A Study Of The Oracles Against The Nations In Jeremiah

The oracles in the three books of The prophets can be roughly divided into three layers.Among them,the judgment of Judah and salvation are the focus of scholars,while the judgment of the nations is always skimmed.The neglected nations are burdened with prophetic metaphors.Starting from the relationship between weal and woe,the oracles against nations can be divided into three models: the model of Jonah,the model of Amos and the model of Obadiah.The Jonah model implies the view of "divine confession",the Amos model closely links the future situation of the state with the revival of Israel,and the core of the Obadiah model is escatology.The trial oracles against nation in the books of the three prophets are often a complex mixture of the two modes.The general purpose of judging the nations can be summed up by the oracles’ audience in two ways: first,to comfort and warn the Israelites,and second,to warn the nations in order to convert them.Each book of The prophets has a completely different historical situation,such a trace of the cause is rough,to draw a more accurate conclusion,it need definite analysis of the specific volume.The study of the oracles against the nations in Jeremiah will be based on these analyses.In the bible,the fiction of literature is interwoven with the truth of history.Literature can never be non-historical,and the prophet Jeremiah should be studied as a phenomenon with an open view.It is likely that the writers of the judgment oracles in Jeremiah and those who wrote it were part of the same community of scribes who had a good understanding of the writings of the prophets before them.Comparing the Hebrew version of the oracles against nations in Jeremiah with the Septuagint,the longer Hebrew version represents an extension of the creative tradition and an extension of the earlier text tradition represented by the shorter Septuagint.In Jeremiah,the oracles for judging the nations is mainly distributed in chapters 46 to 51.Chapter 46 is a military and territorial judgment against Egypt,chapter 47 is a warning against the philistines,chapter 48 is a warning against Moab,and in chapter 49 Jeremiah foretells the fate of the small states of Ammon,Edom,Damascus,Kedar,Hazor,and Elam.Chapters 50 and 51 are Jeremiah’s complaints and blows against Babylon,the great rival and power.Despite the patriotism and nationalism implied in the words,and despite the prophet’s condemnation of military aggression,Jeremiah’s focus in his oracles is still on the moral life of the other nations.Pride,arrogance,hubris,these words are usually accompanied by disrespect and blasphemy towards YAHWEH,and the criticism of the worship of pagan gods is reflected in the judgment of every nation.The writers of Jeremiah demonstrated the power of god by modifying the actual time of events to create a broken,chaotic,nonlinear timeline.The different endings of the nations after the judgment have formed another branch of eschatological reconstruction.Jeremiah’s own political identity also revealed the prophet’s choice and preference for the monarchy.In the former prophets,the covenant of David is the most important theological core condensed by the prophets,and Jeremiah continues the theological tradition of the covenant of David.