David A. Bosworth, «The Tears of God in the Book of Jeremiah», Vol. 94 (2013) 24-46
The article analyzes several passages in Jeremiah in which God weeps in order to understand the function of divine weeping in the book. Attention to the distribution of weeping in the book finds that God’s weeping (8,23; 9,9.17; 13,17; 14,17) gives way to divine anger and refusal to hear the petitions of the people (15,1; 16,5-7). LXX and many modern commentators have attempted to deny that God weeps in these passages. However, several texts clearly depict God weeping, and weeping deities are common in ancient Near Eastern literature.
33
THE TEARS OF GOD IN THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH
not be many speakers in this passage. The beginning of 8,19 intro-
duces a short quote from “the daughter of my people†and the peo-
ple evidently speak again in v. 20 28. The several changes of speaker
postulated by many scholars have no basis in the text, so I prefer
to understand the entire speech as YHWH speaking through Jere-
miah, with two short quotes from the people in vv. 19 and 20. Once
one acknowledges that YHWH (and not Jeremiah) weeps in Jer 9,9,
then the tears of YHWH might appear also in 8,23 where the speaker
expresses the desire to weep copiously:
Would that my head were water (~ym yvar !ty-ym),
and my eyes a fount of tears (h[md rwqm yny[w)
that I might weep (hkbaw) day and night
for the slain of my daughter people.
O’Connor thinks that the speaker is not weeping, but desires to
do so 29. I prefer to see the speaker as having wept and wishing to
continue without interruption after finding his tears exhausted. But
if his head were transformed into water, then he could weep without
interruption. A common measure of the seriousness of grief is the
frequency and duration of crying episodes and other poetic texts
that mention weeping both night and day (Ps 42,4; Jer 14,17; Lam
2,18). Here, the speaker’s grief is greater than the volume of tears
his body can produce. The text may reflect the notion that brain
matter is the source of tears. This conception is consistent with an-
cient Greek medicine and a similar Ugaritic text in which Kirta
urges his son not to weep for him (KTU 1.16 I.25-28) 30:
bn . al . tbkn . Son, do not cry
al / tdm . ly . do not shed tears for me
al . tkl . bn / qr . ‘nk. spend not the flow of your eyes
mḫ. rišk / udm‘t nor the brains of your head with your tears
160-161, and STULMAN, Jeremiah, 25, urge that no sharp distinction be made
between the voices of God and Jeremiah since Jeremiah embodies God’s suf-
fering. Similarly, FRETHEIM, Jeremiah, 148.
Thus O’CONNOR, Jeremiah, 62.
28
O’CONNOR, Jeremiah, 64.
29
On the brain as the source of tears in Greek medicine, see P. PRIORESCHI,
30
A History of Medicine (Omaha, NE 2004) II, 277.
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