[11] Strikingly, this verse is written in
Aramaic. What is it doing in a Hebrew book? Also striking is its often noted
intricate chiastic structure (ABCDD′C′B′A′), which my translation has tried to
capture by its order, though it cannot convey the assonance of ʾĕlāhayyāʾ, “gods,” and ʾēlleh, “this,” or of ʿăbadû, “did make,” and yēʾbadû, “may they perish.” The
vocabulary is taken from v. 12 (“made the earth,” “sky”); from v. 13, where the
order of nouns is reversed (“sky … earth”); and from v. 15 (“will perish” [yōʾbēdû]). The Targum interprets the
citation as a response the exiles were to give to Babylonians who urged them to
worship local gods. In that case “to them” refers to “the nations,” harking
back to v. 2, which was nearer in the older text, though now the term recurs in
v. 10, perhaps as an intended antecedent. The language used would be Aramaic,
as a common tongue, and not unnaturally the introductory words were written in
Aramaic. The following unit gave rise to a cursing formula, expressed in a
memorable word pattern, that would boldly express the exiles’ faith, and this
formula was inserted here. It was a way to “make your defense” to inquirers, to
use the terms of 1 Pet 3:15, though it lacks the “gentleness” counseled in that
text, apart from the concession “gods”—if such it is, since they are firmly
relegated to an earthly habitat, “under this sky.” The formula implies an idea
new to the context, that divine making is restricted to Yahweh. The Aramaic
interestingly uses different words for “earth” in stylistic dissimilation,
first an older term, ʾarqāʾ, and then
a later term that eventually replaced it, ʾarʿāʾ.
The two terms were used together in Egyptian Aramaic in the fifth century b.c.e., which may be the historical
context of v. 11. (Leslie C. Allen, Jeremiah; A Commentary [The
Old Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westmister John Knox Press, 2008], 127)
