Jeremiah 36 - Speaking of Words

Abstract

In Jer 36, Jeremiah addresses a fundamental difficulty of prophecy raised by the climactic burning of his prophetic scroll by Jehoiakim on the eve of the Babylonian destruction of Judah. Would Jerusalem have been destroyed if Jehoiakim had not burnt the scroll prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem? Does the unrolling of metaphor determine history? Was it God’s message of destruction presented in Jeremiah’s prophecy that made Jehoiakim do it, condemning the king, the city and its people to destruction and exile? In this article, the implications of individual words are expanded to include Jeremiah, prophecy, history and God. Finally, it seems as if the prophecy and the event prophesied are caught up in the same inescapable loop of sequence and consequence.

Keywords

• Jeremiah 36
• Jehoiakim
• prophecy
• exile
• semantics