Epistle of Jeremy

Introduction to the Epistle of Jeremy

PROBABLY most readers approach these relics of the past with a controlling opinion or prejudice in their minds, whether they are conscious of the fact or not. If, however, we wish to form a just appreciation of the significance of an ancient document, we must clear our minds of prepossessions and let it speak to us. We must be careful neither to overlook things which are there, nor to read into it things which are not there. It may have been mere chance which caused it to survive the wreck of much else that we could wish had been saved; but it is more likely that it was preserved because of some intrinsic merit, or because of something in it which specially appealed to the sympathies of its earliest readers.

§ 1. Nature and Scope of the Work.

The so-called Epistle of Feremy reads more like a sermon or hortatory address than a letter; a fact which may account for its characteristic repetitions. The author is very much in earnest, as becomes a preacher. The idolatry he denounces is no imaginary picture, but the reality of his own environment. And it is not the idolatry of Canaan, so strongly condemned by the prophets of Yahweh, nor that of Egypt, which Jeremiah might have denounced had he long survived his forced migration to that uncongenial region. It is the idolatry of Babylon. For ‘Babylon’, in the author’s use, is evidently not a mask for some other land or city. Not only is he aware of a very peculiar custom there prevalent, which Herodotus has also noted (v. 43; cf. Hdt. i. 199); but many incidental allusions and individual touches agree with other known features of Babylonian religion. (See the notes on vv. 4, 11, 15, 30-32. 41, 43.) Had ‘Babylon’ meant Egypt, the degrading animal-worship, of which the author of Wisdom makes so much, would hardly have escaped the shafts of his eager though not very profound satire. §

§ 2. Probable Date.

But what Babylon was it? Was it the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, whose magnificent temples were enriched with the plunder of nations and maintained by the tribute of a subject world? Was it Babylon in its imperial splendour, as Jechonias and the men of the First Captivity saw it—Babylon as it was when the susceptible heart of the poet-priest Ezekiel was so powerfully impressed by the carven and painted symbols of its immemorial faith? Not Babylon in its glory, but Babylon in its decay, as Herodotus saw it more than a century afterwards; or rather as Alexander saw it, crumbling slowly away, yet still, in its ruined majesty, preserving enough of its ancient splendour to induce the conqueror of the world to choose it for his future capital and seat of empire. When our author makes Jeremiah predict a sojourn of the Jews in Babylon for ‘seven generations’, he does it deliberately. He can hardly have been ignorant of the famous prophecy of the seventy years, or of the less-heeded estimate of three generations involved in the statement that the exiles were to serve Nebuchadnezzar and his son and his son’s son (Jer. xxv. 12; xxvii. 7). He seems, in fact, to be giving us a clue to his own period. Seven generations, allowing forty years to the generation according to Old Testament reckoning, would cover 280 years. If we count from the exile of Jechonias (597 B.C.), this brings us to the year 317 B.C., or counting (as the author may have done) from 586 B.C., the year of the final Captivity, we arrive at 306 B.C., some thirty years after the arrival of Alexander in Babylon. It must not be forgotten that the Jews who returned to Palestine in consequence of the Edict of Cyrus were only a small part of the Jewish population of Babylonia. Great numbers of them were perfectly satisfied with their adopted country, and no more desired to return to Judaea than our own colonists in Australia or New Zealand desire to return to the narrower conditions of English life. What is more, they not only went beyond the advice of Jeremiah (xxix. 4-7) in the matter of regarding the land of their exile as their permanent home. Many of them assumed Babylonian names, implying at least an identification of the God of Israel with Bel-Merodach or Nebo; and there must always have been a strong temptation to assimilate themselves entirely to their neighbours in the customs and manners of life. Doubtless there was considerable leakage from the synagogue to the indigenous worships. Some might sincerely believe that the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the overthrow of their national independence were proof enough of the superiority of the Babylonian gods. Others would surrender themselves to the influence of more sordid considerations (cf. Jer. xliv. 17 (ἡ). The zeal of loyal spirits would naturally be roused by this state of things; and pieces like the one before us might have been circulated among the weak believers and waverers as dissuasives from the folly of exchanging the religion of the prophets for any lower form of faith and life.

§ 3. Original Language.

If the author belongs to anything like so early a date, he probably wrote in Hebrew, not Greek. But this probability is greatly strengthened by a careful study of the phenomena of the Greek text. It is incredible that a piece so formless, so confused, so utterly destitute of the graces of style, as this ‘Epistle’ now is, should have been thought worthy of preservation in the Alexandrian Canon of Scripture, had such been its original condition. Our translators and their Revisers have done their best; but what a poor halting semblance of sense, not to say manifest nonsense, the result too often is! Harmony with context and logical connexion of thought are often untraceable. We are presented with a voluble but ill-connected succession of propositions, bearing little visible relation to each other beyond a general animus against idolatry. But almost every verse exhibits peculiarities which suggest translation, and that from a Hebrew original, as will be seen by reference to the notes on the text. It is, of course, often easier to see that the Greek is more or less suspicious than to divine the true reading of the lost Hebrew archetype. A suggestion may seem plausible, even probable, without being right. But a possible sense is better than nonsense and may be accepted provisionally, in preference to the assumption that we have before us nothing better than the crude effusion of an illiterate fanatic. Amid all such uncertainties one thing appears to be certain. It is that in this Zpzstle of Feremy there are places where the strange phraseology of the Greek can only be accounted for by assuming that the writer of it supplied the wrong vowels to some Hebrew word which he was translating, or mistook some Hebrew consonant for another resembling it, or could only guess at the meaning of a corrupted text. His MS. may have been badly written or have become illegible in places through time and use. Perhaps also, like some of his modern commentators, he was not himself a too expert Hebraist, though capable enough of a certain careless and misleading fluency in Greek, which enabled him to conceal lack of knowledge under a surface of smoothly-expressed inaccuracies. It may suffice to examine a few of the more striking instances here, referring to the notes on the text for a more complete presentation of the evidence.

(1) Κῶ τῶ: ‘from rust and moths’. The true meaning; but the Greek has ἀπὸ ἰοῦ καὶ βρωμάτων =‘from rust and foods’. In LXX βρώματα Ξξ boik (Gen. xli. 35 f) or POND (Gen. vi. 21) food. The translator read the latter word here, instead of Dak from a devourer (= moth or grub; cf. Mal. iii. 11; Isa. li. 8; Matt. vi. 19 σὴς καὶ βρῶσις = bait) wy moth and devourer). The translator supplied the wrong vowel-points in reading his unpointed Hebrew text.

(2) V. 20: ‘They are as one of the beams of the temple; and men say their hearts are eaten out,’ &c. Here there is no apparent connexion of thought, and the Greek does not help us. But the words τὰς δὲ καρδίας αὐτῶν φασίν suggest a corruption of the common Hebrew phrase to say in one’s heart’ = ὦ think. The original sense may thus have been: And he (the idol) is like a beam (i.e. a mere log) inside the temple (cf. 1 Kings vi. 15); yet they think that he eats! (i.e. consumes the offerings made to him). For eating, as a proof of being a ‘living god’, see Bel 6. Our translator pointed n>? instead of yn? (Num. xxii. 4).:

(3) Κ΄. 31: Gk. διφρεύουσιν, drive chariots. Not even a Jew of 100 shed would have accused the Babylonian priests of careering about in chariots inside their temples, and that with all the outward signs of mourning upon their bodies, rent clothes, shaven heads, ἅς, But read ‘they weep’ instead of ‘they drive chariots ᾿, and the context is satisfied, and all becomes clear. It is merely a matter of writing 123, which was perhaps miswritten 132" in the translator's MS., for 129 they ride. Cf. v. 32, and the notes i” loc. The reference is to services of mourning for the gods, especially Dumuzi = Tammuz (see Cuneiform Texts, vol. xv).

(4) V. 35. ‘They can neither give riches zor money’ (χαλκόν): a false antithesis, and incongruous with the context (v. 34; cf. 1 Sam. ii. 7). What is obviously required is οὔτε πενίαν, ‘nor poverty’: Prov. xxx. 8. The translator may have mistaken a badly written ריש poverty for wn, and then guessed that this was a remnant of נחש') (= χαλκός). But if חלכה in Ps. x. 8, 10 really means 6 πένης (LXX and Syr.), it may be that חלכות (= πενία) stood in the Heb. MS. of our Epistle, and the Greek translator, not being acquainted with the rare word, identified it with the like-sounding χαλκός; cf. the transliterations of Heb. words in LXX.

(5) V. 54. ‘Neither can they judge ... being unable: for they are as crows between heaven and earth. The point of the comparison is obscure. Moreover, a verb seems wanting, as crows are not always in the air. ᾿Αδύνατοι ὄντες is perhaps a misrendering of 151 5 (cf. Job xxviii. 4 with v. 16, xxxi. 16), and ὥσπερ ai (AQ™S recte) κορῶναι may be due to misreading כערבים for Ὁ 32}2. We thus get the sense: for they hang suspended—like the clouds—between heaven and earth. The reference would be to plated wooden images hung against the walls of the temples.

(6) V. 59. ‘Therefore it is better to be a king that showeth his manhood ...than such false gods.’ Was such a feeble truism worth writing or worth preserving? Could it ever have proved edifying to any readers whatever? But let us look at the context. The other comparisons of the verse are a vessel, a door, a wooden pillar—all inanimate objects. Emend Better is a stick (Ezek. xxxix. 9) 7” the hand of a mighty man... than the false gods, and harmony and sense are restored to the whole verse. (Heb. 323 2 23 340 instead of 743) ANID 422 312.)

(7) V. 68. ‘The (wild) beasts are better than they: for they can get under a covert, and help themselves. The object of getting under a covert is surely 20 hide; and it is almost self-evident that αὑτὰ ὠφελῆσαι represents Heb. להעלם to hide themselves. The translator vocalized the word wrongly, reading pond to profit them (cf. Isa. xxx. 5) instead of peynd to hide.

(8) Κ΄. 72. ‘The bright purple that rotteth upon them.’ The Greek has ‘the purple and the marble that rotteth upon them’. As I pointed out long a go (Var. Apocr. in loc.), this is clearly a case of confusion between ww byssus, fine linen, and its homophone שש alabaster or marble (Cant. v. 15). ‘Marble’ does not ‘rot’, ‘fine linen’ does; and ‘purple and fine linen’ go together (Exod? xxvi. 1; Prov. xxxi. 2.; Luke xvi. 19):

For a not inconsiderable amount of similar evidence the notes on the text may be consulted. Altogether it would seem difficult to avoid the conclusion that our Lfzstle is a free translation of a lost Hebrew original. In that case, the Greek version may very well be considerably later in date, and may even belong to the age of the Maccabees.

By C. J. Ball