32 DAVID A. BOSWORTH his strong reaction against the idea that the voices of God and Jere- miah may be blended together and indistinguishable 24. He rightly notes that in some passages, God and Jeremiah have a dialogue with each other and their voices are clearly separate (Jer 12,1-6; 15,10-21). However, he and others mistakenly try to apply this separation of di- vine and prophetic voices elsewhere. A.E. Pilarski offers a convincing refutation of Henderson’s argument for identifying Jeremiah as the speaker, and she argues that YHWH weeps in 8,2325. Prophetic speech often begins with “thus says YHWH”, which marks prophets as mes- sengers from God. The messenger model makes it difficult to separate the voice of the prophet from the voice of God. In the fourth century, Jerome said that Jer 8,23 “can be understood as spoken both out of the persona of the prophet and out of the persona of the Lord” 26. This same observation may be applied to a great many more texts in Jere- miah and other prophets. In this comment, Jerome shows that he feels no need to separate the prophetic and divine voices, and that he sees no difficulty with biblical language of a weeping deity. Allowing Jer 8,18-23 to represent the speech of both Jeremiah and God appears to be the most elegant solution to the tangled dis- cussion about various speakers 27. As some have argued, there need Jeremiah, 1.535; FISCHER, Jeremia, 1.344; J.M. HENDERSON, “Who Weeps in Jeremiah VIII 23 (XI 1)?: Identifying Dramatic Speakers in the Poetry of Jer- emiah”, VT 52 (2002) 191-206, esp. 205-206. Some scholars who see YHWH weeping in 9,9 do not think YHWH weeps in 8,23: CRAIGIE, Jeremiah 1–25, 135-136; HOLLADAY, Jeremiah, 1.287-288. M. BIDDLE, Polyphony, 30, thinks YHWH weeps in 8,23, but, like others, finds more changes of speaker than the text warrants. HENDERSON, “Who Weeps?”, 191-192. 24 A.E. PILARSKI, “A Study of the References to bat-͑ammī in Jer 8:18– 25 9:2(3): A Gendered Lamentation”, Why?...How Long? Studies on Voice(s) of Lamentation Rooted in Biblical Hebrew Poetry (eds. L.S. FLESHER et al.) (LHBOT 552; New York, forthcoming). Others who see YHWH weeping in 8,23 include FRETHEIM, Jeremiah, 148, 155-156; BIDDLE, Polyphony, 30-32; ROBERTS, “Motif of the Weeping God”, 140-141; O’CONNOR, Jeremiah, 62- 62; STULMAN, Jeremiah, 102. JEROME, Commentary on Jeremiah (trans. M. GRAVES) (Ancient Chris- 26 tian Texts; Downers Grove, IL 2011) 60. BIDDLE, Polyphony, 29-30, sees YHWH as the one weeping in this pas- 27 sage, but in his concern to separate and identify diverse voices, he does not acknowledge that the prophetic and divine voices may merge. O’CONNOR (Jeremiah, 62-63), T. FRETHEIM, The Suffering of God (Philadelphia, PA 1984) © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati