formula’9 anticipates four words at the end of the whole book, ‘so Judah went into captivity, away from her land’ (52:27b). So right here in the introduction we are being told the end of the story to which the whole book is heading. This has several consequences. First, it means that the reader knows from the start the terrible tragedy that lies at the end. Robert Harris’s novel Pompeii10 exploits a similar tragic irony. Readers know from history that the book must end with the catastrophic eruption