Klagender Gott—Klagende Menschen: Studien zur Klage im Jeremiabuch (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 98 Reviews tions (e.g., Absalom's rebellion had already occurred; the note about Bathsheba's post-menstrual cleansing implies that both parties were deliberately courting pregnancy; David had promised that the child would be the heir; when David urged Uriah to go home to his wife, it was part of a plan to catch him in the act and have him executed for violating the code of holy war). All in all this book makes a valuable contribution to the research on the Court History/Succession Narrative. Most of the traditional arguments that 2 Samuel 9-20 and I Kings 1-2 had been compiled from earlier sources made little sense to me. Diversity of themes, complex (even opposing) evaluation of characters, change within characters, shift of focus from one group of characters to another, changing point of view regarding God's presence in each scene-these are all hallmarks of great artistry, not necessarily signs of divergent sources. I was not convinced when Bailey used these arguments as a basis for separating chaps. 10-12 from the larger work, but his close analysis of the Ammonite wars section proves to my satisfaction that at least parts of the Succession Narrative do indeed have a complex literary history. I am forced to agree with his conclusion that "2 Samuel 10-12 was given its present structure by DtrH composition using some traditional materials on the life and reign of David and joining them in a creative complex through the use of redactional seams and speeches to suggest a unified and coherent composition" (p. 129). We must await further research along these lines to determine the extent to which this same thesis can be applied to the rest of the Succession Narrative/Court History. James S. Ackerman Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 KLAGENDER GOTT-KLAGENDE MENSCHEN: STUDIEN ZUR KLAGE 1M JEREMIABUCH. By Dong Hyun Bak. BZAW 193. Pp. xii + 269. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990. Cloth, DM 104.00. Bak seeks to explore that element in the book of the prophet from Anathoth for which his prophecy is well known: the lament as uttered by both human and divine voices. The shortened dissertation, accepted in 1988/89 by the (Protestant) Kirchliche Hochschule (West Berlin), professes Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 99 Reviews to be concerned not only with relevant texts but, more broadly, with the "phenomenon" of lament. The method employed, however, "connects literary analysis with a modified form-critical approach" (pp. 23-24) and discusses only occasionally and in passing sociological, psychological, and cultural aspects of the phenomenon. Thus readers are not led to an appreciation of the phenomenon of lament beyond what a literarily oriented analysis of the nine texts selected can offer. These he divides into two groups. One is that of the "confessions" (11 :18-12:6; 15:10-21; 17:1218 ; 18:18-23; 20:7-18). The other is made up of four representative texts (12:7-12; 14:1-15:4; 31:18-20; 48:31-39). Bak discusses the latter group first because he posits that they represent the phenomenon of lament as found in the words of the historical Jeremiah or of the generation of the Babylonian exile, while the "confessions" are assumed to have been composed in a considerably later period. In the discussion of each text, Bak first offers his own translation and then proceeds to comment, phrase by phrase and line by line, on the text. His observations concentrate on semantic word and phrase fields and restate the lines of argumentation of the text unit, marshalling support from secondary literature. The conclusion seeks to bring the discussed texts together into a portrayal of the phenomenon of lament in the entire book. By way of summary, Bak suggests three stages in the development of lament texts in the Jeremiah tradition: (1) the lament of the historical prophet responds to the impending doom and illustrates the nature of his own lament (12:7-12; 14:1-15:4); (2) the text 48:31-39 is an exilic imitation of Jeremiah's style and is informed by the notion of God's power over all nations; (3...