Jeremiah

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JEREMIAH

JEREMIAH (c. 640–580 bce), or, in Hebrew, Yirme-yah(u); biblical prophet. Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, was born in Anathoth, some 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Jerusalem. The English name Jeremiah is based on the Greek Hieremias from the Septuagint and not on the received Hebrew Masoretic text. The Septuagint reflects a correct original Hebrew Yarim-Yahu ("Yahveh grants"), a name type whose antecedents can be traced to the third millennium bce.

The Book of Jeremiah and the Biography of Jeremiah

Most of our knowledge about Jeremiah's life comes from the biblical Book of Jeremiah. The book is not arranged chronologically, with the result that contemporary scholarly reconstructions of the prophet's life are highly subjective. Important background information is found in the Hebrew scriptures, in 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Obadiah. Other important sources are the Hebrew letters from Lachish, primary documents from Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the histories of Herodotos and Josephus Flavius. However, 2 Kings, which describes in great detail events contemporary with Jeremiah, does not mention him.

Later generations regarded Jeremiah very highly. According to the Chronicler, the prophet was the author of a lament over Josiah, king of Judah (2 Chr. 35:25). His prophecies about the duration of the exile were cited in 2 Chronicles 36:15–21 and by the author of the ninth chapter of Daniel. Later writers composed pious fictions about Jeremiah. The apocryphal Letter of Jeremiah, allegedly written by Jeremiah to the Jewish exiles in Babylonia, is styled in the manner of Jeremiah 29. According to the second chapter of 2 Maccabees, Jeremiah secreted the ark and Tabernacle, a tradition based on Jeremiah 3:16. In the New Testament, Jeremiah is named in Matthew 2:17, and his vision of the "new covenant" (Jer. 31:31–34; cf. Jer. 32:38–40) is quoted in Hebrews 8:8–12 and 10:16–17. Jewish Talmudic tradition (B.T., B.B. 15a) ascribes to the prophet the authorship of Jeremiah, Kings, and Lamentations (the last probably on the basis of 2 Chronicles 35:25).

Jeremiah was of priestly stock (Jer. 1:1) and probably of the Abiathar family, which had been banished to Anathoth by Solomon (c. 960) and had served at the Shiloh sanctuary before 1050. Yet there is no indication that Jeremiah ever functioned as a priest. Nonetheless, he generally had free access to the Temple and its chambers (Jer. 35:4). Apparently he was well off. He was able to spend seventeen shekels to buy a piece of property as a symbolic act (Jer. 32:9), and he was able to hire as a personal secretary one Baruch, son of Neriah, who thought the job would be lucrative and whose own brother was a high official (Jer. 45:2–5, 51:59). In addition, during the reigns of Jehoiakim (609–598) and Zedekiah (597-586), Jeremiah's counsel was regularly sought by the kings and their advisers. The powerful Shaphan family was particularly close to him (Jer. 26:24, 29:3, 36:10–12, 39:14, 40:5), and the Babylonian conquerors offered him special protection (Jer. 40:1–6). The high-ranking avengers of Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, sought him out as well, although they disregarded his counsel and forced him to accompany them to Egypt (Jer. 42). Perhaps a further indication of his affluence and influence is his relative lack of concern for the poor. Although he demanded justice for the oppressed (Jer. 7:6, 22:16), his denunciations of their suffering at the hands of the rich and powerful are not as frequent or as fervent as those of the prophets Amos and Isaiah. Josiah is praised as one who "ate and drank" at the same time as he dispensed justice and equity (Jer. 22:15). No particular class in society is singled out for condemnation (Jer. 5:1–5).

Among the details of his life, we hear that Jeremiah did not marry (Jer. 16:1–4), that he avoided social gatherings (Jer. 16:5–9), that he perceived himself as a man of strife and contention (Jer. 15:10), that he wished he had never been born (Jer. 20:15–17), and that his relatives had attempted to kill him (Jer. 10:21, 11:6), as had Jehoiakim (Jer. 36:26), the audience in the Temple court (Jer. 26:24), and some of Zedekiah's ministers (Jer. 38:4–6). Sometime after 586 Jeremiah and his amanuensis were forcibly taken to Egypt, which is probably where he died.

It is difficult to treat Jeremiah's thought systematically for a number of reasons. First, Israelite prophets did not write systematic treatises. Second, the textual history of the book is very complicated. The present book is found in two major recensions, the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, which is about one-eighth shorter. In addition to the divergence in size, the recensions differ in arrangement. The Masoretic text of Jeremiah consists of prophecies directed to Jeremiah's own people (Jer. 1–25), narratives about him (Jer. 26–45), prophecies directed to the Gentiles (Jer. 46–51), and a historical appendix (Jer. 52). The Septuagint, in contrast, places the oracles to the Gentiles in the middle of the book, following chapter 25, verse 13. The Hebrew fragments of Jeremiah from Qumran demonstrate that in the late pre-Christian era, the Hebrew text was circulating in shorter and longer forms. It is not always certain whether the longer is an expansion or the shorter an abridgment. In both recensions, there is material that can hardly be from the hand of the prophet. For example, the prophecy against Damascus (Jer. 49:23–27) dates from the eighth century bce. Other sections, such as Jeremiah 33:14–16 (not found in the Septuagint), are later additions. In this same category are Jeremiah 15:4b, which attempts to harmonize Jeremiah's theology with that of 2 Kings by blaming the fall on Manasseh, and the injunction to keep the Sabbath (Jer. 18:21–27), which recalls Nehemiah 10:15–21. Other suspicious prophecies are the Edomite oracle (Jer. 49:7–16; cf. Ob.) and the Moabite oracle (Jer. 48:45–46; cf. Nm. 21:28–29).

Some clues to the book's composition are provided in the text itself. In each case, a religious motivation is given. According to Jeremiah 30:2–3, which begins the section generally known as "The Little Book of Consolation," Jeremiah was told by Yahveh: "Commit to writing all the words I have spoken to you, for days are coming when I will restore the fortunes of my people … and bring them back to the land." The prophecies were to be written so that later generations would know that all had been foretold. Unfortunately, no date is given for this action. The prophecies themselves contain genuine Jeremianic utterances as well as later interpolations. More specific information is provided in Jeremiah 36, which is dated to the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, synchronized in Jeremiah 25:1 with 605 bce, the first regnal year of Nebuchadrezzar II, king of Babylon (605–562). In that year Yahveh commanded Jeremiah, "Get a scroll and write in it all the words concerning Israel, Judah and all the nations that I have spoken to you, from the days of Josiah until now. Perhaps when the house of Judah hear all the terrible designs I have on them they will turn away from their wicked ways so that I might pardon their wicked sins" (Jer. 36:2–3). The specific reason for writing the prophecies of twenty-three years was to demonstrate to the people that they had been warned early and frequently and that there was still time to avert disaster. Though Jeremiah knew how to write (Jer. 32:10), he found a secretary, Baruch. By the ninth month of Jehoiakim's fifth year, at the latest (Jer. 36:9), the scroll was complete. It was read three times on a public fast day. First Baruch read it to a crowd at the Temple (Jer. 36:10) and then to a group of royal officials (Jer. 36:15). Finally, it was read to King Jehoiakim, who destroyed it section by section (Jer. 36:22–23). The scroll probably contained no more than ten thousand words.

After the destruction of the original scroll, Jeremiah purchased a second, on which Baruch rewrote the destroyed prophecies. To this scroll were added prophecies similar in content to the original ones (Jer. 36:32). The text gives no information about the time period in which this second edition was produced. Our present book of Jeremiah most likely had its origin in this edition.

Historical Background and the Prophet's Position

It is impossible to understand the man Jeremiah or his prophecies apart from the turbulent historical period in which he lived. When Jeremiah was born, the Assyrian empire was the single most important political power in the Middle East and, consequently, in the life of the southern kingdom of Judah. By the time Jeremiah was in his early thirties, Assyria had disappeared as a political entity, and Judah's fate had become contingent on Egypt and on the Neo-Babylonian empire and its allies. Before Jeremiah turned sixty, Judah had lost its political independence entirely, and the prophet himself had become part of the Jewish Diaspora in Egypt.

Assyrian foreign policy had been important to Judah as early as the ninth century bce, but the fall of the closely related northern kingdom of Israel and the establishment of the Assyrian province of Samaria on Judah's northern border was momentous. Judah maintained nominal political autonomy by becoming an Assyrian vassal, an arrangement that required the regular payment of tribute and the provision of troops for Assyrian campaigns. Between 720 and 627, Judah's political policy was very much in the Assyrian shadow. King Hezekiah of Judah (715–686) had attempted a revolt in collaboration with the Babylonian king Merodachbaladan II (Marduk-apal-iddina, 721–710) and with Egypt and various Philistine and Phoenician cities. The forces of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704–681) quashed the rebellion, although they failed to take Jerusalem and left Hezekiah on his throne with a smaller domain and a larger tribute obligation.

If Jerusalem's deliverance appeared miraculous to some (Is. 37:33–38), it had a different moral for Manasseh, son and successor of Hezekiah. For most, and perhaps all, of his long reign (c. 692–639), Manasseh was a loyal Assyrian vassal. According to 2 Kings 21:11, he was equally loyal in the service of foreign gods, outdoing everyone, the aboriginal Amorites included, in idolatry and wickedness. Some scholars have argued that Manasseh's religious and political policies were closely related, and have understood the worship of foreign gods as Assyrian vassal obligations. More recently, however, it has been noted that Assyria generally did not impose its forms of worship on its vassals. Even if we understand Manasseh's paganism as a somewhat voluntary attempt to curry favor with Assyria, we must keep in mind that the majority of the cults introduced or encouraged during his reign were not Assyrian (2 Kgs. 21:2–7). The bloodiness of his reign (2 Kgs. 21:16) surely reflects internal struggles, but we cannot tell what these concerned. Manasseh's death brought to the throne his son Amon, who was assassinated in a palace revolt of unknown motivation (2 Kgs. 21:23).

Amon's assassins were slain by ʿam ha-arets ("people of the land"), an influential body of Judahites who put on the throne his young son Josiah. The biblical books 2 Kings (22-23) and 2 Chronicles (34–35) have only praise for Josiah and devote much attention to his religious reforms, though each gives a different account. According to 2 Kings, Josiah's reforms were initiated by Hilkiah's discovery of "the book of the torah " in the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kgs. 22:8). When the book, which is generally considered to be some form of Deuteronomy, was given by the scribe Shaphan to Josiah, the king rent his garments in contrition. In keeping with the book's message, the king centralized all sacrificial worship in the country, restricting it to Jerusalem. That same year (622 bce), Josiah removed all traces of the foreign worship that Manasseh had encouraged. In addition, he abolished ancient rituals and institutions, which he considered antithetical to the cult of Yahveh.

In contrast, the Chronicler depicts a gradual reform in which important steps were taken in the king's eighth and twelfth years. Though chronologically more attractive, in this scheme the book is discovered in 622, by which time the major elements of the reform had been accomplished, with the exception of binding all the people of Judah by covenant to obey the book's provisions.

The wisest course is to combine elements from both our sources. The reforms must have been implemented gradually. At the same time, "the book of the torah [of the covenant]" must have been available at an early stage of the reform, when its reading would have had the greatest effect (cf. Jeremiah 36:24 with 2 Kings 23:11). This is likely because, in the opinion of most current scholarship, the kernel of Deuteronomy was a northern Israelite work that had been brought to Judah after 720 bce.

The political motivations for the Josianic reform have occasioned much debate. Some scholars have viewed the reform as a religious expression of anti-Assyrian nationalism; they have noted especially that Josiah destroyed the altar at Bethel, which was in Assyrian territory. Other scholars have remarked that neither 2 Kings nor 2 Chronicles imputes anti-Assyrian rebellion to Josiah, though both books describe revolts by "good" and "bad" kings of Israel and Judah (2 Kgs. 18:7, 24:1, 24:20; 2 Chr. 32:10–11, 36:13). It is likely that Josiah's destruction of the Bethel altar had the motive of consolidating Davidic rule, for its original construction had been with the opposite intent (1 Kgs. 12:26–29, 13:2), but this could have been done with Assyrian acquiescence.

The role of Jeremiah in the Josianic reform has aroused much controversy. Some scholars depict the prophet as an early, ardent proponent of the reform who became disillusioned. At the other extreme, some scholars have revised the chronology of the prophet's life so that he begins to prophesy only after the death of Josiah in 609. If the Chronicler's chronology of the reform is accepted, then Jeremiah would have been an unlikely choice to consult about the book because of his tender age, and the prophetess Huldah a better candidate (2 Kgs. 22:14). It appears that sometime in the mid-twenties of the seventh century, during the reign of Josiah, whom he considered a just and righteous king (Jer. 22:12–15), Jeremiah preached "return" (repentance) to the northerners (Jer. 3:6, 3:11–18; cf. 31:2–23). If so, then he must have been enthusiastic at the outset, only to be disappointed later.

It is probably correct to say that for Jeremiah, the people's return could never be sufficient. He was too much of an idealist. He considers Judah's return to Yahveh "deceitful" (Jer. 3:10), whereas the people complain, "I have been cleansed. Surely his anger is turned away from me.… Will he be angry forever? Will he rage for all time?" (Jer. 2:35, 3:5). The author of 2 Kings 23 is in fundamental agreement with the people rather than with Jeremiah. According to 2 Kings, Josiah "returned to Yahveh with all his heart and soul and might, in complete accord with the teaching of Moses" (23:25). There is no indication that Josiah's contemporaries had not done enough or had been deceitful. Instead, the verse following says that although Josiah had repented (shav ), Yahveh had not repented of his anger, because of the sins of Manasseh. For the writer of 2 Kings, Manasseh's generation was so irredeemably wicked that the following generations were doomed no matter how they acted (2 Kgs. 21:1–16).

Some of Jeremiah's contemporaries expressed this same pessimistic attitude in the proverb "The ancestors ate sour grapes but the children's teeth are clean" (Jer. 31:29; cf. Ez. 18:1). That is, they believed that because the ancestors ate forbidden food, their children go hungry. But Jeremiah disagrees. He believes that his contemporaries are worse because they have returned (shavu ) to the ancestral sins after supposedly repudiating them, and thus have broken the ancient covenant that demanded Yahveh's exclusive worship (Jer. 11:9–10, 16:10–12). The notion that returning to sin after allegedly repenting is worse than sinning without repentance is characteristic of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 34, for example, the prophet rebukes the people who had first reinstated the provision for the release of Hebrew slaves under the leadership of Zedekiah, but then turned around (va-yashuvu ) and enslaved them a second time.

The sin of insincere repentance underlies Jeremiah's attitude toward the cult of his time. Josiah's reforms had made the Jerusalem Temple the only legitimate Yahvistic shrine in the country, so that it could truly be called "Yahveh's palace" (Jer. 7:4) by the people, echoing the prophecies of the eighth-century prophet Isaiah (Is. 2:1–4, 31:4-5, 37:32–35). In contrast, Jeremiah taught, as had others (Jer. 26:18–20), that the Temple was not inviolable, nor was it any more permanent than the anciently destroyed Shiloh sanctuary (Jer. 7:14). Probably at the same time, he made the statement, "Add your whole burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat. For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt I did not speak with them to command them about burnt offerings and sacrifices. This rather is what I commanded them: Hearken to my voice so that I can be your God and you can be my people" (Jer. 7:21–22).

It would be inaccurate to say that Jeremiah advocated a cultless religion. He did not disagree that the Temple is God's place. Indeed, if the people mend their ways, then Yahveh will dwell with them in the Jerusalem Temple (Jer. 7:3, 7:7). But, for a number of reasons, the people's offerings are not "pleasing" (Jer. 6:20); the word used, leratson, is a technical term for an acceptable sacrifice (see also Leviticus 1:3, 19:5, 22:29; Isaiah 56:7). Most important, the popular view had it that other gods might be worshiped by Israelites as long as their worship of Yahveh was in purity. As Jeremiah says in his indictment, "Will you steal and murder and commit adultery and swear falsely and sacrifice to Baal and follow other gods with whom you have no [rightful] relation and then come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say 'we are saved' and then continue to commit all these abominations?" (Jer. 7:9–10).

It is clear that the people believed the cult could purify them of all their sins. If such violations as theft, murder, adultery, and false oaths could succumb to purificatory rituals, why could not the worship of foreign gods? In fact, such temporary rejection of foreign gods is ascribed to Jacob (Gn. 35:4) and to Joshua (Jos. 24). According to Leviticus 16:30, the priesthood claimed that its atonement rituals could remove all impurity caused by sin. (A priesthood could hardly claim otherwise.) Jeremiah did not accept this view because he saw it as insincere. In his eyes, Israel had been faithful to Yahveh only in the wilderness (Jer. 2:1). The people strayed as soon as they entered the promised land and so profaned it (Jer. 2:8, 3:2). Borrowing an image from Hosea, Jeremiah depicts the people of Judah as a faithless wife who had pretended to mend her ways (Jer. 3:1ff.). She knows that Yahveh has divorced the northern kingdom of Israel for infidelity (Jer. 3:8), but her heart is still uncircumcised (Jer. 4:4, 9:25). The entire people is guilty, for none has practiced true repentance—neither priests, teachers, kings, nor prophets (Jer. 2:8, 21:11–23:5, 23:9–40, 27–29). Jeremiah's mission is to bring the people to true repentance (Jer. 3:14, 3:22, 4:1). If he fails, then destruction of the land is inevitable, and even the gentiles will know the cause (Jer. 22:8–9; cf. Dt. 29:21–29, 1 Kgs. 9:8–9).

Compared with sincere repentance, the obligations of the cult are secondary. Inasmuch as Jeremiah agrees with Amos that there was no organized sacrificial cult in Israel's forty-year wandering in the desert (Am. 5:25), the covenant between Yahveh and his people could not have been made through the cult. Conversely, the cult must be insufficient to sustain the bond.

In the tradition of those prophets who influenced him, notably Hosea, the political events of his time were to Jeremiah an indication of Yahveh's disfavor. In his early prophecies, Yahveh's judgment was described as being through the agency of an unnamed northern foe. The kings of the north would come "and set their thrones at Jerusalem's gates," where Yahveh would pronounce sentence against Judah for serving other gods (Jer. 1:14–16). It does not seem that Jeremiah actually identified the northern foe as Babylon until the Babylonian victory over the Egyptians at Carchemish in Syria in 605 (cf. Jer. 36:29). It is also likely that the description of the Babylonian officers sitting in the gate in Jerusalem (Jer. 39:3) is a "fulfillment" of the early prophecy.

At first Jeremiah teaches that Yahveh's punishment of the people at the hands of their foes can be averted by true repentance. The death of Josiah and the accession of Jehoiakim to the throne mark a turning point. Jeremiah does not accuse Jehoiakim of the worship of foreign gods but of social abuses. The king was unjustly impressing laborers into service so that he could build himself a lavish palace. He was shedding innocent blood and perpetrating fraud and violence (Jer. 22:13–17). In consequence, predicted Jeremiah, perhaps inaccurately (2 Kgs. 24:6), Jehoiakim would have a donkey's funeral rather than a king's.

During Jehoiakim's reign, Jeremiah first began to commit his prophecies to writing in order to bring the people to repentance. Baruch was sent to read the scroll publicly in the Temple on a fast day (Jer. 36:9). The reading did not have the desired effect: Jehoiakim destroyed the scroll and attempted to kill Jeremiah and Baruch (Jer. 36:26) just as he had slain Uriah, who preached a similar message (Jer. 26:23). The writer of Jeremiah 36 remarks pointedly that Jehoiakim and his courtiers "showed no fear and did not tear their garments," in order to contrast Jehoiakim with his pious father, Josiah, who had torn his garments upon hearing Yahveh's word from a book (2 Kgs. 22:11, 22:19). Jehoiakim's unjust behavior, coupled with the rise of Babylon, was proof enough to Jeremiah that the required change of heart had not taken place, that Jehoiakim was not the man to bring it about, and that Yahveh would use Babylon to punish Judah, just as he had used Assyria to punish northern Israel.

In consequence, Jeremiah began to preach submission to Babylonia as Yahveh's will. This was particularly offensive to Jehoiakim, who had rebelled against Nebuchadrezzar II after three years of vassalage (2 Kgs. 23:26). The counsel of submission of Babylonia intensified after the death of Jehoiakim, in 597. Jehoiakin, Jehoiakim's son and successor, was deposed after three months, following a siege of Jerusalem. He and many other Judahites were deported. Jeremiah thought little of Jehoiakin and predicted that he would die in exile (Jer. 22:24–30).

In the reign of Zedekiah, the last king to occupy the throne of Judah, Jeremiah articulated Yahveh's plan. Yahveh had given all the lands over to Nebuchadrezzar and would punish those people who would not submit to Babylonian rule. Nebuchadrezzar was Yahveh's servant (Jer. 27:6) whose rule had been ordained for three generations (Jer. 27:7), or seventy years (Jer. 25:11). Those people who submitted to Nebuchadrezzar and, consequently, to Yahveh's word would be permitted by Yahveh to remain on their own land, while those who resisted would be exiled (Jer. 27:10–11). For Jeremiah, people like the Yahveh prophet Hananiah, son of Azzur, who preached the speedy return of Jeconiah, son of Jehoiakim, and the Temple vessels (Jer. 28:3–4) and who counseled rebellion were no better than the pagan diviners who offered the same message (Jer. 27:9, 27:15). Just as false were those prophets from Judah in Babylonia who taught that the exile would be short (Jer. 29:8–9). Yahveh had not sent them. The exiled Judahites should consider themselves "good figs" and should do Yahveh's will by building homes and families in Babylonia (Jer. 24:5, 29:4–7). Those people of Judah who had not been captured and exiled in 597 and who continued to resist Nebuchadrezzar were "bad figs." Flight to Egypt in order to escape Babylonian rule was just as bad, as far as Jeremiah was concerned (Jer. 24:8, 42:10–16). Yahveh himself had turned against Judah (Jer. 21:4–8). This meant that the "way of life" was surrender and the "way of death" was resistance (Jer. 21:8–10). Jeremiah's insistence on surrender landed him in the stocks (Jer. 20:1–6), caused him to be accused of treason and subversion, and nearly cost him his life (Jer. 38:3–6).

Pessimism and Hope in Jeremiah

The Book of Jeremiah provides more information about its subject's inner life than does any other biblical book. Even if some elements, such as the disinclination to prophecy, are felt elsewhere, they are more articulate in Jeremiah. Jeremiah does not want to prophesy (Jer. 1:6), but he cannot contain himself with Yahveh's anger (Jer. 6:11, 20:9). Though a prophet is normally supposed to intercede (Gn. 20:7, 20:17), Jeremiah is told not to (Jer. 7:16, 15:1). At least once, Yahveh was about to remove him from his prophetic office (Jer. 15:19). In Jeremiah's eyes, Yahveh seduced and even raped him (Jer. 20:7). Jeremiah prayed for the death of his relatives (Jer. 12:3) and cursed the day of his own birth (Jer. 20:15–18). He depicted himself as a man of strife and contention (Jer. 15:10) who lacked the comfort of family and social gatherings (Jer. 16:1–13). Yahveh's word has been, he says ironically, his joyful wedding tune (Jer. 15:16).

Yet the moroseness of the man and the generally pessimistic tone of his prophecy give us only one side of his personality. For at least twenty-three years, he believed that Yahveh might avert disaster if the people would repent. Even afterward, he prophesied hope. Perhaps the most optimistic of his prophecies is that of the berit ḥadashah (new covenant or testament), which must be understood in terms of the sixth century bce.

According to the authors of the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy, Yahveh and Israel were joined by covenant, or treaty. Yahveh had taken Israel as his people, and they had accepted him as their god and had assumed the obligation to worship him alone. Violation of the covenant would bring all manner of curses on the people (Dt. 28; cf. Jer. 11). Modern research has shown that the covenant form employed by Jeremiah and Deuteronomy is based on ancient Near Eastern political documents whereby a minor king becomes a vassal of a greater one. In such treaties, the suzerain promises land and protection to the vassal in return for the vassal's exclusive and undivided loyalty. The biblical religious covenants conceive of Israel as the vassal of Yahveh, who is, therefore, entitled to exclusive worship. Israel was entitled to remain on the land given it by Yahveh only as long as it served Yahveh alone (Jer. 11:5). Jeremiah was certain that his people had broken their covenant with Yahveh by following other gods (Jer. 11:10) and were therefore doomed to suffer the expected consequences. In Jeremiah 31, however, inspired by Hosea's teaching, the prophet arrives at a new idea.

Hosea speaks of Israel as a faithless wife who was to be cast out and divorced. But Yahveh realized that her inability to be faithful was inherent in her constitutional lack of the qualities of justice, equity, loyalty, compassion, and steadfastness. Yahveh would remarry Israel and would give her these qualities as betrothal gifts so that she would be able to be truly intimate with Yahveh (Hos. 2:18–21). He would even make it inherently impossible for her to pronounce the name Baal.

Jeremiah follows the same line of thinking, but he employs a political rather than a marital metaphor:

In days to come I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant which I made with their ancestors … a covenant which they broke, so I rejected them.… I will put my teaching inside of them and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their god and they will be my people. No longer will they need to teach one another "heed Yahveh," for all of them … shall heed me. (Jer. 31:31–34)

A similar notion is found in Jeremiah 32:38–41: "They shall be my people and I will be their god. I will give them an undivided heart and nature to revere me for all time. I will make an everlasting covenant with them and put reverence fore me in their hearts so that they cannot turn away from me.…Then I will plant them permanently in this land."

The new covenant is necessary because Israel and Judah lacked the innate abililty to keep the old one. Yahveh's recognition of the deficiency of his people inspires him to remedy it by a change of their nature. Once Yahveh has effected the change, his people will be able to keep his covenant and remain permanently on his land.

The new covenant itself was designed for the salvation of Israel and Judah. Yet its implications that a radical change of human nature is possible became universal. In a great irony of religious history, the words of the prophet who spent much of his career prophesying doom became to his direct and indirect descendants a legacy of hope.

Bibliography

Bright, John, trans. and ed. Jeremiah. Anchor Bible, vol. 21. Garden City, N.Y., 1965. A readable translation with commentary, notes, historical introduction, and bibliography. A scholarly work but accessible to the nonspecialist.

Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia, 1979. Excellent bibliography and a succinct treatment of Jeremiah from the viewpoint of canon criticism.

Cogan, Morton. Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries b.c. Missoula, Mont., 1974. An examination of primary Assyrian sources to determine religious policy in Assyrian provinces and vassal states.

Ehrlich, Arnold B. Miqraʿ ki-feshuṭo. 3 vols. Berlin, 1899–1901. An excellent and erratic philological commentary.

Fohrer, Georg. History of Israelite Religion. Translated by David E. Green. Nashville, 1972.

Ginsberg, H. L. "Hosea, Book of." In Encyclopaedia Judaica. Jerusalem, 1971. An extremely important account of the background of northern Israelite prophetic thought and of Hosea's influence on Deuteronomy.

Kaufmann, Yeḥezkel. The Religion of Israel, from Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. Translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg. Chicago, 1960. An attempt to demonstrate that there was no great gap between prophetic and popular religion. Kaufmann argues that prophetic polemics against idolatry are mostly rhetorical exaggerations by idealists.

Nelson, Richard. "Realpolitik in Judah, 687–609 b.c." In Scripture in Context, edited by William W. Hallo, James C. Moyer, and Leo G. Perdue, vol. 2, pp. 177–189. Winona Lake, Ind., 1982. A critique of the theory that Josiah's religious policies were part of his anti-Assyrian nationalism.

Rowley, H. H. "The Prophet Jeremiah and the Book of Deuteronomy." In his From Moses to Qumran, chap. 6. London, 1963. A good summary of the problems involved in the relation between the prophet and the book. Good bibliography to 1950.

Soden, Wolfram von. Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, vol. 2. Wiesbaden, 1972. See the index, s.v. rimu (m ).