The Oracles against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51: A Horror Among the Nations (review)

Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 182 Reviews The last two chapters investigate Israelite agriculture and crafts. These cover issues such as the crops of ancient Israel, agricultural techniques, pottery, wine making, oil lamps, and metallurgy. Notes, glossary and selected bibliography round out the volume. Naturally, in the presentation of such a wide range of topics King is only able to introduce an area where archaeology enlightens the text. Thus. in a number of instances varying opinions are not fully developed or in some cases, mentioned. For example, while acknowledging the different views on the tophet in ancient Israel, King does not discuss these in great detail. Along this same line, this reviewer wishes that King had given more extensive bibliography. Professors will need to alert their students to additional articles and books on given subjects. In all fairness. however, it is obvious that the book is not intended to be the final word on every subject that it addresses. Only a scholar of King's experience could adequately cover, as he has done, all of these wideranging subjects in such an informative and up-to-date manner. King has produced an exceptional volume. Scholars as well as lay persons will appreciate this volume's readability and its fine illustrations. In this, it serves as a model that should be more frequently emulated. King is to be heartily commended for giving us such an outstanding work that so clearly demonstrates how archaeology and the biblical text interrelate. K. Lawson Younger, Jr. LeTourneau University Longview. TX 75607-7001 THE ORACLES AGAINST BABYLON IN JEREMIAH 50·51: A HORROR AMONG THE NATIONS. By David J. Reimer. Pp. xi + 317. San Francisco: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993. Cloth, $79.95. Study of the oracles against the nations. including those against Babylon, has been sporadic in Jeremiah studies. The new monograph by David Reimer is very welcome indeed. It is cautious in judgment. deliberate and disciplined in execution, thorough in scope. Particularly distinctive in Reimer's contribution is that portion of the work devoted to analysis of metaphor, image, and symbol. In so doing. he begins to open a window on the transformation of Babylon from political reality to religious symbol. Anyone working on the oracles against the nations in Jeremiah will want to have Reimer's book in their library. Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 183 Reviews SUMMARY: The first of four analytical "slices" used to grapple with Jeremiah 50-S1 devotes itself to the poetic structure and rhetorical form of the oracles. Discernment of poetic structure and assessment of aesthetic form constitute besetting problems for research. Reimer tackles this task anew, incorporates recent developments in the analysis of Hebrew poetry, and takes as his primary dialogue partners the work of Kenneth Aitken ("The Oracles Against Babylon in Jeremiah SO-SI: Structures and Perspectives," Tyndale Bulletin 3S [1984] pp. 2S-63) and especially the recent dissertation by Alice Ogden Bellis ("The Structure and Composition of Jeremiah SO:2-S1 :S8" [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation; The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 1986]). He criticizes recent Rhetorical Criticism's attempts (Bellis and others) for failing to rmd a convincing rhetorical structure of any kind that advances perception of structural clarity for chapters SO-51 beyond what earlier scholarship had already discerned. Aitken's attempt to discover an underlying "deep structure " that makes sense of the existing "surface structure" ends up, for Reimer, running roughshod over the very surface features of the poetry it seeks to elucidate. In contrast, Reimer tests the relative structural coherence of chapters SO-51 through detailed analysis of the microstructure of individual poetic lines. He finds as a result a high internal coherence of lines and units extending just beyond a single line. For a sense of basic units as Reimer sees them: (in chap. 50) 2-3; 4-S; 6-7; 8-10; 11-13; 14-16; 17-19; 20; 21-23; 24-2S and so forth. As for stanzas, whole poems, or movements organizing larger coherent groupings-they do not exist. Any sense of unity discernible for chapters 50-S1 is a unity of theme, not of structure. In this regard, chapters 50-51 constitute a literary "pastiche" formed out of...