538 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSfall of Jerusalem. Once the city is destroyed and the priesthood from Jehoiakim
and Zedekiah's reigns is fully discredited, there is no reason why Jeremiah
might not say something positive about this fundamental institution in Juda-
hite society. He, after all, was himself of priestly stock. Giesebrecht said the
phrase "Levitical priests" (hakkohiinfm halewfyfm) was suitable to Jeremiah's
time (see Note for 33:18), but since he decided against the verses, he explained
the phrase as an archaism employed by a later writer. McKane (p. 862) repeats
this same uneconomical argument.
The argument about the repetition of material that occurs earlier in the
book must be discounted. Vocabulary, phraseology, and whole passages are re-
peated all throughout the book, and repetitions are no more indicative of a late
date here than elsewhere. The style too, except for some rare usages and un-
usual grammar, is largely what we find elsewhere. Holladay has restated the
older view that the style here is careless, therefore indicating a postexilic (late-
fifth-century) date for the material. But this judgment will not stand scrutiny,
as his examples-singly or in the aggregate-are unconvincing. Here in the
present oracle, he cites an interchange of 'al and 'el in v 14 and the omission
of "name" in some form in v 16 (cf. 23:6: "his name"). As for the interchange
of 'al and 'el, this is common throughout the book and cannot be written off as
careless Hebrew, much less a mark of lateness (see Notes). As for a possible
omission of semah ("her name"), which is present in T, this could be explained
as a loss due to haplography (see Notes).
The omission of vv 14-26 in the LXX is the main issue. It has been argued
recently that this omission was intentional, being dropped by an editor who
was uninterested in the material (Grothe 1981). Grothe cites for comparison
Sirach, where the discovery of Hebrew MSS showed that in at least two places
the Greek translation altered or omitted materials. The best explanation for the
LXX omission of vv 14-26, however, is that the verses were lost by (vertical)
haplography (homoeoarcton: h ... h), an explanation Holladay considers but
rejects. Theodotion includes the verses in his Version. His rendering in Greek
is preserved in the margin of GQ and can be read in Swete 1914: 44-45. It
should also be n.oted that vv 16-20 are extant in 4QJer° (Tov 1997: 200).
Two other cases of vertical haplography (where the eye of the scribe skips in-
advertently down the column rather than ahead in the line) should be noted in
this connection. A long omission at the end of 1 Sam 10:27 in both MT and
LXX is now apparent with the discovery of a longer text in 4QSama, the added
words being present also in the Greek text used by Josephus (Ant vi 68-71; cf.
McCarter 1980: 198-99). McCarter does not take the omission as haplo-
graphic, saying it is simply an extraordinary skipping of a paragraph. But the
omission can be haplographic, since the omitted section begins [wn](!s, "and
Nahash," and MT 11:1 begins wy'l n(is, "and Nahash went up" (homoeoarc-
ton: w ... w). MT's second word "Nahash" may also have facilitated the error.
In Ezek 36:23b-38 another large omission occurs in Papyrus 967, the oldest
Greek (LXX) manuscript of Ezekiel (second to third century A.D.). Filson
(1943: 31-32) and M. Greenberg (1997: 738-40) argue that this is an inner-