Fall of the State.—Under Zedekiah the prophet was less fortunate. Such was the tension of feeling that the “princes,” who were formerly friendly to Jeremiah, now took up an attitude of decided hostility to him. At last they had him consigned to a miry dungeon, and it was the king who (at the instance of the Cushite Ebed-melech) intervened for his relief, though he remained a prisoner in other quarters till the fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.). Nebuchadrezzar, who is assumed to have heard of Jeremiah’s constant recommendations of submission, gave him the choice either of going to Babylon or of remaining in the country (chs. xxxviii. seq.). He chose the latter and resided with Gedaliah, the native governor, at Mizpah. On the murder of Gedaliah he was carried to Mizraim or Egypt, or perhaps to the land of Mizrim in north Arabia—against his will (chs. xl.-xliii.). How far all this is correct we know not. The graphic style of a narrative is no sufficient proof of its truth. Conceivably enough the story of Jeremiah’s journey to Egypt (or Mizrim) may have been imagined to supply a background for the artificial prophecies ascribed to Jeremiah in chs. xlvi.-li. A legend in Jerome and Epiphanius states that he was stoned to death at Daphnae, but the biography, though not averse from horrors, does not mention this.
A Patriot?—Was Jeremiah really a patriot? The question has been variously answered. He was not a Phocion, for he never became the tool of a foreign power. To say with Winckler[5] that he was “a decided adherent of the Chaldean party” is to go beyond the evidence. He did indeed counsel submission, but only because his detachment from party gave him a clearness of vision (cf. xxxviii. 17, 18) which the politicians lacked. How he suffered in his uphill course he has told us himself (xv. 10-21). In after ages the oppressed people saw in his love for Israel and his patient resignation their own realized ideal. “And Onias said, This is the lover of the brethren, he who prayeth much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah the prophet of God” (2 Macc. xv. 14). And in proportion as the popular belief in Jeremiah rose, fresh prophecies were added to the book (notably those of the new covenant and of the restoration of the people after seventy years) to justify it. Professor N. Schmidt has gone further into the character of this sympathetic prophet, Ency. Bib. “Jeremiah,” § 5.
Jeremiah’s Prophecies.—It has been said above that our best authorities are Jeremiah’s own prophecies. Which may these be? Before answering we must again point out (see also [Isaiah]) that the records of the pre-exilic prophets came down in a fragmentary form, and that these fragments needed much supplementing to adapt them to the use of post-exilic readers. In Jeremiah, as in Isaiah, we must constantly ask to what age do the phraseology, the ideas and the implied circumstances most naturally point? According to Duhm there are many passages in which metre (see also [Amos]) may also be a factor in our critical conclusions. Jeremiah, he thinks, always uses the same metre. Giesebrecht, on the other hand, maintains that there are passages which are certainly Jeremiah’s, but which are not in what Duhm calls Jeremiah’s metre; Giesebrecht also, himself rather conservative, considers Duhm remarkably free with his emendations. There has also to be considered whether the text of the poetical passages has not often become corrupt, not only from ordinary causes but through the misunderstanding and misreading of north Arabian names on the part of late scribes and editors, the danger to Judah from north Arabia being (it is held) not less in pre-exilic times than the danger from Assyria and Babylonia, so that references to north Arabia are only to be expected. To bring educated readers into touch with critical workers it is needful to acquaint them with these various points, the neglect of any one of which may to some extent injure the results of criticism.
It is a new stage of criticism on which we have entered, so that no single critic can be reckoned as the authority on Jeremiah. But since the results of the higher criticism depend on the soundness and thoroughness of the criticism called “lower,” and since Duhm has the advantage of being exceptionally free from that exaggerated respect for the letters of the traditional text which has survived the destruction of the old superstitious veneration for the vowel-points, it may be best to give the student his “higher critical” results, dated 1901. Let us premise, however, that the portions mentioned in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. as having been “entirely or in part denied,” to Jeremiah, viz. x. 1-16; xxx.; xxxiii.; l.-li. and lii., are still regarded in their present form as non-Jeremianic. The question which next awaits decision is whether any part of the booklet on foreign nations (xxv., xlvi.-li.) can safely be regarded as Jeremianic. Giesebrecht still asserts the genuineness of xxv. 15-24 (apart from glosses), xlvii. (in the main) and xlix. 7, 8, 10, 11. Against these views see N. Schmidt, Ency. Bib., col. 2384.
Let us now listen to Duhm, who analyses the book into six groups of passages. These are (a) i.-xxv., the “words of Jeremiah.” (i. 1); (b) xxvi.-xxix., passages from Baruch’s biography of Jeremiah; (c) xxx.-xxxi., the book of the future of Israel and Judah; (d) xxxii.-xlv., from Baruch; (e) xlvi.-li., the prophecies “concerning the nations”;[6] (f) lii., historical appendix. Upon examining these groups we find that besides a prose letter (ch. xxix.), about sixty poetical pieces may be Jeremiah’s. A: Anathoth passages before 621, (a) ii. 2b, 3, 14-28; ii. 29-37; iii. 1-5; iii. 12b, 13, 19, 20; iii. 21-25; iv. i, 3, 4; these form a cycle, (b) xxxi. 2-6; 15-20; 21, 22; another cycle. (c) iv. 5-8; 11b, 12a, 13, 15-17a; 19-21; 23-26; 29-31; visions and “auditions” of the impending invasion. B: Jerusalem passages. (d) v. 1-6a; 6b-9; 10-17; vi. 1-5; 6b-8; 9-14; 16, 17, 20; 22-26a; 27-30; vii. 28, 29; viii. 4-7a; 8, 9, 13; 14-17; viii. 18-23; ix. 1-8; 9 (short song); 16-18; 19-21; x. 19, 20, 22; reign of Josiah, strong personal element. (e) xxii. 10 (Jehoahaz). xxii. 13-17; probably too xi. 15, 16; xii. 7-12 (Jehoiakim). xxii. 18, 19, perhaps too xxii. 6b, 7; 20-23; and the cycle xiii. 15, 16; 17; 18, 19; 20, 21a, 22-25a, 26, 27 (later, Jehoiakim). xxii. 24; xxii. 28 (Jehoiachin). (f) Later poems. xiv. 2-10; xv. 5-9; xvi. 5-7; xviii. 13-17; xxiii. 9-12; 13-15; xi. 18-20; xv. 10-12; 15-19a, and 20, 21; xvii. 9, 10, 14, 16, 17; xviii. 18-20; xx. 7-11; xx. 14-18; xiv. 17, 18; xvii. 1-4; xxxviii. 24; assigned to the close of Zedekiah’s time.
Two Recensions of the Text.—It has often been said that we have virtually two recensions of the text, that represented by the Septuagint and the Massoretic text, and critics have taken different sides, some for one and some for the other. “Recension,” however, is a bad term; it implies that the two texts which undeniably exist were the result of revising and editing according to definite critical principles. Such, however, is not the case. It is true that “there are (in the LXX.) many omissions of words, sentences, verses and whole passages, in fact, that altogether about 2700 words are wanting, or the eighth part of the Massoretic text” (Bleek). It may also be admitted that the scribes who produced the Hebrew basis of the Septuagint version, conscious of the unsettled state of the text, did not shrink from what they considered a justifiable simplification. But we must also grant that those from whom the “written” Hebrew text proceeds allowed themselves to fill up and to repeat without any sufficient warrant. In each case in which there is a genuine difference of reading between the two texts, it is for the critic to decide; often, however, he will have to seek to go behind what both the texts present in order to constitute a truer text than either. Here is the great difficulty of the future. We may add to the credit of the Septuagint that the position given to the prophecies on “the nations” (chs. xlvi.-li. in our Bible) in the Septuagint is probably more original than that in the Massoretic text. On this point see especially Schmidt, Ency. Bib. “Jeremiah (Book)” §§ 6 and 21; Davidson, Hastings’s Dict. Bible, ii. 573b-575; Driver, Introduction (8th ed.), pp. 269, 270.
The best German commentary is that of Cornill (1905). A skilful translation by Driver, with notes intended for ordinary students (1906) should also be mentioned.
(T. K. C.)