Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 166:663 (Jul 2009)
Article: The Quest for the Structure of the Book of Jeremiah
Author: S. Jonathan Murphy

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BibSac 166:663 (Jul 2009) p. 306

The Quest for the Structure of the Book of Jeremiah

S. Jonathan Murphy

S. Jonathan Murphy is Senior Pastor of Newcastle Baptist Church, Newcastle, County Down, Northern Ireland, and a writer for Sacra Script Ministries.

Jeremiah is known as the “Weeping Prophet.” Michelangelo’s portrait of him in Rome’s Sistine Chapel has portrayed this gloomy depiction for centuries. The man sits in despair—tormented in thought, troubled, with face lost in hand. The Book of Jeremiah leaves most readers no different, tormented in thought—at least initially.

Particularly baffling is the question of how to understand the structure of the book. This area is so plagued with difficulties that many who approach the subject become “weeping scholars”—academicians tormented in thought, troubled, with faces lost in hands. Carroll states, “Whatever the more sanguine commentators on Jeremiah may say and think, I am still of the opinion that the book of Jeremiah is a very difficult, confused and confusing text. . . . Writing the commentary on Jeremiah was for me a Dantean experience: a journey through a wood darker than I had ever imagined it would or could be.”1

This article examines the major pitfalls in the quest for the book’s structure and proposes some potential ways forward. The article contends that the difficulties in understanding the structure of Jeremiah can be reduced by respecting the text as it stands in its final form and interpreting it through a theological principle of arrangement.

BibSac 166:663 (Jul 2009) p. 307

Pitfalls in the Quest for the Structure of Jeremiah

A glance at the introductory paragraphs to many works on Jeremiah confirms the fact that determining the structure of the Book of Jeremiah is troubling. It is described as “enigmatic,”2 “puzzling,”3 “an intractable riddle,”4 “a hopeless hodgepodge,”5 “complicated,”6 and an issue that leaves the reader “baffled.”7 The list goes on. The cause of such consternation is the mysterious arrangement of the chapters in Jeremiah.

“Several factors contribute to this difficulty, including the less than obvious development of thought, the lack of consistent chronological ordering, the references to various scrolls and other writings, and the differences betw...

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