Monday, September 16, 2024

William McKane: Jeremiah 23:24 is not about the Omnipresence of God

  

If vv. 25–32 are explicable as a prose commentary on the preceding poetry, there is a presumption that they were originally contiguous with vv. 16–22 and that this connection has been broken by the subsequent insertion of vv. 23f. which contain an affirmation that God is all-seeing and misses nothing. It may have been thought that this had some appositeness as a theological comment: God was not deceived by the activities of prophets who falsely laid claim to his authority for what they said; there was no way of throwing dust in his eyes or making him suppose that a spurious prophetic activity was a genuine one. There is a need to work very hard in order to establish the relevance of the insertion and the person responsible for it may not have been so greatly exercised about its relevance. At any rate vv. 23f. are not concerned with transcendence and immanence in relation to God (pace Volz, Rudolph, Weiser, Nicholson) and these verses have no intrinsic connection with any context in chapter 23. (William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, 2 vols. [International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T&T Clark International, 1986], 1:587, emphasis in bold added)

 

 

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