“I Sat Alone”: Jeremiah Among the Prophets 9781463216450

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“I SAT ALONE”

“I Sat Alone” Jeremiah Among the Prophets

MICHAEL AVIOZ

2009

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2009 Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey ISBN: 978-1-59333-854-1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Avioz, Michael, 1967[Nevu'ato shel Yirmeyahu. English] I sat alone : Jeremiah among the prophets / Michael Avioz. -- 1st Gorgias Press ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59333-854-1 (alk. paper) 1. Jeremiah (Biblical prophet) 2. Bible. O.T. Jeremiah-Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. BS580.J4A9513 2009 224'.206--dc22 2009001234

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standards.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword by Professor Walter Brueggemann ...................................................vii Foreword by Professor Mark Leuchter ..............................................................ix Preface....................................................................................................................xiii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................xv 1 On Prophecy and the Prophets ........................................................................1 What are the major differences between the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets?..............................................................................3 What Led to the Rise of Classical Prophecy? ............................................5 Types of Oracles.............................................................................................6 2 The Historical Background of Jeremiah's Prophecy ......................................9 3 Jeremiah's Prophetic Call.................................................................................15 4 Jeremiah's Temple Sermon..............................................................................21 The Arrangement of the Material ..............................................................22 Citations and Refutation..............................................................................24 The Rhetorical Questions ...........................................................................25 Analogies........................................................................................................26 What Was Not Mentioned in the Speech? ...............................................27 5 The Trial .............................................................................................................29 The Trial Begins............................................................................................29 What Was The Charge Against Jeremiah?................................................30 Jeremiah's Defense .......................................................................................31 The Precedents .............................................................................................32 The Verdict....................................................................................................32 Jeremiah's Trial and Other Famous Trials ...............................................33 The Aim of the Trial Narrative ..................................................................33 6 Jeremiah's Complaints......................................................................................35 Jeremiah 11: 18-23........................................................................................36 Jeremiah 12: 1-6 ............................................................................................38 Jeremiah 15: 15-21........................................................................................39 v

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Jeremiah 17: 14-18........................................................................................40 Jeremiah 18: 18-23........................................................................................40 Jeremiah 20....................................................................................................41 The Place of the Laments in the Book of Jeremiah................................42 7 Jeremiah and the Kings of Judah....................................................................43 8 Jeremiah and the False Prophets ....................................................................51 Characteristics Typical of the Prophets ....................................................55 Jeremiah's Struggle Against the False Prophets: The Political Aspect....................................................................................................57 9 The End of the Kingdom of Judah................................................................61 10 The Gedaliah Episode....................................................................................67 Gedaliah's Murder ........................................................................................68 Two Differing Descriptions of the Murder: Kings and Jeremiah ........69 Jeremiah's Fate After the Destruction of the First Temple...................70 11 Jeremiah's Legacy............................................................................................73 Jeremiah in the Writings of Josephus Flavius..........................................76 Jeremiah in the Midrashim..........................................................................77 Jeremiah in Art..............................................................................................79 Jeremiah in World Literature......................................................................79 Jeremiah in Modern Hebrew Poetry and Literature ...............................80 Jeremiah in Cinema ......................................................................................83 The Prophets in Modern Society ...............................................................83 Bibliography ...........................................................................................................85 Index........................................................................................................................91

FOREWORD BY PROFESSOR WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

It is clear that the Book of Jeremiah, of all the biblical material, is a most contemporary piece of literature. It addresses the faithful with passion about the truth of a society that is permeated with falseness and violence. Avioz has written a winsome book about Jeremiah that calls attention to the high points of religious sensibility and rhetorical power in the Book of Jeremiah and invites engagement with a prophetic passion that bears all the marks of revelation. His book is accessible and reliable, and will well serve a beginning reader. Professor Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary November 2007

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FOREWORD BY PROFESSOR MARK LEUCHTER

In many ways, the scholarly world today is no different than any other part of modern culture. True, it sets itself aside as a crucible of theories and ideas that don’t often enter into common discourse, but those theories and ideas are only subsets of a larger intellectual heritage that does indeed inform the experience of people beyond the academy. And like the ever changing features of that larger intellectual heritage, scholarship is in a constant state of flux, with pundits drawing and re-drawing lines in the sand regarding how they and their colleagues may engage in an inquiry or express their respective interests and predilections. The study of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), especially, has seen much of this over the last two and a half decades. Questions that were once of utmost importance to scholars regarding the development of texts, the biases and beliefs of their authors, and the personalities presented therein have as of late been overshadowed by new approaches and concerns. Years ago, a common scholarly starting point was the question “who wrote this Biblical text?” or “what does this Biblical text tell us about ancient Israel’s history?” Today, it is just as common (or perhaps even more common) for scholars to ask “who reads this Biblical text?” or “how are people reading this Biblical text?” There is great merit in asking these latter two questions, but in the process of focusing on them, many scholars have relegated the earlier questions to the backburner, or taken them off the stove top altogether. This is unfortunate, because beyond the academy, these questions are tremendously important to people interested in Biblical literature. Most people who care to encounter the contents of the Bible want to establish a meaningful connection between remote epochs, namely, their own and that of the characters within (and behind) the text. For many, this is governed by faith, but faith alone is not the sole reason for such curiosity or interest. What do these narratives, poems, and aphorism say about the enduring human condition that is as true “now” and it was “then”? What do they depict that has laid the foundations for Western (and a good part of Eastix

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ern) social and political ideology? Or—more simply but no less significantly—what did these legendary, mythic Biblical characters say, do, or think that still matters? This last question is deceptively complex, for it is asked both by readers who see Moses, Samuel, David, etc. as flesh and blood historical personalities and by readers who see them as literary figures who nonetheless represent a wealth of personality types and experiences from antiquity. In both cases, the choice to read the Bible involves certain expectations that this question be answered, or that it at least be answerable. For many years, the subfield of research in the Book of Jeremiah was an important component in providing such an answer, for no other work of prophetic literature presents such a transparent image of an eponymous prophetic personality. The Book of Jeremiah was, for many, a reliable testament to a prophet’s life and social world, his views regarding history and faith, and the legacy of teaching he imparted to his disciples and supporters. This was especially the case when readers turned to passages such as the prophet’s call narrative in chapter 1, his Temple Sermon in chapter 7, his complaints punctuating chapters 11-20, and the historiographic materials regarding his life in chapters 26-45. This is not to suggest that these passages present a uniform, consistent theological message or socio-political view of the world, but that they give the reader an understanding of how a single person could grow and change and issue a stream of ideas in a definite and limited period of time. Recent years have seen academic studies of Jeremiah—both the book and the prophet himself—shy away from this, focusing instead on the text of Jeremiah as a symbolic tapestry where nothing is as it seems. The prophet is reduced to a mouthpiece for religious groups, and the shifting concepts we encounter from one oracle to the next, or even from one verse to the next… or even from one word to the next...provides a window into polemics from populations arguing against each other and choosing Jeremiah as a vehicle for their positions. Many scholars would agree that this approach yields useful dividends, for it is highly unlikely that every oracle placed in Jeremiah’s mouth could conceivably have been his own. And even this method of reading and studying the Book of Jeremiah still assumes some historical context for the writers of these words and, therefore, the historicity of the prophet under whose name they write. Many recent commentators, however, have gone even further, arguing that the text creates a world of its own, that this world cannot be decoded, and that there is absolutely nothing that it can tell us about the world of the people who wrote it. And as such, the questions that long governed historical-critical inquiry into the book of Jeremiah, whether asked by academic researchers or lay-readers of the text, have been disqualified by

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these commentators who seek to direct attention away from “innocent” (i.e., “unsophisticated”) readings of the book of Jeremiah. From this perspective, sophisticated literary appreciation and the attempt to situate the literature in an ancient cultural context are mutually exclusive. Michael Avioz’s work on Jeremiah is a much needed response to this impasse. Here is a scholar who was written extensively on the literature associated with Jeremiah’s (ostensible) lifetime, a researcher whose knowledge of history as reported both within the Bible and in ancient near eastern sources is encyclopedic, and an investigator who is meticulous in clarifying questions of minute chronological detail. He brings that wealth of experience and expertise to this book in an accessible and startlingly clear manner, walking the reader through a Biblical text that is famously complicated and difficult to read and understand as the product of a particular epoch in ancient history or as a witness to a particular prophet’s ministry and interaction with the society surrounding him. At same time, Avioz casts a careful eye to the subtlety of the literature in the book of Jeremiah: it is not just a journalistic account of events or a scrapbook of the prophet’s teachings. Rather, it arranges episodes in a manner that carefully and deliberately engages in a conversation with other Biblical texts and ancient methods of thinking and arguing. It is a symbolic response to an experienced reality that attempts to elucidate and preserve the value of that experienced reality in a work of sacred literature; in making this case, Avioz bridges scholarly approaches that too often stand at great distance to each other. The end result is a work that guides the reader through the world of the prophet as much as it identifies the details of the world shaped within the book bearing his name and the world shaped by that book as well. Avioz has yielded an important volume that not only helps lay readers enter into an often hermetic and overwhelming universe, but one that also helps scholars within that universe recognize that it takes stars of great variety to create enduring and discernible constellations. Professor Mark Leuchter Temple University August, 2008

PREFACE This work is an English translation of my Hebrew book, published in 2005 by MOD Press, Tel Aviv, under the name ‫[ נבואתו של ירמיהו‬Jeremiah’s Oracles]. It is based on lectures delivered at the Israeli Broadcast University in summer 2004. Its main audience is undergraduate students, teachers in seminars and colleges, clergy, and all those who are interested in the life and times of one of the great prophets. The main questions this work seeks to answer are: What is the historical, political, and social background wherein Jeremiah prophesied? What was the relationship between the prophet and his audience? What is the aim of the book of Jeremiah, and in what ways does it differ from other Biblical books? How was Jeremiah’s character shaped in the post-Biblical era? In contrast with the scientific commentaries written on Jeremiah (ICC; Hermeneia; Anchor Bible, etc.), I will not deal with questions regarding the composition of the book of Jeremiah. Rather, I offer a synchronic reading, focusing in the historical, political, and international circumstances into which the events in Jeremiah are interwoven. This work may be of interest to readers trying to understand the book of Jeremiah as a whole, without getting lost in the scholarly publications focusing on ancient versions, translations, and levels of redaction. I have chosen specific “moments” from the book of Jeremiah that may demonstrate the historical reading of the prophetic books. The order of the various chapters in this work is chronological: It follows the timeline of Jeremiah’s age, rather than the order of the chapters of the book of Jeremiah. My aim was to make readers want to better know this extraordinary prophet; this aim may be achieved by delving into the bibliographical references listed at the end of every chapter.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank MOD Press in Tel Aviv for their permission to publish an English version of my book. I owe my gratitude to Gorgias Press for accepting my manuscript and helping me prepare it for publication. My late teacher, Professor Saul Zalewski, opened for me windows to the wonderful world of Jeremiah. His intriguing lectures inspired me to devote so many years to teaching and exploring the book of Jeremiah. I gratefully acknowledge Beit Shalom Japan for its generous support that made this research possible.

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1 ON PROPHECY AND THE PROPHETS In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and recited in his famous “I have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted Every hill and mountain shall be made low The rough places will be made plain And the crooked places will be made straight And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

The knowledgeable among the readers will certainly recognize that King’s words were taken from Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa. 40:3-5). Indeed, the sayings of many of the prophets are quoted in key speeches of leaders, politicians, and intellectuals. Two facts apparently lead them to turn to the words of the prophets: (a) Their sayings contain a treasure of exalted ideas on social justice, world peace, and morality; (b) The prophetic books contain encouraging messages, messages that serve as a source of hope for the future. What do we mean by the word prophet? A prophet is seemingly someone who can foretell the future. This is indeed the meaning of the Greek word prophētēs. However, a closer examination of the prophetical books of the Bible reveals that foretelling the future is only one component of the definition of prophecy, since the present and the past are actually at the center of the prophets’ attention. The simplest definition of “prophet” would seem to be an individual blessed with special traits who is chosen by God to transmit a message to a community or to other individuals. The mission is revealed to the prophet in a Divine revelation, in which the prophet’s duties and destinations are defined. From this moment on, the prophet becomes “God’s property”. God promises to protect the prophet only if s/he fulfills the mission properly, i.e., the prophet must transmit the content of the mission to the relevant public. For example, Isaiah says, “That which I have heard of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you” (Isa. 21:10).

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Why does God not communicate directly to the people in order to transmit messages? We learn the answer from Deuteronomy. In the version of the Revelation at Mount Sinai that appears in Deuteronomy 5:19-22, Moses turns to the people and expresses concern that if they continue to stand near the mountain, they will die: And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, for the mountain did burn with fire, that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; And ye said, Behold, the Lord our God hath shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God talketh with man, and He lives. Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us: If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it. It is assumed that an ordinary person cannot withstand the splendor and glory personified in the revelation of God on earth; the people need a mediator for this purpose. The age of Prophecy can be divided into three periods: Moses’ prophecy, which is described in the Pentateuch, is in a category of its own in the Biblical text: Moses is regarded as the master of the prophets, a prophet whom all the prophets should strive to emulate (Deut. 18:18). He is the only one to whom God revealed Himself when he was awake, face to face (Exod. 32:11) or mouth to ear (Num. 12:8). This revelation is in contrast to all other prophets, to whom God revealed Himself in a dream. After Moses comes the period of the Former Prophets, who lived between 1,300 and 900 BCE. These include: Joshua, Deborah, Nathan, Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha. The books wherein these prophets are found do indeed describe the history of Israel (and therefore in the Septuagint they are labeled as the “Historical Books”), yet the name “Former Prophets” was apparently given to them based on two basic assumptions: that the events that appear in these books were written from a prophetic viewpoint; and that these books were written by prophets. The Former Prophets were followed by a period of the Latter Prophets, who are also called the “writing prophets” or “the classical prophets”. These are the fifteen prophets whose prophecies were written down, and for whom the books that comprise their prophecies are named. These

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prophets lived and were active from 800 to 500 BCE. The first of these prophets was Amos, and the last was Malachi. Most of them were active in the days of the First Temple, and a minority was active in the days of the Second Temple. What are the major differences between the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets? 1. In the days of the Former Prophets, most of the prophecies are not directed to the entire people, but rather to individuals. 2. The books of the Former Prophets contain numerous descriptions of miraculous acts. In the books of the Latter Prophets, these are almost absent. 3. Moral reproof is nearly absent in the books of the Former Prophets, yet is a major component of the Latter Prophets. 4. The Former Prophets usually prophesied for Israel, whereas the Latter Prophets also prophesied for the foreign nations. There are also differences among the classical prophets that are related to the unique historic and social situations wherein each prophet lived: Were they prophets who prophesied before or after the Exile? Did the prophet prophesy in the Land of Israel, or in Babylon? The element of a mission is the principal one that characterizes the role of all prophets, from Moses to Malachi. The prophet is actually God’s mouthpiece (Isa. 59:21; Jer. 1:9). The aim of the mission is to warn and reprove the people so that they will repent, yet sometimes also to encourage and comfort them. However, prophets were not only prosecutors on behalf of the prosecution―of God―but also acted as defense counsel on behalf of the people: They were expected to pray for the people in times of need (see Exod. 32:30; 2 Kgs 19:4; Jer. 21:2; 37:3). The role of prophet entailed two major difficulties: lack of the prophet’s confidence that he was indeed worthy of the role, and the question of the prophet’s credibility in the eyes of the people. Therefore, prophets were usually less than enthused about performing their role. We will present sayings of the Talmudic Sages who tried to complete the details of the dialogue between God and Jeremiah when he was sanctified, in order to illustrate this point (Pesikta Rabbati 26): Jeremiah answered and said to the Lord Blessed be his Name: Master of the World, I cannot be a prophet over them! What prophet went out to them that they did not ask to kill? Moses and Aaron stood before them; did they not wish to stone them with stones? As is written: “But all the congregation bade stone them with stones” (Num. 14: 10)… You gave them Elisha and

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they said unto him: “Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head” (2 Kgs 2:23). I cannot go out to Israel. The contest between the prophets who are called “true prophets” and those called “false prophets” is described in this context. Both claimed that God was the one who put the words into their mouths. This presented a real challenge with existential significance for the people: Whom should they believe? The significance of this question was that a prophet who was interrogated and was found to be a false prophet was killed. The criteria presented in the prophetical books are not always empirical, and one who studies these texts must therefore try to compose one’s own list of criteria based thereon. The means of persuasion employed in the days of the classical prophets were more meager than those used by the prophets who preceded them. There are no longer descriptions of performing miracles, and therefore the power of speech, or rhetoric ability, is the only power on which they can rely. The classical prophets also added symbolic acts: They performed tangible acts in front of their audiences―a kind of show―whose purpose was to illustrate the verity of the prophecy. For example, Jeremiah carried reins and bars on his neck with which beasts were restrained, in order to symbolize the yoke of enslavement to Babylon (Jeremiah 27). The prophets used poetic language, rhetorical questions, irony, allegories, and images to enrich their rhetoric capability. They would also speak in fixed formulas that indicated that they were indeed God’s prophets. For example: “So said the Lord” in order to indicate a mission, and “Woe” in order to indicate a retribution prophecy. In addition, they worded their prophecies in legal jargon, thus rendering themselves prosecutors in a trial in which the people were the accused. The prophets had to avoid being depicted as predictable, and therefore always tried to surprise their audiences and behave contrary to convention. The prophets’ actions were not always received with sympathy and respect. Some called them “crazy” (Hos. 9:7) and others ridiculed them, as Ezekiel describes, and regarded them merely as bards who could compose beautiful poetry: “And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their covetousness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not” (Ezek. 33: 31-32).

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We know very little about the prophets’ private lives, and the book of Jeremiah constitutes a conspicuous exception in this respect, since in contrast to all other prophetical books, it gives us numerous biographical details. We can deduce from the book Jeremiah’s painful loneliness, his many opponents and his few supporters, his thoughts, and the arguments he conducted with God. What Led to the Rise of Classical Prophecy? The appearance of the prophets in ancient Israeli society accompanied some major events in the history of the nation, i.e., the establishment of the monarchy; the division of the united monarchy; the Exile of the Kingdom of Israel; the rise of the Assyrian Empire and afterward it the Babylonian Empire; the Exile of Judah, and the destruction of the Temple. The prophetic criticism of the prophets who lived between 800 and 600 BCE differs from that of the prophets who preceded them. In the former prophet’s reproofs, they did not emphasize specific actions or individuals, but rather the entire regime, namely the ruling class in Israel and Judah. These prophets refer very little to the actions of individuals, yet refer at great length to the sins of the political, judicial, priestly, prophetic, and economic establishment. The difference in the type of criticism of society’s actions between the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets can be explained by the essential difference between society in the days of the Former Prophets and that in the days of the Latter Prophets. In the days of the Former Prophets, polarization between the leadership and the people was not significant, whereas the way the monarchy evolved in the time of the Latter Prophets led to social developments that resulted in intensified social polarization and the rule of the upper economic classes over the assets of others. This social divide served as fertile ground for the prophetic activity in the eighth century BCE. The demand for solidarity, cooperation between the various parts of society, and frugality lay behind these prophecies. Types of Oracles The two main types of oracles are the woe oracles and salvation oracles. A distinction should also be drawn between oracles addressed to Israel, and oracles addressed to the foreign nations. The woe oracles include two main parts, and are constructed as a kind of legal claim. They open with an accusation, wherein the prophet describes

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the wrongdoings in the religious and/or social realms. This accusation is followed by a section that indicates the expected punishment for such behavior. The punishment can be defeat in war, exile, or destruction. It is assumed that speech has a kind of magical power to generate disasters. In these prophecies, the prophets indicate that since they were chosen by God, the People of Israel is obligated to behave according to rules that were formulated in the Covenant that was entered into with them at Mount Sinai (see for example, Isaiah 1; Ezekiel 8). In the salvation oracles, the prophets give notice of the fate expected for the People of Israel after it has fulfilled its measure of punishment. The salvation oracles describe the return of the exiles to Israel, restoration and renewal, reinstatement of the monarchy of the House of David, everlasting peace, and other good tidings. The foundation for these prophecies is usually the Covenant between God and the forefathers, according to which the Land of Israel was promised to the People of Israel forever; the promise to David regarding kingship forever for him and his seed; and the mercy of God for His people (for example, Isaiah 11; Isaiah 40-66; Jeremiah 30-33; Ezekiel 33-48). The prophets also expressed political opinions. Isaiah advised Ahaz not to go to war against the King of Aram and the King of Israel (Isaiah 7), and opposed alliances with Egypt (Isaiah 30-31). Jeremiah advised the kings of Judah to surrender to Babylon and not fight it, and also opposed an alliance with Egypt (Jeremiah 2: 18). Their social and religious criticism as well as their political attitudes sometimes placed the prophets in mortal danger. We must remember that in those days, there was no freedom of speech; when a prophet criticized a king, s/he could not expect a positive response. The prophet and the king were two authorities that historically clashed with each other. While there were kings who treated the words of the prophets with respect and even turned to them for guidance, they were the exceptions. The book of Jeremiah comprises an important stratum in the history of prophecy in Israel. It preserves the prophecies of one of the most fascinating figures among the prophets of Israel, and contains documentation of the conflict between Jeremiah as prophet and Jeremiah the layperson. This encounter necessarily also led to internal conflicts (within himself) as well as external conflicts (between him and God, between him and the people), wherein Jeremiah becomes the servant of two masters: One the one hand, he is God’s messenger, yet at the same time he represents the people to God. He must placate both, even though it constitutes conflict of interest. The prophet must identify with the Godly message as well as with

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the people’s difficult situation, and must pray for the people. Therefore, we discover a deliberating, divided, and agonized figure. Anyone who reads the entire book will discover that the motif of crying and sadness takes up a large portion thereof, not coincidentally. Jeremiah was a prophet who was full of love for his people. For example: “My heart is faint in me” (8: 18); “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people” (8: 23); “But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the Lord’s flock is carried away captive” (13: 17); “Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease” (14: 17).

In the following chapters, we will investigate the figure and teachings of this prophet, who lived during one of the most dramatic periods in Jewish history. We will try to determine the uniqueness of his prophetic teachings by comparing them to other prophets’ and by studying the historic circumstances of the time. In order to do this, we will cover a broad range of topics that focus on the book of Jeremiah, and more broadly, on the phenomenon of Biblical prophecy in general. Approximately forty years before the destruction of the First Temple and the exile of Judah to Babylon, Jeremiah acts in a desperate attempt to prevent these two disasters. What are the historical circumstances wherein Jeremiah’s prophecy is voiced? What are the main events at the national and international levels? These will be discussed in the next chapter.

2 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF JEREMIAH'S PROPHECY The seventh century BCE, during which Jeremiah prophesied, is a century wherein which great changes took place in the ancient Near East in general and in the Land of Israel and Syria in particular. The kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon struggled with each other over control of Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Babylon and Assyria are located at the eastern edge of this land, and Egypt lies on its southwest edge. The Land of Israel and Syria are located in between, and control thereover was therefore a great military and economic advantage. The information available today on this period includes both Biblical and external sources. The Biblical sources include, in addition to the book of Jeremiah, the books of Kings and Chronicles, as well as additional books that contain references to this period, i.e., Ezekiel, Obadiah, and Lamentations. The external sources include written and material finds from Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon, as well as from the Land of Israel, and even the writings of Josephus Flavius. The Assyrian Empire was established in 800 BCE, about one hundred years before Jeremiah began prophesying. The region under its rule included both ends of Mesopotamia, as well as the area of the Land of Israel and Syria. However, this rule was destined to collapse after Assyria failed in its efforts to suppress the repeated revolts that broke out all over the Empire, especially by Babylon. The most crucial event for Assyria was the death of its beloved king, Ashurbanipal. It was the Kingdom of Egypt that tried to usurp Assyria’s position, since it wanted to protect itself from the Babylonians and become dominant in the region. Egypt first succeeded in ruling over the region between 609 and 605/604 BCE. In this year, a crucial battle took place between Egypt and Babylon in the city of Carchemish (situated on the banks of the Euphrates), which the Babylonians won in a smashing victory. We learn about the outcome of this battle from the Babylonian Chronicles, a record written by the King of Babylon’s scribes that describes chronologically the 9

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actions and battles of various Babylonian kings. The Chronicles were written in cuneiform script and were translated into English at the beginning of the 20th century. The Babylonian king who rose to power that same year was Nebuchadnezzar. In 605 or 604, Nebuchadnezzar enslaved Judah under his kingdom, and about twenty years later, exiled the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah to Babylon and destroyed the First Temple. What are the concurrent events that took place in Judah during those years? The prophet Jeremiah prophesied during the days of the last five kings: Josiah, Ahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Nearly three hundred years before Jeremiah’s days, after Solomon’s death, the United Kingdom split into two separate kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed in the year 721 BCE by the King of Assyria because it revolted against him, whereas the Kingdom of Judah continued to exist and was enslaved to Assyria. When King Josiah of Judah rose to power in the year 640 BCE, Assyria’s status was weakening, thereby contributing to the success of Josiah’s efforts to carry out religious reforms in the Kingdom of Judah, which are called “Josiah’s Reform”. These were carried out after a dramatic event depicted in 2 Kings 22-23: finding a Book of the Pentateuch, the Book of Deuteronomy, in the year 622 BCE. The book was apparently hidden because it was not used in the manner deemed proper according to the Pentateuch: “and he shall read in it all the days of his life” (Deut. 17:19). The kings were not strict about this commandment, and therefore the book remained hidden for many years. Josiah abolished the idol worship prevalent in those days (mainly in the days of Manasseh), cleansed the Temple, celebrated the holiday of Passover, which had not been celebrated for a long time, and concentrated the worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. The ritual cleansing included shattering alters and high places in Bethel, in the cities of Samaria, and “from Geba to Beer-sheba” as we read in 2 Kings 23: 8, 19. A broader description of Josiah’s religious actions is found in Chronicles: “In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali, in their ruins all around, he broke down the altars, beat the sacred poles and the images into powder, and demolished all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.”

Josiah apparently felt that Judah could not be a bystander to the domination contests between the powers, and decided to take a stand. He bet on Babylon (and perhaps even expected rewards from them) as the nation that would rule the area, and therefore went to the area of Megiddo (near Wadi Ara) in order to block the King of Egypt, who was on his way to aid As-

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syria, which was under attack by Babylon. However, Josiah was killed in this battle by the King of Egypt (2 Kings 23: 29-30). His death was tragic, and a great blow to the people, who did not understand how a king as righteous as Josiah could die in battle. It should be remembered that according to the Biblical viewpoint, death in battle is not considered heroic, but rather a divine punishment. Some claim that Psalm 89 was written as a result of Josiah’s downfall: “You have broken through all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him, he has become the scorn of his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice. Moreover, you have turned back the edge of his sword, and you have not supported him in battle” (Ps. 89: 40).

Josiah’s defeat in the battle of Megiddo in the year 609 BCE (2 Kings 23) symbolizes the beginning of Judah’s decline. Judah again became a small country, and Egypt dominated the region from 609 to 605 BCE. After Josiah’s death, a group of dignitaries of Judah who called themselves ‫“( עם הארץ‬the people of the Land”) crowned his son Jehoahaz as king. It was 609 BCE. The Egyptians expected the young king to learn the lesson of his father’s death. However, Jehoahaz apparently followed in his father’s footsteps, i.e., also supported Babylon, and therefore reigned for only three months, until the Egyptians exiled him to Egypt, where he died. That same year, the Egyptians crowned Jehoahaz’s brother Jehoiakim as king, and he swore loyalty to them. And indeed it was so, until four years later, in 605 BCE, when the Babylonians defeated Egypt in the Battle of Carchemish (in northern Syria). This victory forced Jehoiakim to accept Babylon as master, which he did for three years, until deciding to rebel. The Babylonians should have punished him for this revolt, but the arrival of the Babylonian army to Judah was delayed until 597 BCE because they were busy with wars against Egypt. Another event that took place that year was the rise of Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim’s son, to kingship. However, Jehoiachin was king for only three months, because the Babylonians came to punish Judah for the sins of the young king’s father. At this point, the Babylonians should have destroyed Jerusalem, and they indeed prepared for siege. However, they apparently refrained from laying siege in light of the fact that when they breached the city after a short siege, Jehoiachin did not show any resistance. Jehoiachin and the administrative class were exiled to Babylon together with eight or ten thousand people. Jehoiachin sat in a Babylonian prison for 37 years, until he was finally released in 561 BCE (2 Kgs 25: 27-30).

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The Babylonians decided to crown Zedekiah, Josiah’s third son, as king, and he swore to be their loyal servant. The Babylonians were interested in avoiding a ruling void in Judah, which would be filled by hostile groups. The Babylonians threatened Zedekiah that if he rebelled against them, they would replace him by Jehoiachin, who was then in Babylonian exile. It appears that the controversy that had begun as early as the days of Jehoiakim over whether to support Egypt or Babylon, continued in the days of Zedekiah. There were two factions in the royal court: a pro-Egyptian faction and a pro-Babylonian faction. The pro-Egyptian faction pressured Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon and to support Egypt. And indeed, in the fourth year of his reign, Zedekiah convened representatives of the countries of the region in Jerusalem in order to organize a revolt against the Babylonians. The country that afforded patronage for this event was Egypt. However, the revolt failed, and Zedekiah was again forced to swear allegiance to Babylon. A controversy consequently broke out among the inhabitants of Judah over whether to regard Zedekiah’s kingship as legitimate, or to continue to regard Jehoiachin, the exiled king, as their legitimate king. The implications of this controversy were: whether to support Babylon, which had crowned Zedekiah, or to try and drive it out and thus hasten Jehoiachin’s return from exile. Jeremiah and the false prophets, who voiced contradictory opinions, found themselves in the midst of this controversy. The Babylonians, observing the relations between Egypt and Judah from afar, did not view the strengthening of Egypt and its relations with Judah benevolently. Therefore, they laid siege against Jerusalem in 588 BCE, which lasted for about one-and-a-half years. During this siege, the Egyptians came to help Judah and caused a temporary Babylonian withdrawal. However, after a short while, the Babylonians returned and renewed their siege on the city. The descriptions of the siege in the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations tell of a distressful famine, a plague, and even unfortunate cases of cannibalism, with women eating the flesh of their children. Those trapped in the city were finally subdued in 586 BCE, on the 9th of Tamuz. The Babylonians breached the walls of the fortified city, and after about one month, entered, burned the Temple, and exiled the remaining inhabitants to Babylon. Zedekiah, who knew what he could expect from the Babylonians, tried to escape, but after a brief chase, was caught and brought to trial. During this trial, the Babylonians killed Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes, then gouged out his eyes. We do not know his fate after this.

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Jeremiah’s prophecy of the destruction of the First Temple and the exile of the people to Babylon was thus realized. However, this was not the end of the events recounted in the book. The Babylonians concentrated their efforts only against Jerusalem and did not harm other cities. They decided to leave Jews in Israel in the city of Mizpah in Benjamin under the rule of Gedaliah son of Ahikam, a member of the Shaphan family. The Shaphans were regarded as pro-Babylonian. However, Ishmael son of Netaniah, who was a descendent of the Royal House and wanted to realize his natural right to be king, murdered Gedaliah. After this murder, the remaining Jews decided to go to Egypt and to take the prophet Jeremiah with them. Now, after reviewing the major events in the context of which the book of Jeremiah was written, we will discuss selected topics from the book.

3 JEREMIAH'S PROPHETIC CALL A rite of passage is a ritual that accompanies any change in a person’s place, time, situation, and age. Such transitions accompany the individual from cradle to grave, and include birth, maturity, marriage, and death. The following are added in Judaism: circumcision and Bar Mitzvah. In addition, some adolescents undergo a process of apprenticeship and training. What process does the prophet undergo when appointed to be a messenger of God? Does the prophet undergo a period of apprenticeship? The event that opens all books of the prophets is the sanctification, or the prophet’s appointment to the role of prophet and imposing the divine mission upon him or her. The appointment is a constitutive experience. Indeed we do not have a written description thereof for all prophets, but it is reasonable to assume that it was experienced by all prophets. What does the prophet do before this moment? Various testimonies in the Scriptures indicate that s/he lives a quite ordinary life and that no preparation was necessarily required for prophecy. For example, Moses and Amos were shepherds (Exod. 3; Am 7:14), while Jeremiah and Ezekiel came from families of priests (Jer. 1:1; Ezek. 1: 3). Thus, the prophet did not hail from a particular professional or social status. A differing viewpoint is offered by medieval Jewish philosophers like Maimonides, according to whom a preparatory period is required for taking on the role of prophet (Guide for the Perplexed, 2:36). God is usually revealed to the individual who is destined to be a prophet suddenly; at night, God fires the bombshell: you are the chosen one; you will be God’s prophet, God’s messenger to the people. How old were the prophets? The word ‫( נער‬boy, young man) is mentioned only in reference to Moses and to Jeremiah, and apparently means an age range between 16 and 20. The appointment is not a monologue, but rather a dialogue between God and the prophet-to-be. When the prophet’s turn comes, his or her reaction is utter shock: How can I speak in God’s name? The natural reaction is recoiling, fear, and finally the explicit statement: I am certain that there 15

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are others who can perform this duty better; I am not the one. Yet all this is to no avail: The role is forced on the individual, and even if s/he tries to evade it, God will force him or her to continue. The best-known example of attempt at evasion is Jonah, who fled to Tarshish, got swallowed by a fish, and wandered in the desert, but finally carried out his mission. A study of the various sanctification visions in the Bible indicates a repeating literary pattern: ● God is suddenly revealed to the person: With Moses, the revelation occurs while he is awake, as he shepherds his father-in-law Jethro’s sheep. The rest of the prophets receive their prophecies in a dream. ● Starting a conversation: A description of the distress in which Israel is found, such as: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters” (Exodus 3: 7). ● The appointment to the mission is usually indicated with the Hebrew root ‫“( שלח‬send”). ● The refusal or anxiety: The messenger recoils from the role and expresses objections thereto. As can be seen, God allows the prophets to express words of reservation. From where do they stem? (a) Doubts regarding their suitability for the role (Moses—humble); (b) great fear of the confrontation with those to whom he is sent. For example, Moses claimed, “But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say the Lord did not appear to you” (Exodus 4: 1). Jeremiah was told: “Do not be afraid of them”, as was Ezekiel. Jeremiah indicates that he is only a boy, and like Moses, says that he cannot speak publicly, although in contrast to Moses, who actually had a speech impediment, i.e., a stutter, Jeremiah claimed that he was not a rhetorician. ● Words of encouragement and promise of help: “I will be with you” (Exod. 3: 12); “for I am with you to deliver you” (Jeremiah 1: 8). ● The sign is given to the messenger in order to remove all doubt from his or her mind that s/he is indeed sent by God. Internal persuasion was a necessary condition for accepting the mission in spite of it being imposed on him or her. This pattern is found in the sanctifications of Moses, Gideon, and Jeremiah, and with some elaboration and changes also in the sanctifications of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Some claim that the revelation to Samuel (1 Sam. 3) should also be included in this pattern. However, this literary pattern is flexible enough to enable exceptions and differences between prophets. 1. Not all prophets are awarded a dramatic vision at the start. Only Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekiel are awarded a special vision. Jeremiah does not

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have such a vision at the time of his sanctification. The visions that Jeremiah sees come after the sanctification: First he sees a bare tree branch and recognizes it as an almond branch. Next, he sees a pot full of boiling liquid pointing to the north, which means that the enemy will come to Judah and will destroy it. These two visions illustrate the speed at which the prophet’s prophecy will come true; the words that God put into the prophet’s mouth were indeed realized. Furthermore, the visions that Jeremiah sees are earthly and compatible with his native environment, i.e., the desert. 2. The theme of the preliminary objection or reservation: This theme exists in most of the sanctification visions, in various forms. Moses objects five times, among them stating fear that he will not be believed and his speech impediment, whereas Isaiah actually volunteers for the role. Thus there is no need for words of reinforcement and a sign in Isaiah’s sanctification. In Ezekiel, a refusal can be found, but it is implicit: It can be inferred that Ezekiel is afraid from the fact that God repeatedly tells him, “do not be afraid”. Furthermore, all of the verbs used in the descriptions of the sanctifications are in the passive form, i.e., “he was stood up on his feet”; “he was fed the scroll”. 3. The most detailed format is found in the book of Ezekiel, where it is spread over three chapters. Ezekiel’s is the most unique vision describing the experience wherein he sees God in a vivid manner. 4. The timing of the prophetic call. With Moses it appears after the story of his birth and youth, which differs from all other prophets. In Isaiah, the vision appears only in chapter 6, and not in the opening chapter of the book. 5. The theme of signs is the secondary component, appearing prominently only with Moses. In all others it is doubtful whether certain expressions might be considered signs. The message that emerges from the prophets’ reluctance to take on prophetic duty is that they are appointed to their role out of a sense of great uncertainty regarding the chances of their success; the sense of failure is inherent. God never calls those who think they are suited to become leaders, but rather those who resist, those who stutter, those who do not regard themselves as worthy. This unlikelihood also has implications for various styles of leadership. Joseph and David are the youngest of their brothers, and it is they who become leaders. Deborah is a woman; even though the society is patriarchal, it is she who is chosen as a prophet. Gideon is not the most heroic among the men in his tribe, yet the element of awe is prominent in the stories about him.

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What are the prophet’s chances of success? In the stories of Moses, we read “but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery” (Exodus 6: 9). Who has the strength to listen when s/he is being beaten with a whip and debased? Yet the situation is no different centuries later: God informs Ezekiel that his mission is predestined to fail; the repeated sentence is, “Whether they hear or refuse to hear” (Ezekiel 2: 5-7). The message remains: You as a prophet must carry out the mission. If you carry it out properly, it does not matter whether they listen to you or not, because it is enough that “they shall know that there has been a prophet among them” (ibid. 5). The justification for this sentence is that when the people are finally exiled from their land and ask: “Where did we go wrong?” They will not be able to claim, “We did not know; had we known, we would have behaved differently”. They will tell themselves, “There was a prophet in our midst, but we refused to listen to him. Therefore, we are now here in exile. Sitting in exile is not a random act by God, but rather a justified act. And what if the prophet is negligent in his duty? Then the prophet himself will pay the price: God informs Ezekiel that he is likened to a sentry who stands at the city gate and watches to see whether enemies are approaching. If he warns the citizens, then he is doing his duty properly. If he does not, he fell asleep on his watch and should bear the responsibility, and his fate will be no different from that of the people (Ezekiel 3: 17-21; 33: 19). The sanctification visions usually end with the prophet agreeing against his or her will. From here on, s/he must identify completely with the role. This identification takes various forms: Ezekiel eats the scroll of the prophecies he receives (Ezekiel 3: 1-3), whereas Jeremiah feels the touch of God on his mouth (Jeremiah 1: 9). What are the distinctive features of Jeremiah’s prophetic call? 1. Jeremiah is the only one of the prophets about whom it was said that he was “a prophet to the nations” in the definition of his mission (Jeremiah 1: 5). The commentators deliberated on the meaning of this expression. Does this mean that Jeremiah must prophecy only to the nations of the world? An examination of the word “nation” in the book of Jeremiah in all its various forms indicates that it refers to both the nations of the world and Israel. Why, then, was Jeremiah the one who was called to prophecy to the nations? The answer is that his name apparently stemmed from the historic circumstances wherein he lived and acted: The Land of Israel was embroiled in a control struggle between Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon; the prophet’s duty was to inform the people that all of these

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changes were taking place as a result of the will of God, who is not only a national God, but the God of all of the nations. 2. Jeremiah is the only prophet about whom it is written that he was chosen for the job in a pre-embryonic state, i.e., before he was conceived,. This description is intended to emphasize a designation, a unique choice. Such language is familiar from the ancient Orient, where it was used to convince the people of their rulers’ legitimacy and source of authority. With Jeremiah, it is intended to show that even when God explains this, it does not cause Jeremiah pleasure. In this sense, there is a particularly close similarity between Jeremiah and Moses: Jeremiah I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy (Jeremiah 1:6) And you shall speak whatever I command you (Jeremiah 1: 7)

Moses I have never been eloquent (Exodus 4: 10) I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people …who shall speak to them everything that I command (Deuteronomy 18: 18)

Now I have put my words in your mouth (Jeremiah 1: 9)

You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth (Exodus 4: 15). I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet (Deuteronomy 18: 18).

In Jeremiah’s vision, we also find extensive use of verbs that indicate a mission, e.g. “I sanctified you”; “I gave to you”; “I have put you in charge”; “I will send you”. The reason for this repetition is apparently the existence of many false prophets in Jeremiah’s time. We will refer to this group later in our discussion. One of the ways that the author could deal with the problem of the prophet’s credibility was to emphasize the Divine origin of his prophecy, and also to point to Jeremiah as being Moses’ direct successor. Jeremiah’s sanctification was intended to serve as an introduction to the entire book. It discusses matters that are expanded upon later in the book, such as affording validity to the prophet’s words and presenting God as a universal God. The book opens with a prediction of the fall of Jerusalem into the hands of its enemies and ends with the realization of this prophecy, i.e., the fall of Judah into the hands of Babylon.

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All that remains now is to see how Jeremiah carries out his duty, and whether he will succeed in persuading his audience. The first answers to these questions are given in Jeremiah’s speech in the Temple in chapter 7. This speech will be the focus of the next chapter.

4 JEREMIAH'S TEMPLE SERMON Jeremiah’s speech in the Temple (Jeremiah 7:1-15) is one of the most impressive in the Hebrew Bible. In his book, Zeev Weisman writes the following. The canonical prophets’ charismatic test lay not so much in whether they succeeded in predicting the future, but in whether they possessed the proficiency and power with which to persuade their audience of the truth of their messages. In the same vein as Weisman, I will attempt to show that research written on the subject of rhetoric can make a significant contribution to understanding Jeremiah’s speech in the Temple. What were the historical and societal conditions leading to Jeremiah’s Temple speech? What is the message of the speech? By what means does Jeremiah transmit his message, with the aim of persuading his audience? It seems that two specific groups were of special interest in Jeremiah’s speech: a. The reference to the Ten Commandments and to Shiloh implies the priests, whose job it is to teach the people how to observe the Ten Commandments (see, for example Deut. 17:9–12; 33:10; Jer. 2:8; 18:18; Ezek. 7:26; Hos. 5:1; Mal. 2:7; 2 Chr. 15:3). Since they failed in their duties, they deserved to be censured, a task that the true prophets take upon themselves. According to the description in 1 Sam. 2, Eli’s sons, the priests, were responsible for the destruction of Shiloh. The priests’ abuse of their position in Jeremiah’s time likewise threatens to cause the destruction of Jerusalem. Jeremiah is particularly entitled to prophecy this, as according to the first verse of the book (Jer. 1:1), he himself was from a priestly family. He knows very well how a priest is supposed to behave, and is therefore in a position to judge. b. Jeremiah appears to be addressing a second group―the false prophets―in his speech. They are indicated by the expression “we are saved” and by use of the word “falsehood”. The use of slogans implies the false prophets. The fact that the prophets and the priests were Jeremiah’s 21

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leading accusers in the story of his trial in chapter 26 is also an indication that they understood Jeremiah’s words perfectly. If Jeremiah’s speech was indeed made in 609/8 BCE, as many scholars suppose, then it goes without saying that the effect created thereby was fear. It was a particularly difficult year for the people of Judah, a year of turmoil: the death of Josiah, followed by his replacement by two more kings, Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim. Judah came under Egyptian rule and the people sought comfort and security in the Temple. Jeremiah’s role, then, was to undermine the peoples’ sense of calm and security. This period was a fertile one for the false prophets to espouse their ideologies and to gain popularity among the masses. It is in this troubled period that Jeremiah had to stand strong and go out against these prophets. The Arrangement of the Material In contrast to Isaiah 1, wherein grave accusations are brought against the people in the introduction, Jeremiah opens the body of his speech on a positive note: “Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place” (v. 3). This positive attitude is part of Jeremiah’s ethos: He is genuinely concerned with the destiny of Israel, and he makes efforts to save them from error. Jeremiah 7 is a classic call for repentance, a change of direction. Indeed, the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel according to the promise made to their forefathers, yet their dwelling therein is conditional: In every generation, the people have to prove that they are worthy of the Land, and should therefore take care that the Temple does not become a source of illusion, or a stumbling block for Israel. Later on, Jeremiah states that society has a moral obligation toward its members, and is therefore required to make improvements. From a rhetorical point of view, Jeremiah begins by moving from the general to the particular, and then returns to the general in his speech’s conclusion. When Jeremiah sees no positive response from the audience, he ratchets up his tone. He abandons all pretenses and expresses the full severity of his words. While he begins his speech in a positive tone, when this tack receives no response, he moves on to a description of his people’s terrifying position. Evidence for this can be found in his speech (v. 13): “When I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen”. Jeremiah is now wearing the “hat” of the prosecution in court. He presents the charges to the people followed by the consequences should they be found guilty. Jeremiah pleads that the people’s negative behavior consti-

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tutes a violation of the binding legal document that lays down the terms of the relationship between the people of Israel and God: the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are defined as a covenant, a contract between Israel and God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-20), which obligates both sides. If the people break their part of the agreement, then God will commensurately break His. Jeremiah refers to the Ten Commandments in a different order from that in the Hebrew Bible. In Exodus 20, the religious commandments come first, and the social commandments come afterwards. Jeremiah, however, starts by presenting the social commandments. Martin Buber explains the significance of this: the sins against religion come at the end (as in v. 6), because the prophet has to proclaim just this, that God seeks something other than religion. Out of a human community He wills to make his kingdom; community there must be in order that His kingdom shall come; therefore here, where he blames a people for not having become a community, man’s claim upon man takes precedence of God’s claim. According to Buber, the moral commandments occupy a more important position within the prophet’s value system. However, Buber’s opinion seems not to fit the Book of Jeremiah, which names idolatry as the main cause of the destruction of the Temple. Thus reads Jer. 9:12-14, for example: Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the LORD spoken, so that they may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? And the LORD says: Because they have forsaken My law that I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, or walked in accordance with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them (see also Jer. 5:10-11, 16, 18). What is special about Jeremiah’s words is that he raises the position of social ethics to the level of an additional basic condition for the existence of the nation in its land, in contrast to the viewpoint that sees the Temple sacrifices as the essence. Apart from that, the distinction between “man’s claim” and “God’s claim” is a problem. The Hebrew Bible makes a connection between sins against man and sins against God. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is not only a sin against man, but also a sin against God. The same is the case with “Thou shalt not murder”. We see from here that progression is incorporated within Jeremiah’s words. In v. 3-5, we follow Jeremiah’s move from the general to the particular. Now we see the progression from the (relatively) light to the serious.

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Jeremiah wishes to tell his audience: Not only have you sinned in a moral context, but you have also dared to commit the greatest sin of all─idolatry. Citations and Refutation Jeremiah quotes his antagonists, the false prophets: “The Temple of the LORD, The Temple of the LORD, The Temple of the LORD”, (v. 4) and again, “we are saved” (v. 10). Presenting the false prophets’ words as mere slogans enables Jeremiah’s audience to discern the untruths, as they ask themselves, “What is the basis for this person’s statements?” Moreover, one definition of falsehood is: words spoken with the intention of creating an erroneous belief or understanding among the audience, by using half-truths and/or delivering partial information. From the words ‫“(לרע לכם‬to your own harm”, v. 6), it can be understood that Jeremiah believes that words are being spoken by the false prophets, who are aware of their being partially or completely incorrect. Although it is quite likely that Jeremiah is referring to beliefs regarding Jerusalem’s immunity, which developed during Sennacherib’s campaign to Judah (2 Kings 18-20 / Isaiah 36-39), Jeremiah only hints at this belief by using Hebrew words with the roots ‫“( בטח‬trust”) and ‫“( נצל‬save; rescue”). An explicit mention of the story of Jerusalem’s deliverance is likely to conceal Jeremiah’s intention of presenting Jerusalem as vulnerable to the enemy. The use of first person plural ‫“( נצלנו‬We are delivered”, JPS; “We are safe”, NRSV) is also deliberate. Jeremiah does not say, “God has saved us”, but rather, “we are delivered”. In other words, he disconnects God from the slogans created by his antagonists. The word ‫ נצלנו‬was apparently a slogan regularly used by the false prophets. Various scholars who have dealt with the subject of falsehood have noted that the aspiration to popularity must be included in the motives for lying. Belief in falsehood stems from the false prophets’ authority in the eyes of the people, and from the comfort the latter derive from the optimistic message. In chapter 7, Jeremiah speaks out against such beliefs, and in doing so must contend with prophecies that were particularly popular. Such prophecies were given by prophets claiming to be God’s messengers, representing the Zion Tradition. This ideology seeks to highlight God’s unconditional commitment to Jerusalem and to the Temple, thus releasing the people from their commitment to God. According to Jeremiah, there is no guaran-

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tee that the Temple will be saved, as it is not independent of earlier promises, but rather conditioned on the behavior of the people. Will Jeremiah succeed in achieving the impossible and persuading the people that his cause is just? Jeremiah needs to persuade those gathered at the Temple that it is indeed an important place, and before coming to pray there, or to offer sacrifices, they must make sure that their hands are clean and must mend their ways. Otherwise, they have no business there, and no sacrifice will serve as insurance against enemies who try to conquer the city. It appears that Jeremiah did not intend to speak against the legitimacy of the Temple as such; rather, his intention was to shock the people and spur them into action. Other prophets worked in a similar way. Neither did they speak out against the Temple or religious rituals as such, but rather against the people’s flouting of the covenant between them and their God. The Rhetorical Questions Jeremiah presents the violation of the Ten Commandments as a rhetorical question: “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery…?” (v. 9). This is a confirmed rhetorical medium, i.e., the rhetorical question forces an answer on the part of the listener, and in this case, it is negative. Jeremiah uses rhetorical questions to speak out against accepted opinions, or to rephrase the answers to his questions. His rhetorical questions are designed to cause the audience to utter such responses as, “What are you talking about? Of course we won’t violate all Ten Commandments and then come to the Temple to pray”. Jeremiah continues with a more forceful rhetorical question: “Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers?” ( v. 11 ). This is very strong language, and there is no doubt that it outraged his audience. Its significance is that the Temple has become a hiding place for criminals, thieves, and murderers, a city of refuge for those who are not entitled to flee thereto. Jeremiah’s audience would consider such a pronouncement to be a desecration of holiness. Jeremiah is playing on the emotions here, and his words befit the pathos of Aristotle’s rhetoric. The purpose of playing on the emotions in a speech is to influence the audience’s judgment, to cause it to identify with the orator’s content.

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Analogies Like every successful rhetorician, Jeremiah has to back up his words. It is not enough to reject widespread conceptions. He must prove his arguments with examples from history. Jeremiah needs to suggest opposing precedents to those presented by the false prophets. He therefore notes two such historical precedents. The first example is the destruction of Shiloh (v. 12-14). Before Jeremiah reaches the description of the Jerusalem Temple’s fate, he uses a series of relative clauses instead of stating directly that the Temple will be destroyed. “The Temple”, indicating Jerusalem, is placed at the beginning of the sentence, and “Shiloh”, which constitutes the negative precedent, is placed at the end. Between them are placed the descriptions of the Temple in Jerusalem: “therefore I will do to the house that is called by My name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh” (v. 14 ). Jeremiah combines past, present, and future in one sentence, i.e., the Temple belongs to God: He gave it to the people and to their forefathers. The people currently trust in Him. God will do to the Temple what He has already done to another temple, Shiloh. This negative slant contradicts Jeremiah’s demands in the first part of the speech, i.e., “if you truly act justly” ( v. 5 ), yet it is apparent from verses 10 and 13 that the people’s actions are mainly negative. What is the significance of the analogy to Shiloh? Jeremiah is saying that just as the Ark of the Covenant was to no avail in the days of Samuel and Eli because the priests had greatly sinned, so the Temple in Jerusalem will be to no avail and will not protect the people, because they have not seen the error of their ways. Linking Shiloh and Jerusalem also appears in Psalm 78, although Jeremiah presents an opposing viewpoint to that of the psalm. Instead of presenting the difference between Jerusalem, which was chosen by God, and Shiloh, which was rejected by Him, Jeremiah presents a parallel between the two towns: The citizens of both have sinned, and therefore a similar fate will befall them. Jeremiah’s words are considered to be innovative compared to those of other prophets. Isaiah, for example, never once mentioned the possibility of the Temple’s destruction. He spoke about exile, but not about the destruction of the Temple. The second precedent, with which Jeremiah ends his speech (v. 15), relates to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, when the ten tribes were exiled. Why? Because they committed the sins against which the

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prophet warned, and did not pay heed to their contemporary prophets’ advice (see 2 Kings 17:13-14). That being the case, the people have no insurance―no Temple, and no Divine promise―that they will dwell in the Land of Israel to eternity. Jeremiah concludes his speech in a severe tone, i.e., threat of the destruction of the Temple and exile. Throughout all of Israel’s history, exile―the loss of property and independence, and life in a foreign land―was a substantive threat. In the eyes of the people, the destruction of the Temple meant losing their intimate connection with God, and living in an impure land. What Was Not Mentioned in the Speech? A comparison of the speech in Jeremiah 7 with other speeches reveals that the prophet omitted an important element in his speech: the kings of the House of David. While Jeremiah discusses the question of Jerusalem’s protection of her citizens, he does not specifically mention the kings of the House of David. This omission is despite the fact that the treatment of the orphaned, the poor, and the widowed is the king’s responsibility (see for example Ezek. 22:6-7; cf. 25, 29; Ps. 72:4; Prov. 23:10-11). Two possible reasons can be suggested for why Jeremiah did not mention the kings of the House of David in his prophecy: First, because they are referred to in various prophecies, (particularly in Jer. 21-24). Secondly, specific mention of the kings of the House of David would have been likely to shift the focus from the discussion of the Temple and its functions, to the fate of the promise made to the House of David that it will be an everlasting kingdom. The promise could have been used by the false prophets, claiming that not only is the Temple protected, but so is Jerusalem, not only because of the Divine presence therein, but also because of the promise made to David in 2 Samuel 7. By excluding specific mention of the kings of the House of David, Jeremiah can extend the legal demand for protection of the weak to society as a whole, as is done in the Pentateuch. This is also the apparent reason for why Jeremiah deviates from the line presented in Psalm 78: Instead of ending with the choice of David for the monarchy, he concludes with threats about the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the people from their land. The prosecution has now finished its argument. The ball is now in the hands of the people and their leaders, who must decide whether to embrace Jeremiah or to throttle him, whether to stone him or to applaud him. It is important to emphasize that in the days of Jeremiah, a means that had ex-

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isted in the days of the prophets who preceded him no longer existed, i.e., performing miracles in order to prove one’s message. This is how it had been in the days of Elijah on Mount Carmel when he brought down fire from the skies (1 Kings 18). In contrast, the only power that could be used in Jeremiah’s days was the power of speech. What was the people’s reaction to Jeremiah’s harsh words? The answer is presented in chapter 26 of Jeremiah, the focus of the next chapter.

5 THE TRIAL The prophetic word is received in various ways. Only rarely is the hearer willing to heed the words of the prophet and act accordingly. Most of the audience rejects the prophet’s words, ignores them, or even tries to kill the prophet. The latter is the case in the story of Jezebel and Elijah (1 Kings 19). The Book of Jeremiah provides a rare opportunity to witness the trial of a prophet. Chapter 26 is a prophetic narrative wherein Jeremiah speaks at the Temple of Jerusalem. The people of Judah, who hear his harsh prophecy, demand that he be put to death, and a trial begins. We are at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, in 609 BCE. As we read Jeremiah’s other oracles and prophetic narratives, we get the impression that relations between the prophet and Jehoiakim are tense. Jeremiah has rebuked Jehoiakim for his misconduct as king (Jeremiah 22:13-17; 36), and when Jehoiakim reads the scroll with the woe oracles, Jeremiah’s life is in jeopardy (Jeremiah 36). In Jeremiah 26, the Lord orders Jeremiah to deliver a woe oracle very similar to that delivered in Jeremiah 7 (see above, Chapter 4). However, the two oracles are not identical. They may have been uttered in the same year, but their messages differ: Chapter 26 places more emphasis on the significance of repentance and on the reversibility of the woe oracle regarding Jerusalem and Judah. On the other hand, Chapter 7 emphasizes the wrongdoings of the people. Neither is any report given of the people’s response to the woe oracle in Jeremiah 7. In contrast, Jeremiah 26 contains a dramatic description of the audience’s reaction. The Trial Begins The fact that other “prophets” and priests are Jeremiah’s main accusers may mean that they actually listened carefully to his words, which they view as containing a genuine threat to their ideology, whose slogan is: “I will give 29

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you true peace in this place” (Jeremiah 14:13). They have also promised the people that the Temple will endure forever. Yet now Jeremiah contests this. Moreover, they are concerned about their prestige and standing in the eyes of the people. The priests, for their part, are in charge of keeping order in the Temple and its environs. Next to the Temple, there is some sort of detention cell where lawbreakers such as Jeremiah are detained (Jeremiah 20). In fact, Jeremiah warns that their main source of livelihood and leadership is about to be destroyed. Jeremiah’s proclamation goes uninterrupted; the people let him finish his words. Once he has finished speaking, we read of two juridical procedures: a tribunal―or spontaneous court―and a formal trial. The tribunal is in fact a lynching: The furious crowd demands Jeremiah’s death; it is prosecutor, witness, and judge all in one. This is undoubtedly inconsistent with the legal procedures adhered to in ancient Israel. The charge is: “Why have you prophesied in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” (Jeremiah 26:9). This is not a query seeking information; it is rather a fixed formula implying a charge, and is also found in other Biblical texts (Exodus 1:18). What Was The Charge Against Jeremiah? According to the law stated in Deuteronomy 13:2-6 and 18:15-22, a false prophet should be put to death. This law may help us decide what the charge against Jeremiah is. The prosecutors argue that Jeremiah’s words are his own, and not those of the Lord. It is impossible to even think of the destruction of the Temple, as it is God’s house. Jerusalem’s fate will not resemble Shiloh’s fate, since Jerusalem is inviolable. This argument is at the center of the prosecutor’s arguments (Jeremiah 26:9), of Jeremiah’s defense (Jeremiah 26:12), and of the verdict (Jeremiah 26:16). However, there is another interpretive option. Jeremiah is accused because he has not made his oracle conditional. A true prophet would proclaim, “If you do not heed God’s words, such-and-such will happen”. Jeremiah did not word his prophecy thusly, and therefore he is to be considered a false prophet. Of course, this means that the prosecutors’ hearing and memory are very selective: Verse 4 in Jeremiah 26 explicitly states this condition. Legally speaking, the prophets and priests have no grounds for killing Jeremiah. The formal procedure begins in Jeremiah 26:10. The king’s officers in the courtyard (which was close to the Temple) probably heard the raised

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voices and calls to “Kill the prophet now” and the like. Now everything begins again, but this time in an organized manner. First the prosecutors present their arguments. They do not repeat Jeremiah’s exact words. They say: “He has prophesied against this city” (Jeremiah 26:11). The Temple is now absent from their charge. It seems that Jeremiah’s prophecy about the Temple is deliberately omitted to emphasize the fact that Jeremiah is a traitor to the officers, and so should be sentenced to death. The officers are civilian leaders, and this accusation is liable to rouse their anger against Jeremiah. Jeremiah's Defense No attorney is available to defend Jeremiah; he must represent himself. To be sure, when God appointed Jeremiah as a prophet, He promised him He would protect him; yet this does not mean that Jeremiah should necessarily sit and wait for a miracle. Jeremiah must summon his best rhetorical skills in the meantime. He cannot perform a miracle, since, as we have argued above (see Chapter One), in Jeremiah’s day, prophets do not perform miracles. Now Jeremiah’s life is at stake. How, then, will he convince his judges to spare his life? This is not the first time that Jeremiah must handle such a situation, and as far as we know, neither is it the last. Jeremiah begins his defense (Jeremiah 26:12-15) by presenting his arguments regarding his authority to utter the woe oracle: He claims that God ordered him to utter it, and that he did not utter the words of his own accord. Jeremiah states unequivocally that his words are conditional. He is interested in preventing the disaster, and does not want it to come about. In his second argument, he appeals to the personal conscience of the judges: Are they prepared to kill an innocent man? He warns them of their national responsibility: If they indeed decide to kill him, how will they live with the catastrophe when it materializes? Jeremiah concludes the way he begins: I am God’s messenger, and I was sent by Him to utter these words. This is a rhetorical device referred to as inclusio. The speaker begins and concludes with the subject that is most important to him; s/he repeats his or her opening statements, because subsequent words may have caused those present to forget what was said in the beginning. We may assume that the prosecutors expect to hear an apology from Jeremiah, saying that he regrets his words. Yet, in fact, Jeremiah repeats what he has just said. The prophet is committed to the test of prophecy: He must not deny his words or regret them, unless God has told him to do so.

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As God’s messenger, he must repeat exactly what God has put into his mouth. The Precedents In legal procedures, the prosecution and the defense may present precedents so as to do their best to persuade the court to convict or exonerate the defendant. These precedents are intended to convince the judges to reach a verdict similar to one(s) rendered in past similar cases. In Jeremiah 26, the precedents are in the wrong order: They appear after the verdict, instead of before it. This may seem strange and irregular. However, attention must be drawn to many similar instances in the Hebrew Bible and classical literature, wherein the author chooses not to present the events according to their natural or actual order. The first precedent brought during the trial (vv. 17-19) is from the days of Micah, a prophet who lived about 100 years before Jeremiah. Micah predicted the fall of Jerusalem and King Hezekiah, who then heeded the prophet, and Jerusalem was saved. The implication of this precedent is that this is the proper way that the people should treat Jeremiah: They should listen to his words and save Jerusalem from destruction. However, another group cites an opposing precedent from a much closer time―Jehoiakim’s days (vv. 20-23). In the days of Jehoiakim, there was a prophet named Uriah, who prophesied similar to Jeremiah, but was killed by the king. The implication of this precedent is that Jeremiah should be executed. The Verdict Surprisingly, the judges decide to exonerate Jeremiah. They believe him when he says that he spoke in the name of God. It is hard to know which was the most convincing argument in Jeremiah’s utterance. However, we should also pay attention to what is omitted in their words: They do not say: “Let us all heed the prophet from now on.” They relate only to the legal question brought before them. Jeremiah's Trial and Other Famous Trials Jeremiah’s fate differs from that of other defendants with whom we are familiar from post Biblical times. One may assume that the latter narratives

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were shaped on the basis of the style and content of the Jeremiah trial report. There are literary connections between the trials of Jesus and Jeremiah. The charge against both defendants is blasphemy toward the Temple. In both cases, should the charge be proven true, the verdict is the death penalty (Matt 26; Mark 14; Luke 19; John 2; 19). Saint Stephen was also blamed for similar deeds: “This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law” (NRSV; Acts 6:13). He is also put on trial and he defends himself. He is given the opportunity to answer the charges brought against him. In contrast to Jeremiah, St. Stephen does not try to convince his judges that they are wrong. In his homily, he proceeds to rebuke the people for their wrongdoing (Acts 7). Eventually, he is stoned and becomes a Martyr. Socrates is blamed for “corrupting the youth” and for teaching about new gods, or for not believing in the gods of Greece. He is brought to trial, tries to defend himself, and eventually prefers to drink the conium (poisonous hemlock). The analogies between Socrates and Jeremiah lie above all in their words of defense. However, though the defenses of Socrates and Jeremiah contain similarities, one cannot ignore the differences: Socrates’ motive in his words of defense is his constant search for absolute justice; in contrast, Jeremiah delivers his words because he is compelled to do so as God’s messenger. Socrates, in complete contrast to Jeremiah, is willing to receive the death penalty. Moreover, while Socrates despises the people of Athens, Jeremiah feels love and sympathy toward his people. The Aim of the Trial Narrative Jeremiah 26 opens a cycle of narratives to which scholars usually refer as “Prophetic Narratives,” or “biography.” According to this view, the aim of the trial story is to present the reader with a biographic detail of the prophet’s life: Though he is in danger of death while executing his prophetic duty, he does not shrink from delivering God’s words. However, the narrative approach should be abandoned when approaching Jeremiah 26, as well as when approaching the Book of Jeremiah as a whole. The Book of Jeremiah was not written for biographic purposes. To be sure, the Book contains some biographic details; yet it is not developed or organized according to the biography genre as we know it from classical sources. It seems that the trial story in Jeremiah 26 has two aims, which are also those of the Book of Jeremiah as a whole: The first is to show that Jeremiah anticipates Judah’s fall long before it happens, and so should be considered

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a true prophet; the second is connected to theodicy: Had the people of Judah heeded the prophet, they could have avoided exile and destruction. Since they did not, the exile and the destruction of the First Temple are not to be considered arbitrary: They are a direct result of the shameful attitude of the people toward their prophets.

6 JEREMIAH'S COMPLAINTS If we look for biographical material on the prophets’ lives in the prophetical books, we find that there exists little information on this subject. What were the names of the prophets’ wives and children? At what age were they sanctified for the role? What were their daily lives like? The reason for the paucity of material on this subject is that these books concentrate mainly on the prophecy and not on the prophet. In the book of Jeremiah, we find that alongside the prophecies and the stories, the book also contains a special literary type, to which researchers have given various names: “Individual Laments”, “complaints”, or “confessions”. These refer to the material found in chapters 11-20. In these chapters, it is common to speak of six psalms that are quite similar in their language and style to some of the psalms in the book of Psalms. These are not prophecies that the prophet must transmit to the people in the name of the Lord, but rather Jeremiah’s complaints directed against God. He complains of his bitter fate as a prophet and prays for his personal redemption. There is nothing like it in any of the other prophets, and certainly not at such a scope. The word “lament” has undergone a semantic metamorphosis over the centuries. At its onset, it indicated a eulogy for a dead person (for example, David’s lamentation for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1). At a later stage, its meaning was expanded to complaints to God as well, wherein those praying describe their personal or national distress. The supplicant is an Israelite, the lamentation is called an “individual lamentation”. In such a case, the lament will be a complaint of an illness, solitude, persecution, or suffering. Sometimes those praying can be the entire people, and the lamentation will then be called a “national lamentation”. The subject of such lamentations will be destruction or defeat in battle. In the book of Lamentations, the lamentations include not only eulogies for the dead, but also a gloomy description of the situation in Jerusalem after the destruction and a complaint against God’s helplessness. This is also true in some of the psalms in the book of Psalms (44, 74, 79, etc.). These lamentations can be identified by their rhythm, structure, and content. 35

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In the individual psalms in the book of Jeremiah, emphasis is on the relationship between Jeremiah the prophet and Jeremiah the person. The prophet is torn between his love for his people and his need to serve the One who sent him. Anyone trying to clarify the precise historic background for these psalms will encounter great difficulty. The language of these psalms is general; it is difficult to determine exactly when they were recited. If we try to understand the editor’s considerations when including them in their present location, we can assume that their lyrical style contributed to the decision to include them in the first part of the book (chapters 1-25), wherein mainly prophecies are presented, in contrast to the second half of the book (chapters 26-45), which is composed mostly of stories. Nonetheless, it should be indicated that the relationship between these psalms and the various chapters in which they were included is not always clear. These laments usually have a fixed structure: a plea to God or a mention of His name; a quote of sayings of the enemies and their thoughts; Jeremiah’s justification or declaration of innocence toward God and toward his people; a plea for vengeance on the enemies. Sometimes God’s reply to the prophet’s words also appears. Here too, as in the sanctification visions, the structure is flexible, and all elements are not always found. We will study these laments and examine their contribution to understanding Jeremiah’s personality and prophecy. Jeremiah 11: 18-23 This section describes the plot of the people of Anathoth, which became known to the prophet only from the mouth of God. Anathoth is the city where Jeremiah was born (Jer. 1: 1), and it is there that Jeremiah meets resistance by the people of the city. Their plot is to kill Jeremiah according to the law of the false prophet, which is mentioned in Deuteronomy 13: 6: “But those prophets or those who divine by dreams shall be put to death for having spoken treason against the Lord your God”. According to their viewpoint, Jeremiah predicts prophecies of retribution of his own plotting and attributes these prophecies to God. Since Jeremiah’s prophecies had not yet been realized, the people of Anathoth can claim: Where is your evidence that you are a prophet of God? Jeremiah turns to God and indicates that He, as judge of all people, knows what is in people’s hearts, and therefore knows that the people of Anathoth are wicked, whereas he, Jeremiah, is righteous. In the prophet’s opinion, the behavior of the people of Anathoth toward him demands their severe punishment, as is expressed in his call to God to take revenge on

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them. The call for vengeance is not unique to this psalm, also appearing in the other psalms in the book. How can such a request of God be morally justified? It could seemingly be expected that the prophet would pray for the people, and not that he would ask God to harm them. Is Jeremiah not familiar with the ideal figure of Moses, who prayed for the people even in his most difficult hours? Various interpretations have been proposed for this question: a. According to one suggestion, Jeremiah’s requests stem from frustration over his failure to convince the people, as well as from the suffering and humiliation that he suffered at their hands. And what can be expected of someone who is in constant suffering during his entire life? In chapter 16, God commands Jeremiah not to marry and not to have children. The inhabitants of Judah reject his company, keeping their distance from him. He thus becomes a solitary creature. Jeremiah sees the way to a release from this suffering by demanding that God punish the people. The motive for this request for vengeance is therefore personal. b. According to another suggestion, Jeremiah does not want to avenge his own honor, but rather God’s honor. If God refrains from harming the wicked, it will harm God’s status and authority. Possibly, then, Jeremiah wants to avenge both his own honor and God’s. This is assuming that it is difficult to separate the prophet’s private life from his role as God’s messenger. On the one hand, it is impossible to ignore the harsh impression left by Jeremiah’s descriptions of the people’s attitude toward him. This attitude causes him great suffering, and therefore his distress should not be surprising. However, it is not only personal aspects that are emphasized in the lamentation psalms. Jeremiah testifies that he is not waiting impatiently for the coming of the retribution to the people. He asks God to act according to the principle of a king who protects the messenger whom he sends to foreign parts. If the representatives of the foreign land harm the king’s messenger, the king takes personal offense and may respond harshly. Thus he protects both his messenger’s honor and his own. A story constructed according to this principle appears in 2 Samuel 10. David sends a condolence party to the king of the Ammonites for the death of his father. The king of the Ammonites suspects that it is actually an espionage party, and therefore sends David’s messengers home humiliated, their beards half shaven and their clothes torn, causing King David to decide to declare all-out war against the Ammonites. This is how things were with Jeremiah. He regards himself as God’s messenger who was not accorded proper treatment, and expects God to act

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according to the principle that the king must protect his messenger. Additional stories that come to mind in this context are the stories about Korah and all his company in Numbers 16-17. They complain that Moses took the leadership by force and actually undermined Korah’s leadership. Moses asks God to harm them and thus prove that He chose him, whereupon Korah and all his company are swallowed by the earth. In the stories of Elijah and Elisha, we learn of the principle that harming the messenger is like harming the sender, and therefore various people who try to harm a prophet are themselves severely harmed (2 Kings 1-2). If God sent the prophets to be his executive agency, then whoever rebels against them and threatens their lives is responsible for his or her own death. This is the principle of a measure for a measure, i.e., creation of symmetry between the punishment and the crime out of a wish to restore equilibrium. When God does not bring retribution to the people, His credibility in the eyes of the people is damaged, and this, in the prophet’s opinion, necessitates immediate action. God’s answer in this case is in complete accord with the prophet’s words. The people of Anathoth are indeed destined to be punished by death in battle and plagues. Jeremiah’s request of God is seemingly reminiscent of Elijah’s request that God punish Israel for breaching the Covenant during the days of Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 19). God accedes to this request and informs him that such a punishment will occur in the future. However, the difference between Elijah and Jeremiah is that Elijah does not concurrently pray to God to prevent this retribution. Jeremiah testifies that he did not await the retribution; he acted simultaneously as both prosecutor and defender, representing both God and the people. The editors of the book therefore did not regard Jeremiah’s request for vengeance critically, but rather as an additional means of defending himself. Jeremiah 12: 1-6 The question of reward is raised here: “Why does the way of the guilty prosper?” This question is also discussed in other books (for example: Psalm 73, Job, and Ecclesiastes) and various solutions have been proposed, among them: The success of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous are temporary; true happiness is proximity to God. However, in the book of Jeremiah, this question is discussed in the personal, not the theoretical dimension. The wicked who oppose Jeremiah triumph, overcome him, and succeed in their lives, whereas he fails. The usual assumption is that while

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God runs His world justly, the believing person may suffer a crisis when God’s way is inconsistent with reality. Here too, Jeremiah asks for vengeance. However, God’s answer to Jeremiah’s words in chapter 12 differs from that in chapter 11. In chapter 12, God does not justify Jeremiah. a. On the plane of the relations between the prophet and God, God claims that Jeremiah can expect difficult challenges and therefore cannot at this stage withdraw from his national mission. b. On the meditative plane, humans do not understand the simple things, so how can Jeremiah understand Divine guidance? Humans do not understand natural phenomena, so how can they hope to understand the guidance and considerations of meting out reward and punishment? God therefore rejects Jeremiah’s complaint. Jeremiah 15: 15-21 In this section, Jeremiah voices harsh complaints against God, i.e., the main enemy this time is God himself. God is presented as all-knowing and as supposedly able to distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. However, this knowledge is not translated into an actual distinction between Jeremiah his righteous and his wicked enemies. Jeremiah’s main complaint is that in the sanctification vision, he accepted being appointed willingly, if not gladly: Jeremiah’s name was supposed to elevate God’s name, and even to rise by itself. Indeed, how much irony is in his name (the name Jeremiah means “He shall be exalted” in Hebrew). Yet Jeremiah does not attain status, and neither does he succeed in raising God’s status. The prophet is insulted and cursed by his environment: The book tells us that he is socially isolated. In chapter 16, he is even forbidden to marry, in order to symbolize with his very life the retribution of Israel, i.e., there shall be no continuity in Israel. There is now no separation between the prophet’s private life and his mission; Jeremiah does not even have a wife and children in whom he can confide. Furthermore, Jeremiah himself will not even merit continuity; precisely because he agreed to be God’s prophet. Thus he becomes a prophet of wrath, and wherever he goes, celebrants cease their celebration. If he wants to enter a bathhouse, he is blocked. He is a social outcast; nobody wants to hear his words. And whose fault is this? The God who chose him. Jeremiah concludes his grievance with the image of a seasonal stream whose waters are expected, yet do not come. They come in the winter, yet are needed in

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the summer to combat thirst. According to Jeremiah, God is like disloyal water: He cultivates illusions in the prophet, but does not realize them. A crisis in the relationship between the prophet and God is reflected here. Jeremiah laments from the depths of his heart, yet God does not accept his complaint, and warns him that if he continues to speak in this manner, his fate will be no different than that of the people. Chapter 15 may be read as a second sanctification of Jeremiah: You, Jeremiah, must forget what you said, and take another road; then I will save you. God indeed makes good on this promise (see Jeremiah 26), yet the way to Jeremiah’s salvation is paved with obstacles. Jeremiah 17: 14-18 This periscope describes the derision of the prophet: His prophecies are not realized; there is a sense of ungratefulness from the people. Yet, the prophesy is not realized precisely because the prophet prays for them. The people should have regarded his prophecy as the embodiment of God’s mercy. And indeed, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, the people sorrowfully indicate: “There is no longer any prophet, and there is no one among us who knows how long” (Ps. 74: 9). When they have no prophet, the people do not know how to behave or what God’s wish is. Yet this was said in hindsight: As long as Jeremiah was alive, he was at best regarded as a nuisance. Here too, Jeremiah seeks revenge on his enemies. Jeremiah 18: 18-23 This unit of the book describes the people’s intention of incriminating Jeremiah, i.e., to listen to what he says, deliberately take sentences out of context, and bring them to the authorities in order to condemn him. As aforementioned, words were taken out of context in the trial held for Jeremiah in chapter 26, and his accusers deliberately chose sentences that will incriminate him in yet another attempt to halt his mission by either direct or indirect means. The quest for vengeance is expanded upon in this chapter, and as previously mentioned the editor of the book of Jeremiah did not regard the people’s words as derogatory to Jeremiah, but rather presented them as a statement of defense of the prophet.

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Jeremiah 20 This chapter begins with a story of Jeremiah’s prophecy on the destruction of the Temple (verses 1-6). Pashhur, one of the priests responsible for the environs of the Temple, hears Jeremiah speak, arrests him, and puts him in a torture chamber or solitary confinement (‫)מהפכת‬. This ordeal could have led Jeremiah to recite lamentations. He was being held in a pit, put on trial, and thrown in prison. Another lament appears as the chapter progresses, in verses 7-13. In this lamentation, the prophet expresses his complaints both against God and against his enemies using exactly the same roots: “entice” (‫ )פתה‬and “to be able” (‫)יכל‬. God enticed Jeremiah to accept the role (having actually forced it upon him), and Jeremiah’s enemies also tried to entice him, i.e., tried to cause him to incriminate himself. God succeeded in overcoming him, while his enemies are also trying to overcome him. Jeremiah again indicates the insult, the humiliation, and the derision that are the prophet’s fate. Instead of rewarding him for praying for them, the people connive against him for his downfall. Why? Because the prophecies in Jeremiah’s mouth are prophecies of destruction and harsh retribution that will come at the hands of the Babylonians. Nobody wants to hear it, and therefore they either distance themselves from his presence or taunt him: Where are the prophecies that you prophesied? This ordeal leads Jeremiah to consider stopping his prophesying. After all, if the things he says in God’s name lead him to such suffering, perhaps the end to the suffering is entailed in accepting the prophecy, yet keeping it to himself. However, Jeremiah reaches the conviction that his prophecy is as a fire burning in his bones; he cannot hold it inside. His body will burn and disintegrate if the prophecy does not emerge therefrom. Even if he would like to escape, he cannot because prophecy is a destiny from the womb that cannot be escaped. Jonah tried to escape, yet ultimately carried out his duty. Neither will Jeremiah be able to escape his destiny. He is imprisoned between the people and his God, and suffers whether he speaks in the name of God or he tries to hold the words inside. At the end of this lamentation, Jeremiah indeed expresses hope and confidence that God is with him.

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The Place of the Laments in the Book of Jeremiah What is the purpose of an intimate documentation in a prophetical book that is handed to the people? Some regard this construct as a biographical intention whose purpose is to inform us of the experiences undergone by Jeremiah. However, we already dismissed this option in our discussion on Jeremiah’s trial. Biography is not the book’s main aim. It appears, rather, that the editor of the book wanted to adapt these psalms to the two guiding principles in the book of Jeremiah: a. Presentation of Jeremiah as a true prophet. From these psalms emerges the figure of a prophet who does not make do with speaking words of reproof, but who also prays for the people. He speaks out against the common viewpoints, and for this he is persecuted. Therein he differs from the group referred to as the false prophets, which was accused of an attempt to ingratiate itself to the king and the people by transmitting positive, soothing messages. b. Justification of the verdict. These psalms serve another purpose, which is the justification of the destruction and exile inflicted on Judah. The people will thus not be able to claim that the calamities that befell them were arbitrary. When they read these lamentations, they will understand that the destruction and exile could have been prevented had they listened to Jeremiah and treated him properly. Such an approach, which justifies the acts of God and regards Him as a just judge, is found for example in the books of Nehemiah and Daniel: “You have been just in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully, and we have acted wickedly” (Neh. 9: 33); “We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land. Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us” (Dan. 9: 6-7).

7 JEREMIAH AND THE KINGS OF JUDAH The institution of the monarchy in Israel grew out of a desire to solve the domestic and foreign problems that beset the Israelite tribes in the 12th century. The revolution was accompanied by ideological debates: Alongside the voices that supported a monarchical form of government, viewed as the embodiment of the kingdom of God on earth, there were also opponents who saw it as an attack on the principle of Divine sovereignty. When the people appealed to Samuel (1 Samuel 8) for a king to judge them and lead them in their wars, the Divine consent was conditioned on the king’s full subordination to the prophet. According to the book of Samuel, Saul, the first king, fulfilled part of his role well, leading Israel to important victories over its enemies. The judicial function, however, was neglected by him. David is praised for realizing the ideal of kingship in both aspects, at least until the episode with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12). While Solomon is not described as a warrior, the book of Kings praises his wisdom as a judge. After his death, however, justice and the management of the internal affairs of the kingdom, motivated by concern for the principles of social equality, do not seem to have been a major concern for the monarchs. The book of Kings sees the rulers of both Israel and of Judah as the main culprits in the deterioration that led to the people’s exile from the Land and the destruction of the Temple. The conflict between king and prophet was to be expected: Both were chosen for their role by God. Unlike the situation in other nations, in Israel, the king was subordinate to the prophet: Prophets nominated kings, and prophets dethroned (or threatened to dethrone) them, as in the cases of Saul and Samuel, Nathan and David, Elijah and Ahab, and others. Only a few monarchs were willing to accept the prophet’s guidance (notably Hezekiah and Isaiah). In most cases, there was friction between these two authorities, each representing opposing interests. The king wished to act in accordance with pragmatic and political considerations, while the prophet demanded absolute loyalty to the word of the Lord, even when it was at odds with the king’s preferences. To be loyal to his mission, the prophet 43

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had to have the courage to stand up to the king and criticize him—in some cases risking his or her life to do so. Against this background, we ask how Jeremiah evaluates the five kings of Judah in whose reigns he prophesied. What were his relations with them? Jeremiah’s prophecies about the kings of Judah are found in chapters 21-23; there are references thereto in other parts of the book as well. Most of his prophecies are strong rebukes and a description of the punishments that Judah will suffer because of the conduct of its kings. It bears notice that Jeremiah does not explicitly denounce these kings for the sin of idolatry; perhaps Josiah’s reform had met with success, at least in the royal palace. Instead, Jeremiah deals with social justice and foreign policy, i.e., submission to Babylon. Nevertheless, his words also include the consolation that the exiles will return and the Davidic kingdom will be renewed. The monarch of the future will not have to wage war, because the Lord will fight his battles, and the former will be able to concentrate on domestic and social matters. Jeremiah 23:1–7 expounds on the prophet’s image of the ideal king, which is the shepherd of the people. The motif of the shepherd as the proper type of leadership is borrowed from Mesopotamian literature. Moses is the first leader described as a shepherd (Exodus 3). In Psalm 77, we read about Moses and Aaron: “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps. 77:20). After Moses, the motif of the shepherd is continued in other Biblical stories associated with kings and prophets. David began as a shepherd ( 1 Samuel 16: 19 ) when the Lord told him, “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel” (2 Sam. 7:8). Thus David becomes the archetypal shepherd-king. The comparison of leaders to shepherds is also found in Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34. These prophets use the image of the shepherd to describe leaders who failed at their task. Jeremiah accuses the kings of Judah of causing the people (using the sheep metaphor) to be scattered, and compares the Lord to the ultimate shepherd who will gather the scattered people and provide them with faithful shepherds (Jer. 23:1–4). Now let us proceed to a detailed description of Jeremiah’s attitude toward the kings who reigned in his lifetime, beginning with Josiah. Josiah is hardly mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, even though Jeremiah began his prophetic career in the 13th year of Josiah’s 31-year reign. This paucity of mention is all the more astonishing given that in 622 BCE, the 18th year of his reign, Josiah introduced comprehensive reforms that helped centralize the cult in Jerusalem—a centralization for which Jeremiah, like all the other

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prophets, had called. Why, then, does Jeremiah not dedicate at least a few chapters in his book to Josiah? Several explanations have been offered for this omission: (1) Some of Jeremiah’s prophecies were delivered before this reform; (2) The reform was successful in the royal palace, yet did not penetrate the rest of the kingdom; (3) Jeremiah did not actually prophesy during Josiah’s reign, but rather only from the start of Jehoiakim’s reign. These explanations are incomplete or implausible. A deeper explanation can be found in Jeremiah’s remarks about repentance in chapters 2 and 3. Jeremiah wanted reform, as attested by those passages wherein he condemns the cult of field altars as pagan (2:20, 23; 3:2; 13:27). Such altars lead to syncretism, a confusion of the domains of the Lord and Baal, or the inclusion of the Lord in the pagan pantheon. Their destruction uprooted these popular beliefs, so we should expect Jeremiah to praise the reform. Yet reform was not enough for Jeremiah: He considered ceremonies, public assemblies, and processions to be rote actions. He wanted a more profound form of repentance, one that would include recognition of one’s sins and a willingness to make substantive changes. Jeremiah feared that the Josiaic reform would lead to the mistaken belief that religious observance and piety are fully expressed by bringing sacrifices to Jerusalem. Indeed, when Jeremiah does praise Josiah, in chapter 22, it is for having judged the poor with justice. This, then, must be the focus; only when there is true repentance does sacrificial ritual have any meaning. Jeremiah demanded changes both by the people and by its rulers. When he wanted to describe the exemplary king, he mentioned Josiah not in connection with his cultic reform, but with his judgeship: “He judged the cause of the poor and needy” (22:16). From the prophecies in chapter 3 and the prophecies of consolation in chapters 30 and 31, we may infer that Jeremiah identified with Josiah’s national aspirations to reunite the twelve tribes of Israel under his rule. The book of Jeremiah indicates that like Josiah, the prophet adhered to an anti-Egyptian and pro-Babylonian line. This does not mean, however, that he agreed in principle with the idea of foreign alliances. For Jeremiah, treaties with foreign nations were unacceptable per se, because they expressed a lack of confidence in the Lord’s capacity to defend His people. In addition, treaties might bring short-term benefit, yet in the long term they were liable to prove harmful. Hezekiah, for example, had concluded an alliance with Babylon before the war with Assyria; yet ultimately it was Babylon that destroyed Judah. Jeremiah expressed this opposition to foreign entanglements in a rhetorical question, evidently during Josiah’s reign: “What,

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then, do you gain by going to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Nile? Or what do you gain by going to Assyria, to drink the waters of the Euphrates?” (2:18). Some believe that Josiah’s tragic death in battle at Megiddo (2 Kings 23:29–30) was punishment for his reliance on treaties instead of on the Lord and His prophets. The book of Chronicles reports that after Josiah’s death in battle against the king of Egypt, Jeremiah composed a dirge for him (2 Chron. 35:25). This detail is not mentioned in the book of Kings or in the book of Jeremiah. Some believe that the national elegy in Psalm 89 was occasioned by Josiah’s death and is a complaint to the Lord that He allowed matters to develop in this direction. Josiah’s son Jehoahaz is hardly mentioned by Jeremiah, not even in the header of the book that sets its historical frame. There were no significant events during Jehoahaz’s brief reign of three months. According to Jeremiah, Jehoahaz would not return from his exile. In contrast, the reign of Jehoiakim (608–598 BCE) features prominently in Jeremiah’s prophecies: At the start of Jehoiakim’s reign, Jeremiah was put on trial in the Temple; this incident by itself is evidence of the tense relations between the prophet and this king. In 605 BCE, the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign, Jeremiah prophesied that Babylon would subjugate the entire (known) world, on account of the transgressions of Israel and the other nations (see chapters 25 and 27). He would likely have voiced such a message in the Temple that year, in the month of Kislev, at the public fast proclaimed upon receipt of the news that the Babylonian army had entered the country and had already occupied Ashkelon. Chapter 36 chronicles this event. Jeremiah collected all of his previous prophecies in a single scroll, and intended to read it to Jehoiakim in the hope of alarming him and getting him to change his ways. But for reasons that are unclear, Jeremiah delegated the task to his loyal scribe and disciple, Baruch the son of Neriah, an important figure who committed a substantial portion of Jeremiah’s prophecies to writing. Several ministers from the Shaphan family, whose members were favorably inclined to Jeremiah, heard his prophecies and were indeed shocked. They advised Jeremiah and Baruch to go into hiding lest the king have them executed. When Jehoiakim learns about the scroll, he burns it, believing that its destruction would nullify its contents. While Jeremiah and Jehoiakim did not meet face to face, Jeremiah made sure to notify the king that the prophecies would not be revoked; instead they would be written on a new scroll and new ones added thereto.

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Jehoiakim could not accept Jeremiah’s position of submitting to Babylon and accepting its overlordship. We must remember that Jehoiakim had been placed on the throne by the king of Egypt. Even after the Egyptians had been defeated by the Babylonians, he continued to hope that Egypt would rise again. This is why he refused to accept the Babylonian yoke. Jeremiah continued to criticize Jehoiakim not only for his foreign policy, but also for his management of domestic affairs. In one of his famous prophecies, he cries out against the king: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, ‘I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms,’ and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion” (Jer. 22:13–14).

The house metaphor is a reference is to corruption at the top—largescale royal building projects at the expense of the subjects; withholding the wages of workers; failing to comply with the principles of justice and law, i.e., the utter antithesis of his father Josiah. We do not know Jehoiakim’s ultimate fate. Jeremiah prophesied that he would have an ass’s burial (Jer. 22:19). While Josephus (Ant. 10:97) reports that the Babylonian king had Jehoiakim executed, there is no confirmation of this from other sources. Although Jehoiachin was king for only three months in 597 BCE, there are many references to him (relatively speaking) in the book of Jeremiah. This is because several camps emerged after the Babylonians deported Jehoiachin and his senior officials in 597: One camp, the exiles, saw Jehoiachin as the legitimate monarch, who would shortly return from his exile. Zedekiah, enthroned by the Babylonians, was considered to be only a temporary appointment, a surrogate or place-holder. In the other camp, Zedekiah and his ministers encouraged those who remained in Jerusalem to continue to fight against the Babylonians. Some of those still in Jerusalem supported and encouraged Jehoiachin and the exiles. Others saw Zedekiah as the legitimate king and asserted that the exiles would never return: “Your kinsfolk, your own kin, your fellow exiles, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘They have gone far from the LORD; to us this land is given for a possession’” (Ezek. 11:15).

Consequently they did not scruple to seize the exiles’ land and property.

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Jeremiah belonged to neither camp. On the one hand, he prophesied that the exiles in Babylon would return in 70 years; on the other hand, this return would not include Jehoiachin and his entourage. As for the king himself, Jeremiah prophesied, “None of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah” (Jer. 22:30). Thus Jehoiachin and his people would never return to Judah, but would die in exile. Jeremiah’s position was opposed not only by the various false prophets of his day, but also, two generations later, by the authentic prophets of the early Second Temple period, Haggai and Zechariah, who proclaimed that Zerubbavel, Jehoiachin’s descendant, would be the new king from the House of David. It should be recalled that Jehoiachin was not executed by the king of Babylon. He was imprisoned, provided with a daily ration, and continued to be addressed as “King of Judah.” Ultimately, after 37 years, he was released (2 Kgs 25:27–30). What is more, the people continued to refer to Jehoiachin as “King of Judah” even when he was in exile, and the chronology used by the prophet Ezekiel seems to count from the year of Jehoiachin’s exile. Yet history judges Jeremiah to have been correct. In his prophecies, Jeremiah referred to those who remained in Jerusalem, too. They had no reason to celebrate, for they would yet join their brethren in exile or die in battle against the Babylonians. Zedekiah (597–586), the last king of the House of David, started his reign from a weak position. The Babylonians placed him on the throne in place of his nephew Jehoiachin, and warned that they would bring the younger man back if Zedekiah rebelled. Were this not enough, his courtiers threatened to assassinate him if he supported the Babylonians rather than the Egyptians. Thus, he found himself threatened from both within and without. Some scholars believe that Jeremiah was favorably disposed to Zedekiah at first. Zedekiah’s birth name was Mattaniah (2 Kgs 24:17), but when the Babylonians elevated, him they gave him a regnal name, as a way to express their suzerainty over him. At that time, Jeremiah prophesied that Judah would be delivered during the reign of a certain king, and that the name of that monarch would be “the LORD is our righteousness” [the meaning of Zedekiah in Hebrew] (Jer. 23:5–6). Perhaps the new king’s supporters proposed the name Zedekiah to the Babylonians in the wake of Jeremiah’s prophecy, in the hope that his accession would be the sign for the start of a new age. For their part, the Babylonians did not care what

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regnal name was given to the new king; the main thing was that they confer it on him, in a formal ceremony. In the fourth year of his reign (594 BCE), Zedekiah convened a conference of several states in the region to plan an uprising against the Babylonians. The patron of this conspiracy was Egypt, Babylon’s sworn enemy. Jeremiah made it abundantly clear to Zedekiah that the rebellion would not succeed and that it was tantamount to a revolt against the Lord Himself, since Zedekiah had taken an oath by the God of Israel not to rebel against the king of Babylon. The Babylonian monarch, learning of the assembly, summoned Zedekiah to Babylon to explain himself (Jer. 51:59). Zedekiah’s account must have placated the Babylonian king. Five years later, in 589 BCE, we learn that the Babylonians were besieging Jerusalem. Evidently they had discovered that Zedekiah’s contacts with Egypt and plans to rebel were continuing. In Jeremiah 21, we witness the repercussions of the beginning of the siege and also learn about the special relationship between Zedekiah and Jeremiah. Zedekiah dispatched an official delegation to ask Jeremiah to pray for the people and to ask him what would happen to Jerusalem now. This is an indication of the king’s great respect for the prophet and belief that it lay in his power to alter the course of events. Evidently Zedekiah was relying on the precedent of Sennacherib’s Judaean campaign in 701 BCE: Then too, all had seemed lost, but a miracle intervened and Jerusalem was delivered from the Assyrians. Yet Jeremiah notified Zedekiah that there would be no divine miracle this time; Jerusalem was doomed. Because Jeremiah continued to proclaim similar prophecies as the siege progressed, Zedekiah’s ministers had him arrested and thrown into a pit, a sort of solitary confinement, and accused him of treason and defeatist propaganda that demoralized the fighters. In these difficult times, Zedekiah pursued his efforts to extract a favorable prophecy from a Jeremiah, even at the risk of both their lives. Although his response was always in the negative, until the very last moment Jeremiah kept trying to persuade Zedekiah to surrender to Babylonia and save at least his own life. Jeremiah’s prophecies forecast a relatively peaceful death for Zedekiah if he would submit to the Babylonians. In a moment of truth, Zedekiah admitted that he was afraid to do so, terrified that the Babylonians would hand him over to those who had already deserted and allow them to abuse him. But Jeremiah warned that if Zedekiah held out, the Babylonians would make him pay for his stubbornness. Unlike Jehoiakim, whom the book of Jeremiah views as a wicked king whose conduct destroyed the kingdom, Zedekiah is not depicted as utterly

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evil. He was willing to listen to the prophet, protected him, tried to improve the conditions of his detention, and accepted him as a true prophet. But none of this brought him as far as to comply with the prophet’s instructions; for this he did not have the courage. In his time Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple was razed, and the House of David lost its kingdom. Yet this unfavorable picture of the last kings of Judah does not necessarily mean that Jeremiah ruled out the future restoration of the Davidic kingdom. As he prophesied: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness”. For thus says the LORD: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the House of Israel. Perhaps the repetition of the root ‫“( צדק‬justice”) constitutes implied criticism of Zedekiah, who did not fulfill his royal duty of doing justice. Yet in the future, the prophet promised, this mission would be realized in full.

8 JEREMIAH AND THE FALSE PROPHETS According to several researchers who have written on the subject of lying, a lie is defined as a false message transmitted from one person to another with the intention of creating a false belief in the one on the receiving end. A lie, then, is an action that is intended to mislead. Lies are usually formulated concisely and briefly, sometimes even in slogans. The conditions for the existence of a lie are 1) the liar’s ability to persuade; and 2) the willingness of the duped party to believe the liar. The liar sometimes adds a grain of truth to his or her words, in order to make them sound truthful. A lie is therefore not necessarily a complete distortion of reality, as it sometimes contains half-truths. In his book The World of Lies, Adir Cohen cites dozens of reasons why people lie. Of them, I chose several which appear either explicitly or implicitly in the book of Jeremiah regarding the false prophets: the desire to cause the other to fail; the desire to achieve personal gain; the desire to advance some idea; the desire to infect with some belief; the desire to help someone in distress out of our perceptions of their expectations of us; the desire to avoid confrontation; the desire to escape or avoid the truth; the desire to calm and cheer ourselves; the desire to delude ourselves; the desire to cultivate hope; the desire to escape reality and construct an imaginary reality that we find comfortable; the desire to raise our prestige in the eyes of others; the desire to improve our status; the desire to cause distraction; the desire for solace. Since there can be so many reasons for transmitting false messages, our evaluation of the act of lying is complex. Indeed, over the ages, philosophers have presented a variety of attitudes toward the phenomenon of the lie. In the Biblical text, we find sayings such as “Keep far from a false charge” (Exodus 23: 7) on the one hand, but on the other hand it turns out that the lie is sometimes the weak individual’s last refuge, and can even be used to save a life. Its condemnation is therefore not always unequivocal. The Hebrew midwives lie to Pharaoh (Exodus 1), Rahab lies to the people of her city (Joshua 2), and Michal lies to her father Saul (1 Samuel 19). The 51

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prophets are also sometimes forced to lie, and interestingly, lying is sometimes engaged in at God’s command: When Samuel must anoint David as king, Saul is the ruling king, and the anointment therefore poses a threat to Samuel’s life. God therefore tells Samuel that if he is asked where he is going, he should say that he is going to make a sacrifice to God. Jeremiah is also forced to lie, at Zedekiah’s command. The king warns him of the ministers, and instructs him that if the ministers ask what he and the king talked about, he should tell them that they talked of subjects other than those actually discussed (Jer. 38: 24-27). Such ambiguity is also found in the teachings of the Sages. On the one hand, they say that one of the elements on which the world is based is truth, yet we read that it is permissible to change the truth for the sake of peace. In contrast to this less strict approach, the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) denounced the lie altogether and claimed that a lie is always morally reprehensible, since it comprises free choice. Such a varied approach to the lie exists in an even more pronounced manner in everything related to the differentiation between the true prophets and the false prophets. The Pentateuch commands the people to heed only the true prophets and to kill the false prophets. Yet what are the criteria for this commandment? When is the prophet considered a true prophet, and when is s/he a false prophet? How are the people supposed to know who was sent by God and who is an imposter? Various sources attempt to resolve this problem, yet we do not always receive a clear and absolute answer. Crenshaw even wrote a book on the true prophets and the false prophets, wherein he claimed that the Biblical text does not contain objective criteria for distinguishing between the two. In his opinion, the criteria in many cases are subjective and not empirical. We will herewith set forth the problems involved in recognizing the false prophets and the solutions presented in Scripture in general and in the book of Jeremiah in particular. Why was it important to distinguish between a true prophet and a false prophet? The decision was related to the question of whether the prophet was sent by God or not. If not, then s/he attributes his or her own words to God, thus desecrating the name of the Lord. Based on this decision, the people decided whether to heed the words of the prophets and surrender to the enemy, or heed the other and wage an all-out war. It is therefore a question of survival. We will begin this study of the Biblical sources with Deuteronomy. The law of the prophet appears in chapters 13 and 18 as a legal formulation, according to which the people are supposed to be able to recognize false

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prophets. In Deuteronomy 13, the false prophet is described as someone who proposes worshipping other gods and even “proves” his or her words using a sign or miracle. The Pentateuch states that it is the content of his or her words that counts. If what s/he says contradict one or more of the Pentateuch’s commandments, then this makes him or her into a false prophet, even if s/he manages to perform a miracle. There are sorcerers and magicians who can also perform miracles, yet this talent does not make them into God’s prophets. A much more problematic situation is described in Deuteronomy 18: 18-22: A person who claims to have been sent by God prophecies, yet s/he is actually an imposter. Then comes the question: How will we know this? To which the Pentateuch answers: According to the principle of realization, i.e., if this person’s predictions come true, s/he is a true prophet; if not, then s/he is a false prophet and should be killed: “You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it” (Deuteronomy 18: 21-22).

However, here we see that things are not simple. Suppose such a prophet says, “In seventy years, such-and-such will happen”. Does this mean that we have to wait 70 years in order to know whether or not s/he is a prophet of God? Waiting that long is inconceivable; the people want an immediate answer. A second problem: Will it become known that a particular prophet is a true prophet only according to the principle of realization? Dozens of redemption prophecies by prophets who are regarded as true prophets did not materialize. Does the non-realization of these prophecies make those who made them into false prophets? And a last problem: The retribution prophecies of the true prophets were also not always realized. Jonah was sent to Nineveh to say: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3: 4). He warned the people of Nineveh, they responded to his message by repenting, and the edict was indeed abolished. Thus, the Lord can take back an edict that He decreed, making it therefore hard for us to accept that the principle of realization is the determining principle. Yet this is not the end of the problems. When Elijah fights the Baal prophets in the book of Kings, it is not difficult to discern who is a true prophet and who is a false prophet. However, in another story, also in the

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book of Kings, the problem is more difficult. What should the people do if two prophets both claim to be God’s messengers? In 1 Kings 22, we read that Ahab prepared for war against Aram, and that before the battle, he asked 400 prophets whether to go to war and if he should, whether he would win. All 400 prophets told him that he could go to war and that he would win. Only one prophet, named Micaiah, who was not one of the 400, claimed that Ahab must not go to war and that if he did, he would die in battle. Ahab’s deliberation is understandable. Both the 400 prophets and Micaiah used the words “and the Lord said”, which indicates that they were sent by God. Furthermore, one representative of the 400, Zedekiah son of Chenaanah, even performs a symbolic act, one of the signs of the true prophet. Ahab is on the horns of a particularly difficult dilemma. This is not just a theoretical argument, but an one with fateful implications. The end of the story is that Ahab went to war based on the advice of the 400, and died in battle according to the words of Micaiah, who in retrospect turned out to be the true prophet. Yet how could Ahab have known that? And if we return to what we said about the lie, did the false prophets in this story intend to mislead the king, or were they so convinced that they actually did not know that they were lying? In any case, we have the first clue to distinguishing between true prophets and false prophets. The true prophet usually makes statements that are not pleasing to hear, and also usually speaks out against the majority. Even if there is a genuine threat to his or her life and liberty, the true prophet does not back down, and sticks with his or her message. The problem of the false prophets is also documented in other Biblical books. However, there is no book like Jeremiah wherein it is dealt with over so many chapters. Why? According to Biblical scholar Benjamin Oppenheimer, the numerous appearances of false prophets in the book of Jeremiah should be related to the events that took place in 609 BCE, an eventful year in Judah. King Josiah died in the battle of Megiddo against the King of Egypt. His son Jehoahaz was crowned in his stead, yet reigned for only three months and was exiled to Egypt. Jehoahaz’s brother Jehoiachin rose to power in his stead, and reigned for 11 years. Three kings in one year, political upheavals, loss of political independence―together these may have been cause for the proliferation of false prophets. The people were in need of words of comfort and consolation, and the prophets supplied these expansively, perhaps thinking, or having convinced themselves, that they expressed the vox populi, or the voice of the people. With Babylon’s inva-

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sion of Judah in 604 BCE exacerbating the struggle even further, these false prophets could rely on three things: 1. God’s promises to the forefathers of inhabiting the Land of Israel forever. 2. The Divine promise to David regarding kingship for him and his seed forever. 3. The promise that the Temple will exist forever, since it is the House of God, and since He resides in Jerusalem, the City of God. This last promise they could be construed to prove prophecy, as we already saw in Jeremiah’s speech in the Temple, when he used the precedent of 701 BCE, from the days of the campaign of Sennacherib, when Jerusalem was saved from the King of Assyria and his huge army. Characteristics Typical of the Prophets Jeremiah, like other prophets whom we regard as true prophets, tried to profile the false prophets so that the people would be able to beware of them. To be fair, we have almost no document that explicitly sets forth the false prophets’ attitudes; most of the information about them indeed comes from the true prophets. It may therefore be assumed that reality was more complicated, and that the true prophets often spoke in terms of black and white because of a time-specific need. We will now list false prophets’ characteristics according to Jeremiah: 1. Talking in slogans and using concise language (or what today would be known as “talking in sound bytes”): Today it is also known, from studies on lying, that liars avoid details, thus capturing the listener’s ear. Jeremiah claims that the message of the false prophets is “Peace will be upon you”, i.e., there is no detailing of under what conditions and when, and there is no attempt to prove the claim. The message is simply that peace will come; there is no need to worry. The slogan “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord”, which we mentioned in the chapter on Jeremiah’s speech in the Temple, can be recalled in this context. 2. As we saw, one of the components in the definition of lying is intent to mislead. Jeremiah claims that the false prophets know that their message does not originate with an authoritative source, and their aim is to strengthen the hands of the transgressors who can continue business as usual because their safety is guaranteed. They did this with the cooperation of the priests, and it constituted deception, because it is not as stated in the law of the prophet in the Pentateuch. Of course, if we were to ask a false prophet, s/he would be angry at this presentation of things. The false

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prophets regarded themselves no less patriotic than Jeremiah, as loving their people no less, and were convinced of their righteousness no less than was Jeremiah of his. 3. Jeremiah claims that the source for the authority of the false prophets is not Divine, but rather is based on their personal evaluations. He claims that they dream dreams and then tell them as God’s message. Actually, the true prophets also received their messages in dreams (Jeremiah 31: 25), yet for the sake of argument and in order to distinguish himself further from the false prophets, Jeremiah delegitimizes the dream phenomenon. It should be noted that the Bible is ambivalent regarding dreams. On the one hand, we find several instances where the description of dreams serves as a legitimate means for receiving the word of God, such as the descriptions of the dreams of Jacob, Joseph, and Pharaoh. Even Solomon is awarded a Divine revelation in his dream in Gibeon (1 Kings 3: 4-15). On the other hand, according to Deuteronomy 13: 2, the false prophet is the “dreamer of dreams” about whom Zechariah says the following: “the dreamers tell false dreams” (Zechariah 10: 2). 4. Because of Jeremiah’s all-out war against the false prophets, he does not refrain from describing them as adulterers, as those who carry out the will of the king, and as traitors (Jeremiah 23: 10). Their personalities are characterized by lying, deceit, and immorality (Jeremiah 23: 14, 25). They are motivated by the will to dominate, and therefore manipulate opinion. 5. Jeremiah describes the prophetic experience that the true prophet undergoes as unique. The true prophet’s entire body shakes, s/he feels drunk, his or her feet float in the air (Jeremiah 23: 9). This describes what could be called an ecstatic experience. The false prophet does not experience these sensations; he or she misleads the people knowingly (Jeremiah 23: 13). 6. Only the true prophet hears the discussions on the fate of the people in the celestial retinue, in the Divine council. The false prophet is not partner to these discussions (Jeremiah 23: 18). These claims are not empirical, and are thus difficult to prove. Nonetheless, Jeremiah’s main innovation is that the true prophet reproves the people and transmits his or her prophecy precisely in order that it not come true. In contrast to the false prophet whose prestige will increase if his or her prophecies are realized, the true prophet must simultaneously reprove the people and warn them of the impending disaster, and pray to God to not bring about this calamity.

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Jeremiah's Struggle Against the False Prophets: The Political Aspect The subject of the true prophets/false prophets is discussed in chapters 2729 of the book of Jeremiah from the political aspect. The question is whether to surrender to Babylon or to try and collaborate with additional parties (mainly Egypt) in order to drive out the Babylonians. The false prophets spoke of a short period of enslavement, i.e., God will not stand by when His people are taken from their Land and the enemy acts as if it owns the Temple. Jeremiah’s position is that the King of Babylon was appointed by God to rule the world, and anyone who rebels against Babylon actually rebels against God. The period of enslavement is said to be 70 years. This expression is not intended to indicate a precise period of time, since we do not know when the counting of the 70 years should begin. It can be assumed that this is a typological number, i.e., an integer indicating a unit of time that while not short, is limited and will last about three generations. Illustration of Jeremiah’s prophecy is carried out by a symbolic act: the yoke and the bars. Just as the act is tangible and real, so also will the prophecy that it symbolizes be realized. Chapter 28 presents the confrontation between the true prophets and the false prophets in the form of a dramatic story. The entire people gather in the month of Ab of the year 594 BCE in the Temple in order to decide on the question: Is Hananiah of Gibeon God’s prophet, or is Jeremiah of Anathoth? As mentioned, Jehoiachin was exiled together with the administrative class and the senior officers (approximately 10,000 people) in 597 BCE. Some of the treasures of the Temple were also taken as spoils. Many regarded Jehoiachin–Jehoiachin as the legitimate king who would one day return from Babylon, and continued to call him “King of Judah” even as he sat in a Babylonian prison. Hananiah represented a group that claimed that Jehoiachin was destined to return and that the Babylonian enslavement would be short. Hananiah’s viewpoint and that of his followers is that God will not forfeit His honor and will not allow the Babylonians to take the treasures of his Temple without a response. For this group, the legitimate king is Jehoiachin, and not Zedekiah. This opinion was also held by some of those who were exiled to Babylon. In contrast to this group was a group that regarded Zedekiah as the legitimate king. Whoever was exiled was exiled, and will not return. Their exile is punishment, whereas we who remained in Israel are considered righteous.

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In order to prove his credibility, Hananiah uses the formulation patterns of the true prophet. He says the words: “Thus says the Lord”. He even uses the first person (“I broke”) in order to add force to his message and indicate that his message is the actual word of God. He also performs a symbolic act: He breaks Jeremiah’s bars. Jeremiah’s position is that Jehoiachin will not return from exile, and his sons will not inherit the throne. However, those who were exiled and the Temple implements that were taken will return in 70 years. The exiles fulfilled God’s will, while those who remained in Jerusalem rebelled against God. In another prophecy, he calls those who remain in Jerusalem “bad figs” and those who went to Babylon “good figs” (Jeremiah 24). In his opinion, one should not rely on past precedents wherein Jerusalem was saved in its difficult moments. This might have been the correct choice under certain circumstances, yet it does not mean that events will play themselves out the same way this time. The people find it difficult to decide. In this chapter, Hananiah is called ‫“( הנביא‬The prophet”) as often as is Jeremiah. Jeremiah is actually not certain whether God did reveal himself to Hananiah, perhaps having given him a prophecy of which Jeremiah had no knowledge. In any case, Jeremiah makes a fundamental distinction: What makes me, Jeremiah, a true prophet, and you, Hananiah, a false prophet? Jeremiah claims that the principle of realization does not apply to the true prophet at all―neither when prophesying retribution, nor when prophesying redemption. Both can be cancelled, as Jeremiah says in chapter 18: 7-10: At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change My mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in My sight, not listening to My voice, then I will change My mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. In other words, only the false prophets who transmit prophecies of comfort and peace must prove their messages according to the principle of realization. The true prophet is exempt from doing so, because he is part of the prophetic tradition of prophets who have reproved the people and threatened them with impending disaster. According to Jeremiah, the main criterion is the content. Jeremiah thus becomes a commentator on Deuteronomy. The principle of realization should indeed be taken into account, yet it should be applied only to prophets whose prophecies consist solely of messages of peace.

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It is interesting that in this chapter, Jeremiah abstains from personal slander and deals only with the issue of principle. The first part of the story ends with a clear victory for Hananiah. After he makes his arguments in the second round, Jeremiah does not reply and goes on his way. This is because he does not at that moment have the word of God, and he cannot give his personal opinion. Revelation does not occur all the time, but depends first and foremost on God. Sometimes the answer from God only arrives days later. The audience that witnessed the debate probably understood that Jeremiah felt defeated and therefore went his way. However, the story’s epilogue describes Jeremiah approaching Hananiah with confidence and informing him that God told him that Hananiah is a false prophet. The exile will be long, and not as Hananiah had said. Hananiah will therefore die because of the law of the false prophet. This does indeed take place: two months later, Hananiah dies. However, the story does not quickly reach the “bottom line”, which is to show that Jeremiah was a true prophet, but goes about in a realistic and dramatic manner, by creating suspense, delay, and a convincing reflection of the people’s dilemma. The dilemma is solved after God Himself intervenes and explicitly informs Jeremiah of his message. Chapter 29 tells of a letter that Jeremiah sends to those exiled in Babylon four years after the exile, i.e., in 593 BCE. Those in exile continued to preserve the official institutions: the pre-monarchy leadership institution referred to as “the elders”, the priests, and the administrative class. They regarded Jehoiachin as King of Judah although he sat in a Babylonian prison. It appears that there were also false prophets in Babylon, and that there were interrelations between the ones who were exiled during the days of Jehoiachin in 597 BCE and those who remained in Jerusalem and were not exiled by the King of Babylon, each party encouraging the other. Those exiled in Babylon encouraged those who were left in Jerusalem to the effect that the downfall of the Babylonians was imminent, and those who remained in Jerusalem encouraged those in Babylonian exile that they would soon return to Jerusalem together with Jehoiachin, contrary to Jeremiah’s position. In his letter, Jeremiah clarifies that a return in the near future should not be expected. The stay in exile will be prolonged, i.e., 70 years. The people should settle in Babylon, marry, have children and use their time to pray, repent, and learn lessons, so that God will return them to their Land at the end of the punishment period. In the modern age, in the early days of Zionism, this story became the focus of a debate between those who en-

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couraged going to Israel and settling it, and those who thought that the time for this had not yet arrived. This letter also contains encouragement. The exile is indeed punishment for those who breached the Covenant, yet there is still hope. The ties with God will not be severed in exile. Jeremiah’s letter did indeed reach its destination. As can be seen as the chapter progresses, it reached the hands of a prophet named Shemaiah, who instructed a priest in Jerusalem called Zephaniah to arrest Jeremiah for his message. Jeremiah heard of this intention from Zephaniah himself, who apparently supported Jeremiah. Jeremiah predicts that Shemaiah and all who believe him will never return to the Land of Israel, either in the near future or at the end of the 70-year period. A study of the book of Ezra indicates that the Jews in exile took Jeremiah’s advice to settle in exile. An archive discovered in Babylon indicates that the Jews continued to maintain a Jewish identity in exile and did not assimilate, gave their children Hebrew names, and became integrated into Babylonian society. The number of those returning to Israel some decades after Jeremiah reached 40,000 at most, of the 150,000 who lived in exile. Most of the exiled did not in the end return to Jerusalem, although King Cyrus of Persia, who conquered Babylon, gave them royal permission to return. In fact, they had acclimated so well that one of the most important centers of Judaism in the days of the Second Temple was created there, i.e., the Babylonian community, which created the Babylonian Talmud. The people apparently regarded Jeremiah as a false prophet regarding many parts of his prophecy. Even the fact that events happened just as he predicted did not change the picture. Chapter 43 describes how the people turn to Jeremiah with the question of what to do after Gedaliah’s murder. Should they remain in Israel, or should they go to Egypt? When Jeremiah brings God’s message that they should stay in Israel, they claim: “You are telling a lie. The Lord our God did not send you” (Jer. 43: 2). The people were willing to listen to Jeremiah only if what he said was compatible with their desires and wishes. However, this is the spirit of true prophecy: to tell the people what they need to hear, and not what they want to hear. The true prophet does not go with the flow, assenting to common opinion, but rather teaches the people other things, which are not always to their liking.

9 THE END OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH According to the book of Kings, the kings of Judah were to blame for the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people from their land to Babylon. The kings did not heed the advice of the prophets. They did not maintain the social orders and the fulfillment of the commandments. The Covenant between the people and their God was violated. For all these God punished the people with exile and destruction. Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your ancestors and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets. They would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their ancestors, and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do as they did. They rejected all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made a sacred pole, worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. They made their sons and their daughters pass through fire; they used divination and augury; and they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced (2 Kings 17: 13-19). The person blamed the most was Manasseh King of Judah. However, he was only the straw that broke the camel’s back, or the “hammer blow”, since he was preceded by a long history of the people's sins from the days of the exodus from Egypt (2 Kings 21). Judah's exile to Babylon was the last stage in a deterioration which began with the division of the monarchy into two kingdoms and continued with the exile of the Kingdom of Israel to Assyria and its destruction. The threat mentioned in the Reproaches of the Pentateuch was thus realized. For example: 61

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The Lord will bring a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a grim-faced nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young. It shall consume the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, leaving you neither grain, wine, and oil, nor the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, until it has made you perish. It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the Lord your God has given you. In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you (Deuteronomy 28: 49-53). The book of Jeremiah, like the book of Kings, comprises a bill of indictment against the people and their leaders. Had they heeded Jeremiah's advice to mend their ways and especially to surrender to Babylon, the destruction and the exile would have been prevented. The unique aspect of the book of Jeremiah is that the essence of the story of the destruction is told by way of a dramatic plot. The prophet's biography is integrated in the history of the Kingdom of Judah. Jeremiah's prophecy that the Babylonians will come to Jerusalem was realized in full. Jeremiah tried until the final hours to persuade Zedekiah, the last remaining king, to surrender to Babylon and not try to collaborate with Egypt against Babylon. However, he did not succeed, although the relations between Jeremiah and Zedekiah were different from his relations with other kings. Zedekiah respected the prophet and believed him. The tragedy was that he was not courageous enough to employ his authority as king and refuse the advice of the ministers who instructed him to act in a way completely contrary to Jeremiah's advice. The contribution of the false prophets should also be mentioned. They cultivated the belief in Jerusalem's immunity. As mentioned, the Babylonians appointed Zedekiah as King of Judah in 597 BCE. They made a vassal pact with him, within whose framework they were obligated to protect him from external threats, and in return he was committed to be loyal to them and support them at all times. However, the Babylonians soon understood that Zedekiah was not loyal to them as agreed in the pact made between them. During this period Egypt began to recover and offered active aid to the Kingdom of Judah in getting rid of the Babylonians. The Babylonians, who until then gave their subjects great freedom of movement, decided that from then on they would be more involved in the kingdoms under their domination.

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The Babylonians decided to abolish the rule of the House of David in Judah and destroy Jerusalem which resisted the rule of Babylon. They decided to carry out a siege. The date is given to us in the book of Kings: the tenth of Tevet, the year 588 BCE. This siege lasted for almost two years. The historian and biblical scholar Israel Ephal describes the reasons for using the technique of the siege in antiquity in a comprehensive research on siege in the ancient near East. The decision to find protection behind the city walls was made by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They understood that they had no chance in face to face battle against the Babylonians and therefore preferred a prolonged static battle. It was assumed that the enemy would become exhausted in a prolonged siege. This would obligate the enemy to constant supply of equipment, and life opposite the walls would cause the enemy to withdraw and abandon. A plastic illustration of the siege techniques was preserved in the murals which were painted in the palace of Sennacherib King of Assyria in Nineveh, not far from the city of Mosul in today's Iraq. Copies of these paintings are also found in Israeli museums. However, in the end the siege acted mainly to the detriment of the besieged in Jerusalem. They were in quarantine. They could not leave the city or ask others to enter it. Food supplies ran out, and according to Lamentations, which describes the sights of the destruction, it appears that there was cannibalism in Jerusalem: women ate the meat of their children. The siege also led to the plague and outbreaks of disease because of impaired sanitary conditions. The description of the campaign of Sennacherib in the books of Kings and Isaiah indicate that the attackers sometimes used psychological warfare techniques. They tried to frighten the people, to create divides between the people and the government, to create despair among the warriors. In parallel, they attempted to breach the wall using battering rams, and sometimes even penetrated under the walls by digging tunnels. During the first stage of the siege Zedekiah sent a royal delegation to Jeremiah because he wanted to find out whether Jerusalem was destined to be saved by a miracle. This is told in chapter 21. Zedekiah assumed that God will perform a miracle for those besieged in Jerusalem just like he did during the days of the campaign of Sennacherib. However, the answer that Jeremiah gives to the king's messengers is disappointing. God will not fight for Jerusalem, but against it. He will enable the Babylonians to conquer the city. The only way out is to surrender to the Babylonians voluntarily and thus save the lives of those remaining in Jerusalem. Chapters 32 and 34 describe more stages of the siege. Here too Jeremiah continues to preach to voluntary surrender to the Babylonians. For this he is arrested and placed in prison, in a kind of detention house

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adjacent to the palace. He personally informs Zedekiah that he will be caught by the Babylonians and will not be able to escape them. The final stage of the siege is described in chapters 37-39. After over a year of enduring the siege, Zedekiah sends a second delegation to Jeremiah with the aim of receiving a Redemption prophecy or a prophecy of salvation for Jerusalem. This time the circumstances seemingly changed in favor of Judah. The King of Egypt did indeed appear in the Judah region and his arrival caused a withdrawal of the Babylonians. However, Jeremiah's answer was negative this time too. Jeremiah adds that all of Judah's reliance on Egypt is fundamentally mistaken, because the fate of Jerusalem has been decided. Nothing can save it, and there is no point in continuing to fight. The continued fighting will only make matters worse, because the withdrawal is only temporary and tactical, and in the end the Babylonians will return. In the last chapter of the book, which lists the names of the exiled and the loot taken by the Babylonians, it appears that a group of about eight hundred people listened to Jeremiah and passed over to the Babylonian side after they declared their surrender (Jeremiah 32: 29). However, Zedekiah did not act in this manner. After these events Jeremiah was arrested on a charge of treason. First he was placed in an especially crowded detention house and after he repeated his prophecy he was thrown into the pit, just like Joseph in the book of Genesis (Jeremiah 38). Jeremiah was beginning to drown, but nobody dared save him, except for one non-Jew named Ebed-melech the Ethiopian. He turns toward Jeremiah and Jeremiah is pulled out of the pit and returned to the prison, because the ministers refused to let him go. He remained there until the Babylonians broke into the city. At the end of chapter 38 Zedekiah tries for the last time to ask Jeremiah "What will be", but nothing has changed. Jeremiah advises Zedekiah to surrender voluntarily in order to spare a Babylonian revenge on him and his people for forcing them to maintain a siege for such a long time. Zedekiah says that he is afraid of his ministers and is especially afraid of those who have already deserted to the Babylonian side, because he thinks that the Babylonians will hand him over to these people, and they will castigate him. The description ends: Zedekiah is not courageous enough to strongly object to the ministers. On the other hand Jeremiah has not changed his position. The Babylonians breach the walls on the ninth of Tamuz and enter Jerusalem. Until the 10th of Av, the date on which the First Temple was burned, they apparently hold trials at the city gate (as prophesied by

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Jeremiah in chapter 1) and decide who will remain in the city and who will be taken to Babylon. We will now take a break in order to clarify a problematic point in the stories. When was the First Temple burned by the Babylonians? According to the book of Kings the Temple was burned by the Babylonians on the seventh of Ab, whereas the book of Jeremiah records that it took place on the tenth of Ab. And if this confusion is not enough, the Rabbis set the ninth of Ab as the fast day. How can these contradictions be reconciled? The Rabbis took a harmonistic view according to which the Babylonians reached the Temple on the seventh of Ab and the entire process ended on the tenth of Ab. However, a scientific approach to the biblical text cannot accept harmonistic solutions. It therefore appears that the original date was preserved in the book of Jeremiah and that it is the tenth of Ab. A precise comparison of the two versions, in the book of Kings and in the book of Jeremiah, indicates that the book of Jeremiah contains a more complete version. The Rabbis set the ninth of Ab as a day of remembrance for the destruction of both Temples. However, the ninth of Ab was actually the date on which the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE. Setting the day of remembrance according to the date of the Second Temple apparently stemmed from the fact that this event was closer to their time than the destruction of the First Temple. In any case, they did not want to set two consecutive dates of fasting, one for remembering the destruction of the First Temple and one for the Second Temple, according to the rule that “one does not make an edict for the public, unless most of the public can uphold it” (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 36a). We will now return to the description in the biblical text. Zedekiah tries to escape from the Babylonians at night, because he knows what he can expect. He escapes until he reaches Jericho and there is caught. He apparently tried to reach Ammon and Moab, which were among the nations that came to Jerusalem in the fourth year of his reign, and which planned the rebellion against Babylon (Jeremiah 27). However, Zedekiah does not manage to reach a safe haven. He was caught and taken to the Babylonian headquarters in Riblah in northern Syria, where he was tried and accused of rebelling against the Babylonians. The Babylonians killed Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes and then gouged out his eyes. This is how they also acted towards other nations and vassals that violated the conditions of the pact. Zedekiah’s fate after this is not known. Did he die in Babylon or was he returned to Jerusalem?

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The Babylonians burned the Temple and looted its treasures. The priests, functionaries and military leaders who remained in the city were killed, and others were exiled to Babylon. The Babylonians chose those who would go to Babylon carefully. They wanted to ensure that those exiled to Babylon would not disrupt arrangements that were already achieved with those exiled during the days of Jehoiachin in the year 597 BCE. The kingship of the House of David ceased, and has not been renewed to this day. There is no doubt that this action led to a very great crisis among the people, who believed that the Temple would exist forever, that the kingship of the House of David would exist forever, and that the people of Israel would inhabit the Land of Israel forever. Reality proved them wrong. Indeed, an argument between the people and their God on this matter can be found in several texts in the prophetical books and in Psalms. The prophets are convinced that the people and their leaders are to blame, whereas the people claim that there was no fault in their actions and point an accusing finger towards God himself. God is the one who violated his Covenant with them. A strong formulation is found in Lamentations 5: 7: “Our ancestors sinned; they are no more, and we bear their iniquities”; in Psalm 89: 39-40: “But now you have spurned and rejected him; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust”; and in Psalm 44: 18: “All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you, or been false to your covenant”. The Babylonians find the prophet Jeremiah among the inhabitants of Judah (Jeremiah 39: 11). It turns out that they had received information about Jeremiah's preaching to surrender to Babylon and therefore give him two alternatives: he can stay in Israel or go into exile (Jeremiah 40: 1-6). In the end Jeremiah remains in Israel, but his prophecy has not yet ended, because the entire people have not gone to Babylon. In the next chapter we will discuss the reality in Judah after the destruction and Jeremiah’s prophecies to those who remained.

10 THE GEDALIAH EPISODE Not all the affairs that appear in the book of Jeremiah are about his actions and prophecies. An affair that can illustrate this is the murder of Gedaliah, which is related in chapters 40-41 of the book of Jeremiah. It is difficult to know why the prophet is not mentioned in this affair. Several suggestions have been made on this matter. Some claim that the author of the book did not have information about Jeremiah during this period. Others suppose that Jeremiah is not mentioned because he was not involved in the events, or that he did not have any words of God in his mouth. According to yet another hypothesis, the stories about Gedaliah originate in a chronistic composition that describes the events from a national point of view and not from the prophet’s point of view. After the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed, the Babylonians leave the remnant, apparently several dozen or hundreds, under the command of Gedaliah, son of Ahikam. Why Gedaliah? Because he was a member of the Shaphan family, which according to numerous inscriptions in the book of Jeremiah, was a pro-Babylonian family. The Babylonians wanted to maintain stability in the region and therefore appointed someone who would be loyal to them and would also preserve the loyalty of the remnant. The prophet preaches for such relations between Babylon and Judah throughout the entire book, yet they are implemented only after the destruction. The Babylonians did not allow Gedaliah and his people to live in Jerusalem, the rebelling city, so they lived in the city of Mizpah in Benjamin. Mizpah lay on the main road from Jerusalem to Samaria. Archeological evidence also indicates that the region of Benjamin was not touched by the Babylonians. Gedaliah turns to the remnants and calms their fear of the Babylonians. They can become established in their new homes and need not fear that the Babylonians will exile them as they did their brethren. The condition under which the Babylonians will not harm them was that they would not rebel against the Babylonians and will be loyal to them.

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Gedaliah gathered many people around him, including ministers, i.e., low-ranking military commanders. Those who escaped from Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege also joined him. Some waited until the end of the war and escaped to Moab, the land of the Ammonites and the Edomites. The early establishment of the remnant in Judah was rather optimistic. They planted vineyards and earned their living from agriculture. Thus there was still a future for Israel, even after the trauma of the destruction of the Temple and the exile to Babylonia. There is a kind of beginning of the redemption. However, these optimistic descriptions are rapidly replaced by gloomy ones. Gedaliah's Murder Gedaliah’s policy was not accepted by everyone, especially not by Ishmael son of Nethaniah, who plotted to murder Gedaliah. What was Ishmael’s motive for murdering Gedaliah? It is said that Ishmael was of the seed of the monarchy, i.e., he was a descendent of the House of David and wanted to realize his right to the throne. However, the book of Jeremiah does not back up this claim. According to the prophet, there were no kings from the House of David at this time. Another motive for the murder is related to the desire of the kingdoms in the area to again try and push the Babylonians out. Ishmael was a messenger of the King of the Ammonites, who apparently now supported Egypt in this move. Ishmael’s support of the King of the Ammonites was apparently supposed to bring the King of the Ammonites to help him overtake the kingship in Judah. The Ammonites had supported the intention of rebelling against the King of Babylon a few years earlier, during the reign of Zedekiah. Johanan son of Kareah, who headed the army and the soldiers who were with him, informed Gedaliah of the plot to assassinate him, and sought his permission to kill Ishmael. However, Gedaliah refused to believe them and forbade harming Ishmael. Gedaliah was so confident of himself that he invited Ishmael to the holiday meal of Rosh Hashanah. He could not conceive that Ishmael had malicious intentions. It is not clear in what year this takes place. Is it two months after the destruction, or is it a year and two months later? We only know that the timing is Rosh Hashanah. During the meal, Ishmael and his men rise up and murder Gedaliah and his men, as well as some of the Babylonian representatives in the area. They then make haste to the Ammonites for fear of the Babylonians. On his way, Ishmael meets 80 men who are on their way to perform a ritual in

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Jerusalem in commemoration of the Temple. These men are engaged in customs of mourning, and Ishmael and his men join them, pretending to lead them to Gedaliah, then murdering them so that they would not be witnesses to the murder of Gedaliah and his men. An interesting fact becomes evident from these descriptions. The Temple was indeed destroyed, but some people continued to observe ritual ceremonies in Jerusalem. They did this without sacrifices and without a Temple, yet continued to visit the site of Temple. The origin of the people who came to perform these ritual celebrations is also interesting. They are from Schechem, Shiloh, and Samaria, or the Northern Kingdom; most are murdered by Ishmael. This indicates that Josiah’s reform actually succeeded above and beyond expectations. After the many years that had passed since the division of the kingdom in the days of Solomon, during which Jerusalem was holy only to the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, the remnant of the Ten Tribes continued to come to Jerusalem and still viewed it as a central place of ritual. These people could not come during the reign of Zedekiah for fear of the Babylonians, but they come now, after the Temple has been destroyed. Two Differing Descriptions of the Murder: Kings and Jeremiah The murder of Gedaliah and its consequences are described in both the book of Kings and the book of Jeremiah. In the book of Kings, only limited space is devoted thereto, whereas in Jeremiah, the description of the murder and its implications spreads over two entire chapters. How can this fact be explained? Some commentators afford a technical explanation. The long version of the story is found in the book of Jeremiah, where the book of Kings contains an abridged version. However, such an explanation misses the differing orientations of the two books. It seems to me preferable to suppose that both authors had a description of the murder of Gedaliah, and each applied it according to his particular orientation. In the book of Kings, there is a tendency to show that nobody remained in the Land of Israel after the exile to Babylon, and that the actual remnant are found in Babylon. The verse ‫“( ויגל יהודה מעל אדמתו‬So Judah went into exile out of its land”, 2 Kgs 25:21) is typical in this context, although archeological digs carried out in the regions of Judah and Benjamin indicate that the Land of Israel was not totally emptied of its inhabitants after the exile. In the author of Kings’ opinion, anyone who was exiled

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had sinned, and whoever remained in the Land of Israel was the remnant that was worthy of being left here by God. In contrast, in the book of Jeremiah, the murder is described in a shocking manner. Ishmael is presented as despicable. He slew Gedaliah (‫)וַ יִּ ְשׁ ָח ֵטם‬, deceived men who came to pray and mourn the destruction of the Temple and murdered them, and finally threw their bodies into a pit. All of these actions point to the differing orientations of the books. Before the destruction, the orientation of the book of Jeremiah was similar to that of Kings. In both, those who were exiled to Babylon were presented as superior to those who remained in Judah. However, this viewpoint changed after the exile: The actual remnant would come from those who remained in Israel. Gedaliah’s murder was therefore perceived as very grave in the book of Jeremiah: A Jew assassinated a Jewish leader, thereby wiping out the possibility of renewing life in the Land of Israel after the destruction and exile. Further, the murder resulted in more people leaving Israel. The day of Gedaliah’s murder, the third of Tishrei, was declared a fast day, although the murder was committed on the two first days of the month of Tishrei, which mark Rosh Hashanah (when fasting would not be permitted). In his book Seek Peace and Pursue It (Tel Aviv, 2002), Uriel Simon writes about the murder of Gedaliah: [Ishmael’s] short-sighted thinking did not enable him to foresee either the immediate consequences of the murder… or its damage for centuries (cessation of the rehabilitation and the return, loss of the remnant of leadership, and intensification of the movement of those going to exile). Jeremiah's Fate After the Destruction of the First Temple According to chapters 42-43, the remnant of Judah that was left in Israel deliberated whether to go to Egypt, thinking that they might find refuge there, or to remain in Israel. They turn to Jeremiah to solve this deliberation for them by applying to God, believing that Jeremiah will finally be awarded his lost honor as a true prophet. They indicate that they are willing to accept any answer. Jeremiah answers them that God has instructed them to remain in Israel, because the period of punishment has ended and the period of rehabilitation is beginning, and they should not rely on Egypt. However, they regard him as a false prophet who is encouraged by his student, Baruch son of Neriah, and are not willing to listen to him. A process of drawing conclusions from the destruction and exile did not take place. It now becomes clear that Jeremiah’s answer was not compatible with

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their intentions, and that they were willing to accept only one answer: You have permission to go to Egypt. The people go to Egypt and the Godly ritual continues. In chapter 44, the heads of the Jewish community claim the following against Jeremiah: Since Josiah abolished the Godly ritual, we have been suffering. This is said as a counterbalance to Jeremiah, who claimed that all of the sufferings of the Jews in the last generation stem from the fact that they worshipped other gods. We do not know Jeremiah’s fate. A Christian tradition appears in the Vitae Prophetarum (“The Lives of the Prophets”; 1st century CE) according to which the people stoned Jeremiah in Egypt. This legend is echoed in medieval Jewish sources such as Ibn Yachaya’s Shalshelet Hakabbalah (99b). However, it is not a reliable tradition, but rather an attempt to compare Jeremiah to Jesus in his life as well as in his death: Just as Jesus was killed by the people, so also was Jeremiah. The end of the book is rather gloomy. If this is the people’s attitude toward the prophet, is it any wonder that this will be their fate? The chances of renewing Jewish existence in the Land after the destruction out of the remnant that remained in Israel evaporate. While the restoration prophecies in the book indeed dull this sting when they speak of an age of renewal and rehabilitation, their part in the book is negligible: four chapters out of 52. Some of them were supposed to occur as early as the days of Jeremiah, yet were not realized. This harsh impression is not common to all Biblical books. The descriptions in the books from the days of the Second Temple―Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles―are more optimistic. Those who returned to Zion from exile did not fully realize the prophecies on the ingathering of the Diaspora and the renewal of the monarchy. In terms of the number of those who returned, it did not exceed 40,000, certainly not the number that the prophets meant in their restoration prophecies. A king from the House of David has not existed since then. Nonetheless, one element was realized: the building of the Second Temple, which stood for a long time until its destruction in 70 CE by the Romans. The book of Chronicles, which ends with permission being granted by King Cyrus of Persia to build the Second Temple, portends a better future, wherein there is also room for the renewal of the Davidic monarchy. From the book’s viewpoint, the destruction and exile is not the end; there is reason to expect a renewal of the relations between the people and its God as of old.

11 JEREMIAH'S LEGACY The book Wüste und Gelobtes Land (Berlin, 1936) by Elias Auerbach concludes the discussion on the period of Jeremiah with the following words: “He is still alive today and exists secretly in humanity’s saints—a soul that is entirely a pure blaze, greatness, loyalty and compassion; a man who suffered pain and teaches suppression of sorrow”. Yehezkel Kaufmann wrote similarly: “The greatest of the great prophets. It is hard to decide whether there ever was a prophet greater than Jeremiah” (Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, Tel Aviv 1937, vol. 3, p. 459). Such appraisals can only be written from a perspective of time. Reading the book of Jeremiah indicates that the prophet was never properly appreciated by his generation, and the remnant continued to regard him as a false prophet even after the destruction, when it would have been expected that the realization of his prophecies would lead to a general recognition of Jeremiah by the people. Even the book of Kings, which describes a period identical to that described in the book of Jeremiah, does not mention Jeremiah, whereas other prophets are mentioned in therein (for example Isaiah, Elijah, and Elisha). This situation changes during the days of the Second Temple. The prophet Zechariah, who lived and acted at the beginning of the sixth century BCE, quotes Jeremiah’s prophecies extensively. The redemption prophecies of second Isaiah, which are dated by most researchers to the sixth century BCE, are verbally and conceptually related to Jeremiah’s prophecies. 2 Chronicles 36 mentions Jeremiah’s 70 years prophecy, i.e., the 70 years of exile have ended and the age of redemption has begun. In Zechariah, Jeremiah is mentioned as a true prophet. It is implied that had Jeremiah been heeded, the destruction would have been prevented. The book of Daniel, the latest of the Biblical books, affords a surprising interpretation of the 70 years predicted by Jeremiah: according to Daniel, it actually meant 490 years, which brings us to the days of Antiochus, King of Greece. Jeremiah was given a place of honor in the Pseudepigrapha, especially in the Book of Baruch and in the Letter to Jeremiah. These are books that 73

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were written in the days of the Second Temple, yet not included in the canon of the 24 books of the Bible. In 2 Maccabees, which was written in the 2nd century BCE, Jeremiah is afforded the status of an authoritative leader, who hid the Ark of God and helped Judah the Maccabee in his victory over Nicanor: One finds in the records that Jeremiah the prophet ordered those who were being deported to take some of the fire, as has been told, and that the prophet, after giving them the law, instructed those who were being deported not to forget the commandments of the Lord (2 Maccabees 2: 1-2). The prophet … ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God. And Jeremiah came and found a cave, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense, and he sealed up the entrance (2 Maccabees 2: 4-5). Judah the Maccabee’s victory over Nicanor (161 BCE) is then explained by the supernatural: Jeremiah is described as handing Judah the Maccabee a golden sword that would help him overcome his enemies (2 Maccabees 15: 15-16). The writing of the Book of Baruch is attributed to Baruch son of Neriah, Jeremiah’s student and scribe. However, it is clear that this identification is not historic, but rather homiletical. Five treatises are actually attributed to Baruch son of Neriah―Book of Baruch and Apocalypse of Baruch 1, 2, 3, 4―wherein Baruch is a prophet for all intents and purposes: He has visions and he prays and prophesies to the people of Judah, the nonJewish exiling kings, and even the lost northern tribes. 1 Apocalypse of Baruch is the most far-reaching. Therein, Jeremiah is only a secondary figure: Baruch passes prophetic messages to Jeremiah, and the former is awarded precedence because he is a writer and it is convenient to attribute the writing of the book to him, whereas Jeremiah is described as healing the sick and performing miracles. In the New Testament, there is an attempt to shape Jesus in the image of Jeremiah: Both predicted the destruction of Jerusalem; both spoke out against mistaken beliefs regarding the immunity of the Temple; both criticized society; both were persecuted by their own people and suffered greatly at their hands. In his restoration prophecies, Jeremiah himself speaks of a “new Covenant” that will be entered into between the people and their God. This prophecy is afforded renewed meaning in the books of the New Testament. According to Paul, Jesus said the following at the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11: 23-26): “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you,

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that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” In his second letter to the Corinthians (3: 3) Paul says: “And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts”.

In other words, in the Jews there is a heart of stone, but in the heart of the Christians, there is a new spirit. There is an allusion to Jeremiah 31: 32: “But this is the covenant which I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts”. Matthew’s gospel (2: 17-18) mentions the realization of Jeremiah’s prophecy about Rachel: “Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more”.

The connection between Jeremiah’s prophecy and Jesus was made via Bethlehem, where Rachel was buried and where Jesus was born. In addition to these explicit references, other references allude to Jeremiah’s prophecies. These allusions to Jeremiah are also expressed in the prominence of the need for repentance mentioned extensively in the New Testament. The expression “den of robbers”, which is familiar to us from Jeremiah’s speech at the Temple gate (Jeremiah 7) appears in the book of Mark. Chapter 18 of John’s gospel contains a quote from Jeremiah’s retribution prophecy of Babylon (Jeremiah 50-51). However, in John, the subject of the retribution is Rome. Like Jeremiah, Jesus also contrasts the true prophets and the false prophets, and warns the people of the latter. In addition, there are parallels between Jeremiah’s trial and Jesus’ trial. Paul uses the sanctification vision. The prophecies against Babylon that appear at the end of the book of Jeremiah undergo an adaptation in the New Testament, with the enemy that will be destroyed named as Rome. According to Jewish tradition, prophecy ceased with Malachi (Tosefta Sotah 13; Babylonian Talmud Sotah 48a). After the age of the prophets, authority passed to the Sages. Therefore, regarding Jesus as a prophet be-

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came part of the Judaeo-Christian controversy. The Christians explained that God removed prophecy from Israel because they rebelled against Him and His messiah Jesus, and so prophecy therefore passed from the Jews to the Christians. Jeremiah in the Writings of Josephus Flavius There are several references to Jeremiah in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius. Josephus was born in 37 CE in Jerusalem, about thirty three years before the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. During the period of the Great Revolt (66-73 CE), Josephus was appointed commander of the revolt in the Galilee. In his speech during the Jewish revolt against the Romans (The Judean War 5: 391), Josephus quotes several examples from history in order to illustrate the principle that success does not depend on the force of arms, but rather on belief in God: When the king of Babylon besieged this very city, and our king Zedekiah fought against him, contrary to the predictions made to him by Jeremiah the prophet, he was at once taken prisoner, and saw the city and the Temple demolished. Yet how much greater was the moderation of that king, than is that of your present governors, and that of the people then under him, than is that of you at this time! For when Jeremiah cried out aloud how very angry God was at them because of their transgressions, and told them they should be taken prisoners unless they would surrender up their city, neither did the king nor the people put him to death. According to Josephus, the rebels in his day had no reason to hope for a victory, and their failure would be similar to that in Jeremiah’s generation. From Josephus’ writings we learn of the parallel that he creates between himself and Jeremiah. There are indeed several parallels between Josephus and Jeremiah: Both were priests; both regarded the war as a Divine punishment for the people’s sins; both expected the enemy to triumph and preached to surrender; both suffered from the attitude of the people toward them. The people regarded Jeremiah as a traitor and arrested him (Jeremiah 37-38), and they acted the same way toward Josephus. Like Jeremiah, Josephus claims that he was forced to fight the false prophets, who promised false hope. Later in his work, he claims that God sent Titus and his soldiers, and therefore one must surrender to them, because God is fighting on their side. He mentions Jeremiah in this context as well: “The same wondrous sign you had also experience of formerly, when the aforementioned king of Babylon made war against us, and when he took the city, and burnt the Temple; while yet I believe the Jews of that

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age were not so impious as you are. Wherefore I cannot but suppose that God is fled out of His sanctuary, and stands on the side of those against whom you fight” (compare with Jer. 21: 1-10).

Jeremiah in the Midrashim Jeremiah is also referred to in the Midrashim (homiletic interpretations of the Scriptures) of the Sages. Jeremiah is described in greatest detail in the Pesikta Rabbati Midrash, a collection of Midrashim for special Sabbaths and holidays. As usual, the Sages expound upon the Biblical descriptions, create an idealization of certain figures, add a dramatic touch, and find answers to burning questions of their day in these figures. Jeremiah’s tragic figure was intensified by the description of his birth on the ninth of Ab. He is described as one of the eight prophets born to Rahab the Harlot (Numbers Rabbah 78; Babylonian Talmud Megillah 14b). His origin was used as a subject for ridicule, and it was even claimed that he was not fit to reprove the people (Pesikta Rabbati 13; Babylonian Talmud Bava Kama 16b); within a moment of being born, he burst into loud screams. Jeremiah’s concern for the people is emphasized: He called on the forefathers to pray for the people; he accompanied the exiled all the way to the Euphrates; God took him out of Jerusalem so that He could destroy it (Pesikta Rabbati). According to some of the Midrashim, Jeremiah went to Babylon and was among the founders of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah (“Men of the Great Assembly”). The Sages attributed Lamentations to Jeremiah. They did this not only because of the identical time period of these two books, but also because of the content of Lamentations, which is compatible with the spirit of Jeremiah’s prophecies of wrath and gloom. Glorifying Jeremiah for later generations is expressed in an analogy between Jeremiah and Moses: You will find that everything that is written about the one is written about the other. The one prophesied for forty years and the other prophesied for forty years. The one prophesied about Judah and Israel and the other prophesied about Judah and Israel. The one was opposed by members of his tribe and the other was opposed by members of his tribe. The one was thrown into the Nile and the other was thrown into a pit. The one was saved by a female slave and the other by a male slave. The one came with a message of reproof and the other came with a message of reproof (Yalkut Shimoni 256).

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The motif of political neutrality was developed in the stories about Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and his attitude toward Rome. As mentioned, Jeremiah objected to forming an alliance with foreign nations against Babylon, and preached to surrender to Babylon. Similarly, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, one of the greatest Pharisees in Jerusalem before the destruction of the Second Temple, did not aid in the revolt against the Romans, and warned of getting carried away in the wave of messianic movements that flourished during this period. Just as Jeremiah was arrested by the authorities when he left Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege (Jer. 37: 12-15), so was Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai arrested in the city of Gofna, similarly to other detainees who fled the city. Jeremiah’s willingness to re-establish the ruins of the people of Israel in Mitzpah and not in Jerusalem may parallel Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s willingness to rehabilitate the ruins of the people in Yavne (“give me Yavne and its Sages”, Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56a-b). Another motif in the Midrashim about Jeremiah is actualization. In various Midrashim, we find biased use of Jeremiah’s prophecy that instructed those exiled to Babylon to settle in Babylon and not expect an immediate return to the Land of Israel. As early as the Tractate Ketubot (111a) there is a statement about the prohibition to speed up the end and return to Israel prematurely. Many of those opposed returning to Israel in later generations (even to date) relied on Jeremiah’s prophecy, even though according to Jeremiah, the exile was limited in time to 70 years, no more (Jeremiah 25). Jeremiah in Art Artists of the Middle Ages painted Jeremiah as one of the prophets regarded as a role model for the Jews as well as for the Christians. Michelangelo (1475-1564) painted Jeremiah in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Jeremiah is leaning on one of the pillars of the Temple, his head held between his hands, his hair disheveled, his beard scattered, agonized. In the background are two lamenting women that add to the gloom. Jeremiah’s figure is one of a series of paintings of seven prophets that was painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the request of Pope Julius II. In 1630, Rembrandt painted Jeremiah (oil on canvas) lamenting over the destruction of the Temple. Here too, Jeremiah is supporting his head with his hands in order to express sadness and gloom. He is leaning on a book, perhaps the book of Jeremiah or Lamentations. Some claim that this painting reflects the artist’s identification with Jeremiah’s life.

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In the 19th century, Jeremiah was painted by the French painter Gustave Doré in the posture of a lamenter against the background of Jerusalem, dictating the scroll of his prophecies to Baruch. Doré also painted the killing of Zedekiah’s sons. The motif of Jeremiah lamenting, head held in his hands, is found in other paintings as well. Jeremiah in World Literature Until the 19th century, there was no particular reference to the life and figure of Jeremiah in general literature. However, with the appearance of new branches of literature, Jeremiah has been afforded a place of honor. Expressionism is a branch of art that was prevalent mainly in 20th century Germany. The expressionist creator wrote of his or her strong emotions in a subjective manner. Expressionist poetry reflects the creator’s feelings, without referring to the external world. This definition can illuminate what various artists found in the book of Jeremiah: They viewed it as an expression of strong feelings, of going against the flow. The Biblical novel Hearken Unto the Voice, written by Franz Werfel in 1937, is a comprehensive novel on the life of the prophet Jeremiah. It also contains a short episode on the murder of Gedaliah son of Ahikam. The murder is just one more atrocity in the chain of atrocities suffered by Jeremiah and his people in a book that is an allegory to the impending World War. It was translated into Hebrew under the name Jeremiah, Man of Anathoth in 1946, after the end of Word War II. The story of the great sufferings sustained by Jeremiah’s people seems more relevant now than ever. Jeremiah in Modern Hebrew Poetry and Literature In his article “Reflection on a Prose Era”, Dan Miron writes that modern Hebrew poetry regarded itself as entitled to adopt the cloak of the prophet, although this is a prophecy without a god, a mission without a transcendental sender. The prophets’ messages were imitated not only in form, but also in content. Like the prophets, so the poets, beginning in the period of the Enlightenment, wrote things that were unpopular, surprising, and thoughtprovoking, whose purpose was to shock their readers. Indeed, the consciousness of a prophetic mission can be found in the works of several modern philosophers and humanists. For example, in his poem “For Ahad Ha’am”, the poet Haim Nachman Bialik described Ahad Ha’am as a true prophet, and so took sides in the debate between Ahad Ha’am and Herzl.

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In his essay Priest and Prophet (1894), Ahad Ha’am viewed the prophet as someone who expresses the spirit of the people in his constant search for absolute truth and justice. This was not prophecy of a religious nature, but rather prophecy with a national, social, and moral message. Bialik’s poem Davar (“word”) opens with a description of the prophet who has a prophecy of wrath in his mouth, whose function is to warn the people of the coming retribution. Instead of being praised, the prophet receives humiliating treatment by his audience; his words fall on deaf ears. As the poem continues, things change direction: The people regard this prophet as a false prophet, who does not predict wrath, but rather false “restoration and salvation”. This situation is the opposite of the descriptions in the prophetic literature, wherein the people seem to want to hear prophecies of redemption and peace. This inversion apparently stems from the difficult reality of the Jews in Bialik’s time. Having experienced pogroms and blood libels, they are uninterested in any more words of comfort. The prophet also appears in Bialik’s “City of Slaughter”. However, instead of testifying to God’s greatness and righteousness, the prophet in this poem stresses God’s helplessness in the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. The prophet is predestined to failure, both because the people are unwilling to listen and because God is not a strong hero, as He was in the Bible. Jeremiah’s influence on Bialik is also apparent in his poem I Have Not Found Light in Unclaimed Property. Bialik uses the image of the hammer and the rock in order to stress his difficulty in publishing his poems. However, Bialik is not the messenger of God; he is a messenger of himself: “I have not found light in unclaimed property, It did not come to me by inheritance from my father. Rather, I hammered it out of my stone and rock and carved it from my heart. A spark hides in the depth of my heart, a little spark—but all mine. I did not borrow it from anyone, nor steal it, It is from and in me. Under the large hammer of sorrow my heart bursts, rock of my might, This spark sparked into my eyes, and from my eyes – to my rhymes. And from my rhymes fly into your hearts, In the morning light will ignite, vanish. My marrow and blood feed the fire.”

Poets and writers after Bialik objected to his identification with the figure of the prophet (for example: Jacob Lerner and Z. Shneur).

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Like the enlightened in his day, Judah Leib Gordon (1831-1892), regarded the prophet as representing the rabbinical establishment that they fought. In Gordon’s last poem, “King Zedekiah in Prison” Zedekiah accuses Jeremiah: “What have I sinned?” and later Zedekiah accuses Jeremiah of being “A coward, with a surrendering soul, who advised us shame, slavery and discipline”. Nonetheless, it should be indicated that Gordon does not object to the figure of the prophet per se, only against the figure that in his opinion was created by the rabbinical establishment. Gordon tries to usurp the authority that the rabbis assumed as the prophets’ successors. In this he differs from the line taken by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1623-1677) in his book Theological-Political Treatise, wherein he presented the prophets as a factor that caused harm to the management of the nation’s affairs. Likening the poet to the prophet reaches a pinnacle in the poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896-1981), who described himself in his poem With My God, the Smith, as a block of metal that God smelts until it becomes a prophet with fire burning in his bones like Jeremiah (so also in the poem Like Chapters of Prophecy). Like Jeremiah who tries to escape from God, yet recognizes that he cannot, so Greenberg writes “This is my just lot” (With My God, the Smith). Many researchers have stressed that Greenberg had a genuine awareness of a mission, just like a prophet, except that Greenberg volunteered for the role instead of waiting for God to appoint him. Modern Hebrew writers have also praised the figure of Gedaliah son of Ahikam. Several works that discussed the story of Gedaliah from various points of view were published at the end of the 1930s and 1940s. This may have been related to the rise of the Nazi regime and the threat that it posed for the Jews, which could in turn be compared to the ancient Babylonian regime and the destruction it brought to Judah. Menachem Zalman Wolfowski wrote a trilogy called King in Judah, published in 1936-1937. This trilogy included the sections: Johanan son of Kareah, City Under Siege, and Last Firebrands. In King in Judah, Wolfowski described the last days of the First Temple and its destruction. The upbeat and heroic Johanan son of Kareah who is brave, humble, and loyal to his people is confronted with Ishmael son of Nethaniah the wicked, devious, and murderous. The two are described as being in love with the same woman, the daughter of King Zedekiah, the main cause of the hatred between them. The princess, of course, prefers the chivalrous Johanan. The story describes how Ishmael is the one who betrays Jerusalem and hands it over to the Babylonians in the hope of being given it to rule over. However,

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the Babylonians renege on their promise to Ishmael the traitor, who escapes full of revenge and returns to murder Gedaliah (who is a minor figure in this story) and to kidnap his beloved. Finally, Johanan holds him off, and as in the Biblical story, goes to Egypt along with the remnant. However, Wolfowski apparently had pangs of conscience in giving such an ending to his hero. Johanan son of Kareah and his wife finally return to Israel in order to work the land as per the socialist principles in which Wolfowski believed. A significant historic event that renewed interest in the Gedaliah affair was the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. The murder immediately evoked references in the press to Gedaliah’s murder, since Rabin was also murdered by a Jewish assassin, with disastrous consequences. Rabin’s murder inspired Murder and the Country Emptied, by Chaim Chaimoff (2001), a historic novel about Gedaliah, whose author explicitly connected Gedaliah to Rabin’s murder. Murder and the Country Emptied is actually comprised of two plots, one narrated in the first person of an inhabitant of Judah who describes events from his point of view, and the other narrated in the third person telling of events from the viewpoint of the Babylonians and their king. Gedaliah and Ishmael represent two positions: one is pragmatic and supports making peace with the Babylonians; the other is uncompromising and supports war. The author’s message is that Gedaliah’s murder also led to the destruction of the people and the land and to loss of independence, even if this was independence under Babylonian patronage. Chaimoff explicitly states that Rabin’s murder could have the same consequences, and that the parallel between Rabin and Gedaliah is clear. It therefore appears that the fast of Gedaliah, which was related to the destruction of the land as a result of the assassination of a Jewish leader by one of his own, received renewed significance in the eyes of various thinkers, making the story behind it more relevant than ever. Mobilization of Jeremiah’s figure for a discussion on current problems is also found in the writings of the historian and literary scholar Joseph Klausner, who wrote an article titled, “Why is Jeremiah Not Mentioned in the Book of Kings?” However, when reading this article, it appears that more than wanting to answer this question, Klausner viewed it as an opening for a discussion on a current issue: a prophet who prefers the exiled Jews to those who remained in the Land of Israel cannot be tolerated. This is why the book of Kings does not mention Jeremiah. Klausner’s activist approach led him to criticize Jeremiah, who preached against fighting Babylon. Klausner wonders why the people did not kill Jeremiah.

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Jeremiah in Cinema The movie “Jeremiah”, whose plot was constructed according to standard Christian tradition, was filmed in 1998 with Patrick Dempsey in the leading role. It is easy to discern the parallels between Jesus and Jeremiah. Like the gospels, the book of Jeremiah does not contain any clear indications of romantic relations that the hero had. However, according to the best Hollywood tradition, a woman was included to make the plot more dramatic. “Jeremiah” was broadcast a few years ago on Israel Television Channel 1, on the eve of the fast of ninth of Ab (Jeremiah’s birth date, according to rabbinic sources). The Prophets in Modern Society In his book Human Rights in the Bible and Talmud, Israeli Judge Haim Cohn regarded the prophets as those who established freedom of speech and demanded the rights of minorities: The good lesson we received from the prophets of Israel, and first and foremost from Jeremiah, is that whoever takes freedom of speech upon himself to voice unpopular opinions or sharp criticism, or a wrathful protest, always takes a grave risk of persecution and defamation and punishment upon himself, and even risks his life, until he agrees to shut his mouth. There is no doubt that there has been no prophet like Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s prophecy will continue to be an endless source of courage, heroism, and hope for the renewal of Israel as of old, as he promised in the name of his sender: “so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them” (Jeremiah 32: 42).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Applegate, J., “The Fate of Zedekiah: Redactional Debate in the Book of Jeremiah”, Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998), pp. 137-60; 301-308. Avioz, M., “A Rhetorical Analysis of Jeremiah 7:1-15”, Tyndale Bulletin 57 (2006), pp. 173-90. Avioz, M., “The Call for Revenge in Jeremiah’s Complaints (Jer xi-xx),” Vetus Testamentum 55 (2005), pp. 429-38. Avioz, M., “The Date of the Destruction of the First Temple in Ancient Versions and in Early Biblical Interpretation”, Textus 22 (2005), pp. 8794. Avioz, M., “The Historical Setting of Jeremiah 21:1-10”, Andrews University Seminary Studies 44 (2006), pp. 213-19. Avioz, M., “The Identity of the ‘Enemy of the North’ in the Book of Jeremiah”, Beit Mikra 46 (2001), pp. 322-34 (Hebrew). Avioz, M., “The Narrative of Jehoiachin’s Release from Prison - Its Literary Context and Theological Significance”, Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, 16 (2006), pp. 29-41 (Hebrew). Barton, J., “Jeremiah in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha”, in Troubling Jeremiah (JSOTSup 260; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 306-19. Baumgartner, W., Jeremiah’s Poems of Lament (tr. D. E. Orton; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1988; ET of Die Klagegedichte des Jeremia, Giessen, DE 1917). Berquist, J. L., “Prophetic Legitimation in Jeremiah”, Vetus Testamentum 39 (1989), pp. 129-39. Berridge, J. M., Prophet, People, and the Word of Yahweh: An Examination of Form and Content in the Proclamation of the Prophet Jeremiah (Basel Studies of Theology, 4; Zürich: EVZ Verlag, 1970). Bernheimer, R., “Vitae Prophetarum”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 55 (1935), pp. 200-203.

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Blenkinsopp, J., A History of Prophecy in Israel: From the Settlement in the Land To The Hellenistic Period (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983). Bright, J., Jeremiah (Anchor Bible; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965). Brueggemann, W., To Pluck Up, to Tear Down: Jeremiah 1–25 (ITC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988). Brueggemann, W. To Build, To Plant: Jeremiah 26–52 (ITC; Grand Rapids, MI Eeerdmans, 1991). Buber, M., The Prophetic Faith, trans. C. Witton-Davies (New York: Harper, 1960). Budick, S., “Rembrandt’s Jeremiah”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), pp. 260-64. Carroll, R. P. Jeremiah (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986). Clements, R. E., Jeremiah (Interpretation; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1988). Cohen, A., The World of Lies (Hebrew; Haifa: Amatzia, 1999). Cohn, H. H., Human Rights in the Bible and Talmud (Hebrew; Tel Aviv: MOD, 1989). Craigie, P. C., Kelley, P. H. and J.F. Drinkard, Jr., Jeremiah 1–25 (WBC; Dallas, TX 1991; Keown, G. L., Scalise, P. G., and T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26–52, 1995). Crenshaw, J. L., Prophetic Conflict: Its Effect upon Israelite Religion (BZAW, 124; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1971). Culley, R. C., “The Confessions of Jeremiah and Traditional Discourse”, in S. M. Olyan and R. C. Culley (eds.), “A Wise and Discerning Mind”: Essays in Honor of Burke O. Long (Brown Judaic Studies, 325 Providence, RI: Brown University, 2000), pp. 69-81. Ephal, I., Siege and its Ancient Near Eastern Manifestations (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996). Eshed, E., “Gedaliah Son of Ahikam: The Murder of Judah’s Governor”, http://www.e-mago.co.il/Editor/judaism-530.htm. Fischel, H. A., “Martyr and Prophet (A Study in Jewish Literature),” The Jewish Quarterly Review, N.S. 37 (1947), pp. 265-80. Ford, C. V., Lies, Lies, Lies: The Psychology of Deceit (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1996). Fretheim, T. E., Jeremiah (Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, Ga.: Smyth and Helwys, 2002). Galil, G., The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (SHCANE, 9; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).

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Gray, R., Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Grayson, A. K., Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, vol. 5 of Texts From Cuneiform Sources, ed. A. Leo Oppenheim et al. (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin Publisher, 1975). Habel, N. “The Form and Significance of the Call Narratives”, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 77 (1965), pp. 297-323. Haran, M., “From Early to Classical Prophecy: Continuity and Change”, Vetus Testamentum 27 (1977), pp. 385-97. Hoffman, Y., Jeremiah: Introduction and Commentary. Volume 1, Chapters 1-25; Volume 2, Chapters 26-52 (Hebrew; Mikra Leyisra’el, A Bible Commentary for Israel; Tel Aviv: Am Oved; Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2001). Hoffman, Y., “Literature and Ideology in Jeremiah 40:1–43:7”, in Studies in Bible and Exegesis, Vol. V: Presented to Uriel Simon (Hebrew; ed. M. Garsiel et al.; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2000), pp.103-25. Holladay, W. L., Jeremiah 1–2 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1986–1989). Huffmon, H. B., “Prophecy (ANE)”, The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 5, pp. 477-82. Job, J. B., Jeremiah’s Kings: A Study of the Monarchy in Jeremiah (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006). Jones, D. R., Jeremiah (NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, MI 1992). Kaufmann, Y., The Religion of Israel: From its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. and abridged by M. Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Klausner, J., “Why is Jeremiah Not Mentioned in the Book of Kings?” in: M. Davis (ed.), Jubilee Book in Honor of Mordechai Menachem Kaplan (Hebrew section; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1953), pp. 189203. Klein, S., “On the Book Vitae Prophetarum”, in N. H. Tortshiner et al. (eds.), Joseph Klausner Volume (Hebrew; Tel Aviv: The Jubilee Committee, 1937), pp. 189-209. Laato, A., Josiah and David Redivivus: The Historical Josiah and the Messianic Expectations of Exilic and Postexilic Times (Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series, 33; Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1992). Leuchter, M., Josiah’s Reform and Jeremiah's Scroll: Historical Calamity and Prophetic Response (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006). Lindblom, J., Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1962).

88

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Lipschits, O., “‘Jehoiakim Slept with his Fathers...’ (II Kings 24:6) - Did He?” in E. Ben Zvi (ed.), Perspectives in Hebrew Scriptures: Comprising the Contents of Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, volumes 1-4 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), pp. 405-28. Lipschits, O., The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah Under Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005). Long, B. O., “Reports of Visions Among the Prophets”, Journal of Biblical Literature 94 (1976), pp. 353-65. Lundbom, J. R., Jeremiah 1–20 (AB; New York: Doubleday 1999); Jeremiah 21-36, NY 2004; Jeremiah 37-52, NY 2004. Malamat, A., “Jeremiah and the Last Two Kings of Judah”, in History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 38186. Malamat, A., History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues (Cultural and History of the Ancient Near East, 7; Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001). McConville, J. G., Judgment and Promise: An Interpretation of the Book of Jeremiah (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993). McKane, W., The Book of Jeremiah I–II (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986–1996). Middlemas, J. A., The Troubles of Templeless Judah (Oxford Theological Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Miron, D., “Reflection on a Prose Era”, in 30 Years, 30 Stories: An Anthology of Hebrew Stories from the 60’s to the 90’s, ed. Z. Stavi (Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonot, 1993), pp. 397–427. O’Connor, K. M., The Confessions of Jeremiah: Their Interpretation and Role in Chapters 1-25 (SBLDS 94; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988). Oded, B., “Judah and the Exile,” in J.H. Hayes and J.M. Miller (ed.), Israelite and Judaean History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), pp. 435-88. Overholt, T. W., The Threat of Falsehood: A Study in the Theology of the Book of Jeremiah (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1970). Penner, K. M., D. M. Miller, and I. W. Scott (eds.), “The Lives of the Prophets”, The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha, ed. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006). http://www.purl.org/net/ocp/LivPro.html. Perdue L.G., and B. W. Kovacs (eds.), A Prophet to the Nations: Essays in Jeremiah Studies (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1984). Petersen, D., “Introduction to Prophetic Literature”, The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. VI (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), pp. 1-23.

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Rofé, A., The Prophetical Stories: The Narratives About the Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, Their Literary Types and History (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988). Safrai, S., “New Examination of the Problem of the Status and Deeds of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai”, in M. Dorman (ed.), Gedaliahu Alon Memorial Volume (Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1970), pp. 203-26. Savran, G. W., Encountering the Divine: Theophany in Biblical Narrative (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 420; London: T & T Clark, 2005). Seitz, C. R., Theology in Conflict: Reaction to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah (BZAW 176; Berlin–New York: W. de Gruyter, 1989). Seitz, C. R., Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 176; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1989). Shemesh, Y., ”Lies by Prophets and Other Lies in the Hebrew Bible”, The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 29 (2002), pp. 81-95. Smith, M. S., The Laments of Jeremiah and Their Context: A Literary and Redactional Study of Jeremiah 11-20 (SBLMS 42; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990). Smith-Christopher, D., A Biblical Theology of Exile (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002). Sweeney, M. A., “Introduction to the Prophetic Literature”, in Idem, Isaiah 1-39 (The Forms of the Old Testament, XVI; Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 1-30. Thompson, H. O., The Book of Jeremiah: An Annotated Bibliography (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 1996). Thompson, J. A., The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980). Tomes, R., “The Reception of Jeremiah in Rabbinic Literature and in the Targum”, in A.H.W. Curtis and T. Romer (eds.), The Book of Jeremiah and its Reception (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), pp. 233-53. Westermann, C., Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech, trans. H. C. White (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967). Whitters, M. F., “Jesus in the Footsteps of Jeremiah”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 68 (2006), pp. 229-47. Wright, J. E., Baruch Ben Neriah: From Biblical Scribe to Apocalyptic Seer (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003). Zakovitch, Y., The Concept of the Miracle in the Bible (tr. S. Himelstein; Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1990).

INDEX Old Testament Exodus 1 1:18 3:7 3:12 3, 15 4:1 4:10 4:15 6: 9 19-20 23:7 32:11 32:30

51 30 16 16 44 16 19 19 18 23 51 2 3

Numbers 14:10 12:8

4 2

Deuteronomy 13:2-6 17:9-12 17:19 18:15-22 18:18 18:15-22 18:21-22 28:49-53 33:10

30 21 10 30 2, 19 30 53 62 21

Joshua 2

51

1 Samuel 3 8 16:19 19

16 43 44 51

2 Samuel 1 7 7:8 10 11-12

35 27 44 37 43

1 Kings 18 19 3:4-15

28 29 56

2 Kings 1-2 2:23 17:13-14 17:13-19 18-20 19:4 21 23 23:10 23:29-30 23:8, 19

38 4 27 61 24 3 61 11 56 11, 46 10

91

92

I SAT ALONE

2 Kings 24:17 25:21 25:27-30

48 69 11, 48

Isaiah 1 7 11 21:10 30-31 36-39 40:3-5 40-66

6, 22 6 6 1 6 24 1 6

Jeremiah 1:1 1:5 1:6 1:7 1:8 1:9 2:8 2:18 2:20, 23 3:2 5:10-11 5:16, 18 7:1-15 8:18 8:23 12:1-6 13:17 13:27 14:13 14:17 17:14-18 18:18 18:18-23

15, 21, 36 18 19 19 16 18 21 6, 46 45 45 23 23 21-28 7 7 38 7 45 29, 30 7 40 21, 40 40

Jeremiah 20 21 21:1-10 21:2 21-24 22:13-14 22:13-17 22:16 22:19 22:30 23:1-4 23:1-7 23:5-6 23:9 23:10 23:13 23:14, 25 23:18 24 25 26 27 30-33 31:25 32:29 32:42 37-39 37-38 37:3 37:12-15 38 38:24-27 39:11 40:1-6 43:2 50-51 51:59

30, 41 49, 63 77 3 27 47 29 45 47 48 44 44 48, 49 56 56 56 56 56 58 78 29-34 4, 65 6 56 66 83 64 76 3 78 66 52 66 66 60 75 49

INDEX Ezekiel 1:3 2:5-7 3:1-3 3:17-21 7:26 8 11:15 22:6-7, 25, 29 33:1-9 33:31-32 33-48 Hosea 5:1 9:7

15 18 18 18 21 6 47 27 18 4 6 21 4

93

Psalms 89:40

11

Proverbs 23:10-11

27

Daniel 9:6-7

42

Nehemiah 9:33

42

2 Chronicles 15:3 35L25

21 46

Early

Sources

Jewish

Amos 7:14

15

Apocrypha

Jonah 3:4

53

2 Maccabees 2:1-2, 4-5 15:15-16

74 74

Zechariah 10:2

56

Josephus

Flavius

Malachi 2:7

21

War 5:391

76-77

Psalms 35 44 72:4 73 74 74:9 77:20 78 89:39-40

35 35 27 38 35 40 44 26, 27 66

Antiquities 10:97

47

Rabbinic

Writings

Tosefta Sotah 13

78

94 Babylonian Megillah 14b

I SAT ALONE Talmud

Acts 6:13 7

33 33

1 Corinthians 3:3 11:23-26

75 74

John 2 19

33 33

77

Sotah 48a

75

Gittin 56a-b

78

Bava Kama 16b

77

Avoda Zara 36a

65

Numbers 78

Rabbah 77

Pesikta 13

Rabbati 77

Yalkut 256

Shimoni 77

New

Testament

Matthew 2:17-18 26

77 33

Mark 14

33

Luke 19

33

INDEX OF NAMES Ahad Ha’am Auerbach, Elias Ben Zakkai, Yochanan Bailik, Haim Nachman Buber, Martin Chaimoff, Chaim Cohen, Adir Cohn, Judge Haim Dempsey, Patrick Doré, Gustave Ephal, Israel Gordon, Judah Leib Greenberg, Uri Zvi Herzl, Binjamin Zeev Ibn Yachaya Kant, Immanuel Kaufmann, Yehezkel King, Dr. Martin Luther Klausner, Joseph Lerner, Jacob Maimonedes Miron, Dan Shneur, Z. Simon, Uriel Socrates Spinoza, Baruch Weisman, Zeev Werfel, Franz Wolfowski, Menachem

79 73 78 79-80 23 82 51 83 85 79 63 81 81 79 71 52 73 1 82 80 15 79 80 70 33 81 21 79 81-82

95