Jeremiah 10:1-16 was from early times thought to be a coherent attack on idolatry. In that form it inspired the Epistle of Jeremiah and other polemics. In the course of researching the passage's influence on this literature, I thought I would investigate the sources of the passage.
As the commentator REO White put it (pp. 144-5), Jer 10:1-16 "interrupts its context" between Jer 9:17-22 and 10:17-25, both poems of lamentation. Jer 10:1-16 offers comfort that it is other nations that ought to worry. This mention of other nations links it - tenuously - to 9:25-26, and a mention of Jacob (Jer 10:16) to 10:25. They have clearly been sorted more by catchphrase than subject.
Jer 10:1-16 makes much of silver and gold lavished on an idol (at least in the earlier verses). Outside this passage, Jeremiah makes no mention of gods of silver and gold - nor of silver and gold, period, until the prose verse MT Jer 52:19. Some - like myself, once - have questioned whether Jer 10:1-10 belongs to Jeremiah at all.
What no-one disputes is that Jeremiah opposed a faction of Judaea which worshipped
idols of stone and wood. Consider
Jeremiah 2:27: "They say to wood, `You are my father,' and to stone, `You gave me birth.' They have turned their backs to me and not their faces
", and 3:9: Israel "committed adultery with stone and wood
". A later verse records the Judaeans: "For we will do everything ... burning incense to the Queen of the Heavens, and pouring libations to her, just as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem
" (Jer 44:15-18). Baruch Halpern's essay here says it all: libations to the Queen of Heaven were the order of the day, as well as worship of the Sun and the host of heaven. Their "idols" would therefore not be eidola in the sense of likenesses of gods - that had to await the Diaspora - but wooden poles and sacred stones (rather like maypoles and Stonehenge).
White claimed the passage "betrays its late date by condemning elaborate idol-manufacture and gorgeous images instead of the pagan manifestations of" the late Judaean cult. Dr Martin countered that Jer 10:1-5,8-9 was the core of the poem, and that it originally did not refer to the idol of a workman, but to a palm tree whose ornaments were well-crafted.
What will first strike the investigator about Jer 10:1-16, is that it contains the only Aramaic verse in the Bible outside Ezra and Daniel (Jer 10:11). Already the book divides the poem in twain.
What will next strike the investigator is that the "Septuagint" translation of the Hebrew is very different from the received text. Verses 6-8 and 10 are gone, the concluding phrase of verse 4 is expanded into its own line, the succeeding first line of verse 5 is almost unrecognisable, and verse 9 precedes the rest of verse 5... and this time, there is a Dead Sea Scroll, 4QJerb, to prove that much of this was based on a Hebrew (and Aramaic) original. We also have the Epistle of Jeremiah, which although based on Jer 10:1-16 (as part of Jeremiah) lacks all mention of verses 6-8,10, and follows the LXX's view of verse 4. I feel we owe it to the original author of Jeremiah 10:1-10 to make sense of this.
The current consensus is that the LXX and 4QJerb represent the purer form of the text. Hermann-Josef Stipp wrote in his abstract to "Linguistic Peculiarities of the Masoretic Edition of the Book of Jeremiah: An Updated Index":
There is ongoing debate on the relationship of the Masoretic and Alexandrian editions of the Book of Jeremiah. The following list presents 37 linguistic units (lexemes, phrases, and grammatical constructions) that only occur in the readings (mostly surpluses) particular to the Masoretic recension. Altogether, JerMT contains more than 130 cases of this diction, which may be termed the pre-Masoretic idiolect. This material appears to pose a major challenge to theories favouring the priority of the Masoretic edition over the Alexandrian one.
I can't argue with that in this chapter of Jeremiah. MT Jer 10:6-7,10 - as Martin noted - talk of God's power; if they are original, why did the LXX delete them, and not Jer 10:12-13? To go beyond Martin, verse 8 in the MT belongs with verse 7, whose "wise men of the nations" it debunks. In addition verse 9 is better placed in front of the latter parts of verse 5, which tie up the loose ends of verse 2, and is where the LXX and 4QJerb have it.
Finally, if one restores "they will set them up" to the end of verse 4b - creating a verse 4c - the remainder 4b will fix cracks rather than fix balance. Verse 4b will then parallel 4a more exactly. 4c thus becomes a new parallel to 5a and renders 5b a third wheel - but in the LXX this is not a problem, because 5b follows 9. The LXX's verse 4c, like its lack of vv. 6-8,10, fits the poem better and is attested in the Epistle of Jeremiah. It thus reflects the most probable original reading. My guess is that the MT, by leaving verse 9 for later, found itself with a triple verse of movement. By merging 4b and c it helped restore the doublet.
It is safe to conclude that this one MT minus and its several pluses are secondary. Unlike the - let's just call them what they are - deletion, the additions are not there for aesthetics; I will handle those in a separate section.
(Note: Although White knew about LXX additions elsewhere - p. 30 - he didn't treat them separately here. He cited 10:5a in p. 145. This hardly matters; he didn't view 10:1-10 as from Jeremiah anyway, and he was trying to write a biographical commentary. In that light his offhand implication that Jeremiah called YHWH the "true God" (10:10; see p. 171) was a true mistake, so to speak, but I doubt even Jeremiah would complain about it.)
Lastly, some major translations - this means you, NRSV and NIV - translate MT Jer 10:5a to "like a scarecrow in a [fruit] patch, the idol does not speak", where [fruit] = melon or cucumber. This is far out of step with Jeremiah 10:1-10, even for an interpolation. Why a scarecrow? Why a melon or cucumber patch? Why associate the idol's muteness with a scarecrow, where Habakkuk 2:18-20 associated it (more logically) with lack of breath? The Epistle of Jeremiah parallels Jer 10:1-16 complete with scarecrow and muteness, but those two are split into vv. 8 (for muteness) and 72 (for scarecrow), with no evidence of linkage. Finally, the related verse in the Greek translation is "it is wrought silver, they will not move
", completely different.
While no Dead Sea Scroll exists to show us the Hebrew of Jeremiah 10:5 prior to the Middle Ages, we can still do better than that. Jeremiah 10:5's purported word for "scarecrow" is ktmr in the MT. tmrym litter the landscape in the Hebrew Bible: Ex 15:27, Lev 23:40, Num 33:9, 1 Kings 6-7, &c. Dr Martin's example was Judges 4:5, which has tht-tmr. There the Greeks translated it foinix: that is, "Phoenician thingie", a catch-all for purple dye, Phoenicians, phoenixes, and palm trees. Guess which one is most common in the Judaean hills. I think "palm tree" is original to Jeremiah 10:5, and the Greek translator got confused and used a word from the wrong context. Even if the Hebrew text in Septuagintal times was doubtful, there is no call to introduce scarecrows and cucumbers from an apocryphal book, especially one which is probably a translation itself. To their credit, the KJV translated it in a manner consistent with its other occurrences - "upright palm-tree" - and the Jerusalem Bible chose an independent route, "rigid post".
When the additions and mistranslations are moved aside:
- 2
- This is what the LORD says: "Do not learn the ways of the nations,
nor be terrified by signs in the sky.
Though the nations are terrified by them (LXX adds: on their faces),- 3
- the customs of the peoples are vain;
it is a tree out of the forest,
the work of a craftsman's hands with an axe (LXX replaces 'hands with an axe' with 'a molten image'.)- 4
- They adorn it with silver and gold;
they strengthen it with hammer and nails.
They will set them up (MT omits), it may not move;
- 5
- They erect it like a palm-tree (LXX has: it is wrought silver), it will not walk (MT has: speak).
- 9
- It is forged silver, brought from Tarshish,
gold will come from Uphaz;
(LXX adds: all) the work of the artisan
and of the hands of the goldsmith (LXX switches).
Blue and purple is their clothing,
they are all the work of the skilled (LXX omits line).
- 5b
- They must be carried because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them.
they cannot do harm,
nor is it in them to do good."
- 11
- "Tell them this: `These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.'"
- 12
- "But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
- 13
- .MT: When he utters his voice, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
- 14
- Everyone is senseless and without knowledge; every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. His images are a fraud; they have no breath in them.
- 15
- They are worthless, the objects of mockery; when their judgment comes, they will perish.
- 16
- He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the Maker of all things, including Israel, the tribe of his inheritance-- the LORD Almighty is his name."
- 6
- No one is like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power.
- 7
- Who should not revere you, O King of the nations? This is your due. Among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you.
- 8
- They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols.
- 10
- But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath.
The Greek translator used the "molten image" and "wrought silver" to shift Poem A to image-based idolatry, just as modern commentators and later translators altered MT Jer 10:5a. (The Epistle of Jeremiah cast a long shadow.) I have also sided with the MT in the order of verse 9's lines - basically because I had to post something up here; I can't prove it and don't think it matters much anyway. In this case the ancient translator would have removed what it saw as redundancy between "artisan" and "skilled", by switching the "artisan" and "goldsmith" lines, and adding "all" to the "artisan" line from the "skilled" line.
The MT alterations, meanwhile, added what was absent from Poem A - the holy Name and His power. In this case someone attempted to turn verse 9 into a hymn separate from the satire of Jer 10:1-5. He then altered Jer 10:4 to bandage Jer 10:1-5.
Without the additions, Poem A emerges with (almost!) a consistent style, in which nearly every line comes in doublets until the last verse caps it all off, particularly if one restores 4c. It is a reaction to gentile religion, and says nothing of the practice of the author or audience, except that the audience is supposed to stay off the idols. These idols are immobile wooden objects, but only adorned with silver and gold - not molten nor even overlaid (although the Epistle of Jeremiah read it that way). By calling the craftsmen "skilled workers" the poet is being satirical. And, contra White and the "Epistle of Jeremiah", it emerges that Dr Martin was correct: Poem A is less likely an attack on statue-worship, than on sacred trees and poles (Christmas trees B.C.!). Poem A very likely was written by Jeremiah, if not for this context.
Although the editors left it alone (more or less) Jer 10:12-16 isn't in Poem A's structure either, and also lacks its ironic style. The two sections even differ in substance. Jer 10:12-16 exalts YHWH as the Creator (v. 12, 16), weather god (v. 13), and (I assume) the final judge of creation (v. 15). Jer 10:12-16 did not mock astrology: God made the heavens (10:12), presaging the Astronomical Book of Enoch's belief that astrology was a valid form of religious expression. The craftsmen are no longer skilled workers; they are fools. The idols are no longer immobile; they are doomed to perish. YHWH is the portion of Jacob/Israel (c.f. LXX Deut 32:8 == 4QDeutj), the eponymous ancestor of the Northern Kingdom. But by that time apparently the two kingdoms had been harmonised, pointing to a time after Samaria fell in 711 BCE. This poem was probably not of Jeremiah and certainly not of Poem A's author.
White also proposed (hardly alone) that Jer 10:11 is the editor's note. I suspect the two sides were joined in Babylon, as the first step to constructing such sermons as the Epistle.
Now back to verse 5a. Even without the cucumber patch, the line is a puzzle; is the idol mute or immobile? The rest of Poem A, backed up by the LXX of Jer 10:5a, says the idol is immobile. Muteness agrees more with the lack of breath of Jer 10:12-16 and the additions of Poem A (see discussion of Habakkuk below). On the other hand, the LXX is not necessarily a perfect translation, as is obvious above (even in the first clause of that very line). Also, Ethiopic Jubilees 12:3-5 (and the Epistle of Jeremiah, which I argue elsewhere depends on it) agrees with the MT on muteness, and from a very early date. I will save this puzzle for later.