35 THE TEARS OF GOD IN THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH women (Jer 9,19) 33. The women learn a lament tradition which they actualize to fit the particular circumstances of a given perform- ance. In this text, the primary purpose for summoning the keening women is to motivate weeping: that our eyes may run with tears (h[md wnyny[ hndrtw) and our pupils flow with water (~ym-wlzy wnyp[p[w). The speech of YHWH is introduced in v. 16 and continues through- out the passage except for the marked quotation of the keening women in v. 18. The text speaks of weeping using two forms of the poetic idiom for weeping that reads literally “our eyes go down with tears”. The idiom appears in its typical form in the first line (cf. Jer 13,17; 14,17), but with lexical substitutions and disrupted word order in the second line. Other examples also substitute ~ym (“water”) for h[md (“tears”; Ps 119,136; Lam 1,16; 3,48), and several verbs may be substituted for dry (“to go down”; cf. Lam 3,49; Job 16,20), al- though only this text uses lzn (“to trickle”). Only here does ~ymp[p[ (“pupils”) replace !y[ (“eye”) in the idiom. The use of the same poetic idiom twice without repetition of lexical items or word order creates a colorful innovation of a distinctively poetic expression for weeping to spotlight the tears of the community. In 9,17, the speaker expects to weep when the keening women ap- pear, but does not indicate that weeping has been previously absent 34. What changes in 9,17 is the expectation that “our” eyes will weep. Commentators typically understand Jeremiah rather than YHWH as the speaker of vv. 16-21 despite the opening “thus says YHWH of hosts” in v. 16 and “speak, thus the oracle of YHWH” in v. 20. They see the plural language as Jeremiah speaking and including the people in his “our” 35. LXX reads οἱ ὀφθαλµοὶ ὑµῶν (“your [pl.] eyes”) instead of L.J.M. CLASSENS, “Calling the Keeners: The Image of the Wailing 33 Women as a Symbol of Survival in a Traumatized World”, JFSR 26 (2010) 63-77, esp. 66-67. Pace O’CONNOR, Jeremiah, 66, who thinks the speaker is unable to 34 weep due to shock and despair. RUDOLPH, Jeremia, 67-68; MCKANE, Jeremiah, I, 208; HOLLADAY, Jere- 35 miah, I, 309; ALLEN, Jeremiah, 119; SCHMIDT, Jeremia, 209; FISCHER, Jeremia, 364. LUNDBOM (Jeremiah, 1.559) takes v. 16 to be the speech of YHWH, but thinks that Jeremiah abruptly takes over the speech in v. 17, which saves YHWH from weeping. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati