Jeremiah 52 in the Context of the Book of Jeremiah. By Henk de Waard

Abstract

The book of Jeremiah ends on a somewhat abrupt and jarring note. Its concluding chapter, Jer. 52, makes no mention of the prophet, who simply seems to vanish from the stage. Instead, the end of Jeremiah provides an account of the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 bce, followed by a brief notice about the fate of Jehoiachin in Babylonian captivity. Largely ‘lifted’ from the end of the book of Kings (2 Kgs 24:18–25:30), this chapter has long created the impression of being isolated from the rest of Jeremiah and unintegrated into its overall flow (cf. Isa. 36–9 = 2 Kgs 18:13–20:19). Commonly dismissed as nothing more than an appendix, Jer. 52 has, unsurprisingly, failed to attract much sustained research. Emblematic of this general lack of scholarly interest is Sigmund Mowinckel’s summary judgement: ‘Über diesen letzten Anhang . . . sind nicht viele Worte zu verlieren’ (Zur Komposition des Buches Jeremia [Kristiania: J. Dybwad, 1914], p. 16). The notable exception is Georg Fischer, in whose estimation Jer. 52 serves as an indispensable key to the book of Jeremiah (‘Jeremia 52—ein Schlüssel zum Jeremiabuch’, Biblica [1998], pp. 333–59). The present study seeks to redress this neglect.