“Thus Far the Words of Jeremiah”

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I’ll never forget the first time a movie star talked to me.

At the end of his television show, Roy Rogers looked right into the camera and sang to me, “Happy trails to you, until we meet again.” A similar thing happened to my children when Mister Rogers smiled into the camera and reassured them, “I like you just the way you are.”

These moments stand out in our memory because it is so odd—even jarring—when an actor or a storyteller steps outside the world of the story, as it were, and enters our own. Sometimes it becomes clear that there are actually three worlds involved: the world of the viewer, the world of the story and the world of the actor. This becomes apparent whenever actors look into the camera and take off their wigs, revealing the distance between themselves and the story.

Until that instant, all of our attention has been focused on the world of the story. Indeed, up to that moment, there is no world other than that of the story. But when actors look straight into the camera and speak to the audience, they reveal other worlds to us.

A similarly remarkable event occurs near the end of the Book of Jeremiah.¹ In the last phrase of the last verse of the next to the last chapter in the book, someone—we don’t know who—looks into the “camera” and speaks directly to the audience. The person doesn’t say much—only four words in Hebrew. In English it comes out to seven: “Thus far are the words of Jeremiah” (Jeremiah 51:64b).²

It is a wonderful and revealing moment, in which three worlds come into view.

One of these worlds is the world of the audience. Presumably, when these words were first uttered, they were intended for a particular audience. Undoubtedly, the one speaking in Jeremiah 51:64b shared the same world with them. However, as the Book of Jeremiah was passed down through history, the world of the audience lost its connection with a particular time period; it became, in certain respects, timeless. Anyone today who picks up the Book of Jeremiah becomes part of this world. And the note addressed to the audience is transformed into a message for all the worlds of all the audiences who will ever read Jeremiah.

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But who is speaking in Jeremiah 51:64b? Is it the prophet himself? Probably not. In the first place, the voice in Jeremiah 51:64b speaks about Jeremiah in the third person—something most people don’t do. In fact, we know that Jeremiah is quite capable of speaking for himself, and when he does he uses the first person. We hear his voice directly throughout the Book of Jeremiah. He speaks first in 1:4: “Now the word of the Lord came to me”; and in 1:9: “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.’” All of this indicates that Jeremiah is probably not the speaker in 51:64b.

So again we ask: Who is speaking in Jeremiah 51:64b? What do we know about this person? What do we know about this person’s world, the world of the original audience? Is it the same world as that created and played out in the body of the Book of Jeremiah? Or is it a different world? And what motivates the person to speak at all? What compels this person to draw attention to himself,^a to step out of the shadows of the world of the story and insinuate himself into the world of the audience? Is this the first and only time that we hear this voice in the Book of Jeremiah?

Let’s address the last question first. As it turns out, there are many times in the Book of Jeremiah when someone other than the prophet speaks. Several episodes in the Book of Jeremiah begin with a notice such as this one at 27:1: “In the beginning of the reign of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord.” These are the words of a narrator, someone who is telling the Jeremiah story. This is by no means unusual. But one of the interesting things about the Book of Jeremiah is that this task of narration is passed back and forth between a nameless, omniscient narrator and Jeremiah himself, who sometimes engages in a form of self-narration as he recounts what has happened to him.

Is the voice in Jeremiah 51:64b the voice of a narrator? Not exactly. Narrators tell stories; they don’t tell about stories. Whoever is speaking in Jeremiah 51:64b is not telling the story, he is speaking about it. His comment is something like “What you have heard to this point in the story comes from Jeremiah. What comes after this point in the story does not.”

This kind of voice appears only one other place in the Book of Jeremiah, at the very beginning:

The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

Jeremiah 1:1–3

The voice is commenting on the book as a whole, telling us that the words of Jeremiah lie ahead. It is setting the book up, characterizing the contents for the readers before they plunge into the first episode. This is not the voice of a narrator, but of an editor or publisher.

So we have an interesting connection between Jeremiah 1:1–3 and Jeremiah 51:64b. Like bookends, these passages stand at the beginning and the end of the body of the Book of Jeremiah. In each, the speaker looks into the “camera” and addresses the audience. Further, each has a common perspective and function, that of an editor or publisher surveying and characterizing the body of the book.

But the Book of Jeremiah does not end with this voice at the end of chapter 51. There is a 52nd chapter. What is this?

The voice in 51:64b has already told us two important things, one explicitly, one implicitly. Explicitly, the voice characterizes the material in the Book of Jeremiah before chapter 52 as “the words of Jeremiah”—a phrase that encompasses both Jeremiah’s words and his narrator’s. Implicitly, the speaker is trying to make it clear that in a sense, one story is ending and another, told in a different voice, is beginning.

Up until now, the book has been concerned with the life and times of Jeremiah, and especially with his prophecies in the face of the Babylonian threat. But chapter 52 looks back on the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s words in the events stretching from 598 (the year of King Jehoiachin’s exile) all the way to 562 (the year he was released from prison).

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The voice in 51:64b informs us that chapter 52 is neither the words of Jeremiah nor those of Jeremiah’s narrator. So whose voice is this?

Often in biblical literature, these sorts of questions are impossible to answer with certainty. The Chronicler, for example, tells his readers that there are lots of other sources of information out there. Presumably he borrowed from some of them. Literary critics have identified in various biblical books the telltale clues of materials apparently incorporated from other sources. We know, theoretically, that it often happened. But in the case of Jeremiah 52, the borrowing is not simply theoretical: Jeremiah 52 is virtually the same—almost word for word—as 2 Kings 24:18–25:30.

The extent of the overlap between Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kings 24–25 is far greater than can be accounted for on the basis of a common oral tradition (a few examples are highlighted in the second sidebar to this article). There is a literary dependence at work here somewhere. Either the Book of Jeremiah borrowed from 2 Kings, or 2 Kings borrowed from Jeremiah, or both of them made use of a common third source.

This particular riddle is solved with relative certainty when one observes how well this material fits into the history that runs from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, usually referred to by scholars as the Deuteronomistic History. The vocabulary, form and content of the passage are most at home in the Deuteronomistic History. Just one example: The formula used to introduce the account of Zedekiah’s reign (2 Kings 24:18; Jeremiah 52:1) is a stock formula used more than 40 times in Kings, but it appears only this once in Jeremiah. These kinds of comparisons make it seem most likely that Jeremiah is borrowing from 2 Kings.

Having made the connection between Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kings 24–25, what else can we learn about the voice in Jeremiah 51:64b? First, we can begin to 039determine when Jeremiah 52 was appended to the body of the Book of Jeremiah. The last paragraph of our passage in Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kings 25 (which is also the last paragraph of the Deuteronomistic History) indicates the earliest possible time the text could have been composed. It begins: “In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison” (2 Kings 25:27). Assuming that King Jehoiachin was deported with the rest of the ruling class in the Babylonian action against Judah in 598 B.C.E., the 37th year of his exile would be around 562 B.C.E. To be on the historically conservative side, scholars usually allow a decade between the last event recorded in a book and the earliest time at which it was written. If this is so, the text could date as early as 550 B.C.E.

But what is the latest time at which the Deuteronomistic History could have been composed? Since the Deuteronomistic History is quoted by Chronicles, it must have been composed (and risen to some sort of authoritative status) by the Chronicler’s time (mid- to late fifth century B.C.E.). Most scholars are convinced, however, that the Deuteronomistic History was completed even earlier, in the mid-sixth century B.C.E., at least before 538 B.C.E. This is because the Deuteronomistic History does not mention the Persian king Cyrus’s edict of 538 B.C.E., which allowed the Jews to return from the Babylonian Exile. Reports of Cyrus’s edict are given in two places in the Hebrew Bible: in Ezra 1:1–4 and, more briefly, in 2 Chronicles 36:22–23, both of which note that Jeremiah predicted this event. It seems highly unlikely that the Deuteronomistic Historian would not have mentioned this pivotal event if he knew of it.

This indicates that the Book of Jeremiah—in the form we know it, with a 52nd chapter—must not have come into being any earlier than 550 to 538 B.C.E., since chapter 52 was copied from the Deuteronomistic History, which dates no earlier than this period. And this means that the voice that speaks to us in 51:64b speaks to us from no earlier than 550 to 538 B.C.E. because this voice is familiar with the body of the Book of Jeremiah and knows that what follows comes from someone else. With this realization, second and third worlds appear before us.

Though the voice in 51:64b speaks to us about Jeremiah’s words, that voice is separated from, and looking back on, Jeremiah’s time at a remove of several decades, if not a couple of generations.

What does this tell us about the process that led to the production of the Book of Jeremiah and, specifically, the use of sources in the production of that book? How did the book develop from any early drafts up through its final form?

Having long realized that 2 Kings 24:18–25:30 stands as a source for Jeremiah 52, 20th-century scholars have spilt much ink over the question of additional sources. Scholars recognize that the text of the Book of Jeremiah as we have it seems to fall into two or three general categories.³ First, there is a set of poetic oracles concentrated in the first half of the book. Second, there is a set of biographical stories in prose concentrated in the second half of the book. Third, some of the prose materials seem to have a distinctive vocabulary, style and perspective that set them apart.⁴ Earlier this century, many argued that these variations reflected discrete sources or, perhaps, “layers in the Jeremiah tradition.” The poetic materials were identified as the authentic prophetic oracles of Jeremiah himself; the bulk of the prose accounts of Jeremiah’s life and ministry were thought to have been, perhaps, the work of Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe. These documents were brought together by a school whose thinking and writing style had been fashioned within the same circles that produced the Book of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History; this group introduced the subset of prose materials with its more distinctive vocabulary.

This rather wooden view of the sources has since given way to a more nuanced model, in which Jeremiah’s materials became intertwined with third-person narratives by other hands and the whole was reworked several times by an ongoing tradition of preachers and theologians functioning as editors, copyists and tradents.^b

Speculation about the sources and the literary development of biblical books is common. But in the case of Jeremiah, this speculation has been fueled all the more by the book’s own account of how its first two drafts came to be.

The description, found in Jeremiah 36 (quoted in the first sidebar to this article), is unparalleled in biblical literature for the detailed view it presents of the early stages of the development of a biblical book.⁵ In Jeremiah 36:1, we are told the date of the undertaking—605 B.C.E., a momentous year on the international stage of the ancient Near East, when the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar, routed the Egyptian army at the Battle of Carchemish. We are given an idea of the first draft’s content (“all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations”) and scope (“from the days of Josiah until today”). The working relationship between the prophet and the scribe Baruch is detailed,⁶ as is the promulgation of the first draft through multiple public readings. Then we read of the king’s destruction of the first draft, column by column,⁷ and the production of a revised and extended second draft. What’s more, the 042rest of the Book of Jeremiah makes it clear that this second version was not the final draft of the book. According to the story, both of the first two drafts were produced in 605 B.C.E. But the Book of Jeremiah details several later events, including the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C.E.

Amazingly, whatever the process was that sustained the development of the Book of Jeremiah through various drafts, it led to the finalization of not one, but two forms—or editions—of the Book of Jeremiah. One edition, known to us mainly via its transmission through the Jewish Masoretic tradition,^c served the needs of some, but not all, Jewish believing communities up until the end of the first century C.E., when it became the standard and exclusive form for all Jewish communities to this day. For now, we’ll refer to this as the MT edition. Another edition, known to us mainly through its transmission among the Greek translations of the Septuagint,^d served the needs of other Jewish communities—first in its original Hebrew form and later in a Greek form to serve the needs of Greek-speaking Jewish communities. Eventually this edition became the standard and exclusive edition known to early Christian communities for several centuries into the Christian era. We’ll refer to this as the LXX edition.⁸

The differences between these two editions are not inconsequential. The LXX edition is fully one-seventh (3,000 words, by one count) shorter than the MT edition, and the order of the materials in the two editions differs significantly.⁹ This is particularly evident with that complex of chapters referred to as the Oracles Against the Nations. In this series of oracles, Jeremiah lists the punishments that God will inflict on nine nations, including Egypt, Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon. In the LXX edition, the oracles appear in the middle of the book, just after chapter 25:12–13, which speaks of the vengeance God ultimately intends to take on the nation that destroys Judah.

In the MT edition, however, the Oracles Against the Nations appear late in the book, just before chapter 52.¹⁰

The relationship between these two editions has been debated for some time. Saint Jerome, the fifth-century C.E. biblical translator, suggested that the Greek version of Jeremiah in the LXX was an abridgment of the original Hebrew. Modern textual critics, however, usually give preference to the shorter of two variants. The shorter text, they argue, is more likely the original, since it makes more sense that copyists and editors would start with a shorter text and add to it than that they would delete material from a longer text. In spite of this general truth, many scholars were not willing to accept that the shorter LXX edition was more original than the MT. The biblical text received via the Masoretic tradition has proved itself time and again to be the more reliable of the two traditions. In addition, one can show many places where the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek apparently became the occasion for making all sorts of revisions to the text—including some cases of abbreviation.

And so a debate raged for centuries about which of the two Jeremiah editions was the older one. Then came the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The caves of Qumran, where the scrolls were found, contained the preserved remnants of five Hebrew copies of Jeremiah.¹¹ Three of these Dead Sea 044Scrolls (2QJer, 4QJer^a and 4QJer^c)^e reflect essentially the same edition that we have in the MT. But 4QJer^b and the very fragmentary 4QJer^d—also Hebrew texts, mind you—have the shorter text and different order that characterize the Greek LXX. These texts, then, prove that the edition preserved in the Greek tradition did not originate with a bad translation of a good Hebrew text but, rather, from a good translation of a different Hebrew text. With this additional evidence, it seems clear that the shorter text of Jeremiah preserved in the LXX and now in 4QJer^b and 4QJer^d (hereafter, the First Edition) is indeed earlier than that preserved in the MT and the other texts from Qumran (hereafter, the Second Edition). Each edition’s users were fully convinced that their edition of Jeremiah faithfully delivered God’s word to them.

So what does all this have to with the voice that states “Thus far are the words of Jeremiah” at the end of chapter 51?

This voice speaks only in the Second (MT) Edition of Jeremiah. There is no corresponding notice in the First Edition, even though both editions conclude with the large section borrowed from 2 Kings 24–25.

By examining the other additions made to the Second Edition, we may be better equipped to hear what the voice is telling us. The Second Edition, as we mentioned above, is significantly longer than the first. Much of the supplementary material comes in the form of brief explanatory insertions, of which there are dozens and dozens.¹² The single most frequent insertion is the inclusion of more complete and specific personal names, titles (“king” or “prophet”) and the like. Pronouns are replaced with full names. In addition, the Second Edition reiterates in the same context information given earlier in the episode so that details in the story are perfectly clear. Formulas used in the First Edition are repeated many additional times in the Second Edition. For instance, the First Edition employs the phrase “oracle of the Lord” 109 times; the Second Edition includes all of these occurrences plus 65 more. Several prophetic episodes are given narrative introductions (Jeremiah 2:1–2, 7:1–2, 16:1, 27:1) that were not present in the First Edition. Further, the Second Edition has completely new passages, as well as many facts, that are lacking in the First Edition (for instance, Jeremiah 33:14–26, 39:4–13).¹³

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of the Second Edition was its rearrangement of the contents of the Book of Jeremiah. Determining why the First Edition needed to be rearranged will help us understand why our editor raised his voice at the end of chapter 51.

Let’s look at one telling example.

Both editions include Jeremiah’s oracle to his scribe Baruch:

The word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah, when he wrote these words in a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch: You said, “Woe is me! The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.” Thus you shall say to him, “Thus says the Lord: I am going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted—that is, the 045whole land. And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for I am going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the Lord; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go.”

But although the wording of the oracle is virtually identical in both editions, it appears in two very different places. In the First Edition, this oracle appears in chapter 51, immediately preceding the final chapter (which was borrowed from 2 Kings 24–25). It is the last oracle in the book and is separated from the Oracles Against the Nations, which appear in the middle of the book. In the Second Edition, however, this oracle appears six chapters earlier (in chapter 45), just before the Oracles Against the Nations.

As French scholar Pierre-Maurice Bogaert has argued, when the Oracle to Baruch is left in the final position of the book, as it is in the First Edition, it makes Baruch “the notary and guarantor of the conservation and fulfillment of the Jeremianic prophecy.”¹⁴ In other words, when the body of the Jeremiah book ends with a blessing on Baruch, it seems to underscore and highlight his role in the production and preservation of the book.

Did the Second Edition move the Oracles Against the Nations to the end of the book in order to deflate Baruch’s position? A close look at Baruch’s role in both editions supports this idea.

The accounts given of the production of the first and second drafts of the Book of Jeremiah (chapter 43 in the First Edition; chapter 36 in the Second Edition) have some interesting differences.¹⁵ Although in both versions Baruch plays a significant role alongside Jeremiah in the production of the scrolls, and the king finds the prophet and the scribe jointly responsible for the first draft, in the Second Edition Baruch’s role is clearly diminished to that of an assistant by the addition of the phrase “the secretary” beside his name (the Second Edition is quoted in the first sidebar to this article). Further, in the First Edition’s description of the making of the second draft, we read that “Baruch took another scroll, and wrote on it at Jeremiah’s dictation.” But in the Second Edition, it is the prophet, not the scribe, who initiates the action: “Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the secretary Baruch son of Neriah.”¹⁶

It may be that the Second Edition is simply trying to clarify some of the more confusing aspects of the text of Jeremiah 36. Yet it seems clear that the Second Edition is also trying systematically to reduce Baruch’s role in order to elevate the prophet as the sole authority behind the Jeremiah traditions.

Let us return to the voice at the end of chapter 51. We now know that this voice is part of a tradition that is engaged in interpreting and modifying the Book of Jeremiah. It is not part of the tradition that borrowed material from 2 Kings 24–25 and added it to the Book of Jeremiah as chapter 52: This was already accomplished in the First Edition. This voice in the Second Edition is aware of the connection between 2 Kings and the Jeremiah material and undoubtedly agrees with it. The presence of Jeremiah 52 in both editions reveals a shared conviction: The truth of the words of Jeremiah can only be fully appreciated in the light of the events that happened in 586 B.C.E. and following.

But the voice in Jeremiah 51:64b wants to make this point even clearer by specifying that two stories have been merged in the Jeremiah materials: the story of Jeremiah’s words (recounted in chapters 1–51) and the story of the fulfillment of those words in history (found in chapter 52). But in making this point, the voice in 51:64b may also be telling us something else: One should not make too much of Baruch’s role within the Jeremiah tradition.

There is a great deal of evidence that the role of Baruch in relation to the Jeremiah materials would eventually become a major point of division between various groups. In the Greek tradition, the “words of Jeremiah” were circulated not only with the addition of chapter 52, but also with the attachment of an entire book purportedly by Baruch, what we know as the apocryphal or deuterocanonical Book of Baruch. The closeness of the Book of Baruch and the Book of Jeremiah is not obvious in modern published editions of the Apocrypha. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the Book of Baruch was preserved and transmitted within “biblical manuscripts,” between the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations. (In Catholic Bibles, it follows Lamentations.) In Christian circles, many early church writers even refer to the Book of Baruch as Jeremiah when they quote from it! In addition, several other works were written, attributed to Baruch and circulated in these same circles.¹⁷

Jerome, however, informs us that in his time Jewish communities neither possessed nor used the Book of Baruch or any of the other books attributed to the scribe.¹⁸ 054Thus we see that by the fifth century C.E., Christian and Jewish communities had arrived at two very different conclusions about the role of Baruch in connection with the Jeremiah tradition.

Is it possible that when we enter the world of our speaker in Jeremiah 51:64b, we stand near the beginning of a break that would eventually widen into a great chasm, separating those communities who elevated the role of Baruch from those who minimized him? Had this already become an important issue in the days of our speaker in Jeremiah 51:64b? If so, the First Edition of the Book of Jeremiah marks the launch point of an emphasis on Baruch; the Second Edition marks a turning point, leading back to Jeremiah.¹⁹

The same circle that was working on perfecting and finalizing the Book of Jeremiah was also working on perfecting and finalizing the Deuteronomistic History. One final set of observations from Jeremiah 52 will make this point clear.²⁰

The word-for-word connection between Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kings 24–25 stops after Jeremiah 52:27 and only resumes again at 52:31 (see the second sidebar to this article).

After informing us that “Judah went into exile out of its land” (52:27), Jeremiah gives us a detailed accounting of the number of persons taken into exile in the three deportations carried out under Nebuchadnezzar. Some scholars believe that this passage represents a more natural direction for the story than the one that is taken in 2 Kings 25.²¹ There the story switches abruptly to an account of the appointment and murder of Gedaliah and of the flight of the remaining Judeans to Egypt. Which of the two directions is more original is difficult to determine. However, note one very revealing thing: The episode in 2 Kings 25:22–26 concerning the appointment of Gedaliah as governor in Judah is based on material in Jeremiah chapters 40–41, especially 40:5–10 (see the second sidebar to this article).

The account in 2 Kings is the shorter of the two accounts, but in this case it clearly looks like an abbreviation of the longer story, not all of the details of which were relevant to the Deuteronomistic History. Yet many of the key words and phrases of the longer story in Jeremiah 40–41 were drawn into the summary in 2 Kings 25—thus proving the literary dependence between them. This shows us not only that the editors of the Book of Jeremiah drew on material from the Deuteronomistic History to finalize Jeremiah, but also that the editors of the Deuteronomistic History drew on material in the Book of Jeremiah to finalize the Deuteronomistic History.

One summer day a few years ago, I was swimming in Lake Chelan, a long and deep lake in central Washington State. After floating on my back for some time offshore, I turned over and opened my eyes. I looked at the bank of the shoreline and followed it as it dropped away sharply into a deep and impenetrable abyss. In a moment my view of the world changed. Until that instant, I thought of myself as lying on the surface of something. Now, suddenly, I was hanging over a great nothingness. I was filled with terror, sure that some giant Leviathan was lurking in the hidden deep and was surging upward to devour me. I swam back to shore, where I rested while rethinking my view of the world.

I have a similar experience with the text of Jeremiah 51:64b, though it is an experience filled not with terror, but with wonder and fascination. The “surface of the text,” as it were, gives way to a great depth. And in this depth we can see evidence of a fascinating history. It is a history filled with momentous events and people who are wrestling with the application of the prophetic word in a new world—a world that has been changed by new events. It is a history filled with voices, opinions, interpretations and debates. In short, we are catching a glimpse of that history which lies between the ipsissima verba (very words) of the prophets and the final canonization of the books that bear their names. During this time, the communities of faith were doing at least two things. First, they were beginning to look to the testimonies of the prophets to help them understand and interpret the world around them, and their own place in that world, following the Babylonian destruction and the Exile. And second, they were involved in the arduous task of shaping and finalizing the books in which they heard the word of God. It was not enough, apparently, simply to pass the words along. They needed to be arranged, clarified, interpreted and, in certain cases, edited so that subsequent readers would understand them properly.

As one who has spent much of his adult life engaged in a similar sort of labor, I feel a closeness, an affinity with that nameless and faceless voice that speaks in Jeremiah 51:64b. I share his belief: There is something in these words that have the power of God in them. I know his struggle. The newcomer to this book needs some help. Fully appreciating the prophet’s words is not as simple as just hearing them. The text needs some framing, some clarification and some interpretation. And as I prepare to bring new students into the world of the Book of Jeremiah, I often choose this as my point of entry. I begin here, with these seven words, “Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.”

A brief aside in the prophet’s book opens up a world of multiple authors, editors and textual strands within the Bible and provides a portrait of both Jeremiah and his faithful scribe.