Part 21

47 “Das Buch Jeremia,” 1905, p. xlvi.

48 E.g. Sievers, “Metrische Studien,” in the “Transactions of Saxon Society of the Sciences,” vol. xxi (which relies too much on the Massoretic or Canonical text); Erbt, “Jeremia u. seine Zeit,” p. 298; Giesebrecht, “Jeremia’s Metrik,” iii. ff.; Karl Budde’s relevant pages in his “Geschichte der althebräischen Litteratur,” 1906 reached me after I had expressed the views I have given above. They agree in the main with these views.

49 Certainly the evidence of both the Hebrew text and the Versions are against it, and the sense supports the text. More than once when sharp questions or challenges are thrown out, we have very appropriately two parallel lines of _two_ accents each instead of the usual Qînah couplet of _three_ and _two_: e.g. ii. 14 and iii. 5. See below, pp. 46 ff. Compare the variety of metres, which Schiller employs to such good effect in his “Song of the Bell”—a variety in beautiful harmony with that of the different aspects of life on which he touches; and see above, p. 36, on the irregularity of metre in Heine’s _Nordseebilder_.

50 Ch. xxix.

_ 51 Op. cit._, p. xii.

52 Chs. i, xi and xxxi.

53 “It is an understatement of the case to say that the folk-song has been a source of inspiration. In the very greatest lyricists we simply find the folk-song in a new shape: it has become more polished and artistic, and it has been made the instrument of personal lyrical utterance.”—John Lees, M.A., D.Litt., “The German Lyric” (London, etc., Dent & Sons, 1914).

54 And in particular sins against the fundamental principle of parallelism, e.g. in iv. 3, where even with the help of part of an obvious title to the Oracle he gets only three lines and supposes the fourth to be lost; and though the sense-parallelism is generally within a couplet he divides it between the last line of his first couplet and the first of his second. Again, if we keep in mind what is said above (p. 35) of the recurrence in Hebrew poems of longer, heavier lines at intervals—especially at the end of a strophe or a poem, we must feel a number of Duhm’s emendations to be not only unnecessary but harmful to the effectiveness of the verse.

55 Pointing את with Patah-Sheva for Tsere.

56 Pointing לםדתי with Chireq-Patah-Sheva-Sheva.

57 Hebrew adds _poor_.

58 So Duhm after the Greek; see p. 97, n. 3.

59 After the Greek.

60 By differently arranging the Hebrew consonants, see p. 117. Other arrangements are possible. Greek omits _destined to ruin_.

61 Hebrew and Greek have this couplet in the reverse order.

62 ii. 14-17.

63 xxxi. 15.

64 While Duhm and Giesebrecht reduce the text to the exact Qînah form, Erbt correctly reads it as varied by lines of four accents.

65 After Duhm who reads לכן = לאכן (cp. viii. 6) and transfers it to the following line.

66 See below, p. 92.

67 So Greek.

68 So Greek; Hebrew adds _their God_.

69 Hebrew adds _and is cut off_.

70 The Hebrew _makôm_ must here as elsewhere be given as equivalent to the Arabic _makâm_ (literally like the Hebrew _standing-place_ but) generally _sacred site_.

71 After Duhm.

72 Hebrew adds _the Lord our God_; not in the Greek.

73 So Greek and Vulg.; Hebrew has _he shall not see_.

74 xiii. 12-14. The above rendering follows the Greek version.

75 A Hebrew idiom, literally _don’t, knowing, we know_?

76 This couplet is wanting in the Greek.

77 So rightly Duhm after the Greek.

78 Hebrew uselessly adds _in the land_.

79 So Duhm, reading _gār_ for _gēr_.

80 Hebrew adds, _and will make visitation on their sins_, which the Greek omits.

81 ix. 17 f., 21 f.; see also pp. 205, 206.

82 xiii. 15-16.

83 So the Greek.

84 iv. 11-13, 15-17. The text and so the metre of 16, 17 are uncertain. For _besiegers_ Duhm proposes by the change of one letter to read _panthers_, to which in v. 6 Jeremiah likens the same foes. Skinner, _leopards_. See below, p. 114.

85 Lit. _Because of the feebleness of their hands_.

86 xv. 5-9.

87 Greek; in both cases Hebrew adds _the Lord_.

88 See previous note.

89 This verse is uncertain; for Hebrew בעתה read with the Greek בהלה. For another arrangement see above, p. 51.

90 So Greek; Hebrew omits _sound_.

91 This line is uncertain.

92 Greek.

93 So Greek; Hebrew omits this line.

94 (1) Jeremiah of Libnah, father of Hamutal, II. Kings xxiii. 31; xxiv. 18; (2) Jeremiah, father of Jaazaniah, the Rechabite, Jer. xxxv. 3; (3) Jeremiah the prophet, son of Hilḳiah.

95 Not to be confounded with the temple-priest, Hilḳiah, who was concerned with the finding of the Law.

96 I. Kings ii. 26 f.

97 Duhm, p. 3.

98 Jer. i. 5.

99 ii. 23, 24; iv. 11; v. 6; viii. 7, 22.

100 Gen. xlix. 27.

101 iv. 3.

102 Is. x. 28-32.

103 xxxi. 15.

104 Hab. iii. 7.

105 See below on ch. iii.

106 vii. 12-15; xxvi. 6.

107 iv. 15.

108 i. 103-107 (after Hecatæus).

109 See Appendix I—Medes and Scythians.

110 “Jerusalem,” ii. 263, 264.

111 Micah vi. 8.

112 xxii. 15, 16.

113 “Jerusalem,” ii.

114 Though not in every case, for Anathoth itself is but the plural of the Syrian goddess Anath, as Ashtaroth is the plural of Astart or Astarte.

115 ii. 28; xi. 13.

116 iii. 2.

117 i. 5.

118 Luke i. 76.

119 See Lecture vii.

120 ii. 18.

121 See his seven Scythian songs below, pp. 110 ff.

122 xviii.

123 xxxvi. 2, a clause which Duhm merely on the grounds of his theory is obliged to regard as a later intrusion, though it bears no marks of being such.

124 So Cornill after the Greek.

125 xx. 7.

126 Hebrew adds the redundant _to pull down_; Greek omits.

127 Duhm; see above, p. 40.

128 This is clear from other passages, v. 14; xviii. 7-10, etc.

129 Ball happily translates _wake-tree_.

130 The text reads, _its face is from the face of northwards_, which some would emend to _its face is turned northwards_, i.e. the side on which it is blown upon and made to boil. _Boiling_ or _bubbling_, lit. _blown upon, fanned_.

131 After the Greek; Hebrew has _be opened_.

132 Hebrew has _races and kingdoms_ and adds _Rede of the Lord_.

133 Read אתם with points Chireq and Qamets.

134 Hebrew adds _to them_; Greek omits.

135 The last three couplets are uncertain. In v. 18 Hebrew adds _a basalt pillar_ and, after _bronze, against all the land_.

136 xxxvi. 32; see pp. 22 ff.

137 P. 37.

138 See pp. 40 f., 72.

139 See p. 41.

140 So simply the Greek; the Hebrew, _And the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem saying_, not only betrays an editorial redundancy, but what follows is addressed not to Jerusalem but to all Israel. Here if anywhere the Greek has the original. Jeremiah begins thus to dictate to Baruch.

141 Hebrew _kebel_ = _breath_.

142 Egypt.

143 So Greek.

144 Lit. _shepherds_.

145 Hebrew adds _Rede of the Lord_.

146 Some Hebrew MSS. and Vulgate.

147 Cyprus = Kittim and Kedár, an Arab tribe, are the extremes of the world then known to the Jews.

148 So Greek.

149 Hebrew marg. _my_.

150 Or _heave_ (Ball), lit. _be aghast_ but the Hebrew is alliterative, _shommû shamaîm_.

151 This couplet is after the Greek, Hebrew has _browsed on thy skull_ for _forced_. Noph = Memphis, Egypt’s capital; Taḥpanḥes = Daphne on the Egyptian road to Palestine. Either 14-19 or more probably 16 alone is one of Jeremiah’s additions to his earlier Oracles after Egypt’s invasion of Palestine in 608.

152 So Greek; Hebrew adds, _when he led thee by the way_.

153 Miṣraim = Egypt.

154 These last four lines follow the Greek.

155 So Duhm by a better division of words.

156 So the Greek.

157 The Hebrew _ḳal_ seems to combine here its two meanings of _swift_ and _trifling_.

158 Hebrew _no’ ash_; with Greek delete the second _no_.

159 So Greek.

160 The insertion (by a copyist?) of this formula rather weakens the connection.

161 So some Versions.

162 Greek adds _and as the number of streets in Jerusalem they burn to Baal_; cp. xi. 13.

163 So Greek.

164 Greek.

165 Greek.

166 Greek _the_.

167 Prose, probably a later insertion when the prophet dictated his Oracles. See pp. 47 f.

168 The text of this quatrain is corrupt, the rendering above makes use of the versions.

169 The text of this verse too is uncertain. For _skirts_ Greek has _hands_; to _innocent_ Hebrew adds _needy_. Some read the second couplet [_though_] _thou did’st not catch them breaking in, but because of all these_, i.e. thy sins against Me, thou did’st murder them.

170 Or _balked_.

171 Greek.

172 Greek; Hebrew _land_.

173 So Duhm after the Greek. Hebrew is impossible.

174 The two Hebrew verbs in this couplet, _naṭar_ and _shamar_ mean _to keep_ (or _maintain_) and _to watch_; they are usually transitive and (in the sense here intended) are followed by a noun, _anger_ or _wrath_, which English versions supply here. But its absence from _both_ the Hebrew and Greek texts leads us to take the verbs as intransitive, as is the case with _naṭar_ in New-Hebrew.

175 Verses 6-18, in prose break the connection both of style and meaning between 5 and 19 and cannot in whole be Jeremiah’s or from his period. This is especially true of 16-18 which assume the destruction of the Ark and the Exile of Judah as well as of Israel as already actual. But the passage probably contains genuine fragments from Jeremiah.

176 So Greek.

177 So one Hebrew MS. and Syriac.

178 Hebrew adds _her sister_.

179 Hebrew adds _Rede of the Lord_.

180 So Greek.

181 Lit. _make not My face to fall_.

182 Greek; Hebrew _ye have_.

183 That is _Lord_ and _Husband_.

184 So Greek.

185 Hebrew adds _to the Name of the Lord to Jerusalem_.

186 So Greek; Hebrew _your_; after _North_ Greek has _and from all lands_.

187 In antithesis to verse 5 of which it is the immediate sequel both in sense and metre.

188 Feminine, i.e. Judah was a daughter, and a son’s portion was designed for her.

189 So finely Ball.

190 The riotous festivals on the high-places.

191 Hebrew adds _the Lord_.

192 This couplet after the Greek.

193 I agree with Cornill and Skinner that these two verses are a later addition. The answer to the people’s confession comes in verses 3 and 4.

194 So some Hebrew MSS. and versions.

195 Hebrew _nirû lakeḿ nîr_; also in English the noun and verb are the same—_to fallow_ or _fallow up_ = _to break_ or _plough up_.

196 So Greek and other versions.

197 iii. 22_b_, 25; Hos. v. 15-vi. 3.

198 So Greek.

199 iv. 3, 4.

200 xiii. 23.

201 xvii. 9, 10.

202 See further, Lecture viii.

203 See above, p. 73.

204 xxxvi. 32.

205 On the subject of this paragraph see the appendix on “The Medes and Scythians.” The following may be consulted: N. Schmidt in “Enc. Bibl.” on “Jeremiah” and “Scythians;” Driver, “The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah,” p. 21; J. R. Gillies, “Jeremiah, the Man and His Message,” pp. 63 ff., who thinks that the Scythians did invade Judah, and W. R. Thomson, “The Burden of the Lord,” pp. 46 ff., who thinks they did not. A thorough study of the question will be found in Skinner’s “Prophecy and Religion, Studies in the Life of Jeremiah,” ch. iii. The case against the Scythians being the enemy from the North that Jeremiah describes is best presented by J. F. McCurdy in “History, Prophecy, and the Monuments,” vol. ii. pp. 395 ff.

206 Amos iii. 6; Joel ii. 1.

207 Greek _the earth_.

208 The text adds _from evil_, one wonders if _Jerusalem_ was added in 604; without it the line is regular.

209 After the Greek.

210 So Syr., transferred from previous couplet.

211 Metre and meaning of 16 and 17 uncertain. For beleaguerers (?) Duhm reads _panthers_ or _leopards_; cp. v. 6.

212 Duhm after Greek renders, My soul is in storm, my heart throbs.

213 Greek; Hebrew _know_.

214 Greek; Hebrew adds _lo!_

215 Probably a later addition.

216 The order of verbs in this couplet is that of the Greek.

217 So Greek; Hebrew _city_, a change possibly made after the fall of Jerusalem.

218 So Greek.

219 Text uncertain; this reading is derived by differently dividing the consonants—_bah no’ ash for bahen ’îsh_.

220 P. 134.

221 Greek; Hebrew _her_. The clause seems an addition.

222 Hebrew adds _therefore_.

223 So Duhm after the Greek; p. 48, n. 2.

224 So Greek.

225 The text is uncertain, the Hebrew margin and versions pointing to an untranslatable original.

226 The text has _make not_, but this is inconsistent with the context, and _not_ seems a later addition.

227 Hebrew adds, _thus be it done them_; Greek omits.

228 Hebrew has _God_ after _Lord_ and _your_ for _their_.

229 This couplet the Greek lacks.

230 Eloquent of death: Ps. v. 9.

231 For these four lines the Greek has only _A nation thou hearest not its tongue, all of them mighty_.

232 Hebrew adds _saying_.

233 Lit. _with no heart_, the seat not only of feeling, but of the practical intelligence.

234 Something like this has obviously slipped from the text.

235 Text uncertain.

236 Either with the spoils or with the victims thereof.

237 The text of the whole verse is uncertain. Greek omits _things of evil_ and _to prosper_.

238 Or _take vengeance Myself_.

239 Hebrew bitĕkô’a tiḳĕ’û; a play upon words.

240 After the Greek; the Hebrew text is corrupt.

241 Transferred from the next line to suit the metre.

242 The Hebrew idiom for starting a campaign or a siege, which was formally sanctioned by a religious rite.

243 So some MSS.

244 So Greek: Hebrew, _She is a city to be visited_.

245 Hebrew adds _of Hosts_.

246 So Greek.

247 It is difficult to discriminate in these lines between the Lord and the Prophet as speakers. If the Greek _I will pour_ is correct, the Prophet still speaks, otherwise the Lord who began in verse 9 and was followed by the Prophet in 10 and 11_a_, resumes in 11_b_.

248 So Greek.

_ 249 Ibid._

250 Hans Schmidt, quoted by Dr. Skinner, does so, and takes it as the earliest evidence of Jeremiah’s opposition to Deuteronomy, and Dr. Skinner in his Chapter “In the Wake of the Reform,” says it is almost certainly post-deuteronomic. I am not convinced. See below, p. 133.

251 Greek _mark ye_.

252 See above, p. 112.

253 Text both of Greek and Hebrew uncertain; the above is adapted from the Greek.

254 Greek has _backslidings_.

255 Hebrew adds _great_, which Greek omits.

256 Greek _you_.

257 See above, pp. 79 ff.

258 Hebrew adds, _a fortress_, obviously borrowed by some scribe from other appointments by God of Jeremiah, e.g. i. 18. For _ways_ in next line Duhm by change of a letter reads _value_.

259 Greek and Targ. read _their evil_ for _the evil ones_ of the Hebrew.

260 The general meaning is clear, the details obscure for the text is uncertain. Driver’s note is the most instructive. In refining, the silver was mixed with lead and the mass, fused in the furnace, had a current of air turned upon it; the lead oxidising acted as a flux, carrying off the alloy or dross. But in Israel’s case the dross is too closely mixed with the silver, so that though the bellows blow and the lead is oxidised, the dross is not drawn and the silver remains impure.

261 As Erbt (“Jeremia u. seine Zeit”) and Skinner (p. 160) do.

262 v. 1-8, see p. 119.

263 So Duhm.

264 Deut. xviii. 6, II Kings xxiii. 8, 9.

265 On this and the following paragraphs see the writer’s “Deuteronomy” in the Cambridge Bible for Schools.

266 Deut. iv. 19.

267 See above, pp. 76, 104 ff.

268 See p. 8.

269 Cp. Thomson, _op. cit._, p. 61.

270 xxxi. 6.

271 These two extremes are represented by Winckler and Duhm respectively.

272 Sing. as partly in Greek and wholly in Syriac.

273 With Greek omit _them_ of the Hebrew text.

274 Hebrew adds _all_.

275 As above, Greek omits all of the Hebrew verses 7, 8 except the last clause which follows naturally on verse 6.

276 See above, pp. 40 ff.

277 This consideration seems to dispose of König’s claim that Jeremiah here maintains the Sinai-Covenant (with the Decalogue) in opposition to the Moab-Covenant set forth in Deuteronomy. How could the former be defined in the time of Josiah as _this Covenant_ or described in Deuteronomic phrases? See also G. Douglas, “Book of Jeremiah,” p. 156.

278 Dr. Skinner (_op. cit._, p. 100) thinks that “the accumulation of distinctively Deuteronomic phrases and ideas in verses 4, 5 implies a dependence on that book which savours strongly of editorial workmanship.” But if _this Covenant_ be the Deuteronomic, as he admits, what more natural than to state it in Deuteronomic terms, expressive as these are only of its spiritual essence? I would also refer to what I have said on p. 41 as to the effect on the Prophet of the new and haunting style of Deuteronomy.

279 Dr. Skinner’s authoritative support to the substance of the thesis maintained above is very welcome, strengthened as it is by the point which he makes in the first of the following sentences: “The deliberate invention of an incident, which had no point of contact in the authentic record of his life, is a procedure of which no assured parallel is found in the book. We must at least believe that a trustworthy tradition lies behind the passage in ch. xi; and the conclusion to which it naturally points is that Jeremiah was at first strongly in favour of the law of Deuteronomy, and lent his moral support to the reformation of Josiah” (pp. 102-3). Wellhausen, “Isr. u. Jüdische Gesch.” (1894, p. 97): “An der Einführung des Deuteronomiums hatte er mitgewirkt, zeitlebens eiferte er gegen die illegitimen Altäre in den Städten Judas.... Aber mit den Wirkungen der Reformation war er keineswegs zufrieden.” So too J. R. Gillies, “Jeremiah,” p. 113, and W. R. Thomson, “The Burden of the Lord,” p. 66; and virtually so, Peake, i. 11-14.

280 So, too, H. P. Smith, “O.T. History,” p. 278, n. 2; while Duhm, Giesebrecht, Davidson, Driver, Gillies, Peake and Skinner all take vii. 1-15 and xxvi. to refer to the same occasion early in Jehoiakim’s reign. Duhm and Skinner remark on an apparently incoherent association of Place ( = Holy Place) and Land in vii. 3-7. The clause about the Land may be a later addition. Yet in verses 13-15 (the substance of which Skinner admits to be genuine) the destruction of the Holy Place and ejection of the people from the Land are _both_ threatened.

281 So simply the Greek; the longer Hebrew title, verses 1, 2 may be an expansion by an editor, who took vii. 1-15 as reporting the same speech as xxvi. 1 ff. In verse 3 Hebrew reads _Lord of Hosts_.

282 Greek adds _for they will be absolutely of no avail to you_.

283 So Syriac.

284 Or _there they are!_—plural because of the complex of buildings.

285 It is doubtful whether this verb, meaning in earlier Hebrew _to make any burnt offering_ was already confined to its later meaning, _to burn incense_.

286 So Greek.

287 Much within these brackets is lacking in the Greek.

288 Hebrew _all_.

289 Verses 9, 25, 29, etc.

290 See above, p. 72.

_ 291 Vows_, so Greek, but Lucian _fat pieces_ (Lev. vi. 5); _by these thou escape_, so Greek, Hebrew _then mightest thou rejoice_.

292 ii. 8, see above, p. 92.

293 Cp. the similar charge of Christ against the scribes.

294 xi. 1 ff.; so Giesebrecht on viii. 8.

295 Marti, _Gesch. der Isr. Religion_, 154, 166; Duhm, and especially Cornill, _in loco_.

296 Hebrew adds _of Hosts, the God of Israel_.

297 The former were not, the latter were in part, eaten by the worshipper; but it does not matter if now he eats them all alike!

298 xi. 1 ff.: above, pp. 143 ff.

299 Sam. xv. 22, Hos. vi. 6. Those who take the passage relatively also quote Paul’s words that Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the gospel, 1 Cor. i. 17.

300 Amos v. 25; Micah vi. 6-8; Ps. l. 13, 14; li. 16, 17.

301 See Robertson Smith, “The O.T. in the Jewish Church,” 2nd ed., 203, 295 (1892), and Edghill, “The Evidential Value of Prophecy” (1904), 274, one of the best works on the O.T. in our time.

302 II. Chron. xxxv. 20, _when he had set the Temple again in order_.

303 Or Nechoh or Neco as in our own versions: Heb. נכוה or נכו.

304 “H. G. H. L.,” p. 151.

305 II. Chron. xxxv. 21. This may be only the reflection of later Jewish piety on so perplexing a disaster; but it rings like fact.

306 II. King xxiii. 29, _as soon as he saw him_. For other records of Nĕcoh’s northward march see Appendix II.

307 The idea that Josiah fought Nĕcoh, as an Assyrian vassal (Benzinger on II. Kings xxiii. 28-30) is, of course, quite improbable, even if Nineveh did not fall till 606. But if the latest datum is correct that Nineveh fell in 612 (see Appendix I) it is utterly groundless.

308 See above, p. 149.

309 xxvi. 2, xxxvi. 9.

310 Whether the sacrifices of children in Hinnom had been resumed, vii. 31 ff., is uncertain; yet this passage may well belong to Jehoiakim’s reign.

311 Greek omits and renders the following _I_ and _my_ by _thou_ and _his_.

312 Using the Greek, Duhm, Cornill and Skinner render this quatrain thus:—

Did not thy father eat and drink, And do himself well? Yet he practised justice and right, Judged the cause of the needy and poor.

313 ii. 8, 31, v. 30, 31, vi. 13, 14, 19, etc.; see pp. 106, 154, etc.

314 xx. 10.

315 See above, pp. 147 ff.

316 Many take the conditional clauses in vii and xxvi to be later insertions (e.g. Skinner, 169 f.). But it was natural to the malice of his foes to distort Jeremiah’s conditional, into an absolute, threat, and in xxvi. 13 he corrects them. My translation follows the Greek version, and omits the Hebrew additions which are found in our English versions.

317 Both text and versions add here _and all the people_; but this may be the careless insertion of a copyist, for in what follows the people are with Jeremiah.

318 So 34 MSS., and Syr. Vulg. and Targ.

319 Hebrew adds _against this city and_.

320 Hebrew adds _and all his mighty men_.

321 So Greek; Hebrew _the king sought_.

322 Hebrew adds a name (_El-nathan, son of Ackbor_) and repeats.

323 II. Kings xxii. 12 ff.; Jer. xxxix. 14, xl. 5, 6.

324 The designations of the title differ; what is stated above was probably the fact.

325 See Appendix I.

326 As vividly described, or predicted, by Nahum; see the writer’s “Twelve Prophets,” vol. ii.; on the date see Appendix I.