Jeremiah was still wearing his symbolic yoke of wood and thongs in the Temple, when his prediction that the sacred vessels would not be restored was flatly contradicted and with as much assurance that the contradiction was from the God of Israel, as Jeremiah's assurance about his own words. The speaker was like himself from the country of Benjamin, from Gibeon near Anathoth, Hananiah son of Azzur, who said—
XXVIII. 2. Thus saith the Lord, I have broken[519] the yoke of the king of Babylon! 3. Within two years I will bring back to this place the vessels of the House of the Lord, [4] and Jeconiah and all the exiles of Judah that went to Babylon; for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. 5. Then said Jeremiah to Hananiah, before the priests and all the people[520] standing in the House of the Lord—yes, [6] Jeremiah said,[521] Amen! The Lord do so! The Lord establish the words thou hast prophesied, by bringing back the vessels of the Lord's House and all the exiles from Babylon to this place! 7. Only hear, I pray thee, the Word of the Lord which I am about to speak in thine ears and in the ears of all the people. 8. The prophets who have been before me and thee from of old, [pg 252] they prophesied against many lands and against great kingdoms of war [and of famine (?) and pestilence].[522] 9. The prophet who prophesies of peace (it is only) when the word[523] comes to pass that the prophet is known[524] whom in truth the Lord hath sent. 10. Then Hananiah[525] took the bars off the neck of Jeremiah and brake them. 11. And Hananiah spake before all the people saying: Thus saith the Lord, Even so will I break the yoke of the king of Babylon [within two years][526] from off the necks of all the nations. And Jeremiah went his way. 12. Then came the Word of the Lord to Jeremiah, after Hananiah had broken the bars from off his neck, saying, [13] Go tell Hananiah, Thus saith the Lord: Thou hast broken the bars of wood but I will[527] make in their stead bars of iron. 14. For thus saith the Lord, An iron yoke have I put upon the necks of all [these] nations, that they may serve the king of Babylon. 15. And Jeremiah said to [pg 253] Hananiah,[528] The Lord hath not sent thee, but thou leadest this people to trust in a lie. 16. Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I am about to dispatch thee from off the face of the ground—this year thou shalt die. 17. And he was dead[529] by the seventh month.
All praise to Baruch for his concise and vivid report, and to the Greek translator who has reproduced it! The editors of the Hebrew text have diluted its strength.
With this narrative we are bound to take the section of the Book entitled Of the Prophets, XXIII. 9-32. The text is in parts uncertain, and includes obvious expansions. These removed, we can fairly distinguish a continuous metrical form up to 29, with the exception perhaps of 25-27. The metre is sometimes irregular enough to raise the suggestion[530] that the whole is rhetorical prose, between which and metre proper it is often hard, as we have seen, to draw the line. But we have also learned how often and how naturally irregular, when the subject requires it, Jeremiah's metres tend to become. So I have ventured, with the help of the Greek, to render the whole as metre, in which form are parts beyond doubt. Verses 18 and 30-32 are in prose, and both, but more probably the former, may [pg 254] be later additions, as are 19, 20, and clauses in 9, 10.
There is no reason against taking the remainder as Oracles by Jeremiah himself. No dates are given them; they probably come from various stages of his ministry, for he early found out the false prophets, and his experience of them and their errors lasted to the end. But probably this collection of the Oracles was made under Ṣedekiah; that Baruch gathered it still later is not so likely.
Of the prophets:— XXIII. 9
Broken my heart within me,
All pithless my bones.
I'm become like a drunken man
Like a wight overcome with wine.[531]