2. Prophets and Prophets. (XXIII. 9-32, XXVII-XXIX, etc.)

Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles had its consequences. First, there was their claim to have prophets of the Lord among themselves, which in our text immediately follows the Letter as if part of it, XXIX. 15, 21-23, but which is probably of a somewhat later date.

XXIX. 15. Because ye have said, The Lord hath raised us up prophets in Babylon, thus saith the Lord concerning Ahab son of Kolaiah and concerning Ṣedekiah son of Maaseiah,(505) Behold I am to give them into the hand of the king of Babylon and to your eyes shall he slay them. 22. And of them shall a curse be taken up by all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon saying, “The Lord set thee like Ṣedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted(506) in the fire!” 23. Because they have wrought folly in Israel and committed adultery with their neighbours’ wives, and in My Name have spoken words which I commanded them not. I am He who knoweth and am witness—Rede of the Lord.

And, second, another of the “prophets” among the exiles sent to Jerusalem a protest against Jeremiah’s Letter, XXIX. 24-29.

This passage, especially in its concise Greek form, which as usual is devoid of the repetitions of titles and other redundant phrases in the Hebrew text, bears the stamp of genuineness.

XXIX. 24. And unto Shemaiah the Nehemalite thou shalt say:(507) 25b. Because thou hast sent in thine own name a letter to Ṣephaniah, son of Maaseiah, the priest,(508) saying, The Lord hath appointed thee priest, instead of Jehoiada the priest, to be overseer in the House of the Lord for every man that is raving and takes on himself to be a prophet, that thou shouldest put him in the stocks and in the collar. 27. Now therefore why hast thou not curbed Jeremiah of Anathoth, who takes on himself to prophesy unto you? 28. Hath he not sent to us in Babylon saying, “It(509) is long! Build ye houses and settle down, and plant gardens and eat their fruit.” 29. And Ṣephaniah read this letter in the ears of Jeremiah; and the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, Send to the exiles saying: Thus saith the Lord concerning Shemaiah the Nehemalite, Because Shemaiah hath prophesied unto you, although I did not send him, and hath led you to trust in a lie; therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold I am about to visit upon Shemaiah and upon his seed; there shall not be a man to them in your midst to see the good which I am going to do you.(510)

In one respect Jeremiah has not changed. His denunciation of individuals who oppose the Word of the Lord by himself is as strong as ever, and still more dramatically than in the case of Shemaiah it appears in his treatment of the prophets within Jerusalem, who flouted his counsels of subjection to Nebuchadrezzar, Chs. XXVII-XXVIII. In this narrative or narratives (for the whole seems compounded of several, perhaps not all referring to the same occasion) the differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts are even more than usually great. The Greek again attracts our preference by its freedom from superfluous titles, repetitions and redundances, and is probably nearer than the Hebrew to the original of Baruch’s Memoirs of the Prophet. But it is obviously not complete, missing out clauses, the presence of which is implied by subsequent ones.(511) The following is the substance of what Baruch reports.

It was the fourth year of Ṣedekiah, 593, when messengers from the neighbouring nations came to Jerusalem to intrigue under Egyptian influence for revolt against Babylon. Jeremiah was commanded to make a yoke of bars and thongs, and having put it on his neck to charge the messengers to tell their masters—

XXVII. 4. Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I have made the Earth by My great power and Mine outstretched arm, and I give it unto whom it seems right to Me. 6. So now I have given all these lands(512) into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, to serve him,(513) and even the beasts of the field to serve him. 8. And it shall be that the nation and kingdom, which will not put their neck into the yoke of the king of Babylon, with the sword and with the famine(514) shall I visit them—Rede of the Lord—till they be consumed at his hand (?). 9. But ye, hearken ye not to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers,(515) nor to your soothsayers, nor to your sorcerers, who say, “Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon”; for they prophesy a lie unto you, to the result of removing you far from your own soil. 11. But the nation which brings its neck into the yoke of the king of Babylon and serves him, I will let it rest on its own soil and it shall till this and abide within it.

This is followed by a similar Oracle to Ṣedekiah himself, 12-15, and by another, 16-22, to the priests concerning a matter of peculiar anxiety to them.