JEREMIAH, BOOK OF. The book of the prophet Jeremiah itself gives an account of the origin of the work. This is contained in chapter xxxvi. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah (604 B.C.), Jeremiah, after he had prophesied orally for twenty-three years, was commissioned by Jehovah to write out all the oracles which had been revealed to him. The prophet therefore sought the help of Baruch, who wrote down the book at his dictation. The next year Baruch read the roll in the Temple in the hearing of a great assembly of people on the occasion of a fast. The roll was afterwards read before the princes. The king then commanded that it should be brought to him and read aloud. When three or four double columns had been read, the king threw the roll into the fire. There upon Jehovah commissioned the prophet to take another roll and write in it all the words that were in the first roll. This was done. The words of the original roll were written out again, " and there were also added to them many other similar words." As Cornill says, " it follows from this that we possess no authentic reports from the first half-period of Jeremiah's active ministry, but only a resulnd given by himself. in which he had striven to recapitulate its fundamental thoughts and ideas in as brief and impressive a way as possible." And the original document cannot have been very voluminous, for it was read through twice in a single day. The earliest sections in the Book of Jeremiah would seem to be: chapters i., ii.-vi., vii.-x., xi.-xii. 6, xxv., xviii. These may be prior to the fourth year of Jehoiachim. But even here there are passages which cannot be due to the prophet himself. " Ch. iii. 6-13 breaks the connexion between ili. 5 and 19; ix. 22-x. 16, which itself consists of three discourses, dissevers the immediately continuous verses ix. 21 and x. 17 from each other; xii. 4 stands in an altogether unsuitable and impossible place " (Cornill). The original roll was utilised in the com position of the existing Book of Jeremiah, but it has not been preserved in its original form. In many ways the Book of Jeremiah has undergone considerable reduction. An example of this may be found in chapter iv. verses 5 31. The foe referred to in this prophecy, the " foe from the North," was probably the Scythians. We learn
from Herodotus (i. 105-8) that about 625 B.C. the Scythians overran Western Asia, and advanced through Palestine as far as Ashkelon, with the intention of in vading Egypt. By the time the prophecy was com mitted to writing, however, about 604 B.C., the Chal damns had become dangerous, and were beginning to march from the North. It has been suggested that the prophecy was adapted or modified in parts to-meet the new situation. The whole prophecy extends to chapter vi. vs. 30; and Driver points out, as an instance of adaptation, that the " lion " and " destroyer of nations " in chapter vi. 7 are terms that apply better to an indi vidual leader like Nebuchadnezzar than to a horde. The book of Jeremiah is remarkable, regarded as a propheti cal work, for the amount of biographical material that it contains. This material is due to an editor, no doubt to Baruch. It is to be found in chapters xix.-xx. 6, xxvi.-xxix., xxxiv., and xxxvi.-xlv. Chapters xlvi.-li.
contain a number of oracles uttered against foreign countries. It has been contended that none of these oracles contains words actually spoken by Jeremiah. This is an extreme position. Some of them no doubt are not Jeremian. But as regards others, as Cornill says, " on a priori grounds we should expect to find dis courses against the heathen in the Book of Jeremiah, for no other prophet had the feeling from the outset that his commission included his having been sent to the nations outside Israel as well, to the same degree as Jeremiah (i. 5, 10; xxxvi. 2; xviii. 9 ff.; cp. also xxvii. 2 ff.); and if the announcement in xxv. 15-24 is certainly authentic, this inclines us to take a favourable view of its actual execution." The Septuagint exhibits a shorter form of text than the Hebrew of the Book of Jeremiah. Whitehouse thinks the Septuagint version is based on a shorter and earlier edition of the collected prophecies of Jeremiah. Cornill thinks "a connexion of the words of Jeremiah with the Baruch-narratives must have been effected some considerable time before the LXX." See S. R. Driver, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, 1906; C. Cornill, Intr.; G. H. Box; O. C. Whitehouse; A. S. Peake, Jeremiah, the " Century Bible," 1910; C. F. Kent, The Sermons, Epistles and Apocalypses of Israel's Prophets, 1910.