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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > December 1994

Jeremiah’s Polemic Against Idols

What archaeology can teach us

By Philip J. King

Biblical archaeology envisions a dialogue between artifacts and the scriptural text. In many ways archaeology can provide the context that brings the text to life. Recently I completed a book on Jeremiah and archaeology in which I fill in the background of the prophet’s entire work.1 Here we will look at a single passage where the prophet, dripping with sarcasm, delivers a satire on idolatry, ridiculing idols as worthless contrast to Israel’s omnipotent God. This famous passage from Jeremiah 10 (see the sidebar “The Lord of the House of Israel versus Foreign Gods [Jeremiah 10:1–16]”) has received much linguistic […]

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Footnotes

1.

Most scholars believe the Book of Isaiah was written by several authors: the first 39 chapters by “Isaiah,” who lived before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.; chapters 40–55 by “Deutero-Isaiah,” who lived in Babylon toward the end of the period of Exile; and chapters 56–66 by “Trito-Isaiah,” who lived in the post-Exilic community in Palestine.

2.

See James E. Harper, “26 Tons of Gold and 65 Tons of Silver: Too Much To Believe?” BAR 19:06.

3.

Lawrence Stager, “When Canaanites and Philistines Ruled Ashkelon,” BAR 17:02.

Endnotes

1.

Philip J. King, Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).

2.

See M. Margaliot, “Jeremiah 10:1–16: A Re-examination,” Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 30 (1980), pp. 295–308.

3.

Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 12.

4.

A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 184.

5.

Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Graven Image,” in Ancient Israelite Religion, edited by P. Miller, P. Hanson and S. D. McBride (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987), p. 18.

6.

A. L. Oppenheim, “The Golden Garments of the Gods,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 8 (1949), pp. 172–193.

7.

William F. Albright, “New Light on the Early History of Phoenician Colonization,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 83 (1941), pp. 21–22.

8.

B. Maisler (Mazar), “Two Hebrew Ostraca from Tell Qasile,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 10 (1951), p. 266.