Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy 507 preserve during the exile seems remote, as the act of preserving a text that so drastically condemns Babylon would itself qualify under the same seditious rubric. R.C. Steiner has suggested that the atbash codes, in their current literary context, are intended not to be clandestine but overt, and function as a commentary on communal fear of Babylonian dominance: Although the popular use of this code-word among the Jews must have been motivated, at least initially, by fear of the Babylonians, its use in Jer li 41, in a prophecy full of undisguised references to Babylonia, would seem to have the opposite motive. In context, it has the effect of the flouting the taboo against anti-Babylonian agitation. The expressions ππk and lb qmy are surrounded by quotation marks in Jeremiah, to be read in a voice dripping with sarcasm. When the prophet wails “How was ‘Sheshach’ captured?” in a mock lament, he seems to be saying: “Here is what will happen to the power whose very name you fear to utter openly” (16). Steiner concludes that it is indeed a fear of Babylon that led to the public generation of the coded terms (which he argues were exploited by a scribe responsible for the redaction of an earlier form of the Jeremianic corpus) (17). His observation concerning the unabashed rhetorical presentation of the prophet holds true with respect to the literary context of the atbash codes. This is especially the case when we consider that the ˚çç reference is coupled with the 70-year prophecy in Jer 25, a chapter that at one point introduced an early form of the oracles against the nations (OAN). This collection made no pretense at hiding the dominance of Israel’s national deity over foreign powers(18). Here, (16) R.C. STEINER, “The Two Sons of Neriah and the Two Editions of Jeremiah in Light of the Two Atbash Code-Words for Babylon”, VT 46 (1996) 83-84, who argues that the coding is to be attributed to Seraiah b. Neriah during the latter’s redaction of an earlier edition of the Jeremianic corpus. (17) Ibid. (18) LUNDBOM, “Baruch, Seraiah”, 103 and HOLLADAY, Jeremiah 2, 118, 140 argue that the collection obtained at an earlier stage in the development of the text. Both propose an early form of the book of Jeremiah including material from Jer 1–25,13+OAN, a corpus which may be identified with the scroll that Seraiah dropped into the Euphrates (so also LUNDBOM, “Baruch, Seraiah”, 103). This position does not preclude the possibility that the OAN evolved over time in line with the larger corpus, and indeed scholars are divided on the provenance of the OAN. See R.E. FRIEDMAN, “The Deuteronomistic School”, Fortunate The Eyes That See. Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his 70th Birthday (eds. A.B. BECK et al.) (Grand Rapids 1995) 77-78, who suggests that the OAN should be dated considerably later than the majority of the poetry in the Jeremianic corpus.