Hebrew Bible: Exilic Prophets

The Exilic Prophets

Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Habakkuk

10/31/2011

Exilic Timeline (BCE)

• 722 -- Assyrians overtake Israel
• the size of Jerusalem in Judah tripled
• the exiled Israelites inter-married with other peoples, created the Samaritan ethnicity
• 698/7 -- Judean king Hezekiah dies
• 642 -- Judean king Manasseh dies
• then kings Amon and Josiah (640-609), consecutively 
• Josiah destroyed the high places, tore down altars, killed pagan priests, etc.
• 663 -- Assyrians overtake Thebes in Egypt
• 627 -- Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, died, weakening the Assyrian state
• 626 -- First king of Neo-Babylon (or simply, Babylon) allies with the Medes (a.k.a. Persians)
• 612 -- Babylonians overtake Nineveh (Assyrian city)
• 609 -- Babylonians overtake Assyria completely
• 597 -- Babylonians put the puppet king, Zedekiah, as ruler over Judah
• also, first exile deportation--the elites were deported
• 590 -- Zedekiah rebels against Babylon
• 586 -- Babylonians destroy Jerusalem
• Zedekiah blinded and deported, and his children are killed
• a second exile deportation moved all but the poorest out of the country

Habakkuk

• 1:1-4 -- Habakkuk speaking to God
• complains that God does not see/hear the violence/injustice
• much like Psalms
• theodicy -- why do bad things happen to good people?
• Habakkuk's problem was with God, not people
• 1:6 -- "Rousing the Chaldeans"
• a.k.a. Babylonians
• gives evidence that this book was written around the time of the Babylonian siege of Judah

Jeremiah!

      a contemporary of Babylonian events

• Jeremiah's career was during the reign and reforms of Josiah (1:2)
• Jeremiah was a priest (1:1)
• both (P) and (D) strands are present
• little structure exists in the book
• the Septuagint Jeremiah is much shorter than the present form

Organization

A) poetic oracles--God's message to a people

B) narratives

C) prose sermons

• (D) and (P) strand distinctions in Jeremiah
• (D) -- teachers of the law and scribes in Jerusalem
• (P) -- priests!
• 21:8-9 much resembles (D)
• 8:8-9  this wisdom literature asserts that the scribes falsified the Law, resembling (P)
• The Lament of Jeremiah is recorded in 11-20
• Symbolic oracle--The Yoke, 27-28
• both the prophets mentioned have conflicting messages in the name of YHWH
• the issue:  wrong verses right prophets

Lamentations

• not written by Jeremiah
• most likely composed after the Jerusalem destruction
• organized into a series of acrostic poems
• 22 verses correspond with the 22 characters of the ancient Hebrew alphabet
• chap 3 has 66 verses
• it has 3 verses beginning with the same character 
• liturgical poems