Keil & Delitzsch CommentaryJeremiah 26

Jer 26:1-19 Accusation and Acquittal of Jeremiah. - Jer 26:1-7. His prophecy that temple and city would be destroyed gave occasion to the accusation of the prophet. - Jer 26:1. "In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of Judah, came this word from Jahveh, saying: Jer 26:2. Thus said Jahveh: Stand in the court of the house of Jahveh, and speak to all the cities of Judah which come to worship in Jahveh’s house, all the words that I have commanded thee to speak to them; take not a word therefrom. Jer 26:3. Perchance they will hearken and turn each from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil which I purpose to do unto them for the evil of their doings. Jer 26:4. And say unto them: Thus saith Jahveh: If ye hearken not to me, to walk in my law which I have set before you, Jer 26:5. To hearken to the words of my servants the prophets whom I sent unto you, from early morning on sending, but ye have not hearkened. Jer 26:6. Then I make this house like Shiloh, and this city a curse to all the peoples of the earth. Jer 26:7. And the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of Jahveh." In the discourse of Jer 7, where he was combating the people’s false reliance upon the temple, Jeremiah had already threatened that the temple should share the fate of Shiloh, unless the people turned from its evil ways. Now, since that discourse was also delivered in the temple, and since Jer 26:2-6 of the present chapter manifestly communicate only the substance of what the prophet said, several comm. have held these discourses to be identical, and have taken it for granted that the discourse here referred to, belonging to the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, was given in full in Jer 7, while the history of it has been given in the present chapter by way of supplement (cf. the introductory remarks to Jer 7). But considering that it is a peculiarity of Jeremiah frequently to repeat certain of the main thoughts of his message, the saying of God, that He will do to the temple as He has done to Shiloh, is not sufficient to warrant this assumption. Jeremiah frequently held discourses in the temple, and more than once foretold the destruction of Jerusalem; so that it need not be surprising if on more than one occasion he threatened the temple with the fate of Shiloh. Between the two discourses there is further this distinction: Whereas in Jer 7 the prophet speaks chiefly of the spoliation or destruction of the temple and the expulsion of the people into exile, here in brief incisive words he intimates the destruction of the city of Jerusalem as well; and the present chapter throughout gives the impression that by this, so to speak, peremptory declaration, the prophet sought to move the people finally to decide for Jahveh its God, and that he thus so exasperated the priests and prophets present, that they seized him and pronounced him worthy of death. - According to the heading, this took place in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim. The like specification in the heading of Jer 27 does not warrant us to refer the date to the fourth year of this king. "The beginning" intimates simply that the discourse belongs to the earlier period of Jehoiakim’s reign, without minuter information as to year and day. "To Jeremiah" seems to have been dropped out after "came this word," Jer 26:1. The court of the house of God is not necessarily the inner or priests’ court of the temple; it may have been the outer one where the people assembled; cf. Jer 19:14. All the "cities of Judah" for their inhabitants, as in Jer 11:12. The addition: "take not a word therefrom," cf. Deu 4:2; Deu 13:1, indicates the peremptory character of the discourse. In full, without softening the threat by the omission of anything the Lord commanded him, i.e., he is to proclaim the word of the Lord in its full unconditional severity, to move the people, if possible, to repentance, acc. to Jer 26:3. With Jer 26:3, cf. Jer 18:8, etc. - In Jer 26:4-6 we have the contents of the discourse. If they hearken not to the words of the prophet, as has hitherto been the case, the Lord will make the temple as Shiloh, and this city, i.e., Jerusalem, a curse, i.e., an object of curses (cf. Jer 24:9), for all peoples. On this cf. Jer 7:12. But ye have not hearkened. The Chet. הזּאתה Hitz. holds to be an error of transcription; Ew. §173, g, and Olsh. Gramm. §101, c, and 133, a paragogically lengthened form; Böttcher, Lehrb. §665. iii. and 897, 3, a toneless appended suffix, strengthening the demonstrative force: this (city) here.

Jer 26:20-23 The prophet Urijah put to death. - While the history we have just been considering gives testimony to the hostility of the priests and false prophets towards the true prophets of the Lord, the story of the prophet Urijah shows the hostility of King Jehoiakim against the proclaimers of divine truth. For this purpose, and not merely to show in how great peril Jeremiah then stood (Gr., Näg.), this history is introduced into our book. It is not stated that the occurrence took place at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, nor can we infer so much from its being placed directly after the events of that time. The time is not specified, because it was irrelevant for the case in hand. Jer 26:20. A man, Urijah the son of Shemaiah - both unknown - from Kirjath-Jearim, now called Kuriyet el 'Enab, about three hours to the north-west of Jerusalem, on the frontiers of the tribe of Benjamin (see on Jos 9:17), prophesied in the name of Jahveh against Jerusalem and Judah very much in the same terms as Jeremiah had done. When King Jehoiakim and his great men heard this, discourse, he sought after the prophet to kill him. Urijah, when he heard of it, fled to Egypt; but the king sent men after him, Elnathan the son of Achbor with some followers, and had him brought back thence, caused him to be put to death, and his body to be thrown into the graves of the common people. Hitz. takes objection to "all his mighty men," Jer 26:21, because it is not found in the lxx, and is nowhere else used by Jeremiah. But these facts do not prove that the words are not genuine; the latter of the two, indeed, tells rather in favour of their genuineness, since a glossator would not readily have interpolated an expression foreign to the rest of the book. The "mighty men" are the distinguished soldiers who were about the king, the military commanders, as the "princes" are the supreme civil authorities. Elnathan the son of Achbor, according to Jer 36:12, Jer 36:25, one of Jehoiakim’s princes, was a son of Achbor who is mentioned in 2Ki 22:12-14 as amongst the princes of Josiah. Whether this Elnathan was the same as the Elnathan whose daughter Nehushta was Jehoiachin’s mother (2Ki 24:8), and who was therefore the king’s father-in-law, must remain an undecided point, since the name Elnathan is of not unfrequent occurrence; of Levites, Ezr 8:16. בּני העם (see on Jer 17:19) means the common people here, as in 2Ki 22:6. The place of burial for the common people was in the valley of the Kidron; see on 2Ki 22:6.

Jer 26:24 The narrative closes with a remark as to how, amid such hostility against the prophets of God on the part of king and people, Jeremiah escaped death. This was because the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with him. This person is named in 2Ki 22:12, 2Ki 22:14, as one of the great men sent by King Josiah to the prophetess Hulda to inquire of her concerning the book of the law recently discovered. According to Jer 39:14; Jer 40:5, etc., he was the father of the future Chaldean governor Gedaliah. The Yoke of Babylon upon Judah and the Neighbouring Peoples - Jeremiah 27-29 These three chapters are closely connected with one another. They all belong to the earlier period of Zedekiah’s reign, and contain words of Jeremiah by means of which he confirms and vindicates against the opposition of false prophets his announcement of the seventy years’ duration of the Chaldean supremacy over Judah and the nations, and warns king and people patiently to bear the yoke laid on them by Nebuchadnezzar. The three chapters have besides an external connection. For Jer 28 is attached to the event of Jer 27 by its introductory formula: And it came to pass in that year, at the beginning, etc., as Jer 29 is to Jer 28 by ואלּה. To this, it is true, the heading handed down in the Masoretic text is in contradiction. The date: In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of Judah, came this word to Jeremiah (Jer 27:1), is irreconcilable with the date: And it came to pass in that year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month. The name "Jehoiakim the son of Josiah" in Jer 27:1 is erroneous. It is without doubt the blunder of a copyist who had in his mind the heading of the 26th chapter, and should have been "Zedekiah;" for the contents of Jer 27 carry us into Zedekiah’s time, as plainly appears from Jer 27:3, Jer 27:12, and Jer 27:20. Hence the Syr. translation and one of Kennicott’s codd. have substituted the latter name. (Following the example of ancient comm., Haevernick in his Introd. (ii. 2) has endeavoured to defend the date: "In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah." To this end he ventures the hypothesis, that in Jer 27 there are placed beside one another three discourses agreeing in their subject-matter: "one addressed to Jehoiakim (Jer 27:2-11), a second to Zedekiah (Jer 27:12-15), a third to the priests and people;" and that the words: "by the hand of the ambassador that came to Zedekiah the king of Judah," are appended to show how Zedekiah ought to have obeyed the older prophecy of Jehoiakim’s time, and how he should have borne himself towards the nations with which he was in alliance. but this does not solve the difficulty. The prophecy, Jer 27:4-11, is addressed to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon; but since the envoys of these kings did not come to Jerusalem till Zedekiah’s time, we are bound, if the prophecy dates from the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, to assume that this prophecy was communicated to Jeremiah and published by him eleven years before the event, upon occasion of which it was to be conveyed to the kings concerned. An assumption that would require unusually cogent reasons to render it credible. Vv. 4 b-21 contain nothing whatever that points to Jehoiakim’s time, or give countenance to the hypothesis that the three sections of this chapter contain three discourses of different dates, which have been put together on account merely of the similarity of their contents. Beyond this one error of transcription, these three chapters contain nothing that could throw any doubt on the integrity of the text. There are no traces of a later supplementary revision by another hand, such as Mov., Hitz., and de W. profess to have discovered. The occurrence of Jeremiah’s name in the contracted form ירמיה, as also of other names compounded with Jahu in the form Jah, does not prove later retouching; for, as Graf has shown, we find alongside of it the fuller form also (Jer 28:12; Jer 29:27-30), and have frequently both longer and shorter forms in the same verse (so in Jer 27:1; Jer 28:12; Jer 29:29-31). And so long as other means for distinguishing are wanting, it will not do to discriminate the manner of expression in the original text from that of the reviser by means of these forms alone. Again, as we have shown at p. 194, note, there is a good practical reason for Jeremiah’s being called "the prophet" (הנּביא); so that this too is not the reviser’s work. Finally, we cannot argue later addition from the fact that the name of the king of Babylon is written Nebuchadnezzar in Jer 27:6, Jer 27:8,Jer 27:20; Jer 28:3, Jer 28:11, Jer 28:14; Jer 29:1, Jer 29:3; for the same form appears again in Jer 34:1 and Jer 39:5, and with it we have also Nebuchadrezzar in Jer 29:21 and Jer 39:1. Elsewhere, it is true, we find only the one form Nebuchadnezzar, and this is the unvarying spelling in the books of Kings, Chron., Ezra, Dan., and in Est 2:6; whereas Ezekiel uniformly writes Nebuchadrezzar (Eze 26:7; Eze 29:18-19, and Eze 30:10), and this form Jeremiah uses twenty-seven times (Jer 21:2, Jer 21:7; Jer 22:25; Jer 24:1; Jer 25:1, Jer 25:9; Jer 29:21; Jer 32:1, Jer 32:28; Jer 35:11; Jer 37:1; Jer 39:1, Jer 39:11; Jer 43:10; Jer 44:30; Jer 46:2, Jer 46:13, Jer 46:26; Jer 49:28, 40; Jer 50:17; Jer 51:34; Jer 52:4, Jer 52:12, Jer 52:28-30 - not merely in the discourses, but in the headings and historical parts as well). But though the case is so, we are not entitled to conclude that Nebuchadnezzar was a way of pronouncing the name that came into use at a later time; the conclusion rather is, as we have remarked at p. 203, and on Dan 1:1, that the writing with n represents the Jewish-Aramaean pronunciation, whereas the form Nebuchadrezzar, according to the testimony of such inscriptions as have been preserved, expresses more fairly Assyrian pronunciation. The Jewish way of pronouncing would naturally not arise till after the king of Babylon had appeared in Palestine, from which time the Jews would have this name often on their lips. Hence it is in the book of Jeremiah alone that we find both forms of the name (that with r 27 times, that with n 10 times). How it has come about that the latter form is used just three times in each of Jer 27 and 28 cannot with certainty be made out. But note, (1) that the form with n occurs twice in 28 (Jer 28:3 and Jer 28:11) in the speech of the false prophet Hananiah, and then, Jer 28:14, in Jeremiah’s answer to that speech; (2) that the prophecy of Jer 27 was addressed partly to the envoys of the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Phoenicia, while it is partly a warning to the people against the lying speeches of the false prophets, and that it is just in these portions, Jer 27:6, Jer 27:8, and Jer 27:20, that the name so written occurs. If we consider this, we cannot avoid the conjecture, that by changing the r for n, the Jewish people had accommodated to their own mode of utterance the strange-sounding name Nabucudurusur, and that Jeremiah made use of the popular pronunciation in these two discourses, whereas elsewhere in all his discourses he uses Nebucahdrezzar alone; for the remaining cases in which we find Nebuchadnezzar in this book are contained in historical notices.)