Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/656

(328 JEREMIAH heights. His brevity is that of "the evening star of pro phecy," and Ewald even remarks (with some exuberance, perhaps) that he has " great wealth of new figures with great delicacy of description, a literary facility that readily adapts itself to the most different subjects, .... and with all this an unadorned simplicity which is very unlike the greater artificiality of his contemporary Habakkuk." 3. Dates of the Prophecies. According to Bleek, the following prophecies belong in all probability to the reign of Josiah, (a) ii. 1-iii. 5, (b) iii. 6-vi. 30 (expressly referred to this period), (c) vii. 1-ix. 25, (d) xi. 1-17. Dated prophecies meet us again in the time of Jehoiakim. Chap, xxvi., according to its own statement, arose in the beginning of his reign ; and it is held by some that chap. vii. gives the same prophecy as xxvi. 2-6, only in a fuller form. The prophecy against Egypt in xlvi. 2-12, and the prophecy of the vast extension of the Babylonian power in chap, xxv., are both dated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (the latter is evidently not free from interpolations). To the same eventful year, according to most scholars, belongs the writing of all Jeremiah s prophecies in the roll which was read before Jehoiakim ; but we have already seen reason to doubt the soundness of this view. At any rate, chap. xxxv. belongs to this period, as the superscription and the contents combine to show. Bleek also refers several other prophecies to the reign of Jehoiakim, e.g., (a) xvi. 1-xvii. 18, (b) xvii. 19-27, (c) xiv., xv., (d) xviii., (e) xi. 18-xii. 17. To the short reign of Jehoiachin, or to the last period of Jehoiakim s, we may refer x. 17-23, and perhaps chap, xiii., with its account of a strange symbolical action connected with the Euphrates or more probably (Hitzig) Ephrath, i.e. y Bethlehem. Zedekiah s reign is much more fully represented in the prophecies ; see chaps, xxii.-xxiv., xxvii^-xxix., and, if li. 59 is to be followed, chaps. 1., li. A little later in the same reign we may place chaps, xix., xx., which describe some remark able scenes in Jeremiah s history. Later still, at the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, fall xxxiv. 1-7, chap, xxi., and the group of chapters beginning at chap, xxxii., the important prophecies in chaps, xxx., xxxi., also perhaps belong to this period ; and of course chap, xxxvii. and the two following chapters. It should be mentioned here that there are some portions of the book the Jeremianic authorship of which has been entirely or in part denied, (a) Chap. x. 1-16 was written, according to Movers, Hitzig, Graf, Knobel, and Naegelsbach by a prophet of the captivity Movers and Hitzig say, by the author of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. (b) Chaps, xxx.-xxxlii., according to Movers and Hitzig, have been brought into their present shape by the author of Isa. xl.-lxvi., though the basis is Jeremianic. (c) Chaps. 1., li., which Bleek assigns to the fourth year of Zedekiah, was according to Movers and Hitzig brought into its present form by a captivity prophet, working on a Jeremianic basis, while Ewald and Knobel hold it to have been entirely written at the close of the captivity, (d) Chap. lii. evidently forms the close of a history of the kings of Judah, and no doubt of the history followed very closely by the editor of the Books of Kings. We cannot here enter fully into this subject. But some thing may be said on chaps. 1., li. 2 It is open to grave doubt whether Jeremiah wrote these chapters. That he composed a prophecy against Babylon may be granted, and that he gave it to Seraiah with the charge described in li. G1-G4 ; but it does not follow that the present prophecy on Babylon was the one referred to in ver. GO. There are special reasons for the opposite view, and they are analogous 1 In xxvii. all critics agree that for " Jehoiakim " we should substi tute, with the Syriac version, " Zedekiah." 2 Compare a paper by Budde in Jahrb. f. D. Tkeo!., 1879. to these which lead so many students to doubt the Isaianic origin of Isa. xl.-lxvi. For example, (1) the author of the latter prophecy (or the greater part thereof) writes as if he were living at the close of the Babylonian exile. So does the author of Jer. 1., li. See chap. li. verses 33, 6 and 45, 11 and 28, 20-23. (2) Although the above statement is literally true of most of Isa. xl.-lxvi., yet there are some passages which are much more sugges tive of a Palestinian than of a Babylonian origin (see ISAIAH). Precisely so in Jer. 1., li., at least according to one prevalent interpretation of 1. 5, li. 50 (which are thought to imply a residence in Jerusalem), 1. 28, li. 11, 35, 51 (suggestive, perhaps, of the continuance of Jerusalem and the temple), 1. 17, li. 34 (implying, as some think, that Nebuchadnezzar is still alive). Still there is so much doubt respecting the soundness of the inferences that it is hardly safe to rely too confidently upon them. The case of Jer. 1., li. is therefore in so far rather less favourable to Jeremiah s authorship than that of Isa. xl.-lxvi. is to that of Isaiah. (3) Amongst much that is new and strange in the style and phraseology of Isa. xl.-lxvi., there is not a little that reminds one forcibly of the old Isaiah. Similarly with Jer. 1., li. " Every impartial judge," says Kuenen, "must admit that the number of parallel pas sages is very large, and that the author of chaps. L, li. agrees with no one more than with Jeremiah." For instance, the formula, " Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel" (1. 18, li. 33) also occurs in vii. 3, ix. 15, and some twenty-six other passages ; comp. also 1. 3 with ix. 9 ; 1. 5 with xxxii. 40; 1. 7 with ii. 3, xiv. 18, xvii. 13. The probability would therefore appear to be that, what ever solution we adopt for the literary problems of Isa. xl.-lxvi., an analogous solution must be adopted for Jer. 1., li. The whole question is so large, and connects itself with so many other problems, that the present writer declines to pronounce upon it here. Only it should be observed (1) that both subject and tone remind us of Isa. xl.-lxvi., and the kindred prophecies scattered about in the first part of the Book of Isaiah, and more especially of Isa. xiii. and the closely related prophecy, Isa. xxxiv. ; (2) that these two chapters, Jer. 1. and li., present some striking points of contact with Ezekiel, who, though contemporary with Jeremiah, was still a late contemporary, and allusions to whom (since Ezekiel was a literary rather than an oratorical prophet) imply that his prophetic book was already in circulation in other words, suggest a date well on in the exile for the prophet who alludes to him ; (3) that, though there are many Jeremianic allusions in Jer. l.,li., there are also several passages copied almost verbally from prophe cies of Jeremiah and applied to Babylon and its assailants (it seems difficult to believe that Jeremiah should have been so economical of his literary work), It deserves to be added (4) that, though Jeremiah is a great student of the earlier prophetic writings, and makes numerous allu sions to them (see especially chaps, xlvi.-xlix.), nothing approaching to the mosaic work in Jer. L, li. can be pointed to in the undoubted prophecies of Jeremiah. In fact, the author of these chapters has borrowed almost the whole of their contents from other prophets, his own property, so to speak, being too insignificant to be worth mentioning. 4. The Massoretic Text and the Septuagint Version. The Alexandrian version presents an unusually large amount of variation from the received Hebrew text. Even in the order of the prophecies there is one remarkable dis crepancy, viz., in the series of prophecies against foreign nations (chaps, xxv. 15-xlv. become in the LXX. chaps, xxxii. -li., the series of prophecies in question being transposed) ; and there is no doubt an approach to the truth in the LXX. arrangement. More important are tho