New Exodus And No Exodus In Jeremiah 26-45: Promise And Warning To The Exiles In Babylon

By Gary Yates

Summary

Seeking to contribute to the discussion of the book of Jeremiah as a literary unity, this study examines the contrast between the promise of new exodus in Jeremiah 30-33 and the experience of the remnant in Judah after the fall of Jerusalem that is recounted in Jeremiah 40-43 as a reversal of the exodus. This contrast of ‘new exodus’ and ‘no exodus’ serves as both a promise and warning to the exilic community in Babylon – the promise that they are to be the recipients of the blessings of restoration and a warning that continued disobedience to YHWH will bring further judgement.

1. Introduction

R. R. Wilson comments, ‘From the standpoint of literary analysis, the book of Jeremiah presents some of the most frustrating problems to be found anywhere.’[1] More directly, Carroll has observed: ‘The person who is not confused by reading the book of Jeremiah has not understood it!’[2] These problems are pronounced in Jeremiah 26, the largely narrative section of the book recounting various episodes from the life and ministry of the prophet Jeremiah. Commenting on this section of the book, Carroll states, ‘No central theme can be detected in the twenty chapters which would allow them a unifying title.’[3]

Several features contribute to the apparent literary disarray of Jeremiah 26. With the exception of the continuous narrative in chapters 37, episodes and messages from the time periods of the reign of Jehoiakim (605-697 BC), the reign of Zedekiah (597-586 BC), and the immediate aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem (post-586 BC) are interspersed with little or no regard for chronological sequence. The poetic oracles in Jeremiah 30 seem out of place in a section of the book that otherwise consists exclusively of prose narratives and sermons. Additionally, the message of hope in the so-called ‘Book of Consolation’ in chapters 30 conflicts with the largely negative emphasis on doom and destruction that predominates in the surrounding context. Hobbs writes, ‘The reason for the present context of 30 still remains something of a mystery.’[4] Similarly, Rofé states that the structure of Jeremiah 25 is ‘disturbed by the inclusion of the material in chapters 30, 31, and 33’.[5]

These difficulties, as well as similar problems of literary cohesion in other portions of the book, appear to suggest a long and complex compositional history for the book of Jeremiah. Other indicators of this complex compositional history would include the textual differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic Text of Jeremiah, the presence of the Jeremiah traditions in various literary forms (poetry/prose; speeches/narrative) and redactional issues related especially to the Deuteronomistic influence on the book. Nevertheless, there is a growing awareness in Jeremiah studies of the evidence of literary and theological unity for the book and a greater scholarly emphasis on synchronic reading of the book of Jeremiah as a literary entity.[6] The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the contrast between Jeremiah’s promise of new exodus in Israel’s restoration (chs. 30) and the story of no exodus (or exodus unravelled) in the experiences of Jeremiah and the Jews remaining in the land following the exile (chs. 40) is a central unifying feature in Jeremiah 26.[7] If Jeremiah 26 were a drama, the plot would revolve around the question of ‘What is Israel’s future as God’s covenant people in light of the fall of Jerusalem, the removal of the Davidic king, and the exile that is narrated in these chapters?’ The answer of the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah is that there is hope for Israel’s glorious future that lies beyond the bleak experiences of the present. The future lies not with those who remained in the land following the fall of Jerusalem, but with those who will return from exile in Babylon. The rhetorical interplay between chapters 30-33 and 40-43 is central to how this message is presented within Jeremiah 26 as a whole.

The contrast between the hope of chapters 30 and the doom of chapters 40 emphasises the fact that the experiences of the survivors remaining in the land post-586 (chs. 40) are the exact opposite of what Jeremiah envisages for Israel in the land at the time of the future restoration and renewal (chs. 30). As a result, these contrasts highlight the message of both promise and warning communicated in Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon. Jeremiah identifies the Babylonian exiles as the ‘good figs’ with whom lay the hopes for Israel’s future (24:1-17; contrast 29:17-19). While the promise of restoration stands at a central position in the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah, the book also suggests a potential delay in the realisation of these promises. The exiles must truly repent and avoid the sins of the Jews who remained in the land following the exile if they wish to experience the blessings of restoration.

2. The Contrast Between New Exodus And No Exodus In Jeremiah 30-33 And 40-43

2.1 The Promise Of A New Exodus In Jeremiah 30-33

The central difference between Jeremiah 30 and 40 is the contrasting use of exodus imagery in the two sections. Like other Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah portrays the promised return from Babylonian exile as a new exodus.[8] Chapters 30 portray a new exodus surpassing the old in magnitude and scope (cf. 23:7-8). On the other hand, chapters 40 narrate a sequence of events that constitute a reversal and overturning of the original exodus. Exodus allusions and/or references to the wilderness wanderings and conquest of Canaan during Israel’s formative period as a nation are especially prominent in four specific passages in Jeremiah 30. In 30:1-4, the restoration and return from exile are specifically linked to the land promise associated with the exodus and the conquest (v. 3).[9] The fact that 30:1-4 serves as the prose introduction to the poetic oracles in chapters 30 (and to the message of promise in 30 as a whole) signifies the orientation of this entire section toward a presentation of the return from exile as a second exodus.

The oracle of salvation in 31:2-6 is stocked with phrases and imagery associated with the exodus.[10] Verse 2 provides a summary of the key events in Israel’s early salvation history:

1. the exodus (‘the people who escaped the sword’)[11]
2. preservation in the wilderness (‘found favour in the wilderness’)[12]
3. the conquest (‘Israel ... went to find its “rest”’)[13]

The reference to ‘timbrels’ (תף) and ‘dancing’ (מהלה/מחול) in 31:4 recalls the celebratory song and dance of Miriam in Exodus 15:20-21.[14] The motivation behind the deliverance is YHWH’s ‘everlasting love’ for Israel; this sovereign love is presented in the Pentateuch as the basis of YHWH’s election of Israel (cf. Deut. 4:37; 5:10; 7:8-9, 13; 10:15; 23:5).

The salvation oracle in Jeremiah 31:31-34 proclaims that the former covenant made under Moses has been broken and that YHWH will establish a new covenant with Israel (cf. 32:38-41). As part of the exodus imagery, Jeremiah himself is portrayed as a new Moses.[15] Like Moses at Sinai, Jeremiah functions as a covenant mediator. Holladay explains concerning the Moses imagery applied to the prophet Jeremiah:

Moses had led the Israelites to God’s first covenant, and thereby obedience to him and his gift to them of the land became correlated. But now in the eyes of Jeremiah the people had disobeyed, and the land was no longer theirs; and so, as the new Moses in the face of the new wilderness into which the people had been sent, Jeremiah dared to look forward to the time when God would draw up a new covenant, thereby to fulfill his ultimate purposes for his people.[16]

As in the first exodus, the deliverance from exile will be accompanied by the establishment of a covenant between YHWH and Israel, but this ‘new’ covenant will be qualitatively different from the Sinaitic covenant in that it will guarantee Israel’s perpetual fidelity and obedience to its stipulations (cf. 31:31-34; 32:39-41). The future will be radically different in that there will be no need for Israel ever again to experience national judgement. This future act of salvation will secure the relationship between YHWH and Israel intended but never fully realised by the first exodus.[17]

The prayer of the prophet Jeremiah in 32:16-25 also makes an explicit connection between the exodus and Israel’s future restoration from exile. Jeremiah 32:1-5 records Jeremiah’s purchase of family property at Anathoth, a seemingly foolish act at the time of the Babylonian siege, were it not for YHWH’s promise that Israel will regain possession of the land in the future (32:15). Jeremiah’s reflection on the creation and exodus traditions gives the prophet confidence that ‘nothing is too difficult’ for YHWH to accomplish. The prophet’s remembrance that YHWH acted with ‘a mighty hand and an outstretched arm’ in the exodus (32:20-22) leads to faith in YHWH’s promise of return and restoration from exile (cf. 32:36-44).[18]

The remainder of Jeremiah 30 fills out the picture of the deliverance from exile as a new exodus. The restoration from exile will provide further demonstration of YHWH’s salvific power within the life and history of the people of Israel (cf. 30:7, 10, 11; 31:7-11).[19] The terms of oppression related to Israel’s bondage in Egypt are applied to Judah’s slavery in exile.[20] Like the exodus, the restoration is deliverance from slavery in a foreign land (30:8, 20). The cry of Israel because of its oppression will turn to rejoicing (31:9, 12-13). In the exodus tradition, the deliverance of Israel is the result of YHWH’s response to the ‘cry’ (זעק) of his people (cf. Exod. 2:23; 3:7, 9; 14:10, 15). The root זעק that appears in these exodus passages also appears in Jeremiah 30:15, and the reason for Israel’s deliverance is that YHWH ‘hears’ (שׁמע) the cry of his people and acts on their behalf (31:18; cf. Exod. 3:7).[21] The cry of Israel because of its oppression will turn to rejoicing (31:9, 12). In both the exodus and the return from exile, YHWH acts as the ‘healer’ (רפא) of Israel (30:15; Exod. 15:26).[22]

When returning from exile, the people of Israel will plunder their enemies in the same way that their forefathers plundered the Egyptians (30:16; cf. Exod. 12:36), and their foreign oppressors will be destroyed just as the armies of Egypt were defeated at the Sea of Reeds (30:11, 16-17). YHWH will bring fame and renown to himself and to Israel (30:19; 33:8-9).[23] YHWH will lead his people back to their homeland and will provide water for their journey as in the wilderness (31:9, 21; cf. Exod. 14:19; 17:1-7; Num. 20:1-3). The result of this new exodus is the processional call, ‘Come, let us go up to Zion’ (31:6) and the joyful streaming of the people of Israel to Zion from the ‘ends of the earth’ (31:8-12).[24]

2.2 The Problem Of No Exodus In Jeremiah 40-43

The contrast in Jeremiah 40 is that the assassination of Gedaliah in 41:1-3 sets in motion a disastrous series of events that leads to the overturning of the first exodus for the remnant living in the land rather than the experience of new exodus promised in chapters 30. The Moses imagery associated with Jeremiah in the first panel resumes in Jeremiah 42. Johanan and the Jews under his leadership come seeking intercession and counsel from Jeremiah (cf. 42:1). The encounter between the people and prophet in chapter 42 resembles another Mount Sinai. Like Moses, Jeremiah ‘declares’ (נגד) the word of YHWH to the people (42:3-4; cf. Exod. 19:3; Deut. 5:5). The pledge of obedience to the prophetic word on the part of Johanan and his followers who seek guidance from Jeremiah (42:2-6) recalls the ineffectual promise of the people of Israel to obey the terms of YHWH’s covenant at Mount Sinai as Moses prepares to go up the mountain to receive the law of God (cf. Exod. 19:8; 24:3, 7).[25] The almost immediate rejection of following a course of fidelity to YHWH on the part of Johanan and his compatriots (cf. 43:2-7) is further reminiscent of Israel’s defection at Sinai in worshipping the golden calf before Moses (cf. Exod. 32).[26]

The descent of Johanan and the small contingent of Jewish refugees (including Jeremiah who is taken against his will) into Egypt out of fear of Babylonian reprisal for the assassination of Gedaliah in 43:2-7 might at first recall Jacob’s family going down to Egypt when they were small in number prior to the exodus (cf. Exod. 1:7, 20; Deut. 26:5).[27] However, this journey down to Egypt in defiance of the prophetic word ultimately represents a full reversal of the original exodus.[28] Israel’s salvation history has come full circle, and the ultimate covenant curse of return to Egypt has come into effect. Stulman comments that the book of Jeremiah ‘presents the end of Israel’s story where it originated, back in Egypt’.[29] The resumption of Jeremiah’s ministry of intercession (42:3-4) has raised the possibility that this second Moses would lead Israel to a life of blessing in the promised land, but Jeremiah ultimately fails just like Moses. As in the ministry of Moses, blessing is denied the present generation and transferred to a coming one.[30] Also, like Moses, Jeremiah identifies so completely with his people in his role as prophet that he too must experience exclusion from the promised land because of the sins of the nation (43:6; cf. Deut. 1:37; 3:26; 4:21).[31]

2.3 The Future King In Jeremiah 30-33 And Continued Davidic Failure In Jeremiah 40-43

The role of the house of David is another specific point of contrast between chapters 30 and 40. The Book of Consolation looks forward to the coming of the ideal Davidic ruler, the ‘righteous Branch’ (צמח צדקה) who will bring justice and peace to Jerusalem (33:15-16 cf. 30:9). This Davidic ruler will have a special relationship with YHWH and will ‘arise’ in order to ‘be near’ YHWH (30:21). The closing promise in 30 is that YHWH’s covenant with the house of David is as permanent and abiding as the day and night (33:21-25).[32]

On the other hand, the sole Davidic figure in Jeremiah 40 is the brutally violent Ishmael who murders Gedaliah and inflicts suffering and death on his own people. Israelite theology celebrated the choice of David’s family as YHWH’s human vice-regent (cf. 2 Sam. 7; Ps. 78:70- 72). However, in Jeremiah 40-43, Ishmael the Davidide is the usurper who murders Gedaliah, the divinely legitimised leader at this point in Judah’s history (cf. 41:1-3).[33] Before the murder of Gedaliah, the Judean official Johanan expresses his fear that the death of Gedaliah would result in a negation of the blessings of ‘return’ (שׁוב) (40:12) and ‘gathering’ (קבץ) (40:15) that the people of Judah had begun to experience, and Ishmael’s ruthless action brings these fears to realisation. Ishmael takes captives from among the people of Judah and then removes his captives from the land in the same way that the Babylonians have done (41:10; cf. 30:8-9). Ironically, the very segment of the population of Judah that had avoided deportation from the land of promise by the Babylonians is taken captive by a member of the house of David. Ishmael acts more like a foreign oppressor than a beneficent leader.[34]

The Book of Consolation in panel one looks forward to the reuniting of Israel and Judah as one people. YHWH promises, ‘I will restore the fortunes of Judah and Israel and will rebuild them as they were before’ (33:7).[35] In contrast to these promises of the reunification of Israel, the narratives in 40 portray Ishmael as stoking the fires of the centuries- long division between the north and south by brutally murdering a group of seventy pilgrims from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria who have come to worship at Jerusalem (41:4-9). Ishmael is the antithesis of the ideal Davidic ruler promised in chapters 30.

2.4 Divine Enablement To Obey Versus Persistent Disobedience

The Book of Consolation envisions a time when YHWH’s new covenant with Israel will produce a nation that is completely obedient to the law of God because the law has been internalised and written on the hearts of the people (31:31-34; cf. 24:7). Divine enablement will overcome human weakness and rebellion.[36] The point of contrast in Jeremiah 40 is that the people of Judah in the land are as disobedient after the fall of Jerusalem as they were before. The blessing envisaged in 30 has clearly not arrived because the ‘old covenant’ conditions that have characterised the history of Israel and Judah remain in effect. The new covenant promise in 31:34 is that there will no longer be a need for one man to teach another because all men will know YHWH ‘from the least of them to the greatest’ (ועד־גדולם למקטנם), but in the immediate aftermath of exile, the people ‘from the least of them to the great’ (ועד־גדול מקטן) stand in need of having the word of YHWH mediated through the prophet Jeremiah (42:1-3).[37] When Johanan and his companions ultimately reject Jeremiah’s counsel and go to Egypt in disobedience of the divine directive (cf. 43:7), it confirms that the word of YHWH has not been written on their hearts.

One feature of the narratives in 40 that especially highlights the continuation of ‘old covenant’ conditions in the aftermath of exile is that events involving the remnant in the land after the fall of Jerusalem strikingly parallel events occurring in Judah before the fall of Jerusalem. These parallels, which demonstrate that the Jews remaining in the land continue the sins that brought the judgement of exile, include the following:

1. The two major acts of disobedience in 40 – Ishmael’s assassination of Gedaliah (41:2-3) and Johanan’s flight to Egypt (43:1-7) – represent a continued refusal of Jeremiah’s counsel to submit to Babylon that had necessitated the destruction of Jerusalem (38:2-4).[38]
2. Ishmael’s murder of Gedaliah with the ‘sword’ (חרב) (41:2) recalls Jehoiakim’s execution of the prophet Uriah with the ‘sword’ (חרב) in 26:20-23.
3. Ishmael’s act of dumping bodies in the ‘well’ (בור) (41:7) recalls the officials of Judah casting Jeremiah into a ‘well’ (בור) and leaving him to die (38:6-7).
4. Jeremiah’s willingness to pray for Johanan and his followers after the fall of Jerusalem (42:2-4) recalls the prophet’s refusal to pray for Zedekiah and the people before the fall (37:2-10; 42:2-4). This contrast makes the disobedience of Johanan even more culpable.
5. Johanan’s decision to go down to Egypt as a means of avoiding Babylonian reprisal for the assassination of Gedaliah (42:18; 43:4-7) recalls Zedekiah’s misguided policy of turning to Egypt for security and protection against the Babylonian siege (37:2-4, 8-10).
6. The accusation of Johanan and his men that Jeremiah is a traitor who only wants them to remain in the land so that he can hand them over to the Babylonians (43:2-3) recalls the charge of Zedekiah’s officials that Jeremiah is causing the people of Judah to defect to the Babylonians and weakening the military effort of continued resistance against the Babylonians (38:2-4). Jeremiah labels the charge of Zedekiah’s officials as שׁקר (37:14), while Johanan’s delegation accuses Jeremiah of giving counsel that is שׁקר (43:2).

The Judeans in the land after the fall of Jerusalem are the object of judgement rather than the recipients of blessing because they persist in the sins that necessitated the judgement of exile in the first place. The parallelism of events before and after 586 BC in Jeremiah 26 serves to demonstrate that the era of restoration and blessing envisaged in chapters 30 is far from reality in the experience of the Jews living in the land immediately following the Babylonian exile.

2.5 The Contrasting Sign Acts In Jeremiah 32:1-15 And 43:9-13

A final point of direct contrast between Jeremiah 30 and 40 is the sign acts that appear in 32:1-15 and 43:9-13. These two sign acts are similar to one another in that both provide a message concerning the fate of the Jews in a specific land that will fall under the control of Babylon and these two acts visually reflect the intended contrast between 30 as a message of hope and 40 as a section of judgement. In 32:1-15, Jeremiah purchases family property at Anathoth and then concludes the transaction by having his scribe Baruch place the two copies of the title deed to the property in a clay jar. This action is accompanied by the promise that property will once again be purchased in the land (32:15). As Friebel explains, ‘Jeremiah’s action was a metonymic expression for the resumption of normal economic, societal, familial, and covenantal activities in the land.’[39]

On the other hand, the sign act of Jeremiah 43 offers a warning that the land of Egypt will become a place of death and destruction for the Jews living there. Jeremiah’s burial of several large stones outside a government building in Taphenes signifies Nebuchadnezzar’s future conquest of Egypt and marks Egypt as a place where the victorious Nebuchadnezzar will set up his throne (43:10-11).[40] The Jewish refugees who have fled to Egypt will soon discover that they are unable to run away from YHWH’s punishment and Nebuchadnezzar’s sovereignty over the nations.

The sign acts of Jeremiah 32:1-15 and 43:8-13 draw the starkest possible contrast between the glorious destiny of those who will participate in the new exodus and the horrible fate awaiting the Jewish refugees who have fled to Egypt in a reversal of God’s original act of deliverance for Israel. In Jeremiah 32, YHWH will ‘hand over’ Jerusalem to the Babylonian king (נבוכדראצר ... ביד ... נתן) (32:28, 36), but the land will be returned to Israel in the restoration (32:37-44). In contrast, YHWH will ‘hand over’ Hophra, the Egyptian Pharaoh, to Nebuchadnezzar (נבוכדראצר ... ביד ... נתן) (44:30), and the Jews who are living in Egypt will themselves be destroyed (44:11-14, 26-30).

3. The New Exodus/No Exodus Contrast And Jeremiah’s Message Concerning The Future Of Israel

The final section of this paper will attempt to explain the rhetorical setting and function of the contrast between new exodus and no exodus that appears in Jeremiah 30 and 40. This contrast in Jeremiah is part of the larger concern in the book of Jeremiah to address the issue of Israel’s future and which segment of Judah’s populace has the blessing of YHWH in the aftermath of exile. As Anderson has explained, the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon resulted in a ‘heterogeneous constitution of the Jewish people in the Exilic, Postexilic, and Second Temple periods’.[41] Rather than a single people, the Jews in the exilic period existed as three diverse communities: the remnant in Judah, the Jewish refugees who fled to Egypt, and the exiles in Babylon.

3.1 The Exiles And Israel’s Hope For The Future

The clear intention of the book of Jeremiah is to demonstrate that the hopes for Israel’s future restoration as a nation lay with the exiles in Babylon, who appear to have taken the brunt of YHWH’s anger.[42] The exiles are the ‘good figs’ (24:2-7) and the recipients of YHWH’s promise that they will return to the land when the seventy years of exile are over (24:5-7; 29:10-14). In contrast to these promises to the exiles, Jeremiah places a curse upon every other distinct Jewish group and community: (1) those who remain in the land following the deportation of the exiles in 597 BC (24:9; 29:18; 34:17); (2) the remnant in the land following the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC (42:18); and (3) the refugees who flee to Egypt after the assassination of Gedaliah (44:8, 12).[43]

Consistent with this language of cursing, the narratives and messages in Jeremiah portray and/or predict in hyperbolic fashion the destruction of ‘all’ of Judah with the exception of the exiles in Babylon.[44] The Jews who remain in the land following the deportation of 597 BC are spoiled and rotten fruit not worthy of preservation (24:2-3, 8-10). This community will be destroyed by the Babylonian assault on Jerusalem because of its covenant infidelity under the leadership of Zedekiah. References to king, leaders, officials, priests, and ‘all the people’ (34:8, 19-20; 35:17; 37:1-2) stress the totality of disobedience and the completeness of the impending judgement. The only group spared from this national destruction is the obscure Rechabite tribe (35:1-16, 18-19), whose continued existence contributes nothing to Israel’s future identity as a nation.

According to the book of Jeremiah, the only people left in the land after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC are the ‘poorest people of the land’ (Jer. 39:10; 52:15-16; cf. 2 Kgs 24:14; 25:12), and this group also falls under a sentence of total judgement. The impression in Jeremiah is that Johanan’s followers who flee to Egypt following the assassination of Gedaliah include all the people of Judah living in the land at that time (note the repetition of ‘all’ (כל) in 41:16; 42:1 [2], 8 [2], 17; 43:2; 4 [2], 5 [2], 6 and the additional ‘from the least of them to the greatest’ in 42:1, 8).[45] When Johanan and his followers disregard the counsel of Jeremiah to remain in the land and choose instead to flee to Egypt, they bring upon themselves a sentence of destruction (42:17, 18). The community remaining in the land post-586 cannot be the recipients of the promise because, from the perspective of Jeremiah, there is no one left in the land once Johanan and his followers depart.[46]

In line with the warning of the complete annihilation of the Jewish refugees in Egypt in 42:18-22, the judgement speech against the Jews in Egypt in Jeremiah 44 further stresses that the judgement will fall upon ‘all’ (כל) of the people belonging to this segment of the Jewish populace. The entire community is guilty of worshipping other gods – it involves ‘all’ the Jews living in Lower and Upper Egypt (v. 15) and includes both the men and women (cf. vv. 15, 19, 25). With a unanimous voice, this community expresses blatant rebellion against YHWH: ‘We will not obey the message you have spoken to us in the name of YHWH’ (v. 16).[47] They vow as one to carry out their promise to present offerings to the Queen of Heaven (v. 17). Reflecting their total disregard for the covenant with YHWH, they attribute the fall of Jerusalem to the Josianic reforms that brought an end to the idolatrous practices that were common during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon (v. 18; cf. 2 Kgs 21:2-9, 20-22), believing that the gods have withheld their blessing.[48]

The defiant rebellion of the Jewish community in Egypt brings the deserved sentence of complete destruction. Jeremiah’s announcements of judgement in vv. 20-29 are directed to ‘all’ (כל) of the Jews in Egypt (vv. 20, 24, 26 – note also ‘all’ in vv. 12, 28 and ‘from the least to the greatest’ in v. 12). There will be no survivors of the ‘sword and famine’ among them (vv. 12-13, 27).[49] The ‘remnant’ in Egypt who has survived the destruction of Jerusalem will not themselves leave behind a ‘remnant’ (vv. 7, 14).[50]

3.2 The Warning To The Exiles

In one sense, the message of Jeremiah could be viewed as political ‘propaganda’ written to support the favoured status of one Jewish community over its rivals. Carroll argues that the perspective of the book of Jeremiah concerning the fate of the Jewish communities after the fall of Jerusalem:

reflects an ideology of occupation and control of the temple community in the reconstructionist era of the Persian period. Not only are there exclusivistic claims to possession of and power in the land, but there is also such a denigration of all opposition that no rival claim has any legitimacy whatsoever. Where once deportation may have been a sign of divine anger and rejection, here it has become a foundational element in the warrants for empowerment in the land (cf. Ezek. 11:14-21).[51]

And yet, the message of Jeremiah is much more than an assertion of the favoured status of the Babylonian exiles. The rhetorical interplay of Jeremiah 30 and 40 and the contrast between new exodus and no exodus serves as both a promise and a warning for the exiles. Positively, the narrative accounts in 40 would demonstrate that removal from the promised land did not cause the exiles to miss out on the blessings of restoration and new exodus. Conditions in Judah in the immediate aftermath of the exile ultimately turned out to be the exact opposite of what Jeremiah envisaged for Israel’s future restoration and renewal. The Jews left in the land had no advantage over the exiles and they did not remain in the land because they were exempt from God’s judgement.

Negatively, the narrative of Jeremiah 40 and what happened to the Jews remaining in the land who later fled to Egypt, would serve as a warning to the exiles of what would happen to them if they continued the rebellious behaviour that had characterised Judah’s past. As Ben Zvi has observed, the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible often reflect a ‘past fulfilment perspective’, in which historical events have proven the accuracy of the prophet’s warnings of judgement and provide a warning to the contemporary audience to whom the book is addressed; subsequent generations that persistence in unbelief and disobedience will bring further judgement from God.[52]

Seitz’s assessment that the book of Jeremiah views the exiles in Babylon as ‘God’s obedient folk’ is an oversimplification.[53] The Jews in Babylon are deserving of their exile because they have not obeyed YHWH (29:19).[54] Rather than simply being labelled as ‘God’s obedient folk’, the exiles are commanded to obey YHWH’s command to ‘build houses, settle (ושׁבו), and plant gardens’ in submission to Babylonian authority over their lives (29:4-7). The issue of how the exiles respond to this prophetic call for submission to Babylon is precisely why the story of what happened to the remnant in the land is so important. Like the exiles, the remnant in the land had a real opportunity to experience divine blessing. Gedaliah promised the people in the land that things would go well for them if they would ‘settle’ (שׁבו) in the land and serve the Babylonians (40:9).[55] Jews scattered to the lands surrounding Judah had ‘returned’ (שׁוב) to join Gedaliah in the homeland (40:12).[56] The remnant in the land also enjoyed a productive harvest while Gedaliah was their governor (40:12).[57] As Lundbom observes, ‘It seems as if Jeremiah’s words about people returning to the land are being wonderfully fulfilled.’[58] The death of Gedaliah serves to shatter the prophet’s hopes.[59]

Even after the death of Gedaliah, Jeremiah prays for the remnant in the land because the divine prohibition of prophetic intercession, in effect, before the exile has been removed (42:2-4; cf. 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). The remnant gives their solemn promise to ‘obey’ (שׁמע) the Lord (42:6), and Jeremiah promises that obedience to his counsel to remain in the land will result in blessing rather than disaster (42:10). Just like the exiles in Babylon, the remnant in the land had received a genuine offer of divine blessing, but the potential blessing is forfeited when Johanan and his followers ‘disobey’ (שׁמע לא) the word of YHWH and flee to Egypt (43:4-7).[60]

In the book of Jeremiah, the Jewish remnant in the land is not so much a rival group to the exiles as a mirror image to help the exiles see for themselves the ultimate consequences of failure to follow the prophetic counsel to settle down and submit to Babylon. Rather than merely using the language of preaching (command and warning), the book of Jeremiah employs the more effective tool of teaching by example. This example has even greater impact in that it focuses on the failure of a rival community that members of the exilic community would have readily acknowledged. If the exiles are willing to admit that the remnant in the land made a mistake in not submitting to Babylon and not obeying the Lord, then they should be wise enough not to follow the same course of action. By dispassionately observing from the ‘past fulfilment perspective’ what happened to the remnant in the land after the fall of Jerusalem, the exiles could see what the future held for them if they refused to ‘settle’ in Babylon while waiting for the future restoration.[61]

More than simply validating the favoured status of the exiles in Babylon, the rhetorical function of the demise of the remnant in the land and the contrast between new exodus/no exodus in Jeremiah 30 and 40 is to motivate the exiles to obedience. The exilic community must do more than simply wait out the seventy years in order to become the recipients of restoration. YHWH promises to ‘bring back’ (שׁוב) the exiles (29:10), but their return will only come when they ‘seek’ YHWH with all their heart (29:12-14). When they turn to YHWH in prayer, then YHWH will respond to their cries for help (29:12).[62]

YHWH has promised restoration to the exilic community, but promised blessing can be forfeited by disobedience to YHWH. For the exiles, the remnant in the land functions as an all-too-real demonstration of the theological principle of Jeremiah 18:7-10 – that disobedience can turn promised blessing into judgement and disaster. The fact that the remnant in the land essentially repeats the sins of Judah that had previously necessitated the judgement of 586 BC should further serve as a warning to the exiles of their own systemic corruption and tendency toward disobedience. The message of the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah is that the exile is continuing and ‘unended’ as long as the exiles persist in their disobedience.[63] McKane writes that the promissory message of Jeremiah ‘is disengaged from a present which offers no support for it and demands nothing less than a new age – a Messianic age’.[64]

The tension between the divine initiative to save and the necessity of human responsiveness toward YHWH found in the theology of Jeremiah means that the promises of restoration in this book have an open-ended quality to them. The promises are certain in terms of their ultimate fulfilment because YHWH will ultimately act unilaterally to bring about Israel’s obedience and faithfulness (cf. 31:31-34), but the timing of the fulfilment is unclear. The fact that the disobedience of the remnant in the land is the final chronological event in the ministry of Jeremiah suggests delay in the realisation of Jeremiah’s promises of complete restoration for Israel as a nation. There is even the implied warning that the end of the seventy years will not bring automatic blessing and restoration for the exiles.

Even when YHWH promises to act unilaterally to save, human response to the word of YHWH is a determining factor in the timing of the fulfilment of these promises. While Jeremiah promises in 31:31-34 that YHWH will act unilaterally to restore his people, he also proclaims that the people have a responsibility to seek YHWH and to turn to him (cf. 29:10-14).[65] There is clearly a paradox in this aspect of the prophetic message, but the prophets are unconcerned to resolve the tension between divine enablement and human responsibility in the manner of a systematic theologian. Instead their objective is to call the people to return to YHWH so that the pattern of disobedience that has necessitated YHWH’s judgement might be broken.

4. Conclusion

The tension between new exodus and no exodus is central to the literary structure of Jeremiah 26 and the theological message of the book of Jeremiah as a whole. YHWH will restore his people from exile with a second exodus even greater than the first (Jer. 30), but the exodus reversal experienced by the remnant in the land as the final chronological event in the ministry of Jeremiah (Jer. 40) suggests that unbelief and disobedience remain as impediments to the blessings of restoration promised to the exilic community. Jeremiah’s view of the future is promising, but there is also an element of uncertainty as to when Israel’s glorious future will appear. While looking forward to the fulfilment of YHWH’s promises of restoration and renewal, the exilic community must also look backward and learn from the experiences of the remnant in the land that missed out on potential blessing because of their disobedience to the word of YHWH.

Notes

1. Robert R. Wilson, ‘Poetry and Prose in the Book of Jeremiah’ in Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine, ed. Robert Chazan et al. (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999): 413.
2. Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah (OTG; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989): 9.
3. Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986): 509.
4. T. R. Hobbs, ‘The Composition and Structure of the Book of Jeremiah’, CBQ 34 (1972): 268.
5. A. Rofé, ‘The Arrangement of the Book of Jeremiah,’ ZAW 101 (1991): 395.
6. See J. G. McConville, Judgement and Promise: An Interpretation of the Book of Jeremiah (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1993); Louis Stulman, Order Amid Chaos: Jeremiah as Symbolic Tapestry (The Biblical Seminar 57; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); Martin Kessler, ed., Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2004). Recent commentaries on Jeremiah reflecting this shifting emphasis on rhetorical study and/or treatment of Jeremiah as a literary and theological unity include: Louis Stulman, Jeremiah (AOTC; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005); Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 21A; New York: Doubleday, 1999); Jeremiah 21-36 (AB 21B; New York: Doubleday, 2004); Jeremiah 37-52 (AB 21C; New York: Doubleday, 2004); Terence E. Fretheim, Jeremiah (Smith and Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, Georgia: Smith and Helwys, 2002); Walter Brueggemann; A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). For the methodological issues involved in the debate over synchronic and diachronic approaches to the book, see A. R. Pete Diamond, Kathleen M. O’Connor, and Louis Stulman, eds., Troubling Jeremiah (JSOTSup 260; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
7. For discussion of the literary structure of Jer. 26-45, see Gary E. Yates, ‘Narrative Parallelism and the “Jehoiakim Frame”: A Reading Strategy for Jeremiah 26-45’, JETS 48 (2005): 263-81. This article argues that chs. 26-45 consists of two panels of material (26-35, 36-45) that are framed by passages dating from the time of Jehoiakim (chs. 26, 35, 36, 45). These two panels are also roughly parallel to one another in four ways: (1)Jehoiakim’s response of hostile unbelief to the prophetic word (26, 36); (2)controversy over Jeremiah’s call for submission to Babylon (27-29, 37-39); (3) messages and events concerning the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem (30-33, 40– 43); and (4) the issue of covenant faithfulness with a warning of a message of judgement and a promise of hope to the faithful (34-35; 44-45). This structure heightens the contrast between the new exodus in 30-33 and no exodus in 40-43. For a summary of other views concerning the structure of chs. 26-45 (or 21-45), see A. J. O. van der Wal, ‘Toward a Synchronic Analysis of MT Jeremiah’ in Reading Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence: 13-23.
8. Cf. Jer. 50:33-38 and Isa. 4:5-6; 10:26-27; 11:15-16; 35:6-8; 43:1-2, 16-21; 44:27- 28; 51:9-11; 52:10-12; 55:12-13. For the second exodus in the OT prophets, see further Alice Ogden Bellis, ‘The New Exodus in Jeremiah 50:33-38’ in Imagery and Imagination in Biblical Literature: Essays in Honor of Aloysius Fitzgerald, ed. Lawrence E. Boadt and Mark S. Smith (CBQMS 32; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 2001): 157-68; Anthony R. Ceresko, ‘The Rhetorical Strategy of the Fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13): Poetry and the Exodus – New Exodus’, CBQ 56 (1994): 42-55; Rikki E. Watts, ‘Consolation or Confrontation: Isaiah 40 and the Delay of the New Exodus’, TynBul 41 (1990): 31-53; Hans M. Barstad, A Way in the Wilderness: The Second Exodus in the Message of 2 Isaiah (JSSM 12; Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1989); Bernhard W. Anderson, ‘Exodus and Covenant in Second Isaiah and Prophetic Tradition’ in Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright, ed. Frank M. Cross et al. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976): 339-60; Dale Patrick, ‘Epiphany Imagery in Second Isaiah: Portrayal of a New Exodus’, HAR 8 (1984): 125-42.
9. The phrase ירשׁ... נתן ... ארץ (‘the land [God] gave to possess’) appears through the book of Deuteronomy in anticipation of the coming conquest (cf. Deut. 3:18; 5:31; 9:6; 15:4; 16:20; 17:14; 19:2, 14; 25:19; 26:1).
10. Kenneth Mulzac, ‘The Remnant and the New Covenant in the Book of Jeremiah’, AUSS 34 (1996): 240-42.
11. Cf. Exod. 5:21; 15:9; 18:4. This expression recalls the exodus as deliverance from death at the hands of Pharaoh and the Egyptian army.
12. Mulzac, ‘The Remnant and the New Covenant’: 241, n. 11. The phrase ‘to find favour’ (חןמצא) with YHWH as object is prominent in the book of Exodus (cf. Exod. 33:12, 13[2], 16, 17; 34:9; cf. Num. 11:11; 32:5).
13. In 31:2, רגע = ‘rest’. The synonymous נוח is used with reference to the exodus- conquest (Exod. 33:14; Deut. 12:9, 10; 25:19). See Lundbom, Jeremiah 21-36: 415.
14. A. J. O. van der Wal, ‘Themes from Exodus in Jeremiah 30’ in Studies in the Book of Exodus, ed. Marc Vervenne (Louvain: Peeters, 1996): 563; and Mulzac, ‘The Remnant and the New Covenant’: 241. Note the recurring theme of joy in 30:19; 31:13.
15. For further discussion of this idea of Jeremiah as a new Moses or a prophet like Moses, see William L. Holladay, ‘The Background of Jeremiah’s Self-Understanding: Moses, Samuel, and Psalm 22’, JBL 83 (1964): 153-64; Christopher R. Seitz, ‘The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah’, ZAW 101 (1991): 3-27; and Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993): 52- 62. The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel are also depicted in ways that show them to be prophets ‘like Moses’. See Martin O’Kane, ‘Isaiah: A Prophet in the Footsteps of Moses’, JSOT 69 (1996): 29-51; and Henry McKeating, ‘Ezekiel the “Prophet Like Moses”?’ JSOT 69 (1994): 97-109.
16. Holladay, ‘The Background of Jeremiah’s Self-Understanding’: 163.
17. The covenant formulae identifying Israel as the ‘people’ of YHWH and YHWH as the God of Israel are prominent in Jer. 30 and the story of the exodus (cf. 30:22; 31:1, 20; 31:33 and Exod. 6:7; 29:45). See van der Wal, ‘Themes From Exodus in Jeremiah 30’: 562-63.
18. Richard D. Patterson and Michael Travers in ‘Contours of the Exodus Motif in Jesus’ Earthly Ministry’, WTJ 66 (2004): 33 note similar prayers of the prophets based on remembrance of the historical exodus in Isa. 63:7-18 and Mic. 7:14-20.
19. Jer. 30 employs the same salvific terms used in the exodus tradition to describe the coming restoration: e.g. ישׁע, ‘to save/rescue’ (30:7, 10, 11; 31:11; cf. Exod. 14:30; nominal form in Exod. 14:13; 15:2); פדה, ‘to ransom/deliver’ (31:11; cf. Deut. 7:8; 9:26; 13:6; 15:15; Ps. 78:42; Mic. 6:4; nominal form in Exod. 8:19); גאל, ‘to redeem/ deliver’ (31:11; cf. Exod. 6:6; 15:13; Pss. 74:2; 77:16; 78:35); and פקד, ‘to visit’ (30:20; cf. Exod. 3:16; 4:31; 13:19). See van der Wal, ‘Themes from Exodus in Jeremiah 30’: 562.
20. For the exile, Jeremiah uses terms of slavery and oppression associated with the exodus. For the verb עבד (‘to serve’) in 30:8, note the use of the root in verbal (Exod. 1:14; 5:18; 6:5) and nominal (Exod. 1:14; 2:2, 23; 5:9, 11; 6:6, 9) form. Note also in Jer. 30:8-9 the transfer from ‘service’ to foreign oppressor to ‘service’ to YHWH. The exodus tradition stresses that the outcome of release from Egyptian bondage will be ‘service’ to YHWH (cf. Exod. 3:12; 4:23; 7:16, 26; 8:1; 9:1, 13, etc.). Other terms of oppression connected to the exodus are מכאב (‘sorrow’, 30:15; cf. Exod. 3:7) and לחץ (‘to oppress’, 30:20; cf. Exod. 3:9). See van der Wal, ‘Themes from Exodus’: 561.
21. Van der Wal, ‘Themes from Exodus’: 562.
22. Van der Wal, ‘Themes from Exodus’: 564.
23. Concern for the divine reputation of YHWH served as an important motivation for the original deliverance of Israel (cf. Exod. 15:14-16; Num. 14:13-17).
24. For development of this processional motif in relationship to the return from exile, see Eugene H. Merrill, ‘Pilgrimage and Procession: Motifs of Israel’s Return’ in Israel’s Apostasy and Restoration: Essays in Honor of Roland K. Harrison, ed. A. Gileadi (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988): 261-72.
25. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52: 130. The people of Israel offer similar pledges of fidelity at other times of covenant renewal in the nation’s history (cf. Josh. 24:21, 24; 1 Sam. 7:4, 6, 8; 12:19).
26. The defection of Johanan and his party after ten days (Jer. 42:7) perhaps suggests that Jeremiah’s audience had even less resolve than did the contemporaries of Moses who rebelled against YHWH after forty days (cf. Deut. 10:22; 26:5).
27. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52: 130.
28. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52: 130, 134 notes that Israel was not to return to Egypt and that such a return was a direct covenant curse (Deut. 17:16; 28:68; cf. Hos. 8:13). The desire of Johanan’s party to go down to Egypt is further ‘an echo of the cry’ of the unbelieving wilderness generation (cf. Exod. 16:2-3; Num. 14:2-3). The numerous repetitions of ‘Egypt’ (מצרים) in Jer. 40 demonstrate its rhetorical significance in this section: 41:18; 42:14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19; 43:2, 7, 11, 12[2], 13[2]. This emphasis carries over into ch. 44 (cf. vv. 1, 8, 12[2], 13, 14, 15, 24, 26[2], 27, 28[2], 30).
29. Stulman, Order Amid Chaos: 93. Robert P. Carroll in ‘Jeremiah, Intertextuality and Ideologiekritik’, JNSL 22 (1996): 28 understands this motif of exodus reversal and, in fact, the reversal of all of Israel’s salvation history to be at work throughout the book of Jeremiah. Carroll describes Jer. 2 as ‘a variation on the story in Exodus to Kings’. In a similar vein, Richard Elliott Friedman argues that the final form of the Deuteronomic History ‘tells the story of Israel from Egypt to Egypt’ (cf. 2 Kgs 25:26) in ‘From Egypt to Egypt Dtr1 and Dtr2’ Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith, ed. Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1981): 189-92
30. Seitz, ‘The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah’: 15.
31. Seitz, ‘The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah’: 15.
32. For the messianic prophecies in the book of Jeremiah, see J. J. M. Roberts, ‘The Old Testament’s Contribution to Messianic Expectations’ The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity. The Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, ed. James C. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992): 46-48.
33. This divine legitimacy comes from the fact that Gedaliah is appointed by Nebuchadnezzar (cf. 40:5, 7, 11; 41:2, 18), and Nebuchadnezzar serves in the role of YHWH’s ‘servant’ (25:9; 27:6; 43:10).
34. The behaviour of Ishmael compares unfavourably with the graciousness and generosity of Nebuchadnezzar (39:11-12), Nebuzaradan (40:1-6), and Gedaliah (40:9- 12). The people of Judah are better off in the hands of the Babylonians than they are in the hands of a member of the family of David.
35. The references to ‘Jacob’ and ‘Ephraim’ in the poetic passages in chs. 30 also most likely have reference to the Northern Kingdom (cf. 30:7, 10, 18; 31:4-11, 18-22) and were originally delivered during the reign of Josiah when Josiah was attempting to include the former territory of the Northern Kingdom in his religious reforms (cf. 2 Kgs 23:19-20). For the linking of Jer. 30 and the time of Josiah’s reforms, see Norbert Lohfink, ‘Der junge Jeremiah als Propagandist und Poet: Zum Grundstock von Jer. 30’ in Le Livre de Jérémie: Le Prophète et Son Milieu, les Oracles et leur Transmission, ed. Pierre-Maurice Bogaert (Leuven: University Press, 1981): 351-68; and Martin A. Sweeney, ‘Jeremiah 30 and King Josiah’s Program of National Restoration and Religious Reform’, ZAW 108 (1996): 569-83.
36. Jeremiah’s message is that the human heart is thoroughly corrupted (5:23; 17:1, 9) so that the people do not have the ability on their own to make things right with the Lord (2:25; 13:23). See Lundbom, Jeremiah 21-36: 468-69.
37. Cf. Jer. 44:12, where all of the Jewish remnant in Egypt ‘from the least to the greatest’ (מקטן ועד־גדול) will be put to death for their disobedience and rebellion.
38. Douglas R. Jones in Jeremiah (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992): 474 writes: ‘The first form of this message ... was: “Submit to the Babylonian invader.” King and people would not do this and suffered the consequences. The second form was: “Seek the peace of the land under Gedaliah.” The people were disposed to accept this counsel, but thrown by foreign interference. The third form after the death of Gedaliah was: “Stay in Judah; do not flee to Egypt.”’ See also Walter Brueggemann, ‘The Baruch Connection’, JBL 113 (1994): 410, who notes the ‘if-then’ parallelism between the call for Zedekiah to surrender to the Babylonians in 37:17-18 and the call of Johanan and his associates to remain in the land in 42:9-17.
39. Kelvin G. Friebel, Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s Sign Acts: Their Meaning and Function as Nonverbal Communication and Rhetoric (JSOTSup 283; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999): 758.
40. Friebel, Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s Sign Acts: 821. Friebel argues that the buried stones represent a mark of the exact place where the described event will take place. The Babylonian king will set up his throne on this spot. Similarly, John A. Thompson in The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980): 670 suggests that the stones represent the ‘pedestal’ for the throne that Nebuchadnezzar will set up after his conquest of Egypt.
41. Jeff S. Anderson, ‘The Metonymical Curse as Propaganda in the Book of Jeremiah’, BBR 8 (1998): 7.
42. For this aspect of the message of Jeremiah, see Roy D. Wells, Jr., ‘The Amplification of the Expectations of the Exiles in the MT Revision of Jeremiah’ in Troubling Jeremiah: 272-92; Robert P. Carroll, ‘The Myth of the Empty Land’, Semeia 59 (1992): 79-92. Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah (BZAW 176; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989): 203-96; and Karl-F. Pohlman, Studien zum Jeremiabuch: Eine Beitrag zur Frage nach der Entstehung des Jeremiabuches (FRLANT 118; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978): 183-225.
43. Anderson, ‘The Metonymical Curse as Polemic in the Book of Jeremiah’: 5-13. Anderson notes that through these curses ‘both Judah and Egypt become the lands of the curse. By the simple process of elimination, it is only the Babylonian community that is left to be the exclusive possessor of hope for a future restoration of Israel’ (p. 11). Anderson observes the use of metonymy in the curses against the Jews in Judah and Egypt, where these groups are not only placed under a curse but actually become a curse incarnate (24:9; 26:6; 29:18; 42:18; 44:8, 12 [2]; 49:13), thus intensifying their condemnation and judgement.
44. For this emphasis on ‘all’ in Jeremiah’s oracles of judgement against the Jews other than the exiles in Babylon, see Fretheim, Jeremiah: 556. Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III in A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville: WJK, 2003): 383, n. 20 observe, ‘“All” is often used very loosely in the OT (cf. Josh. 10:40-42; 2 Kgs 11:1- 2)’.
45. In ‘The Amplification of the Expectations of the Exiles’: 279-84, Wells calls attention to how the MT additions in Jer. 40 further highlight the idea that all Judeans other than the exiles in Babylon belong to the ‘remnant of the land’ that falls under YHWH’s judgement. The MT plus in Jer. 40:12 (compare Jer. LXX 47:12) reads: ‘then all the Judeans returned from all the places to which they had been scattered’, indicating that according to the MT, ‘the community under Gedaliah and Johanan appears to include every “scattered” (נדה) Judean not “exiled” to Babylon’. Additions in Jer. MT 41:10-17 (contrast Jer. LXX 48:10-17) suggest that the hostages taken by Ishmael at Mizpah include ‘all the remnant of the people’ (as opposed to ‘all the people who were left at Mizpah’ in the LXX) and that this entire remnant becomes the followers of Johanan who go down to Egypt. The plus in Jer. MT 41:14 reads: ‘So all the people whom Ishmael had carried away captive from Mizpah turned around and came back, and went to Johanan son of Kareah ...’
46. This portrayal of Judah as an ‘empty land’ has led to controversy over the historicity of the biblical accounts of the exile and return. The extreme minimalist position is that the exile and return depicted in the OT is a fictional reconstruction of the Persian or Hellenistic period. See Robert P. Carroll, ‘Exile! What Exile? Deportation and the Discourses of Diaspora’ in Leading Captivity Captive: “The Exile” as History and Ideology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (JSOTSup 278; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998): 62-79. For a more moderating position, see Hans M. Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land: A Study in the History and Archaeology of Judah during the ‘Exilic’ Period (Symbolae isloenses 28; Oslo: Scandanavian University Press, 1996). For a defence of the more traditional view of the exile and return, see Lisbeth S. Fried, ‘The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East’ in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2003): 21-54; and Bustenay Oded, ‘Where is the “Myth of the Empty Land” To Be Found? History versus Myth’ in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period: 55-74.
47. The chronological narrative of Jer. 37 is framed by references to ‘not hearing’ (לא שׁמע) the word of the Lord (cf. 37:1-2; 44:16, 23), once again linking the sins of Judah before and after the fall of Jerusalem. See Stulman, Order Amid Chaos: 90. Stulman notes that the verb שׁמע appears 34 times in Jer. 36, demonstrating the centrality of the issue of response to the word of YHWH in this section. The overarching theme of Jer. 26 is that Judah ‘has not listened to/obeyed’ the word of YHWH (cf. 26:5; 29:19; 32:33; 34:14, 17; 35:14, 15, 16, 17; 36:31; 37:14; 40:3; 42:13, 21; 43:7; 44:16, 23).
48. Holladay, Jeremiah 2: 304. For further explanation of this distorted view of Israel’s covenant history, see David Noel Freedman, ‘A Biblical Idea of History’, Int 21 (1967): 33-37.
49. The hyperbolic nature of these statements is clearly demonstrated by the references to the ‘few survivors’ in v. 14 and those who ‘escape the sword’ and return to the promised land in v. 28.
50. The repeated use of the term ‘remnant’ (שׁארית) for the Jews remaining in the land and/or going down to Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem (cf. 40:11, 15; 41:10, 16; 42:2, 15, 19; 44:12, 14, 28) is tinged with irony. These people are a ‘remnant’ of survivors but not the ‘remnant’ that will experience YHWH’s ultimate salvation.
51. Carroll, ‘The Myth of the Empty Land’, 83. Anderson (‘The Metonymical Curse as Propaganda’: 10) argues that the hyperbolic portrayal of no one left in the land after Johanan and his followers depart for Egypt in 43:1-7 is ‘self-serving ideological propaganda pointing to the vested interests of the Babylonian community’. Wells (‘The Amplification of the Expectation of the Exiles’: 292) also writes: ‘The privilege of the Babylonian exiles consists of a final elimination of all claimants to a future in the land.’
52. Ehud Ben Zvi, A Historical-Critical Study of the Book of Obadiah (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996): 39. Karl Möller in A Prophet in Debate: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in the Book of Amos (JSOTSup 372; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002): 119-20 argues for a similar perspective in the book of Amos.
53. Christopher R. Seitz, ‘The Crisis of Interpretation Over the Meaning and Purpose of the Exile: A redactional study of Jeremiah xxi’, VT 35 (1985): 94.
54. The only Babylonian exiles mentioned by name in the book of Jeremiah (other than the kings Jehoiachin and Zedekiah) are the wicked trio of false prophets – Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah – who seek to convince their fellow-exiles that their stay in Babylon will not be long-lasting, as Jeremiah had warned (cf. 29:20-23, 24-32). Shemaiah and his descendants will never see the future salvation that YHWH has planned for his people (29:32), and this same warning would appear to apply to any of the exiles who follow the deluded message of these false prophets (cf. 29:16-19).
55. Gedaliah’s assurance parallels the promises that Israel will ‘dwell’ (ישׁב) in the land in chs. 30 (31:24; 32:27; cf. 30:10; 31:40; 33:16).
56. W. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah 26-52 (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996): 1003, notes that the language of dispersal in 40:12 is applied to those given the promise of return in 16:15; 23:3, 8; 29:14; 30:11; 32:37; 46:28. ;is the key verb used for this promised restoration in Jer. 30 (cf. 30:3, 10, 18, 24שׁוב31:8, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23; 32:37, 40, 44; 33:7, 11, 26; cf. 29:10, 14).
57. Cf. the promises of agricultural bounty in Jer. 31:5, 12-13.
58. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52: 123.
59. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah 26-52: 1026. McKane also notes that Ishmael’s murder of the pilgrims from the north in 41:5-7 is an important element in the shattering of these hopes because Jer. 3:16 and 31:6 anticipate a reunified Israel worshipping in Jerusalem.
60. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: 273-91 attributes the contrasting offer of hope to the Jews remaining in the land and their judgement for disobedience to two major redactional layers in the Jeremianic tradition. The first is the Scribal Chronicle, probably written by a member of the post-597 community who holds forth the possibility of a ‘legitimate existence for a remnant community and king, in the land, after the events of 597 and 587’ (p. 286). This perspective reflects the viewpoint of the prophet Jeremiah and is expressed in the messages and oracles originating with the prophet. The second layer reflects the perspective of the Exilic Redaction, which favours the status of the exilic community, rules out the possibility of any continued existence in the land by focusing on ‘the finality of judgement over remnant and king’ (p. 286). While comparison of the LXX and MT of Jeremiah would support the idea of editorial amplification and clarification of the favoured status of the Babylonian exiles over the other Jewish communities in the exilic period (see Wells, ‘The Amplification of the Expectations of the Exiles’: 272-92 and n. 43 above), one must be careful that this insight does not negate recognition of the fact that the fate of the Jews that remain in the land in the book of Jeremiah is due to their disobedience to the prophetic word (cf. 43:7). Thus, there is nothing unlikely in the conjecture that the prophet Jeremiah offered hope of continued existence in the land for the post-597 and 586 communities (based upon their response to the prophetic word), while recognising that Israel’s ultimate hope lay with the restoration of the exiles from Babylon. Seitz divides too sharply between the perspective of the Scribal Chronicle and the Exilic Redactor. Fretheim (Jeremiah: 569) observes that ‘it is important to say that this “remnant of Judah” [in the land] was not excluded in principle ... The earlier positive portrayals of this group make the point that, for God, they could have been included in the ongoing community of faith in time, joining the exiles in Babylon in some future shape of Israel. They chose a different path and shaped for themselves a different future, but that was their doing, not God’s.’
61. Conversely, those individuals who respond with repentance, faith, and obedience to the prophetic message serve as positive examples for the exilic community of the desired response to the prophetic word. These examples include: the elders who defended Jeremiah after his temple sermon (26:17-19); the official Ahikam who protected Jeremiah from execution by the people (26:24); the faithful scribe Baruch (cf. 36:4-9; 45:1-5); the royal officials who hid Jeremiah and counselled Jehoiakim to take seriously the warnings found in the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies (36:10-26); and the foreigner Ebed-Melech who pleaded to Zedekiah for Jeremiah’s life (38:7-13). See Christopher R. Seitz, ‘The Place of the Reader in Jeremiah’ in Reading Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence: 73.
62. Fretheim (Jeremiah: 405) unconvincingly attempts to argue that any emphasis on human conditionality in the response of the exiles to God ‘would be no “assertion of the gospel”’.
63. For further development of this idea of the ‘unended exile’ in Jeremiah, see John Hill, ‘“Your Exile Will Be Long”: The Book of Jeremiah and the Unended Exile’ in Reading Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence: 149-61.
64. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah 26-52: 755.
65. Lundbom (Jeremiah 21-36: 469) notes this same tension in the message of the prophet Ezekiel. YHWH promises to give Israel a new ‘heart’ and ‘spirit’ (Ezek. 11:19; 36:21), but Israel also has a responsibility ‘get a new heart and a new spirit’ for themselves (Ezek. 18:31).

The “Weeping Prophet” And “Pouting Prophet” In Dialogue: Intertextual Connections Between Jeremiah And Jonah

By Gary Yates

[Gary Yates is professor of biblical studies and OT at Liberty University School of Divinity, 1971 University Blvd., Lynchburg, VA 24515.]

Abstract: Innerbiblical allusions are a prominent feature in the book of Jonah. The present article examines intertextual connections between Jonah and Jeremiah. This study will specifically explore how the connections between Jeremiah and Jonah contribute to the parody of Jonah as an “anti-prophet” and the special emphasis in both books on repentance as the proper response to the prophetic word. Comparison of Jeremiah and Jonah will also help to demonstrate the unique contribution of these two books to the theological emphasis on Yahweh’s concern for the nations in the prophetic canon of the Hebrew Bible.

* * *

The study of intertextuality focuses on how biblical texts echo, allude to, quote, reapply, or even reconfigure other canonical passages for various rhetorical and theological purposes. Innerbiblical allusion is especially prominent in the book of Jonah, which is not surprising in light of the highly artistic nature of this short work. Hyun Chul Paul Kim argues that “intertextual allusions in the book of Jonah suggest its function and place” and that Jonah’s dialogue with other passages in the Hebrew Bible helps provide “expression to thematic emphases of the post-exilic communities in the Second Temple period.”[1] Salters comments, “In only 48 verses … there are so many connections with the Old Testament that one might begin to doubt if Jonah has anything new to say.”[2]

The purpose of this study is to focus on potential intertextual connections between the books of Jonah and Jeremiah. In 1947, André Feuillet argued that the narrator in Jonah composed the book by reproducing material from other sources, particularly the book of Jeremiah.[3] The relationship between the two books is likely far more complex, and questions concerning the direction of influence between biblical texts are not easily answered. The amount of innerbiblical allusion in Jonah suggests that those responsible for the final form of the book did employ Jeremiah as a foil for Jonah, but the composition and editing of both books likely extended into the postexilic period, and it is possible that cross-pollination occurred between the two books as they reached their final forms.[4] Dialogue with other prophetic texts appears to have been part of the shaping of a prophet’s words as they were put into book form. As Douglas Stuart notes, some of the connections between Jeremiah and Jonah are to be “more generally attributable to the univocal nature of divine revelation throughout the Scripture.”[5] Literary linkages to Jeremiah are important to the message of Jonah, but specific connections to Jeremiah are only part of the larger tendency of the book of Jonah to use stock prophetic type-scenes and expressions from across the Hebrew Bible. Stories and episodes from figures like Moses and Elijah have informed the portrayal of Jonah as much as or more than Jeremiah, and this linkage of Jonah to other prophetic figures appears to be part of the narrator’s attempt to satirize Jonah and to present Jonah as the parody of what a true prophet should be.[6] This study will specifically explore how the connections between Jeremiah and Jonah contribute to the parody of Jonah as an “anti-prophet” and the special emphasis in both books on response to the prophetic word. Comparison of Jeremiah and Jonah will also help to demonstrate the unique contribution of these two books to the theological emphasis on Yahweh’s concern for the nations in the prophetic canon of the Hebrew Bible. Even when direct intertextual links between Jeremiah and Jonah cannot be established, the uniquely biographical nature of these two books in the prophetic canon merits a comparative reading of the two books for the insights such a reading yields concerning the function and theological significance of the prophetic office in ancient Israel.

I. Jonah, Jeremiah, And Response To The Prophetic Word

Jonah engages in dialogue with pagan Gentiles in Jonah 1 (the sailors) and Jonah 3 (the Ninevites), and the prophet suffers by comparison with both groups because they are spiritually sensitive and attuned to God in ways that he is not. The episode with the sailors in Jonah 1 reflects several possible connections with the account of Jeremiah’s temple speech in Jeremiah 26.[7] In that narrative, the leaders and people of Judah seek to put Jeremiah to death for preaching judgment against Jerusalem and the Temple until they are reminded of Hezekiah’s response to the preaching of Micah a century earlier (Jer 26:17–19). The contrast between Jonah 1 and Jeremiah 26 is tinged with irony in that the sailors come to recognize Jonah as a true spokesman of Yahweh in spite of the fact that Jonah does everything he can to avoid his prophetic calling. In fact, the sailors are converted to some type of belief in Yahweh, and in the process of this conversion act more like prophets than Jonah does and must carry out actions that are typically associated with a true prophet proclaiming the word of Yahweh and executing the other duties of his calling.

The sailors are the ones who frantically cry out to the gods while the prophet who should be interceding is asleep (1:5). In Jeremiah 26, Yahweh sends Jeremiah to preach because of the possibility (“perhaps”—אולי) that the people would repent and be spared from judgment (26:3; cf. vv. 13, 19). In Jonah 1, it is the captain of the ship who raises the possibility (“perhaps”—אולי) of divine relenting from judgment to the prophet as a motivation for prayer (1:6). Jeremiah’s task as a prophet is to confront the people with the issue of the רעה they have committed against Yahweh (Jer 26:3). In Jonah’s case, it is the sailors who must raise the issue of רעה with the prophet. They inquire of Jonah regarding responsibility for the רעה that has befallen them (Jonah 1:7–8). By forcing the prophet to reflect on the consequences of his choices, the sailors are fulfilling the same role for Jonah that true prophets like Jeremiah had carried out for the peoples of Israel and Judah. The sailors confront Jonah by asking, “What have you done?,” but in this “prophetic” rebuke it is the sailors who are changed, not Jonah. Jonah never calls for repentance, faith, or prayer as the potential remedy for רעה as is typical of the Hebrew prophets. When Jonah fails to act as prophet, the sailors decide to cast lots as a way of determining the will of the gods, a Yahweh-approved practice for the people of Israel (cf. Num 26:55; Josh 7:14; 1 Sam 10:16–26; 14:42).[8]

Yahweh called the prophets to show concern for the welfare and wellbeing of the people, but here it is the sailors who demonstrate concern for the prophet. Sweeney observes, “Normally, it is the prophet’s role to attempt to save the people from some divinely-inspired disaster, or punishment, but here it is the pagan sailors who attempt to save a prophet of YHWH who refuses to speak.”[9] Jonah is not even concerned with his own life and would prefer to die than carry out his prophetic responsibilities. Instead of responding to Jonah’s directive to throw him overboard, the sailors do everything they can to row to shore and to spare his life. In Jeremiah 26, Jeremiah’s audience at the Temple sought to put him to death, and the prophet reminded and warned them of the consequences of having “innocent blood” (דם נקי) on their hands (26:15). In Jonah’s case, it is the sailors who are sensitive to the problem of culpability for “innocent blood” and who seek to spare the prophet’s life, only throwing him into the angry sea as a last resort. Without the benefit of prophetic intercession, the sailors once again cry out to Yahweh and pray not to be held accountable for Jonah’s death and the shedding of “innocent blood” (דם נקי; Jonah 1:14).[10]

With no positive direction from Jonah, the sailors come to a worshipful response to Yahweh. They move from “fear” of the storm (1:5) to “fear” of Jonah’s news that he has run from Yahweh (1:8), and then to “fear” of Yahweh himself (1:16).[11] The language of their prayer to Yahweh in 1:14 echoes the worship of pious Israelites in the Psalms.[12] The sailors worship by offering sacrifices and making vows, actions that would be expected of orthodox worshippers of Yahweh (1:16; cf. Ps 66:13–16).[13]

The intertextual connections between Jonah 1 and Jeremiah 26 appear to highlight the surprising nature of the sailors’ response to Yahweh. These pagans respond to Yahweh in the same way that the Israelites did at the exodus when they “feared” (ירא) Yahweh and “believed” (אמן + ב) him (Exod 14:31).[14] Both Jonah 1 and Jeremiah 26 recount instances of positive response to the word of Yahweh in connection with the recognition of a prophet as Yahweh’s spokesman, but the sailors respond to Yahweh through the agency of a prophet who refuses to carry out his commission in direct contrast to the faithful Jeremiah. The leaders and people of Judah have a long history with their prophets but are disposed to kill Jeremiah until a group of elders intervene on the prophet’s behalf (Jer 26:17–19). The sailors have no history with Yahweh or his prophets but are reticent to put the prophet to death. Foreigners have more respect for the life of the prophet than the people of God. Jeremiah has to repeatedly encourage the people of Judah to turn from their sinful ways, but the sailors “fear” the Lord and offer him appropriate prayer and worship with no specific instructions from the prophet.

Ironically, the narrative of Jer 26:1–19 involving the positive response to Jeremiah is immediately followed by a brief account of how the evil king Jehoiakim put the prophet Uriah to death for preaching the same message of judgment as Jeremiah (Jer 26:20–24). This episode of the people and leaders of Judah acknowledging Jeremiah as a true prophet introduces a section of the book extending to chapter 45 that highlights Judah’s overall rejection of Jeremiah’s message of judgment that ultimately led to the fall of Jerusalem and the exile (cf. Jer 37:1–2). The surprising readiness of the sailors to believe and respond positively to Yahweh and even a defective prophet ultimately serves as a rebuke to the persistent unbelief and disobedience of Israel and Judah, an idea that emerges even more forcefully from the example of the Ninevites and their repentant response to the prophetic word in Jonah 3.

Perhaps the closest connection between Jonah and Jeremiah occurs with the account of Nineveh’s response to Jonah’s preaching in chapter 3. The repentance of Nineveh and God’s response to the Ninevites reflects the working out of the principle of Jer 18:6–7, which promises that if a nation “turns” (שׁוב) from its “evil” (רעה) in response to a prophetic warning of judgment, then Yahweh would “relent” (נחם) from sending the “calamity” (רעה) that he had threatened to bring.[15] The triad of שׁוב, רעה, and נחם is also prominent in Jonah 3. The king of Nineveh issues a proclamation that calls on all of the people to “turn” (שׁוב) from their “evil” (רעה) ways in light of the possibility that God might “turn” (שׁוב) and “relent” (נחם) from pouring out his burning anger (Jonah 3:7–9). When God sees that the Ninevites have indeed “turned” (שׁוב) from their “evil” (רעה) deeds, he does “relent” (נחם) concerning the “disaster” (רעה) he had planned for them (Jonah 3:10). Jeremiah 18 and Jonah 3 are unique in the way that they apply this concept of repentance and divine relenting from judgment to nations outside of Israel and Judah.

Like the account of Jonah and the sailors, the narrative of Jonah 3 also appears to echo Jeremiah 26. The king of Nineveh raises the possibility of divine relenting in Jonah 3:9 with the question מי יודע, and as noted earlier, Yahweh sends Jeremiah to announce judgment at the Temple in Jer 26:3 because of the possibility (אולי) that his preaching might lead to repentance on the part of the people. The wording of Jer 26:3 is almost identical to Jer 18:6–7 and Jonah 3:7–10. If the people would “turn” (שׁוב) from their “evil” (רעה), then Yahweh would “relent” (נחם) from sending “calamity” (רעה). When Jeremiah preaches to the people, he offers the promise of divine “relenting” (נחם) if the people would “repent” (שׁוב) of their “evil” (רעה) in 26:13. In 26:19, the elders remember Hezekiah’s repentant response to Micah’s preaching that led to Yahweh relenting from the “disaster” (רעה) he had planned for Jerusalem (cf. Mic 3:9–12). Both Jeremiah 26 and Jonah 3 are texts that move from the possibility of repentance and relenting to an actual occurrence of God not sending judgment, but in Jeremiah 26, the incident of divine relenting is from a previous generation. The absence of any such response on the part of the nation to the preaching of Jeremiah would ultimately lead to the judgment of the Babylonian exile.

The parallels between Jonah 3 and Jeremiah 36 are even more specific. The possibility (אולי) of divine relenting stands behind the commissioning of the prophetic word in this episode as well (Jer 36:3). A religious fast provides the context for both narratives.[16] The people and king of Nineveh call for a fast as a sign of repentance (Jonah 3:5, 7–8). Jonah’s scribe Baruch goes to read the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies at the Temple when the people have proclaimed a fast to Yahweh, likely in response to the Babylonian crisis (Jer 36:9). The parallels between Jonah 3 and Jeremiah 36 once again highlight the contrasting responses of Jerusalem to the preaching of Jeremiah and Nineveh to the preaching of Jonah. The residents of Nineveh “turn” (שׁוב) from their “evil way” (רעה) even when there is no direct appeal for them to do so (Jonah 3:8, 10), but there is no such response from the people of Judah and Jerusalem in spite of the fact that the specific purpose of the reading of Jeremiah’s scroll was so that the people “might turn from their evil way” (וישׁב אישׁ מדבר הרעה; Jer 36:7). The responses of the Ninevites to the preaching of Jonah include “the most severe fasting in the Old Testament” in addition to wearing sackcloth, sitting on ashes, calling on God, and changing their behavior (Jonah 3:5–7).[17] The repentance of the Ninevites is so complete that even the animals get in on the act (v. 7). In Jeremiah 36, there is no recorded response to the reading of the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies from the people of Judah who have called a fast to seek Yahweh, and this silence seems to reflect that Jeremiah’s warnings of judgment are largely ignored.

The response of the Ninevites is remarkable for a variety of reasons. As with the sailors in chapter 1, there is positive and almost immediate response to Yahweh’s word in spite of Jonah’s less than stellar execution of his prophetic duties.[18] As Moberly notes, the Ninevites respond to “what is arguably the shortest sermon on record.”[19] The striking contrast in Jeremiah 36 is that there is minimal response to the prophetic words of Jeremiah found in the scroll that represent more than twenty years of faithful proclamation of Yahweh’s words. Gitay describes Jonah’s preaching as “the prophecy of anti-rhetoric.”[20] The narrative of Jonah 3 contributes to the parodying of Jonah as a prophetic figure in that, “Unlike the classical prophets, who desire to appeal to their audience, Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh (3:4) is limited to only five words, thereby revealing his desire to avoid a rhetorical speech that seeks to affect the audience’s behavior.”[21] Jonah proclaims the word of Yahweh, but his message is also “subversive of his calling.”[22] In his message, there is no introductory formula identifying the deity that is the source of the warning, no formal accusation or indictment brought against the Ninevites that provides the basis for the warning of judgment, and no call to repentance or offer of divine mercy.[23] Jonah simply states matter-of-factly that Nineveh would be “overturned” (הפך), and his lackluster effort at preaching here would seem to reflect his “implied desire” that the Ninevites “will dismiss his announcement as nonsense.”[24]

The responses of the kings of Nineveh and Judah (Jehoiakim) are at the center of the contrast between Jonah 3 and Jeremiah 36. The response of the Ninevite king is the direct opposite of what would be expected when looking at the stories of prophet-king confrontations in the Hebrew Bible.[25] Marcus comments, “Normally a prophet’s message is ignored. Kings do not usually listen to him.”[26] Examples of these unbelieving and sometimes violent confrontations between kings and prophets include Moses and Pharaoh, Elijah and Ahab, Micaiah and Ahab, and Isaiah and Ahaz. Jeremiah’s interactions with the hostile Jehoiakim and then the hesitant Zedekiah (cf. Jeremiah 37:1–2; 38) would follow this pattern as well.

In Jeremiah 36, King Jehoiakim hears the words of Jeremiah’s scroll when concerned officials deem the prophet’s warnings of judgment important enough to bring to the king’s attention. Jehoiakim himself has no regard for Jeremiah’s warnings of divine wrath and cuts up the scroll and burns it in his firepot (Jer 36:23–24). When God saw the repentance of the people and king of Nineveh, he relented from sending רעה, while Jehoiakim’s destruction of the scroll brings a further word of judgment against the king and a warning of the רעה that will befall Judah and Jerusalem (Jer 36:29–31).[27] Jehoiakim’s disobedience puts all of Judah, “both man and beast” (אדם ובהמה), in danger of divine judgment (Jer 36:29), in direct contrast to the sparing of Nineveh due to the fact that “both man and beast” (אדם ובהמה) had responded to the prophet’s message (Jonah 3:7; cf. 4:10–11).[28]

II. Jonah’s Failure To Conform To Prophetic Expectations

Beyond those close parallels that seem to clearly connect Jonah and Jeremiah, there are other parallels that reflect similarities between the two books of a more general nature in light of common prophetic motifs or type-scenes. In some of these passages, Jonah reflects connections with several different prophetic figures or books. It would appear that various prophets from the Hebrew Bible have helped to shape or influence the portrayal of Jonah and have contributed to the parodying of Jonah as a prophetic figure.

1. The prophetic call of Jonah. The account of Jonah’s call introduces the motif of Jonah as an anti-prophet at the very beginning of the book. Prophetic call narratives generally include a word from God and/or a vision from God, a commission to a specific task, an objection of unworthiness followed by a promise of divine protection and enablement, and a confirming sign.[29] The narratives depicting the calls of Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and to a lesser extent, Samuel and Elijah reflect this pattern. In light of this standard form, one expects protest or objections when the word of Yahweh comes to Jonah, especially in light of his unusual commission to go and preach to a foreign people. Jeremiah protested that he was too young and did not know how to speak (Jer 1:5). Despite his objection, Jeremiah faithfully fulfills his commission, and the pattern of protest-compliance appears in the other prophetic call narratives as well. In contrast, Jonah offers no protest, but instead flees and refuses to carry out his prophetic assignment.

Yahweh’s response to Jonah’s refusal to comply with his commission also reflects a more specific connection to the book of Jeremiah. The “storm” (סער) that Yahweh sends in Jonah 1:4 provides an ironic echo of Jeremiah’s oracle condemning false prophets in Jer 23:18–22.[30] In that oracle, Jeremiah announces that the wrath of Yahweh will rage like a “storm” (סער) and that the prophets who fail to warn the people of the coming judgment give evidence that they are not those whom the Lord has sent. In contrast, Yahweh targets Jonah with the “storm” of his wrath because Jonah refuses to carry out his commission to warn Nineveh of its coming destruction. As Youngblood explains, Jeremiah’s oracle against the wicked and the false prophets “speaks just as powerfully to Jonah, who though given a message … refused to speak it. God did send Jonah and he did run—in the other direction. Therefore Jonah experienced the same manifestation of divine wrath prescribed for these false prophets—a life-threatening storm.”[31] As is true of the false prophets, Jonah’s refusal to go to Nineveh thwarts Yahweh’s intent of “turning” (שׁוב) evil people from their “wicked ways” (מדרכם הרע; Jer 30:22; cf. Jonah 3:8, 10). By “hurling” (טול) a storm in the direction of Jonah and the ship (1:4), Yahweh acts in the same way toward his wayward prophet that he would act against unfaithful Judah when he “hurled” (טול) them and their unbelieving king Jehoiakim into exile (Jer 16:13; 26:26–28).[32]

2. Jonah’s and Jeremiah’s life-threatening circumstances. In his article, “Jonah and Intertextual Dialogue,” Anthony Abela has noted parallels between Jonah and Jeremiah in that both prophets face great distress and life-threatening circumstances.[33] The prayer of Jonah 2 draws upon the language and imagery of the Psalter to portray Jonah as a righteous worshipper expressing his thanksgiving that Yahweh has delivered him from drowning in the sea.[34] The threats to Jeremiah’s life are reflected in his “confessions” where he laments the hardships and difficulties of his prophetic calling (cf. Jer 11:18–12:6; 15:10–21; 17:14–18; 18:18–23; 20:7–18) and in the various narrative accounts where Jeremiah’s enemies seek to put him to death (cf. Jer 11:19–23; 20:10–11; 26:1–15; 38:1–6). Both Jonah and Jeremiah experience great distress as prophets for Yahweh, but the irony is that they experience these hardships for entirely different reasons. Jonah’s downward “descent” of disobedience leads him to the brink of Sheol as he is engulfed by the waters of chaos.[35] Jonah suffers because he has rejected his prophetic commission and refuses to speak the word of Yahweh, while Jeremiah suffers because of his faithfulness to his prophetic commission and the compulsion to proclaim the word of Yahweh that he cannot escape (cf. Jer 20:7–9). In fact, the suffering of Jeremiah recalls that of the faithful “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah.[36] The Isaianic Servant and the prophet Jeremiah are beaten, shamed, and then vindicated (Isa. 50:4–9; Jer. 20:7–12). Both the Servant and Jeremiah are like sheep “led to slaughter” (Isa. 53:7–8; Jer. 11:19) so that they are cut off “from the land of the living.” Adding to the irony, the disobedient Jonah is delivered from his life-threatening situation and his imprisonment behind the “bars” of the underworld in Jonah 2:6, but the faithful Jeremiah must rest in the promise of an eventual deliverance from the various forms of imprisonment that he experiences throughout the course of a long and difficult ministry (cf. Jer 1:17–19; 20:13).

Both prophets express angry complaints toward Yahweh, but the cause of their anger again demonstrates the disparity between the two characters. Jonah is angry (חרה; 4:1) that Yahweh has “turned” (שׁב) from his “fierce anger” (חרון אפו) and from bringing the “calamity” (רעה) he had threatened for Nineveh (3:9–10). The source of Jeremiah’s anger is exactly the opposite of Jonah’s. Jeremiah complains that willing faithfulness to proclaim the word of Yahweh has brought great misery into his life (15:16–18) and that he is divinely compelled to preach a message that the people refuse to listen to and persecute him for preaching (20:7–9). Unlike Jonah’s anger that is at odds with Yahweh, Jeremiah is angry because Yahweh has filled him with indignation (Jer 6:11; 15:17). Jeremiah’s anger at those who reject his message and his desire to see them punished (cf. Jer 11:20; 12:3; 15:15; 17:18; 18:21–23) are just as intense as Jonah’s desire to see the punishment of Nineveh, but Jeremiah’s anger is justified in that these people remain under Yahweh’s wrath because of their refusal to turn from their sin (cf. Jer 7:20; 11:17; 12:13; 15:14; 17:4; 21:5; 23:19; 30:23; 32:31, 37; 42:12; 44:6).

As with Yahweh, Jeremiah’s indignation at the people is balanced by his sorrow over their impending destruction. Beyond God’s wrath and anger, Jeremiah also expresses Yahweh’s grief and sorrow over the devastation that he inflicts upon Judah. Jeremiah is the weeping prophet because he speaks for the weeping God. This conjoining of divine and prophetic grief is most evident in passages such as 4:19–21; 8:18–9:3[4]; 10:17–21; 13:17–19; and 14:17–18, and it becomes practically impossible to separate the voices of Yahweh and his prophet. The contrast between Jeremiah and Jonah could not be stronger.

The circumstances behind these two prophets asking Yahweh to die are a final point of comparison that helps to bring out the contrast between their two personas.[37] In the face of overwhelming opposition, Jeremiah curses the day of his birth and wishes that Yahweh had killed him in the womb (20:14–18). Jeremiah asks that the one who announced his birth share the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 that were “overthrown” (הפך) by Yahweh (Jer 20:16), the same fate that Jonah warns is about to befall Nineveh (Jonah 3:4). The repentance and sparing of the Ninevites from destruction is what leads Jonah to ask Yahweh to take his life (Jonah 4:3, 8–9). Nogalski also contrasts Jonah to other biblical figures who ask God to take their lives and notes that these characters “face far more drastic circumstances than did Jonah.”[38] Jeremiah desires death because of opposition and persecution; Jonah wants to die because there has been a positive response to his preaching.

3. Jonah, Jeremiah, and prophetic intercession. Jonah’s lack of intercession for those under the threat of divine judgment is another prominent motif that highlights the parodying of Jonah as a prophetic figure. One of the key roles of a prophet is to intercede for those under the sentence of divine judgment.[39] In Jonah 1, Jonah fails to intercede even as the sailors cry out to their gods and the captain of the ship implores him to pray on their behalf (vv. 5–6). Jonah also offers no intercession for the Ninevites in chapter 3 as they respond to the prophetic word in repentance and seek divine favor. Yahweh “relents” (נחם) from judgment (v. 10), but unlike with the prophets Moses and Amos (cf. Exod 32:14; Amos 7:3, 6), there is no prophetic intercession that helps to bring about this divine relenting. The two specific uses of the verb “to pray” (פלל) in the book of Jonah appear with reference to the prophet’s prayers for himself (2:1; 4:2). In Jonah 2, Jonah “prays” to Yahweh and offers his thanksgiving for Yahweh delivering him from drowning at sea; in chapter 4, he prays to express his displeasure that Yahweh has extended the same kind of mercy to the Ninevites. The intertextual reference to Exod 34:6 in Jonah 4:2 particularly contrasts Jonah and Moses as prophetic figures.[40] The confession in Exod 34:6–7 concerning Yahweh’s mercy and compassion appears in the context of Moses’s intercession for Israel following their worship of the golden calf and reflects the reason why Yahweh was responsive to Moses’s prayers.[41] Jonah’s knowledge of Yahweh’s mercy does not lead him to intercede for the Ninevites; in fact, it is finally revealed that Jonah’s awareness of Yahweh’s inclination to show mercy and to relent from judgment was what led Jonah to refuse his prophetic commission in the first place.

Jonah’s failure as an intercessor provides a striking and ironic contrast to the figure of Jeremiah.[42] Yahweh specifically instructs Jeremiah not to pray for the people of Judah (Jer 7:16; 11:14; 14:11), and the appearance of these commands immediately following Jeremiah’s Temple sermon in Jeremiah 7 reflects divine judgment arising from the people’s refusal to respond to the prophetic calls to “return” (שׁוב) to Yahweh that are prominent in the first part of the book. Even in the context of Jeremiah’s laments in Jeremiah 11–20 over his own desperate circumstances and in spite of this divine injunction not to pray, Jeremiah intercedes twice on Judah’s behalf in Jeremiah 14. Jeremiah expresses a model confession on Judah’s behalf in 14:7–10, followed by a passionate plea for Yahweh to not reject his people with another confession of Judah’s sin in 14:17–22. In both cases, Yahweh rebuffs Jeremiah’s requests because of the people’s continued refusal to turn from their sinful ways (Jer 14:10–11; 15:1–4) and states that he would not pardon the people even if Moses and Samuel were to intercede on their behalf (Jer 15:1). After the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah returns to the role of prophetic intercessor (Jer 42:16), but the group of people he prays for reject his counsel and force him to accompany them to Egypt (Jer 43:1–7). What emerges from the contrast between Jonah and Jeremiah as intercessors is an unfaithful prophet who refuses to pray for his audience even when they “turn” (שׁוב) from their sinful ways and a faithful prophet who intercedes for a people who would not “turn” (שׁוב) from their sin, even when God has explicitly directed him not to pray.

III. Jonah-Jeremiah Intertextuality And The Issue Of Repentance

1. Jonah, Jeremiah, and the call to repentance. The intertextual connections between Jonah-Jeremiah and other prophetic figures in the book of Jonah move interpretation away from viewing Jonah primarily as a representative of the nation of Israel.[43] The book of Jonah portrays Jonah as the “virtual caricature of a prophet” in both behavior and attitudes when compared to figures like Jeremiah, Moses, and Elijah.[44] For Marcus, these elements of parody in the book are not designed to advance an ideological message but merely to satirize poor prophetic behavior.[45] It seems clear, however, that the story of Jonah conveys more than simply a condemnation of bad behavior. The intertextual connections between Jeremiah and Jonah particularly place emphasis on the issue of response to the prophetic word and Yahweh’s desire to show mercy in relenting from judgment when people repent. The closest overlaps between the two books are in passages like Jeremiah 18:7–10; 26; 36; and Jonah 3 where the interaction between human repentance and divine relenting are prominent. On its own, the book of Jonah emphasizes the wideness of God’s mercy that is shown to the sailors, Jonah, and Nineveh in sparing them from death and destruction. God’s mercy is not contingent on repentance or guaranteed by repentance, because Jonah is spared without repenting, but divine mercy is often bestowed “in response to steps taken in the right direction.”[46]

The Jonah-Jeremiah intertexts serve as a rebuke of Judah’s unbelief and failure to repent. The immediate response and turning to Yahweh on the part of the pagan sailors and Ninevites contrasts to Judah’s overall lack of positive response to the preaching of Jeremiah. Jonah is a book about how Nineveh “turned” (שׁוב) to Yahweh; Jeremiah is a book about how Judah refused to “return” (שׁוב) to Yahweh.[47] As a result, Nineveh is the “great city” (עיר גדולה) that is spared from judgment (Jonah 1:1; 3:1–2). Jerusalem, on the other hand, is the “great city” (עיר גדולה) that will cause foreigners to ask why it is fallen because it ultimately refused to turn from its sinful ways (Jer 22:8). If the sailors and Ninevites could respond to a pathetic prophet like Jonah, then Judah is all the more guilty for not responding to the long and faithful preaching ministry of the prophet Jeremiah.

The repentance of the Ninevites and their experience of God’s mercy also serve as a motivation for Israel to positively respond to the prophetic calls to return to Yahweh. If Yahweh would extend his mercy to the Assyrians, he would certainly do so for Israel, his own people.[48] The even more encouraging point is that God responds to even the minimal repentance of the Ninevites. There is no mention of the Assyrians turning away from their pagan gods or of their conversion to an exclusive devotion to Yahweh.[49] The expression “they believed in God” (האמן + ב) in Jonah 3:5 simply conveys that they took God at his word in regard to the threats of judgment (cf. Gen 15:6; Num 20:12).[50] Impressive and surprising as their response to Jonah’s preaching is, it still essentially amounts to a “ritual response and ethical tidying up” that had little long-lasting effect.[51] The point then is that if Yahweh is merciful enough to respond to “shallow, naïve repentance ‘Assyrian-style,’” then he would be even more gracious if Israel would genuinely return to him or even if they would simply take small steps in the right direction toward him.[52]

This focus on repentance and response to the prophetic word in Jonah is reinforced by the larger message of the Book of the Twelve as a whole. LeCureux argues that the verb שׁוב provides the thematic key for the unity of the Book of the Twelve.[53] The closest intertext to Jonah 3 in the Book of the Twelve is found in Joel 2:12–17, and this close connection likely stresses that one of the few positive responses to the prophetic word in the Twelve comes from the hated Assyrians.[54] If Israel and Judah had only responded like the Ninevites, then many of the judgments detailed in the Book of the Twelve could have been avoided.

2. Yahweh, the prophets, and the nations. Reading Jonah and Jeremiah in light of each other also reveals that the two books share a unique rhetorical emphasis on the leveling of Yahweh’s relationships with Israel and the nations.[55] The book of Jonah highlights positive responses by Gentiles to the prophetic word in Jonah 1 and 3. The A-B-A-B structure of the book highlights the incongruity of Jonah’s rejoicing over Yahweh’s mercy that led to his sparing Jonah from death (chap. 2) versus his anger over Yahweh’s mercy that led to the sparing of Nineveh (chap. 4).[56] The narrator’s deft strategy in waiting to disclose the reason for Jonah’s refusal to go to Nineveh at the end of the book (Jonah 4:2) turns the theme of the wideness of God’s mercy into the book’s punchline. The application of Exod 34:6 to Yahweh’s treatment of the Ninevites demonstrates that he deals with the nations in the same way that he does with his covenant people Israel. The object lesson of the plant and the worm in Jonah 4:5–11 also effectively results in Jonah trading places with the Ninevites.[57] Since Jonah desires to see God’s mercy withdrawn from the Ninevites so that they experience the “disaster” (רעה) Yahweh had planned for them, Yahweh uses the plant to provide relief for Jonah from his “discomfort” (רעה) caused by the excessive heat but then quickly takes away that relief when the worm devours the plant. The book of Jonah serves at least in part to put Jew and Gentile on more equal footing before God. As Youngblood observes, one clear implication of the message of Jonah is “that YHWH’s mercy is not exclusively for Israel’s benefit. God’s special relationship with Israel is not an end in and of itself, but a means to an end—the blessing of the nations (cf. Gen 12:1–3).”[58]

This idea of God’s leveling of his relationships with Israel and the nations also emerges from a reading of the book of Jeremiah. Like Jonah, Jeremiah is “a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5). His prophetic role to the nations certainly involves proclaiming Yahweh’s coming judgment (cf. the message concerning the “cup of wrath” extended to the nations in Jeremiah 25 and the prophetic oracles in chapters 46–51 in Jeremiah MT being prime examples).[59] It was the judgment of the oppressive Babylonians, however, that would open the way for Yahweh to “restore the fortunes” (שׁוב שׁבות) of Israel, and the message of Jeremiah extends that salvation to the nations in some significant ways. Jeremiah 3:17 announces that Yahweh would gather the nations at Jerusalem and that they would no more “follow their own evil heart.”[60] Thus, the nations would experience a heart transformation similar to what is promised to Israel and Judah in the new covenant in Jer 31:31–34. Jeremiah 4:1–2 calls upon Israel to “return” to Yahweh so that the nations might “bless themselves” by Israel in fulfillment of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant (cf. Gen 12:1–3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4).[61]

Jeremiah’s dual message for Israel and Judah was a negative message of judgment that involved “plucking up” (נתשׁ) and a positive message of salvation that included “building up” (בנה; cf. Jer 1:10; 12, 14, 17; 18:7; 24:6; 31:28, 40; 42:10; 45:5). Remarkably, Jeremiah promises this same kind opportunity for restoration and “building up” after judgment to the nations that turn to Yahweh in Jer 12:14–17, including the Canaanites who had taught Israel to worship Baal and had been under a decree of extermination when Israel had initially entered the land.[62] The phrase “restore the fortunes” (שׁוב שׁבות) is prominent in the Book of Consolation in Jeremiah 30–33, which focus on Israel’s restoration and return to the land following the exile (Jer 30:3, 18; 31:23; 32:14; 33:7, 11, 26). This same expression is also used to describe the restoration of Moab (48:47), Ammon (49:6), and Elam (49:6) following their time of divine judgment.[63] In multiple ways, the language of salvation applied to Israel is also extended to the nations in the book of Jeremiah.

IV. Conclusion

The prophet Jeremiah applies the principle of divine “relenting” from “disaster” to any nation that “turns” from its evil ways (Jer 18:5–6). Judah’s refusal to “turn” despite the faithful preaching of Jeremiah meant that they would experience the full brunt of Yahweh’s judgment. Surprisingly, the positive example of “turning” and “divine relenting” comes from Jonah 3 as the Ninevites respond to the preaching of perhaps the poorest excuse for a prophet in the OT. The Ninevites’ response to the half-hearted preaching of Jonah even anticipates the promise of Isa 19:19–25 that Assyria, Egypt, and Israel would be the three peoples of God in the future kingdom, and this positive response angers Jonah and makes him want to die. The prophet Jeremiah can only lament that there was no such positive response to his preaching and look forward to the day that Yahweh would write his law on the hearts of the people so that they and the nations might know his blessing and salvation.

Notes

1. Hyun Chul Paul Kim, “Jonah Read Intertextually,” JBL 126 (2007): 499. In developing the intertextual components in Jonah, Kim focuses on parallels between Jonah and (1) the flood story in Genesis; (2) the historical narrative from 2 Kgs 14:23-29 that mentions the ministry of Jonah during the reign of Jeroboam II; (3) the complimentary message concerning Nineveh in the book of Nahum; and (4) the use of the nearly identical expression of the theological confession of Exod 34:6-7 in Joel 2 and Jonah 4:2 with Yahweh relenting from a judgment threatened by a prophetic messenger. In addition to noting correspondence between Jonah and other prophetic texts and figures, Katherine Dell (“Reinventing the Wheel: The Shaping of the Book of Jonah,” in After the Exile: Essays in Honor of Rex Mason [ed. John Barton and David J. Reimer; Mercer, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996], 85-102) highlights parallels between Jonah and Job. Jonathan Magonet (Form and Meaning: Studies in Literary Techniques in the Book of Jonah [2nd ed.; Bible and Literature; Sheffield: Almond, 1983], 44-49, 65-84) notes correlations between Jonah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Psalms 107 (cf. the rescue of the sailors from the storm at sea in vv. 23-32) and 139 (cf. vv. 7-10 and the impossibility of escape from the presence of Yahweh). Anthony Abela (“When the Agenda of an Artistic Composition is Hidden: Jonah and Intertextual Dialogue with Isaiah 6, the ‘Confessions of Jeremiah,’ and Other Texts,” in The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist [Oudtestamentische Studien 45; ed. Johannes C. de Moor; Atlanta: SBL, 2005], 1-30) calls attention to the intertextual dialogue between Jonah and the narrative of 2 Kgs 14:23-29; prophetic laments like Isaiah 6:9-10 and Jeremiah’s confessions in Jeremiah 12, 15, 17, and 20; and the story of Elijah. Alastair Hunter (“Jonah From the Whale: Exodus Motifs in Jonah 2, ” in Elusive Prophet, 142-58) notes specific correspondences between Jonah 2 and “exodus motifs” that are found in passages like Exod 15:1-13; Pss 69:2-3, 14-19; 107:23-32; and Neh 9:9-11. J. Henk Potgieter (“David in Consultation with the Prophets: The Intertextual Relationship of Psalm 31 with the Books of Jeremiah and Jonah,” in “My Spirit at Rest in the North Country” (Zechariah 6:8): Collected Communications to the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the OT, Helsinki 2010 [BEATAJ 57; New York: Peter Lang, 2011], 153-63) has argued for an intertextual connection of Psalm 31 to both Jonah 2 and the book of Jeremiah (cf. Jonah 2:4 and Ps 31:22; Jonah 2:8 and Ps 31:6). The use of language from the Psalms in Jonah 2 as a whole (cf. Jonah 2:3 and Ps 42:7; Jonah 2:5; Ps 69:1) presents Jonah as a pious worshipper, perhaps somewhat ironically in light of the book as a whole.
2. Robert B. Salters, Jonah and Lamentations (OTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 20.
3. André Feuillet, “Les Sources du Livre de Jonas,” RB 54 (1947): 161-86. For an early response to Feuillet, see G. Ch. Aalders, The Problem of the Book of Jonah (London: Tyndale, 1948), 19-25.
4. Exact dating of the prophetic books in the OT is extremely difficult. The differences between Jeremiah LXX and MT are reflective of the book’s complex compositional history. There are no prohibitive arguments against seeing most of the material in both versions as originating from Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch, even if redactional activity continued for a significant time after the prophet’s death. See Tremper Longman III and Raymond B. Dillard, An Introduction to the OT (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 330-31; Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 21A; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 92-101; Emmanuel Tov, “Some Aspects of the Textual and Literary History of the Book of Jeremiah,” in Le Livre de Jérémie: Le prophète et son milieu, les oracles et leur transmission (ed. P. Bogaert; BETL 54; Louvain: Peeters, 1981), 145-67 and John Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 33-50. The exact dating of Jonah is not clear, though the scholarly tendency is to date the final form to the postexilic period, even as late as the third century BC. See Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation (AB 24B; New Haven, CT: Yale, 1990), 20-26. For a response to the arguments for the late dating of Jonah, see Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC 31; Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 432-33. For further discussion of the process involved in the formation of prophetic books, see Aaron Chalmers, Interpreting the Prophets (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 22-33.
5. Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, 433.
6. Cf. David Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah: Anti-Prophetic Satire in the Hebrew Bible (BJS 301; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 93-159.
7. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 69-73. The episode in Jeremiah 26 most likely provides a variant account of the Temple sermon found in Jeremiah 7. Chap. 7 focuses on the content of the message; chap. 26 focuses more on the response to the message by various groups present at the Temple when Jeremiah delivers this message.
8. Marvin A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, vol. 1: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah (Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), 313.
9. Ibid., 1:315.
10. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 72-73. Magonet notes that the collocation of the verb נתן + דם נקי appears outside of Jonah 1:14 only in Jer 26:15 and Deut 21:8. The phrase תתן עלינו דם נקיא in Jonah 1:14 more closely replicates what is found in Deut 21:8, but Jonah 1 and Jeremiah 26 both use the concept of “innocent blood” in the context of the potential death of a prophet. References to “innocent blood” (דם נקי) also appear in Jer 7:6 and 22:3, 17. The pagan sailors are reticent to participate in an activity that the prophet must exhort the people of Judah not to practice.
11. The cognate accusative of verb ירא + object יראה is used for emphasis in each of these verses with the addition of the adjective גדולה in vv. 10 and 16.
12. Magonet (Form and Meaning, 70) notes that their statement to Yahweh that he had done “just as he pleased” recalls passages like Pss 115:3 and 135:6.
13. Cognate accusatives also appear with “sacrificed sacrifices” (זבח) and “vowed vows” (נדר) in v. 16 for further emphasis on the responses of the sailors to Yahweh.
14. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 70.
15. Kevin J. Youngblood, Jonah: God’s Scandalous Mercy (Hearing the Message of Scripture; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 142.
16. Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah, 136.
17. Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the OT (Siphrut 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 316.
18. For the detailed correspondences between Jonah 1 and 3, see Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (Guides to Biblical Scholarship; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 110-11.
19. R. W. L. Moberly, OT Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 186.
20. Yehoshua Gitay, “Jonah: The Prophecy of Antirhetoric,” in Fortunate the Eyes that See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Astrid B. Beck et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 197-206.
21. Ibid., 197.
22. Moberly, OT Theology, 186.
23. Gitay, “Jonah: The Prophecy of Antirhetoric,” 201.
24. Moberly, OT Theology, 186.
25. See further Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (NSBT 26; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2011), 105-9. Assyrian kings and military officials are noted in the Hebrew Bible for their arrogant and blasphemous stances toward Yahweh (Isa 10:7-19; 36:1-20 // 2 Kgs 18:19-35). The king of Assyria is specifically targeted as the object of Yahweh’s judgment at the close of Nahum’s oracle of judgment against Nineveh (Nah 3:17-18).
26. Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah, 135.
27. The expression “from the greatest to the least of them” (מגדלם עד־קטנם) in Jonah 3:5 may also provide a connection with the book of Jeremiah. This exact expression appears nowhere else in the OT, but the related “from the least of them to the greatest” (מקטנם ועד־גדולם) appears only in Jer 6:13; 8:10; 31:34; 42:1, 8; 44:12. All of these examples except Jer 31:34 appear in contexts indicting the whole of Judah for sin or in a context where the collective group disobeys Yahweh and the prophetic word. Jer 31:34 looks forward to a time when all the people of Israel will know the Lord; the irony is that the collective people of Nineveh achieve that in some sense long before the final restoration of Israel.
28. Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah, 136. Cf. Jer 14:5-6, where the animals experience the negative consequences of Yahweh’s divine judgment on Judah, and Jer 4:23-26, where the judgment of Judah will bring about the undoing of creation itself and the return to the earth being “void and without form.”
29. See Norman C. Habel, “The Form and Significance of the Call Narratives,” ZAW 77 (1965): 297-323.
30. Youngblood, Jonah: God’s Scandalous Mercy, 72. A doublet of this text also occurs in Jer 30:23, referring to Yahweh’s judgment of the wicked in general.
31. Ibid.
32. Sweeney, Twelve Prophets, 1:311. The verb טול appears a total of seven times in Jonah and Jeremiah and only two other places in the prophets as a whole (Isa 22:17; Ezek 32:43). The repetition of the verb is rhetorically significant in Jonah 1. The human participants all act in response to Yahweh’s sovereign act of “hurling” the storm—the sailors “hurl” the cargo (1:5), Jonah instructs the sailors to “hurl” him into the sea so that the storm will cease (1:12), and then the sailors reluctantly carry out Jonah’s instructions (1:15).
33. Abela, “When the Agenda of an Artistic Composition Is Hidden,” 22-25.
34. Dell (“Reinventing the Wheel,” 94) notes the following connections between Jonah and the Psalms: Jonah 2:2a (Pss 18:6; 30:2; 118:5); 2b (Ps 130:1, 2); 2-3b (Ps 42:7b); 2:4a (Ps 31:22); 2:5a (Pss 18:4-5; 69:1); 2:6b (Pss 30:3; 71:20); 2:7a (Pss 142:3; 143:4); 2:7b (Pss 5:7; 18:6; 88:2); 2:8a (Ps 31:6); 2:9a (42:4; 50:14, 23; 66:13); 2:9b (Ps 3:8).
35. Jonah “goes down” (ירד) (1:3, 5; 2:6) until he is surrounded by the “deep” (תהום) and is at the gates of Sheol at the bottom of the mountains when Yahweh then “brings him up” from his watery abyss (2:5-6). In the “belly of the fish,” Jonah recalled how Yahweh had saved him from the “belly of Sheol” (2:1-2).
36. See Gary E. Yates, “Intertextuality and the Portrayal of Jeremiah the Prophet,” BSac 170 (2013): 290-92; and Benjamin D. Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66 (Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 64-66.
37. This noting of contrasts here stands contra the approach of Bruckner (Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 24), who argues instead for the similarities between Jonah and Jeremiah: “Jonah resisted Yahweh to the point that he cried out for his own death … much like Jeremiah…. This is an integral part of the life of prophets who are called to the most difficult tasks. Jonah’s flight from Israel was not moral rebellion as it is sometimes described. It was prophetic resistance, in the classical Old Testament tradition, to an extremely difficult word from Yahweh (forgiveness of the terror-mongers of Nineveh). God honored Jonah’s resistance, as he honored the resistance of Abram, Moses, and Jeremiah.” Bruckner is correct in noting the prophetic dissent in both figures, but the numerous dissimilarities between Jonah and Jeremiah argue against his reading.
38. James D. Nogalski, The Book of the Twelve: Hosea-Jonah (SHBC 18a; Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2011), 446. Job asks that God take his life because of his losses and God’s lack of response to his cries for justice and explanation. Moses asks to die because of the constant burden of leading and caring for the stubborn Israelites in the wilderness (Num 11:1-15). Samson prays for death so that he might avenge his brutal treatment at the hands of the Philistines (Judg 16:28-31).
39. Cf. the examples of Moses (Exod 32:9-14; Num 14:11-19), Samuel (1 Sam 8:6-9; 19-22; 12:18-25), and Amos (Amos 7:1-6). For discussion of these three figures as intercessors in the Hebrew Bible, see Michael Widmer, Standing in the Breach: An OT Theology and Spirituality of Intercessory Prayer (Siphrut 13; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 57-223, 477-505.
40. For the larger significance of Exod 34:6-7 in the Book of the Twelve, see Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie (ed. L. G. Perdue et al.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 31-49. Quotations of or allusions to Exod 34:6-7 appear also in Joel 2:13; Mic 7:16-20; and Nah 1:3. See also n. 54 below.
41. Youngblood, Jonah: God’s Scandalous Mercy, 153-54.
42. For Jeremiah as intercessor, see Widmer, Standing in the Breach, 329-441. Widmer notes that Jeremiah is remembered in 2 Macc 15:12-14 as a model intercessor and even a heavenly advocate.
43. Terence E. Fretheim (The Message of Jonah [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2000], 69-70) rejects interpreting Jonah being swallowed and then vomited out by the fish as an allegory for Israel being taken into exile and then living among the nations as an overly simplistic reading of the book. Jer 51:34, 44 does portray Nebuchadnezzar and Bel the god of Babylon as sea monsters that have “swallowed up” (בלע) Israel, but the imagery in the passage is a dragon, not a great fish, and any correspondence to the story of Jonah here appears to be coincidental. See also Bruckner (Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 106-109) for cautions against viewing the figure of Jonah as typological of Israel’s unwillingness to share the knowledge of God with Gentiles.
44. Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah, 157.
45. Ibid., 158. He sees a similar purpose behind the story of the lying prophet in 1 Kings 13 and of Elisha and the cursing of the youths in 2 Kgs 2:23-24.
46. John H. Walton, “The Object Lesson of Jonah 4:5-7 and the Purpose of the Book of Jonah,” BBR 2 (1992): 55.
47. Some form of the root שׁוב appears 121 times in the book of Jeremiah. For the emphasis on repentance in the book, see William L. Holladay, The Rootšûbh in the OT with Particular References to Its Usages in Covenantal Contexts (Leiden: Brill, 1958).
48. Boda, Severe Mercy, 318.
49. Walton, “Object Lesson of Jonah 4:5-7, ” 54.
50. Ibid., 53-54.
51. Ibid., 54.
52. Ibid., 53-54. For more on the minimal nature of the Ninevites’ response to the prophetic word, see also Timmer, Gracious and Compassionate God, 100-104. The same emphasis on God’s willingness to respond to even less than exemplary repentance is also conveyed in the Hebrew Bible by the stories of the repentance of Ahab in 1 Kgs 21:25-29 and Manasseh in 2 Chr 33:10-20.
53. Jason T. LeCureux, The Thematic Unity of the Book of the Twelve (HBM 41; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012).
54. In Joel 2:12, Yahweh calls on the people to “return” (שׁוב) with fasting and weeping. The motivation for repentance is introduced by the question מי יודע, raising the possibility that Yahweh would “turn” (שׁוב) and “relent” (נחם) from sending judgment. All of these elements are found in Jonah 3 as well: (1) the Ninevites reflect their repentance through intensive fasting and mourning (3:5-8); (2) the king of Nineveh uses the question מי יודע to raise the possibility of divine relenting (חישׁוב ונחם) from judgment (3:9); and (3) it is the “turning” (שׁוב) of the Ninevites that leads Yahweh to “relent” (נחם) from destroying Nineveh as Jonah had warned (3:10). The phrase מי יודע only appears in these two passages in the Book of the Twelve and only six other times in the Hebrew Bible as a whole (2 Sam 12:22; Ps 90:11; Qoh 2:19; 3:21; 8:1; Esth 4:14). Also reflecting the close connection between Jeremiah 18 and 26 with Joel 2 and Jonah 3 is the fact that the verbs “to turn” (שׁוב) and “to relent” (נחם) only appear together in a total of nine verses. The two verbs together only refer to Yahweh’s actions four times (Exod 32:12; Ps 90:13; Isa 12:1; Jer 4:20), and the exact expression ישׁוב ונחם appears only in Joel 2:14 and Jonah 3:9. Joel 2 and Jonah 3-4 are also linked together by an almost identical citation of the confession of Exod 34:6-7 in Joel 2:13 and Jonah 4:2. It is the basis for the appeal for repentance in Joel 2 and the reason for Jonah’s anger at the sparing of Nineveh in Jonah 4:2.
55. Kevin J. Youngblood, (“Beyond Deuteronomism: Jeremiah’s Unique Theological Contribution,” a paper presented at Lipscomb University 2009, 6) notes how we see a “reduction of Judah’s status to one of the nations” and “a grouping” of Judah with other nations as theological components of the book of Jeremiah.
56. The “A” panels in chaps. 1 and 3 involve Jonah interacting with pagans who respond positively to God, while the “B” panels in chaps. 2 and 4 depict Jonah in dialogue with Yahweh.
57. Walton, “Object Lesson of Jonah 4:5-7, ” 49.
58. Youngblood, Jonah: God’s Scandalous Mercy, 144. The wideness of God’s mercy that includes both Jews and Gentiles trumps even Jonah’s concerns over the working out of divine justice. Walton (“Object Lesson of Jonah 4:5-7, ” 56) is certainly correct to argue against the reading of Jonah as an indictment of Israel’s failure to be a missionary to the nations. Jonah is commissioned to preach only a message of judgment, and Israel is never directly called to go and evangelize the nations. See also Bruckner (Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 106-9) for cautions against viewing the figure of Jonah as typological of Israel’s unwillingness to share the knowledge of God with Gentiles. Nevertheless, Jonah’s response to Yahweh’s mercy to the Ninevites does seem to serve as a rebuke of how Israel’s disobedience to Yahweh had presented an obstacle to Gentile blessing and perhaps even an indictment of Jewish ethnocentrism and failure to properly understand that any nation could become the recipient of Yahweh’s mercy. See also Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), 460-62.
59. Similar to the preaching mission of Jonah, Jeremiah even commissions Seraiah to read his oracles of judgment announcing the “disaster” (רעה) that Yahweh would bring against Babylon (Jer 51:59-64), though there is no evidence that the message was read to the Babylonians in order to give them an opportunity to repent. The sign act accompanying the reading that involved tying a rock around the scroll and throwing it into the Euphrates signifies the unalterable certainty of the message of judgment as well.
60. Youngblood, “Beyond Deuteronomism,” 13.
61. See Wright, Mission of God, 240-41, 351.
62. Youngblood, “Beyond Deuteronomism,” 13-14.
63. Ibid., 13.