Jeremiah 39:1

Footnotes

1. 61 For location see ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; .
2. 62 The precise meaning of this line and its relation to the context are somewhat uncertain. This line is missing from the Greek and versions and from a few Hebrew . Some English versions and commentaries omit it as a double writing of the final words of the preceding line (see, e.g., ; W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:). Others see it as misplaced from the beginning of 39:3 (see, e.g., , , J. Bright, Jeremiah [], 245). The clause probably does belong syntactically with 39:3 (i.e., כַּאֲשֶׁר [ka’asher] introduces a temporal clause which is resumed by the vav consecutive on וַיָּבֹאוּ (vayyavo’u; see 455 כַּאֲשֶׁר 3), but it should not be moved there because there is no textual evidence for doing so. The intervening verses are to be interpreted as parenthetical, giving the background for the events that follow (see, e.g., the translation in D. Barthélemy, e.d., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 4:280). The chapter is not so much concerned with describing how Jerusalem fell as it is with contrasting the fate of Zedekiah who disregarded the word of the Lord with the fate of Jeremiah and that of Jeremiah’s benefactor Ebed Melech. The best way to treat the line without actually moving it before 39:3a is to treat it as a heading as has been done here.
3. 1 2 Kgs 25:1 and Jer 52:4 give the more precise date of the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year which would have been Jan 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).