Book of Jeremiah
The
Book of Jeremiah, or
Jeremiah (יִרְמְיָ×"וּ
Yirmiyahu in
Hebrew), is a book that is part of the
Hebrew Bible,
Judaism's
Tanakh, and later became a part of
Christianity's
Old Testament. It was originally written in a complex and poetic Hebrew (apart from verse 10:11, curiously written in
Aramaic), recording the words and events surrounding the life of the
Jewish
prophet Jeremiah who lived at the time of the destruction of
Solomon's Temple in
Jerusalem during the fall of the
Kingdom of Judah at the hands of
Babylonia.
It consists of twenty-three separate and independent sections, arranged in five sub-sections or "books".
#The introduction, ch. 1. #Scorn for the sins of the Jews, consisting of seven sections, (1.) ch. 2; (2.) ch. 3-6; (3.) ch. 7-10; (4.) ch. 11-13; (5.) ch. 14-17:18; (6.) ch. 17:19-ch. 20; (7.) ch. 21-24. #A general review of all nations, forseeing their destruction, in two sections, (1.) ch. 46-49; (2.) ch. 25; with an historical appendix of three sections, (1.) ch. 26; (2.) ch. 27; (3.) ch. 28, 29. #Two sections picturing the hopes of better times, (1.) ch. 30, 31; (2.) ch. 32,33; to which is added an historical appendix in three sections, (1.) ch. 34:1-7; (2.) ch. 34:8-22; (3.) ch. 35. #The conclusion, in two sections, (1.) ch. 36; (2.) ch. 45.
In Egypt, after an interval, Jeremiah is supposed to haveadded three sections, viz., ch. 37-39; 40-43; and 44.
The principal Messianic prophecies are found in 23:1-8;31:31-40; and 33:14-26.
Jeremiah's prophecies are noted for the frequent repetitions found in them of the same words, phrases, and imagery. They cover the period of about 30 years. They are not in chronological order. When, where, and how the text was edited into its present form we know not.
*A proclamation of the certain fall of Jerusalem made, according to the superscription to Zedekiah and the people, during the
siege of Jerusalem, i.e., about 588 B.C. (xxi. 1-10);
*Prophecies against the kings of Judah in the time of Jehoiakim (608;xxi. 11-xxii. 19), completed by the passage xxii. 20-30, descriptive of the leading away of Jehoiachin into captivity (597);
*Threats against the "unfaithful shepherds" (i.e., the prophets), the promise of peace and of the real shepherd (after 597), and warnings against false prophets and godless priests (perhaps in the time of Jehoiakim; xxiii. 1-8, 9-40);
*Vision of the two baskets of figs, illustrating the fate of the captives and of those who were left behind, from the period after the first deportation by Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 (xxiv.);
*Threats of punishments to be inflicted on Judah and the surrounding nations, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e., the year of the
Battle of Carchemish (605; xxv.);
*The first of the historical passages recounting Jeremiah's prophecy in the Temple (comp. vii.), his arrest, his threatened death, and his rescue, in which connection the martyrdom of the prophet Uriah is briefly mentioned (xxvi.).
*Utterances from the time of Zedekiah (see § II.), with an appendix, the last connected prophecy of any length, in ch. xxxv., treating of the fidelity of the Rechabites and of the unfaithfulness of Judah. This dates from a somewhat earlier period, that of Jehoiakim (because certainly before 597), and thus forms a transition to the first passages of the narrative sections.
The
Septuagint (Greek or 'LXX') version of this book is, in its arrangement and in other particulars, different from the Masoretic Hebrew. The Septuagint omits 10:6-8; 25:14; 27:19-22; 29:16-20; 33:14-26; 39:4-13; 52:2, 3, 15, 28-30, etc. In all, about 2,700 words found in the standard Hebrew version are omitted. Also, the 'Oracles against the Nations', that appear as chapters 46-51 in the Masoretic and most dependent versions, in the Septuagint are placed right after 25:13, and in a different order.
According to the
Jewish Encyclopedia,
"a comparison of the Masoretic text with the Septuagint throws some light on the last phase in the history of the origin of the Book of Jeremiah, inasmuch as the translation into Greek was already under way before the work on the Hebrew book had come to an end... The two texts differ above all in that the Septuagint is much shorter... Even if the text of the Septuagint is proved to be the older, it does not necessarily follow that all these variations first arose after the Greek translation had been made, because two different editions of the same text might have been in process of development side by side..."The Book of Jeremiah has also been found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 in
Qumran. One text is the Hebrew variant of the
Septuagint version. This may shed some light on why the Septaugint version differs from the
Masoretic version. It was previously thought that the difference was due to poor translation, but it is now thought by many that the Masoretic version has been reworked, or that there were two versions of this Book.
*Original Hebrew text:
**
ירמי×"ו Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah (
Hebrew)
*Translations into English
**
Jewish translations:
***
Jeremiah at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
***
Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah (Judaica Press) translation with
Rashi's commentary at Chabad.org
**
Christian translations:
***
Online Bible at GospelHall.org***
Jeremiah at The Great Books (New Revised Standard Version)
* (Jewish Encyclopedia)
Book of Jeremiah article * Till, Farrell
The Jeremiah Dilemma The Skeptical Review, No. 4 (1990)
