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

Jeremiah Buys Land in Anathoth (32:1-44)

EXCURSUS VI: THE EXPANSION OF JERUSALEM

IN THE EIGHTH AND SEVENTH CENTURIES B.c.

495

Jerusalem grew from a city of 130-80 dunams (33.5 to 45 acres)" in the eighth

century to a city of 500-600 dunams (125-50 acres) in the seventh century,

making it a very large city (Broshi 1974: 23; 1978: 12). Broshi, who assumes a

settlement on the Western Hill ( = Upper City) beginning in the eighth cen-

tury, puts the seventh-century population of walled Jerusalem at 24,000/

25,000, a figure baseJ 011 an average of 40-50 people per dunam. But Stager

(1975: 243-44), who acknowledges an eighth-century expansion onto the

Western Hill, says these figures are too high. Accepting Broshi's proportional

increase of acreage and population, with a large expansion coming after Sa-

maria's fall in 722 B.C. and another expansion coming after Sennacherib's

Judah campaign in 701 B.C., when Judah's western provinces were given by

Sennacherib to the Philistines, Stager says a more realistic population for the

seventh century would be 7,500-12,000 people. Stager and Broshi's statistics

on the size and population of Jerusalem in Iron II (900-586 B.C.) are the

following:

10th C. B.C.

8th C. B.C.

7th C. B.C.

size in du mans (acres)

44 (11)

130-80 (33.5-45)

500-600 (125-50)

population (Broshi)

6,000-8,000

24,000 I 25,000

population (Stager)

600-900

2,000-3,600

7,500-12,000

In a subsequent publication, Stager ( 1982: 121) puts the expanded eighth lo
seventh century population at 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants. For more general
population estimates in Western Palestine during Iron II, see Broshi 1993 .d

'The dunam is a land measure equal to 1000 square meters, about 1/4 of an acre.

JBroshi's article is contained in the Pre-Congress Symposium Supplement.

B. Jeremiah Buys Land in Anathoth (32: 1-44)

I. Why Are You Prophesying Thus? (32:1-5)

32 1 The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh in the tenth yeara of

Zedekiah, king of Judah (that was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar).

"Q is bassand; Kt is the construct bisnat; see 28: I; 46:2; 51 :59; and elsewhere; cf. GKC § 134p.