peake; Cornill; Streane; Hyatt;
Carroll; Mendecki 1988; McKane). Others attribute them to Jeremiah, dating
them either in Josiah's reign or close to the fall of Jerusalem (Volz; Rudolph;
Weiser; Bright; Thompson; Boadt; Holladay; Jones). The verses contain the
"new Exodus" theme so prominent in Second Isaiah, but Halpern ( 1998) has
recently argued that it is the prophet of the exile who builds on Jeremiah, not
the other way around. This is the view also of Holladay, and I think the correct
one. The diction here is very much that of Jeremiah, e.g., "gladness," "Look I
will bring ... from the land of the north," "from remote parts of the earth," and
"they shall (not) stumble," to mention some of the most obvious examples.
Also, as Holladay, Jones, and Halpern all point out, ideas of deliverance here
invert the same ideas found in Jeremiah's earlier judgment preaching (com-
pare vv 8-9 with 6:21-22; 18:15; 25:32; and 50:41).
This is another dialogue oracle. Jeremiah speaks first in v 7, calling people to
cry out loudly and praise Yahweh for saving the remnant of Israel. Then Yah-
weh speaks in vv 8-9 (divine "I"), replying to this joyous acclamation (Calvin;