More literally, the message “happened” (hāyâ) to Jeremiah. How did it do so? The introduction goes on to recount a conversation between Yahweh and Jeremiah (1:4–19). If we had been there, would we have heard Yahweh’s voice? Surely not everyone who claims to have heard God’s voice is crazy, and sometimes the Scriptures give a realistic report of God’s speaking aloud: see 1 Sam 3 and the varying accounts of Yahweh’s speaking at Sinai and of Jesus’s appearing to Saul of Tarsus. Or did the conversation
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