Friday, October 16, 2020

William McKane on Jeremiah 8:21

  

For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. (Jer 8:21 | KJV)

 

Because my people is shattered I am shattered; I am dejected; seized by desolation. (Jer 8:21 1985 | JPS Tanakh)

 

Commenting on this verse (which he himself renders as "The wounds of my people have wounded me, I am in deep mourning, desolation has seized me"), William McKane wrote:

 

The brokenness of Judah is not a condition of which he has a spectator’s view; it is a suffering and sickness in which he is immersed. His heart is sick and his spirit dissolves; he is shattered, enveloped in darkness and seized with desolation. Or, perhaps, קדרתי is rather an indication that he is afflicted by the sadness of a mourner and wears a mourner’s garb (so NEB, ‘I go like a mourner’). השׁברתי (v. 21) is not represented by Sept. and Pesh. and חיל כיולדה is represented by Sept. (ὠδῖνες ὡς τικτούσης). Both Ziegler (Beiträge, pp. 91f.) and Janzen (pp. 31, 63) suppose that חיל כיולדה is an insertion from 6:24. (William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, Volume 1: Introduction and Commentary on Jeremiah I-XXV [International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T&T Clark International, 1986], 195-96)