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[As if it’s not difficult enough to read through the book of one major prophet, this commentary tackles two at the same time! But please understand that this study of two books simultaneously focuses only on the literary merits of the works attributed to these two prophets. Most all other religious studies expectedly, examine their theological/doctrinal significance. What struck me in reading these prophetic books is how I had to keep track of who is speaking — YHWH or His mouthpiece, the prophet — sometimes I could not distinguish between the two. Of course the key phrase would be: “Thus saith the Lord.” But then, so many pastors say something of the same sort, “the Lord spoke to me and said this” . . . except they’re not prophets. Again, this is from our MUST READ/MUST OWN resource: The Literary Guide to the Bible, eds. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Highlights and reformatting ours.—Admin1]
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Jeremiah and Ezekiel
Joel Rosenberg
The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel—representing the two prophets who most epitomized Israel’s transition to exile—pose literary problems different from those of more purely narrative biblical books. A literary reading must try to make sense of how the books have chosen to unfold the words of their alleged authors, for it is fair to say that Jeremiah and Ezekiel are less the authors of their books than personages or voices within a text.
Despite the common ancient practice of attributing authorship of a work to one or another chief figure within it (a practice that critical scholarship sometimes perpetuates), it is likely that ancient readers were at least subliminally aware of another presence—anonymous, narrative, and traditionary in character—by whose intelligence the prophet’s words acquired additional shape, coherence, and historical resonance for a later community. This interplay of prophecy and traditionary memory is our key to the literary dimensions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and accordingly we must beware of overvaluing any one part at the expense of the whole. Once we understand the carefully modulated montage of utterance and narrative in the two works, we will be better able to see the complementary relation of the two prophets and to comprehend the role they played in the formation of biblical tradition as a whole.
Jeremiah
A chief paradox of the Book of Jeremiah is a kind of reciprocal ambiguity between the earlier and later chapters:
- the closer we are to the prophet’s indisputedly original words, largely identified with the poetic material, the father we are from biographical specifics;
- and conversely, the more deeply immersed we become in the details of Jeremiah’s life, the more likely we are to encounter either prose synopses of the prophet’s utterances or stereotyped recapitulations, which are no less integral to the total composition.
The poetic material in Jeremiah is most concentrated at the beginning (chaps. 1-25), middle (chaps. 30-31), and end (chaps. 46-51), and this fact supplies our initial clues to the structure and meaning of the book.
Before we examine that structure, however, we should try to apprehend the separate styles and apparent sources as they present themselves and to gain a better sense of their uniqueness and internal progressions, so that later we can appreciate the distinctive way in which they are combined. We may here dispense with the chronological categories proposed by scholarship and instead view the alleged sources as voices within the work, of which there are essentially three types:
- poetic oracles,
- prose sermons,
- and biographical prose.
Poetic Oracles
Although meter and parallelism are no longer criteria as certain as they once seemed for identifying biblical poetry, it is still possible to assert that a distinctly poetic style predominates in Jeremiah 1-25, 30-31, and 46-51:
- staccato exclamations,
- rapid changes of scene and vantage point,
- frequent shifts of voice and discourse,
- use of invocation, plural command, and rhetorical question,
- a propensity for assonance and wordplay,
- a rich array of metaphors and similes from the natural landscapes and from human crafts and trades,
- and precision of metonymy and synecdoche.
Here we come closest to the mind of the prophet, and it is clear that the book has been constructed to allow the voice of Jeremiah to dominate the beginning, end, and core of the text.
The opening chapters —
- convey a sense of the prophet’s panoramic purview and his brilliant reversals of mood and tone.
- The book begins with a starkly simple commissioning scene (a bold contrast to Moses’ commissioning in Exodus 3 and to those of Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1-3),
- in which YHWH drafts the reluctant prophet (“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee … and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations,” 1:5),
- who is initially shown two symbolic visions:
- the almond branch (shaqed), a symbol of the watchful (shoqed) deity (1:11);
- and the molten caldron pouring destruction from the north (1:13), symbol of the imminent terror from northern peoples who will descend upon the hapless nation—an image that will dominate the whole book.
- The prophet now turns to plead with his audience,
- personifying a God who remembers the former love of his favored people (2:1-3—the influence of Hosea is especially marked here)
- and reciting the milestones of its early history.
- Intermittently he flares up in wrath over—
- the defilement of the Land,
- the faithlessness,
- superstition,
- and folly of the people,
- the futile alliances of their leaders.
- The nation is personified—
- as a wanton woman, lustful in her passion (2:23-24),
- contriving schemes to grasp her lover (2:33),
- lying with paramours on roads and hilltops (3:23).
- Momentarily, the prophet imagines a scene of reconciliation,Visions of doom resurge in 4:3-9, and the wrathful deity is now sketched as the awesome divine warrior of Near Eastern myth (4:11-13).
- first calling to the people to turn back (3:2)
- and articulating their hypothetical heartfelt confession (3:22-25),
- then again in the voice of YHWH promising forgiveness and future blessing (4:1-2).
- In a characteristic etiological flourish, the prophet pauses to pronounce the casual nexus between human and misdeed and bitter punishment: “Your ways and your doings have brought this upon you” (4:18 [AT]).
- Then, suddenly, we are plunged into the moaning despair of one who must witness such devastation:
My anguish, my anguish!
I writhe in pain!
Oh, the walls of my heart! (4:19 [RSV])
Is it the prophet who speaks here, or is it YHWH speaking figuratively of himself?
No connectors enable us to know for sure. This mingling of divine and prophetic persona (punctuated only occasionally by first-person markers such as “and the Lord said to me”) is frequent in Jeremiah and illustrates the extent to which God’s sorrow and the prophet’s suffering are seen as two sides of the same coin.
As the prophet surveys the devastation of the Land as if it were already an accomplished fact (4:25-31), first and third person mingle with fluid ease; then, just as easily, the prophet turns again to the populace (“And when thou art spoiled, what will thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold …” 4:30), and shifting voice once more, depicts Daughter Zion’s cry of despair: “Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers” (4:31).
The chief themes of the early chapters,
- despite much geographic specificity,
- are unique to no particular moment of the prophet’s mission
- and, indeed, display much the same feel for the typical and typologically recurrent that characterizes Hebrew prophecy as a whole.
Jeremiah appears to have learned from his predecessors—
- from Amos and Micah
- the preoccupation with social injustice and the indifference to cultic propriety;
- from Hosea
- the feminine personification of Israel
- and the nostalgia for the days of the Exodus and the Wilderness wandering;
- from Isaiah
- the panoramic vision,
- the sharpness of satire,
- and the gift of paronomasia
- and linguistic musicality.
The prophet moves around the Land with the certainty of a stage director,
- calling forth the sights, sounds, and exclamations of his tortured era,
- posing legalities and claims,
- mocking the self-exculpations and self-pity of the populace,
- and expressing anguish and despair over their devastation and its aftermath,
- only to call the enemy down upon them anew,
- as new offenses of the people come to mind.
We notice a certain hardening of the prophet’s position, as he moves from the hope of repentance to a sense of the inevitability of retribution. As this happens, we find increasing expression of prophetic and divine pathos—at first without distinction between the celestial and earthly perception; then, as the prophet’s social encounters increase, with the growing sense of the prophet’s isolation from God and man alike.
The lamentation passages in 11:18-20 and later perhaps the most distinctive feature of the book, from which alone we would be entitled to view Jeremiah as our most self-revealed prophet. Much akin to Job’s outcries, Jeremiah’s tortured confessions alternate between plea, accusation, and anticipation, now begging for divine vindication in the face of his mockers and enemies, then, at a particularly raw moment of desperation (20:7-10), complaining of deception by the deity and of the cruel absence of respite or relief. After a brief glimmer of renewed trust (20:11-13), the prophet curses the day he was born, implicitly repudiating the mantle of prophecy that was laid upon him in the womb (1:5). Gradually we come to see the enormous toll and burden on one who was once granted the freest mandate and the most dextrous hand:
to root out, and to pull down,
and to destroy, and to throw down,
to build, and to plant. (1:10)
Many have noted the symbolic, exemplary nature of Jeremiah’s sufferings—“a speaker of parables and himself a parable.”
This impression is strengthened by the numerous ways in which Jeremiah is called upon to act out mimetically some aspect of the nation’s fate:
- standing at the Temple gate (7:2),
- wearing and destroying a loincloth (13:1-7),
- refraining from marriage (16:1-4),
- witnessing a potter at his wheel (18:1-4),
- smashing a potter’s jug (19:1-12),
- holding forth a wine cup of wrath (25:15-17),
- attaching a yoke to his neck with thongs (27:1-4), and so on.
But there is no need to view the prophet’s anguish as purely teleological and didactic, or as a kind of shamanistic dramatization of the torment of an era. The lavishness of prophetic pathos flows more from the breakdown of missionary purpose than from an enactment of it. Even YHWH must confront this unforeseen faltering of his plan. Had Jeremiah remained but a mannequin of heavenly design, a disembodied oracular voice, we would not have sensed as fully the desperation and extremity of the time and place in which he moved.
His sharp departure from prophetic tradition and custom in setting forth his complaint so elaborately is wholly his own innovation, and there is nothing else quite like it in biblical prophetic literature.
Prose Sermons
Extensive prose of a sermonic nature invades the Book of Jeremiah as early as chapters 3, 7, and 11, and it punctuates the oracles in briefer ways in the form of eschatological pronouncements (“In that day, there will be …”) and etiological justifications (“for the people of Judah have done what displeases me”).
Scholars have long noted the diction and cadences of the Deuteronomists in these prose segments—“Hearken to his voice,” “to do right in the eyes of the Lord,” “the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,” “provoke me to anger,” and many related turns of speech.
- The prophet could be revealing his own familiarity with the so-called Ur-Deuteronomy;
- or he could be using phrases that were later imitated by the Deuteronomists;
- or the affinity could rest in commonality of language, era, and heritage;
- or there could have been interpolations by a Deuteronomistic hand in order to claim Jeremiah for the movement.
Though the precise textual relation between the Book of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy may elude us, there is a certain convergence of interest between Jeremiah and the Deuteronomist.
- Both simultaneously affirm and deny the uniqueness ofIsrael among the nations;
- both call the people to strict accountability for their wrongdoings;
- and both reflect a similar sense of historical and divine causality.
That the nation’s fate was to become a proverb and a byword in the discourse of later generations, as Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic portions of Jeremiah would have it, accorded well with the idiom of this most emblematic of prophets—indeed, he, too, was a symbol of ridicule: “I have become a constant laughingstock—everyone jeers at me” (20:7 [AT]).
On the other hand, investigators seeking to challenge or downplay the influence of Deuteronomistic ideology in the prose sermons have suggested a useful model for recovering from them the authentic voice of the prophet. They have spoken of a remembered gist and of “demetrified” copies of the prophet’s original utterances. If we shift our interest here from source-criticism to literary interpretation, we find an excellent model for understanding the voice of the prose sermons—for it is not the firsthand voice of the prophet but a voice filtered through memory and tradition, and thus a sign of the baroquely tortuous chronological sense that informs the book as a whole.
The prophet speaks and is remembered speaking.
As Jeremiah looks forward to the era of the survivors, eyes and ears from that era harken back to him.
The mutuality of prediction and fulfillment is repeatedly affirmed.
The wider arc of divine purpose is repeatedly made explicit.
Biographical Prose
The history of Jeremiah’s life and times, like Deuteronomic voice, builds gradually in the Book of Jeremiah.
Indeed, anticipations of the biographic voice begin within the Deuteronomic material itself, in chapters 7 and 11.
- There we find reference to Jeremiah’s famous Temple sermon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim;
- to the prophet’s clashes with the Jerusalem leadership during their apparent efforts to reverse the reforms of Josiah;
- and, most significantly, to Jeremiah’s estrangement from his own village of Anathoth as a plot against his life arises there.
- The poetic oracles that accompany and follow this material underscore this biographical interest by presenting the prophet’s laments over his many enemies and ridiculers.
- The narratives that accompany these laments represent the first of the various symbolic actions commanded of Jeremiah (discussed above), and so bring into focus the specific public confrontations that will later be given historical concreteness.
- Only from chapter 20 onward do references appear to specific names of officials and dates, and to controversies of late pre-ExilicJerusalem.
- Up to the point, we experience the issues only typologically—in the homiletic rhythms of preachment and the compressed synecdoche of oracle.
- After that time, the history of Jeremiah’s life gradually comes into full view,
- and the prophet is finally revealed as an engaged historical actor,
- uncompromising but relentlessly committed to persuasion and debate,
- mingling with the highest ruling circles,
- able to mobilize allies among them,
- and, most important, exercising, despite his vulnerability to persecution, considerable public influence, enough to have made himself a threat to the national leaders.
The biographical prose should be understood as stemming from two fundamentally different documentative processes—
- one arising as an amplification of sermonic situations,
- and the other as part of a more purely historiographic or biographical project.
There seems to have been an evolution from the one to the other, and that history of discourse on Jeremiah is preserved in the layout of the book as a whole, where we find a progression—
- from oracle to sermon,
- from sermon to sermonic setting,
- and from sermonic setting to personal and court history.
Why was it important to include the historical material on Jeremiah?
He is, after all, the most fully documented literary prophet in the Hebrew Bible, even without chapters 37-44. But the latter amplify the sparsely reported events of 2 Kings 24-25 in an exceptionally illuminating way. It is a stirring account, detailing Jeremiah’s troubles during Jerusalem’s final days, with fascinating glimpses of the uncompromising prophet and the tragically vacillating King Zedekiah.
Here, we learn—
- of the rescue of Jeremiah from starvation in a mud pit by an Ethiopian slave named Ebed-Melech,
- of the capture of the city and the humiliation and exile of Zedekiah,
- of the defeat of the conspiracy and the stormy aftermath in Judah and Egypt.
It is not a “passion” narrative, as some have maintained.
- If anything, it portrays the prophet’s vindication and rescue;
- and the final setbacks he experiences,
- in his failure to convince the surviving Judean leaders to abandon their conspiratorial course against Babylon,
- serve only to accentuate the folly and perverseness of the very persons he is trying to rescue.
Our clue to the function and significance of the history in the Book of Jeremiah can be found in the return of the Deuteronomic style in the later chapters, especially in 44. There an elaborate, almost ceremonial dialogue occurs between Jeremiah and the Judean exiles in Egypt, in which the prophet affirms that he has been sent as the last in a line of prophets mandated to warn the people “to turn their wickedness, to burn no incense to other gods” (44:5).
We see that a biography of Jeremiah—or, more accurately, a detailed report of his repeated rejection by court and community alike—underscores the Deuteronomic theme of an embattled prophetic tradition and sets the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah firmly into the framework of reciprocal justice that shaped the Deuteronomic history as a whole (Deuteronomy-2 Kings) and, indeed, the entire narrative history from Genesis through 2 Kings.
Structure
The structure of Jeremiah, and especially of its apparently chaotic chronology, has proved elusive to critical investigators, many of whom have declared the text to be in disarray and have attempted a reconstruction of an “original.”
The great divergence between the Masoretic and Septuagint versions of Jeremiah has intensified this perplexity, for the Greek translation places the oracles against the nations (46-51) after chapter 25 (which seems to introduce the international theme). But by relying on the distinction among poetic oracles, prose sermon, and prose history, we can make a very plausible case for adhering to the Masoretic arrangement. That arrangement not only has a symmetrical pattern quite common in biblical literature but also helps us to make sense of a number of odd details that might otherwise seem obscure. Allowing for some crossover or interfixing common to biblical redaction, we thus find a poetic central segment, bracketed by two long, chiefly prose segments; these, in turn, are bracketed ty two more bodies of chiefly poetic oracle. The whole is then placed into a redactional framework introducing and concluding the prophet’s mission. Parallel segments match up thematically as well as, for the most part, formally, although considerable overlap of elements occurs in the actual sequence of texts. The theoretical pattern is summarized as follows:
a Historical headnote (1:1-3).
b Commission (1:4).
c “Prophet to the nations” theme introduced (1:5-10).
d Doom for Israel; poetic oracles predominate (chaps. 1-10).
e Prophet cut off from Anathoth; focus on prophet’s trials and conflicts;
prose predominates (11:1-28:17).
f Optimistic prophesies; renewal of Israel; prose brackets poetic center
(chaps. 29-31).
e’ Prophet returns to Anathoth; focus on prophet’s trials and conflicts;
prose predominates (32:1-45:5).
d’ Doom for the nations; poetic orales predominate (chaps. 46-51).
c’ “Prophet to the nations” theme culminates (chaps. 50-51).
b’ Prophet’s concluding message (51:59-64).
a’ Historical appendix (chap. 52).
The outermost parallel is fairly self-evident: both sections are concerned with setting the book in the context of the Deuteronomic History and more or less presuppose the reader’s acquaintance with that history, specifically with its last four chapters (2 Kings 21-25) or their substance.
The second parallel is more problematic—
- first, because b’ does not seem to end the whole book but only the Babylonian oracles that immediately precede it in chapters 50-51;
- second, because its purported date (see 51:59) is the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign, not the end of Jeremiah’s career.
Thus, his last mentioned prophecy is not his last delivered.
Yet there are good reasons for ending Jeremiah’s prophecies to the nations with the Babylonian oracles:
- Babylonia is presented as Israel’s nemesis throughout the book,
- and she is now the most powerful of nations
- and the symbol of political might as such.
- One other episode in the book is dated to the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign, namely Jeremiah’s confrontation with the court prophet Hananiah. Curiously, Hananiah’s theme is the fall of Babylon, and Jeremiah expresses reserved on the truth of this oracle, stating that it can be verified only if and when it comes true (27:7-8), and later (27:15) he criticizes Hananiah for having provided false assurances to court and kingdom. Assuming that both chapter 28 and 59:59-64 have a basis in fact, we learn something quite intriguing about Jeremiah:
- that at the same time that he was telling his own people not to expect the immediate fall of Babylon,
- he was telling the Babylonians (at least symbolically—no recipient is designated) that their kingdom would indeed fall.
The fall of Babylon, then, if authentically Jeremiah’s prediction,
- seems to have been a secret prophecy,
- not intended for the prophet’s contemporaries back home in Judah,
- and possibly not even for the Babylonians of his era,
- since Jeremiah (51:59) gives Seraiah ben Neriah the scroll of his Babylon prophecies without designating any recipient (though it is to be read aloud).
- This is quite odd, and Jeremiah’s further instructions to Seraiah suggest that the delivery is to be a purely magical act, not intended to persuade any crowd or official—only to notify “Babylon” as a whole Recipients are not to be ruled out, but their locale and identity are unimportant.
- With the delivery of this message, Jeremiah’s ministry is logically complete, even though he has some eight more years of documented preaching.
These considerations enable us to understand the significance of c and c’, which focus on Jeremiah’s mission “to the nations.”
Much debate has arisen as to whether this means “to” or “concerning,” but we need only assume that his mission embraces all nations, though it is also quite likely that most of his internationally oriented oracles were intended chiefly for recipients beyond his own era, Judean or otherwise.
The mission is not to be understood as a serious program to preach to foreigners, in the manner of, say, Paul in the New Testament epistles. It is sound Deuteronomic doctrine and also authentically Jeremaniac.
It affirms the central tenet of Jeremiah’s whole prophetic mission: that the God of Israel and Judah controls the destinies of all peoples with thorough impartiality and vigorous justice.
In chapters 50-51
- the full design of Jeremiah’s mission “to the nations” becomes clear for the first time:
- even the great devourer will be devoured;
- even the great nemesis, which throughout the book has been seen as the spearhead of “the enemy from the north,” has its own enemy from the north (50:41-43).
The relation of the three bodies of poetic oracle (d,f,d’ ) can now be seen more clearly.
There are the three classic components of most prophetic books of the Hebrew canon:
- prophecies of doom for Israel;
- prophecies of doom for the surrounding nations;
- prophesies of restoration for Israel.
Unlike, say, Isaiah or Ezekiel, where these three orders of prophecy are put into a relatively simple sequential relation, in Jeremiah they are placed in a popular and symmetrical opposition: d is opposed to d’and both are contrasted with f. The symmetry all the better underscores that we are not dealing with simple historical prediction, but with a dialectical system in which changes in one era—most specifically, Judah/Israel’s repentance—can set off a chain of consequences in the others. All is contingent on human behavior, all is subject to the same impartial standard, and all is reversible in the fullness of time.
Between (and partly overlapping) these three elements are two long sections dealing with the life of the prophet, each introduced by an episode illustrating some aspect of his relation to his home village, Anathoth. As chapter 32 makes clear, the prophet’s relation to Anathoth is a touchtone of larger events coming to pass—his return is a minuscule and possibly uncompleted token of Israel’s eventual return from exile—and thus shows us in an oblique and quiet way that two major progressions in the nation’s history are being comprehended: from prosperity to ruin, and from ruin to (still distant) prosperity.
One further and striking symmetry in Jeremiah 20-40 sheds light on the otherwise quite confusing chronology of the book.
a Jeremiah’s first imprisonment no date given, but probably in
is recounted (20:1-18) reign of Jehoiakim
b An official of Zedekiah asks reign of Zedekiah
Jeremiah to pray to YHWH;
Broad survey of Jeremiah’s
Dealings with various kings
(21-24)
c Jeremiah summarizes orally fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign
23 years of preaching (25:1-14)
d Cup of wine (gloss: “of wrath”) fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign
is forced on neighboring
nations (25:15-38);
Jeremiah’s troubles with
Official circles are recounted
(26:1-24)
e Jeremiah predicts that nations Beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign,
will be enslaved to Babilonia but real referent is Zedekiah’s
(chap. 27)
f Jeremiah’s rival Hananiah fourth year (or “beginning”) of
predicts short-term vindication Zedekiah’s reign
of the nation (chap. 28)
g Jeremiah tells exiles to settle shortly after exile of Jehoiachin
permanently in Babylonia (Jeconiah); thus, beginning of
(chap. 29)
h “Book of Consolation” ad-
dressed to Northern Israel
(chaps. 30-31)
g’ YHWH tells Jeremiah to settle tenth year of Zedekiah’s reign,
permanently in Anathoth during siege of Jerusalem
(chap. 32)
f’ Jeremiah predicts long-term tenth year of Zedekiah’s reign,
vindication of the nation slightly later than g’
(chap. 33)
e’ Judean slaveowners renege on during siege of Jerusalem, but
releasing slaves, and Jeremiah possibly earlier than g’
predicts death for them
(chap. 34)
d’ Cup of wine is refused by “in the days of King Jehoiakim”
Rechabites; authentic (but
nonofficial) servants of YHWH
are praised; the nation’s
disobedience is denounced
(chap. 35)
c’ Jeremiah summarizes in writing fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign
23 years of preaching (chap. 36)
b’ An official of Zedekiah asks early in Zedekiah’s reign
Jeremiah to pray to YHWH;
Jeremiah’s dealings with
Zedekiah’s court are set forth
in detail (37:1-39:18)
a’ Jeremiah’s final release from after the Babylonian capture of
prison is recounted (40:1-5) Jerusalem
It can be seen that the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah are interspersed in something of a checkerboard pattern, and that, starting with b/b’ inward, parallel pairs fall within the same reign (the apparent exception, e/e’, at least yields messages applicable to the same reign). Just as the overall layout of oracles stresses that prophetic prediction is not a matter of sequential chronology but rather of dialectical interdependence, this deployment of episodes suggests that the prophetic vocation is not a matter of steady augmentation of the prophet’s doctrine or of increasing acceptance by his public, but rather one of continual reversal, deadlock, setback, and resurgence.
The restlessness and apparent aimlessness of the prophet’s career is thus captured in a unique and profound way. Patterns emerge in his ministry which are hard to see in the short run (for the reader as much as for the prophet or his contemporaries), but which, over the long run, show simultaneously a deep consistency of vision and an immense versatility of expression.
The relativity of the historical hour, the alteration of preachment to context and circumstance, are stressed as the prophet is shown churning about the relentless movement—adapting, clashing, revising, retrenching, threatening, pleading, promising. Yet one thread of argument runs through this Heraclitean swirl of change.
The only human power that transcends all circumstances, all nations and alliances, all empires and kings, is the power of repentance.
It is this power alone that grants insights into history, for it is here shown as the force that shapes history.
- And behind all motions and changes is the voice of Jeremiah,
- whose book characteristically leaves us in the dark about where he spent his final days—
- a not untypical ending for prophetic cycles (consider Moses’ unknown gravesite, Elijah’s exit in a chariot of fire, Jonah’s silent perplexity before a divine question).
- In Jeremiah’s case the omission creates a sense of the prophet’s freewheeling ubiquity “to root out, and to pull down, / and to destroy, and to throw down, / to build, and to plant” (1:10),
- which can now be seen as an emblem for the double opposition,
- between national and international calamity and between calamity and restoration,
- that informs the design of the book as a whole,
- and which defines the parameters of historical understanding within the Hebrew Bible at large.
[The prophet Ezekiel/Yechezqe’l in part 2.]