Part 22
327 II. Kings xxiv. 1-16. The chronology of the end of Jehoiakim’s reign is uncertain. Most have held that the three years of his tribute were his last years, 600-598. But Winckler (“A.T. Untersuchungen,” 81 ff.) gives good reasons for preferring 605-3.
328 See above, pp. 22 ff. Our versions render the Hebrew correctly, but the following emendations may be made from the Greek: Verse 1, for _this word ... from the Lord_ read _the word of the Lord came unto me_; 2, for _Israel_ read _Jerusalem_; 22, omit _in the ninth month_, unnecessary after 9; 31, omit _their iniquity_, for _upon them_ read _upon him_, and for _men_ read _land, of Judah_; 32, for _Jeremiah took_ read _Baruch took_ and omit _and gave it to Baruch the scribe the son of Neriah_, and also the words _king of Judah_ and _in the fire_.
329 xxxvi. 3.
330 xxxvi. 29; cp. xxv. 9 f.
331 xxxvi. 19, 24.
332 Such is the force of the Hebrew idiom in the last clause of xxxvi. 16; for the different attitude of the princes in 608 see pp. 170 ff.
333 The Hebrew text is accurately rendered by our English Versions; the following are the principal points on which the Greek differs from it: Verse 1, both Greek and Latin lack _that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon_; in verse 2 Greek lacks _Jeremiah the prophet_ and _all_, and in verse 3 _the word of the Lord hath come to me_ and _but ye have not hearkened_. In verse 6 for _I will do you no hurt_ Greek reads _to your hurt_. Again, Greek lacks in 7 _saith the Lord_, in 8 _of Hosts_, in 9 _saith the Lord and to Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon My servant_, and for _all the families_ it reads _a family_; and in 11 lacks _this, a desolation, these_ and _the king of Babylon_, substituting for the last two _shall serve among the nations_.
334 E.g. the preposition _to_ before _Nebuchadrezzar_ in verse 9 which does not construe.
335 xxv. 1-14 has been denied to Jeremiah by Schwally (“Z.A.T.W.,” viii. 177 ff.) and Duhm, but their arguments are answered by Giesebrecht and Cornill _in loco_; see, too, Gillies, 195-8, 202, and Skinner, 240 f.
336 See Davidson in Hastings’ “D.B.,” ii. 574, Driver and Gillies _in loco_.
337 See above, p. 14.
338 E.g. cp. 26 with 9 and both with i. 15.
339 As Duhm asserts; see above, pp. 79 ff.
340 The above paragraph on xxv. 15-38 is based on Giesebrecht’s careful analysis of the passage.
341 xxxvi. 5, 19, 26.
342 Worn next the skin; not _girdle_ which came over the other garments. See “Enc. Bibl.,” article “Girdle.”
343 So virtually Cornill, who, indifferent as to whether the story is one of fact or of imagination, emphasises the choice of the Euphrates as its essential point, compares ii. 18, _to drink of the waters of the River_, and dates the story in the earliest years of Jeremiah’s ministry. On the other hand Erbt, who also reads _Euphrates_, interprets the story as one of actual journeys thither by Jeremiah.
344 I visited it in 1901 and 1904, a most surprising oasis!
345 Pĕrath or Parah = Farah was first suggested by Ewald (“Prophets of the O. T.,” Eng. trans, iii. 152), quoting Schick (“Ausland,” 1867, 572-4), by Birch (“P.E.F.Q.,” 1880, 235), and by Marti (“Z.D.P.V.,” 1880, 11), and has been accepted by many—Cheyne, Ball, McFadyen, Peake, etc.
346 See above, p. 55.
347 In the valley of Hinnom, where were potteries and above them a city-gate _Harsith_ = (probably) _Potsherds_; in the upper valley broken pottery is still crushed for cement; lower down traces of ancient potteries appear, and there is the traditional site of the Potter’s Field, Matt. xxvii. 7.
348 So literally the term rendered _wheel_, A.V. It was of two discs, originally of stone, but later of wood, of which in earlier times the upper alone revolved and the lower and larger was stationary, but later both revolved by the potter’s foot. See “Enc. Bibl.,” article “Pottery.”
349 See above, pp. 84 f.
350 Hebrew adds _Rede of the Lord_.
351 Hebrew adds _House of Israel_.
352 A. B. Davidson.
353 To this we return in dealing with Jeremiah’s religious experience. See below, Lecture vii.
354 See above, p. 109 on iv. 3.
355 Luke xiii. 6 ff. Other parables or actual incidents illustrating either the possibilities of characters commonly deemed hopeless or the fresh chances given them by God’s grace, are found in Matt. xviii. 23 f., Luke vii. 39 f. (the woman who was a sinner) and xix. (Zacchæus).
356 Cornill _in loco_, Skinner, pp. 162 f., both of them in fine passages on the teaching of the parable, the former exposing the superficiality of Duhm’s impulsive judgment upon it. Cornill finds that the genuine words of Jeremiah close with verse 4; Skinner, Erbt and Gillies (p. 158) continue them to 6.
357 But see next page.
358 xix. 1 ff. The Greek connects this incident with the preceding by reading _then_ for the Hebrew _thus_, and with many Hebrew MSS. adds to _saith the Lord_ the phrase _to me_, making Jeremiah himself the narrator. In xix. 4 read with Greek _whom neither they nor their fathers knew, and the kings of Judah have filled_, etc. Throughout Greek lacks phrases which are probably later additions to Hebrew; but these are not important.
359 See p. 185, n. 2.
360 The above is mainly from the Greek. The following is a significant instance of how the knowledge of the Bible still holds among some at least of the Scottish peasantry. A woman in a rural parish calling on her minister to complain about the harshness of the factor of the landlord said that he was a very Magor-Missabib. And it is no less significant that the minister had to consult his concordance to the Bible to know what she meant!
361 In xxxv the differences between Greek and Hebrew continue to be those generally found in the Book, i.e. Greek omits the expansive formulas, including the Divine titles, redundant words (like _all_) and phrases, and corrects the wrong preposition _to_ by the right _upon_ (17). Further, it spells differently some of the proper names, reads _house_ for _chamber_ (4 _bis_), _a bowl_ for _bowls_ (5), _to me_ for _to Jeremiah_ (12), and in 18 does not address the promise to the Rechabites, but utters it of them in the third person, also omitting the name of Jeremiah, and in 19 for _for ever_, lit. _all the days_, reads _all the days of the land_.
362 The ally of Jehu, II. Kings x. 15, 23. The tribe was Kenite, I. Chron. ii. 55. The Kenites, according to Jud. i. 16, I. Sam. xv. 6, settled in the South of Judah, but Jonadab is found in North Israel and apparently his descendants, as fugitives before an invasion from the North, came from the same quarter. Heber the Kenite also dwelt on Esdraelon, Jud. iv. 17, v. 24.
363 Duhm’s criticisms of it, and rejection of some of its parts are, even for him, unusually arbitrary, especially his objection to the words in verse 13, _Go and say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem_, for obviously these people were not gathered in, nor could be addressed from, the Temple chamber. It was the people as a whole, whose fickleness from age to age he was about to condemn; on this verse Duhm’s remarks are, besides being arbitrary, inconsistent.
364 Above, pp. 147 ff.
365 Above, pp. 50, 153 f.
366 Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3; II. Kings xxiii. 5, 13. See the present writer’s “Jerusalem,” ii., pp. 186 ff., 260, 263.
367 Deut. xii. 31, II. Kings xxiii. 10. See “Jerusalem,” ii., pp. 263 f.
368 Pp. 153 f.
369 The only apparent reason for the compiler putting the two songs together is that the last verse of the one and the first verse of the other open in the same way, _O that I had_ (Hebrew _O who would give me_).
370 xxxvi. 32.
371 Greek omits this clause.
372 Apparently a common proverb.
373 Hebrew adds _Jerusalem_ with no sense and a disturbance to the metre.
_ 374 Mishpaṭ = rule, order, ordinance._
_ 375 Torah = law_, see p. 154.
376 Reading צשה with Dagesh in last letter.
377 With 10-12, cp. vi. 13-15; 11, 12 are wanting in Greek.
378 Hebrew adds a line of corrupt text.
379 Hebrew, _the Lord_.
380 So Greek. The verse is another instance of the two-stresses-to-a-line metre; see p. 46.
381 So Greek.
382 So Greek.
383 So Greek.
384 Hebrew adds _Rede of the Lord_.
385 After t