HarperCollins Study Bible

by Harold W. Attridge

  so that we may see your joy”

  but it is they who shall be put to shame.

  6Listen, an uproar from the city!

  A voice from the temple!

  The voice of the LORD,

  dealing retribution to his enemies!

  7Before she was in labor

  she gave birth;

  before her pain came upon her

  she delivered a son.

  8Who has heard of such a thing?

  Who has seen such things?

  Shall a land be born in one day?

  Shall a nation be delivered in one moment?

  Yet as soon as Zion was in labor

  she delivered her children.

  9Shall I open the womb and not deliver?

  says the LORD;

  shall I, the one who delivers, shut the womb?

  says your God.

  10Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,

  all you who love her;

  rejoice with her in joy,

  all you who mourn over her—

  11that you may nurse and be satisfied

  from her consoling breast;

  that you may drink deeply with delight

  from her glorious bosom.

  12For thus says the LORD:

  I will extend prosperity to her like a river,

  and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream;

  and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm,

  and dandled on her knees.

  13As a mother comforts her child,

  so I will comfort you;

  you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

  The Reign and Indignation of God

  14You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;

  your bodiesd shall flourish like the grass;

  and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD is with his servants,

  and his indignation is against his enemies.

  15For the LORD will come in fire,

  and his chariots like the whirlwind,

  to pay back his anger in fury,

  and his rebuke in flames of fire.

  16For by fire will the LORD execute judgment,

  and by his sword, on all flesh;

  and those slain by the LORD shall be many.

  17Those who sanctify and purify themselves to go into the gardens, following the one in the center, eating the flesh of pigs, vermin, and rodents, shall come to an end together, says the LORD.

  18For I knowe their works and their thoughts, and I amf coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory, 19and I will set a sign among them. From them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Put,g and Lud—which draw the bow—to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations. 20They shall bring all your kindred from all the nations as an offering to the LORD, on horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and on mules, and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the LORD, just as the Israelites bring a grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the LORD. 21And I will also take some of them as priests and as Levites, says the LORD.

  22For as the new heavens and the new earth,

  which I will make,

  shall remain before me, says the LORD;

  so shall your descendants and your name remain.

  23From new moon to new moon,

  and from sabbath to sabbath,

  all flesh shall come to worship before me,

  says the LORD.

  24And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.

  * * *

  a Gk Syr: Heb these things came to be

  b Meaning of Heb uncertain

  c Or to punish

  d Heb bones

  e Gk Syr: Heb lacks know

  f Gk Syr Vg Tg: Heb it is

  g Gk: Heb Pul

  66.1–5 True worship differentiated from false worship.

  66.1 House that you would build for me presupposes the work of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem after the return from exile (520–515 BCE). In contrast to Haggai and Zechariah, this prophet does not show much enthusiasm for the rebuilding project.

  66.2 Since the creator of the whole world cannot be contained in a temple built by humans (1 Kings 8.27), it is not the temple, but the right attitude among God’s worshipers, that guarantees God’s continuing presence with the people (33.14–16; 57.15).

  66.3 Like one. Each of the four occurrences of this phrase links an appropriate ritual action with a sinful action. The NRSV translation suggests a blanket condemnation of the sacrificial system, but this is only one possible interpretation. The word like is not in the Hebrew, and the verse may be translated in a way that simply condemns normal worship practices when the worshiper is also engaging in pagan rituals or an immoral life (1.10–17;65.1–7, 11). The latter interpretation fits better with the complaint that the wicked have chosen their own ways.

  66.4 God will choose to mock the wicked, because they refused to listen to God’s word and chose what displeased God (65.12–16).

  66.5 “Let the LORD…your joy,” the mocking words of those Israelites who reject God’s promises and hate those who take these promises seriously (cf. 5.19; Jer 17.15).

  66.6–16 Contrary to what the skeptics say, God’s promises to Jerusalem are about to be fulfilled.

  66.6–9 God’s vindication of the righteous and punishment of the wicked in Zion is as imminent and certain as birth to a woman in labor.

  66.7 Before…labor she gave birth. Zion’s delivery will be quick and painless.

  66.8 The easy birth is incredible because the prophet is talking about the rebirth of a whole nation, which normally does not happen in a day or a moment.

  66.9 God’s rhetorical questions may be a response to an Israelite complaint that Israel’s distress was as desperate as that of pregnant woman who could not give birth (see 26.18; 37.3).

  66.10–13 When Zion gives birth to her children, those who love her will delight in Mother Zion’s consolations.

  66.12 Cf. 60.4–5.

  66.13 The prophet switches from the image of Zion as comforting mother to that of God who comforts like a mother.

  66.14–16 While the righteous rejoice, God will come in fire to punish the wicked (30.27–33; 33.10–14).

  66.17–24 Concluding comments underscoring the Lord’s judgment and the revelation of God’s glory before the nations.

  66.17 See 65.3–4.

  66.18–19 God’s glory will be announced even to the most distant nations. Tarshish. See note on 23.1. Put, a part of Libya (Ezek 30.5). Lud, Lydia in Asia Minor. Tubal, a country in Asia Minor referred to in the Assyrian sources as Tabal. Javan, Ionia or Greece.

  66.20–23 The nations will bring the exiles from Israel back to Jerusalem as an offering to God, and all nations will serve the Lord (see 60.4–12).

  66.21 Take some of them as priests and as Levites. The antecedent of them is ambiguous. Does it refer to Israelites brought back from distant exile by the nations, or to the foreigners who now acknowledge the glory of God and enter into his priestly service?

  66.23 However one interprets (see note on) 66.21, all the nations will continually come to worship before God in Jerusalem (cf. Zech 14.16–19).

  66.24 The worm-eaten, burning corpses of the wicked dead will remain as an eternal warning against rebellion. Cf. Mk 9.48.

  JEREMIAH

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 |

  THE PROPHET JEREMIAH CAME FROM ANATHOTH, a village in the hill country of Benjamin, a small tribe to the north of Judah. Though often controlled by its powerful neighbor to t
he south, Benjamin was culturally and religiously more at home with the tribes who comprised the Northern Kingdom.

  Jeremiah was a descendant of Abiathar, one of the two chief priests of King David (1 Sam 22–23; 2 Sam 20.25). Abiathar was a levitical priest, belonging to a priesthood that was prominent during the period of the judges (ca. 1200–1000 BCE) and that was connected by tradition to the shrine at Shiloh (1 Kings 2.27). David’s other chief priest, Zadok, was the founder of the Zadokite priesthood, which contended with the Levites for priestly control of royal religion in Jerusalem. Solomon banished Abiathar to Anathoth because he supported the efforts of Adonijah, Solomon’s rival, to succeed David to the throne (1 Kings 2.26–27). Allied with Solomon, Zadok and his descendants gained control of the temple in Jerusalem and were strong supporters of the Davidic monarchy. Jeremiah’s strong criticism of the house of David and the Jerusalem temple is due in part to his levitical and Benjaminite heritage.

  Jeremiah’s Mosaic theology emphasizes particularly the traditions of the exodus from Egypt, the wilderness wandering, the gift of the land of Canaan, and the covenant of Sinai. Indeed, Jeremiah is presented as the “prophet like Moses” (Deut 18.15–22) whom, like the early lawgiver, people were to hear and obey.

  Historical Background

  THE PROSE NARRATIVES AND SERMONS (1.2; 25.3) place Jeremiah’s call to prophesy in the “thirteenth year of King Josiah” (627 BCE) and note that the prophet was active during this king’s reign (cf. 3.6; 36.2). The year 627 was an auspicious time in the history of Judah; it witnessed the death of Ashurbanipal, the last powerful Assyrian king. Judah had become a vassal of the Assyrian Empire in 735 BCE. With Ashurbanipal’s death, the Assyrian Empire began to crumble. Asshur, a major Assyrian city, fell to the Medes in 614, and Nineveh, the capital, fell in 612. After Nebuchadrezzar’s (also spelled Nebuchadnezzar; see note on 21.2) defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish in 605, Babylonia conquered much of the ancient Near East.

  In 627 the vassal nations in the Assyrian Empire revolted; these included Judah, ruled by King Josiah, whose ambition was to reestablish the empire of David and Solomon. Five years later Josiah launched a religious reform that reaffirmed the covenant of Moses and centralized the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem. The reform also had political implications. The king pressed the reform not only in Judah but also in the territory of the old Northern Kingdom, which at that time was under the political control of the Assyrians. Josiah was initially successful, but his dreams of independence ended with his death at the hands of the Egyptians at Megiddo (609 BCE).

  Within a year or two after the battle of Carchemish Judah became a part of the Babylonian Empire. A later king of Judah, Jehoiakim (609–598 BCE), died during an unsuccessful revolt against Babylon, and the first exiles from Jerusalem were taken to Babylon (597). A second rebellion, led by the last king of Judah, Zedekiah (597–587/6), resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the second, more comprehensive exile in 587. After zealots assassinated the Judean governor, Gedaliah, Jeremiah was forced to accompany a group of Jews seeking exile in Egypt. The Babylonian captivity lasted until 539, when the Persian king, Cyrus, conquered Babylon and allowed the exiles to return home (538; see Ezra 1.1–4).

  Jeremiah’s prophetic career coincided with these critical events in Judah’s history. The early period of his life is difficult to reconstruct. It is likely that he opposed the unabashed enthusiasm for the political ambitions of Josiah and spoke of a “foe from the north” who would bring destruction (see chs. 4–10). This foe was not clearly identified as Babylon until the battle of Carchemish. If active at the time, Jeremiah may have initially supported Josiah’s reform, though this support probably ended with the king’s death in 609 BCE. Some of Jeremiah’s oracles addressed to the Northern Kingdom may come from this period of religious reform. Before coming to Jerusalem after Josiah’s death, the prophet preached both repentance by returning to the ancestral faith (ch. 3) and acquiescence to the Babylonians as the sole means of avoiding national destruction, thus gaining for himself powerful enemies within Judah. The so-called “laments of Jeremiah” (see 11.18–20.18) reflect his experience of persecution.

  Jeremiah’s temple sermon (see chs. 7, 26), dating to the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign (609 BCE), assaulted the theological undergirding of royal religion by arguing that obedience to the commandments and the covenant of Moses, not temple worship, was Judah’s only hope for survival. Comparable are Jeremiah’s oracles of judgment against Jerusalem and the kings of the house of David (21.11–23.8). In Jeremiah’s view, temple worship and the eternal covenant of God with the dynasty of David, so central to royal religion in Jerusalem (2 Sam 7), were a “false” (Hebrew sheqer) religion, sure to fail.

  After the exile of 587 BCE, Jeremiah chose to stay in Jerusalem to help those who remained rebuild their lives. Although he had earlier occasionally delivered oracles of salvation to both Judah and the Northern Kingdom, now he emphasized oracles of hope rather than of judgment. The remnants of both Israel and Judah would enter into a new covenant and faithfully follow God’s law, for it would be written upon their hearts (chs. 30–31). After the assassination of Gedaliah by Jewish partisans, Jeremiah was forced to go into Egyptian exile. Sometime later the prophet disappeared from history.

  Composition and Literary Character

  THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH consists of several kinds of literature that underwent numerous editions before the book achieved its present form. Three major types of literature compose much of the book. Poetic oracles of judgment are found throughout chs. 1–25. These may contain much that originated with the prophet. Narratives about incidents in the life of Jeremiah are found mainly in chs. 26–45. Prose exhortations or “sermons” in the literary style of speeches in Deuteronomy and the books of Samuel and Kings are embedded in the first forty-five chapters. Indeed, both the narratives and the prose exhortations may derive from later scribes, called by scholars Deuteronomic authors or editors because of their affinities in thought and style to the Deuteronomic literature (Deuteronomy–2 Kings). These later writers were responsible for the final form of the book. Their efforts were designed to enable Jeremiah to speak to later exilic and early postexilic Jewish communities.

  Several independent collections of literary materials appear to have been compiled and transmitted separately, at least for a time, before being brought together in the present book. These collections include the oracles “concerning the house of David” (21.11–23.8), speeches “concerning the prophets”(23.9–40), speeches “concerning the nations”(chs. 46–51), and possibly two others: the “laments of Jeremiah” (found throughout 11.18–20.18) and the oracles concerning the “foe from the north” (found throughout chs. 4–10).

  In addition, several clues to the composition and growth of the book are given in ch. 36. This chapter mentions two “scrolls of Baruch,” Jeremiah’s scribe, who is presented as writing down in the first scroll the oracles the prophet spoke from the “days of Josiah” until the battle of Carchemish. After the first scroll’s destruction Baruch wrote a second scroll that repeated the contents of the first and added “many similar words.” The call of Jeremiah (ch. 1), his laments (found in parts of 11.18–20.18), and the oracles concerning the “foe from the north” (chs. 4–10), along with other early oracles in chs. 1–25, may have composed the book’s first scroll (or edition). The second scroll made allowances for the addition of other materials, including the biographical narratives and the prose exhortations.

  Part of the literary history of the book also may be reconstructed by comparing the Septuagint (Greek) of Jeremiah with its Masoretic (Hebrew) counterpart. The Septuagint is one-eighth shorter than the Masoretic Text and represents a different arrangement of materials (especially the location of the “oracles against the nations,” chs. 46–51). The manuscript evidence for Jeremiah contained in the Qumran scrolls, discovered near the Dead Sea in the 1940s, suggests that the Septuagint is based on an older Hebrew edition of Jeremiah. Some later editor or
editors supplemented that early edition to produce what became the canonical form of the present book.

  The rather complex composition and editing of the book should obscure neither the beauty of its literary character nor the power of its prophetic message. Here indeed was a prophet who combined elegance of form with the ethical and redemptive content of the “word of the LORD.” Perhaps more than anyone in his time, Jeremiah provided the means by which a despairing people could hope for a new future. [LEO G. PERDUE, revised by ROBERT R. WILSON]

  JEREMIAH 1

  1The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

  Jeremiah’s Call and Commission

  4Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,

  5“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

  and before you were born I consecrated you;

  I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

  6Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 7But the LORD said to me,

  “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’

  for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

  and you shall speak whatever I command you.

  8Do not be afraid of them,

  for I am with you to deliver you,

  says the LORD.”

  9Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,

  “Now I have put my words in your mouth.

  10See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,

  to pluck up and to pull down,

  to destroy and to overthrow,