Jeremiah 36

Text

Textual witnesses

Verse numbering

Parashot

Verse 1

• Cross reference:
• This chapter is out of the chronological order of chapter 32-34 and 37-44, as it records the events during the fourth year of king Jehoiakim's reign.

  Verse 2

• "Scroll of a book" : from Hebrew: מְגִלַּת־סֵפֶר, megillat-sefer; according to R. Lansing Hicks, a theologian at Yale Divinity School, "the dimension and content of this 'roll of book' or 'scroll' has "received repeated attention", resulting in some efforts to reconstruct it, but "each of these efforts suffers by reason of its subjective approach."

  Verse 5

Verse 9

• "The fifth year...the ninth month": December 604 BCE. The fast is related to the fall of Ashkelon on the Philistine territory by the Babylonia army, as recorded in the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle, which must cause terror in Judah, because they have allied themselves with Egypt since the death of Josiah in 609 BCE.

  Verse 10

• "Baruch" : a scribe closely related to Jeremiah and the one transcribed Jeremiah's prophecies in the scrolls. His brother, Seriah, is a minister of king Zedekiah. Bullae or seals belonging to Baruch and Seriah have been discovered.
• "Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe": Shaphan the scribe is assumed to be the same person reading to king Josiah the Book of Law discovered by Hilkiah the priest. This Gemariah is then the brother of Ahikam, who protected Jeremiah and the uncle of Gedaliah, who treated Jeremiah favorably, therefore it is not peculiar that Gemariah allowed Baruch to use his room. In 1983 a bulla was discovered in the ruins of the City of David with the inscription "belonging to Gemariah, son of Saphan", presumably the same person as in this verse.

  Verse 23

• "Columns" or "leaves" or "columns of scroll" : translated from Hebrew word delet which has the "sense of a column of writing." This Hebrew word is a hapax legomenon in the Masoretic text. Holladay notices from this verse that the scroll containing Jeremiah's prophecies is thus "a fairly extensive collection, containing several multiples of three or four columns of writing." Hicks noted that many ancient Hebrew manuscripts found in Qumran Caves have 3 to 4 columns per sheet. For example, the Great Isaiah Scroll, 1QIs^a, consists of 17 sheets, 10 have 3 columns per sheet and 5 have 4 columns, whereas 1QIs^b has 4 columns per sheet uniformly, as well as some other manuscripts. As all ancient Hebrew manuscript sheets found to date are made of leather/vellum, instead of papyrus, it would be difficult to cut them - Sabda.org through with a "scribe's knife". Therefore, Hicks concluded that the scroll was cut "sheet by sheet at the sutures", and that some sheets have 4 columns and the others 3, just like 1QIs^a. Additionally, Hicks studied the average number of lines per column and the average number of words per line in ancient Hebrew biblical manuscripts to estimate that the text in one of the columns of writing described in this verse would contain "a little bit more than one Masoretic chapter of Jeremiah," as his examples show variations between 1.25 and 1.75 chapter per column. Furthermore, with the data of the height-to-width ratio of a column and the interpretation of the grammar of the verbal sequence in the same verse, Hicks comes to an estimate that the scroll destroyed in the presence of king Jehoiakim "would have contained between 18-24 chapters of our Masoretic book of Jeremiah," which may form the major parts of the first 25 chapters in the current Masoretic version of the book.

  Verse 26

• "Jerahmeel the king's son" : an old bulla with the inscription "Jerahmeel the king's son" has been found and considered authentic.

  Verse 30

Verse 32

• "At the instruction of Jeremiah": or "from the mouth of Jeremiah".

  Jewish

• Christian

• Archeology

• - bullae seals bearing names mentioned in Jeremiah 36