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A Mouth Full of Fire: The Word of God in the Words of Jeremiah is unavailable, but you can change that!

“I am putting my words as a fire in your mouth; these people are tinder and it will consume them” (Jeremiah 5:14). In the book of Jeremiah, not only is the vocabulary of “word” and “words” uniquely prevalent, but formulae marking divine speech also play an unprecedented role in giving the book’s final form its narrative and theological shape. Indeed, “the word of the Lord” is arguably the main...

words (pl.) to Jeremiah is not found outside these verses. In particular, Jeremiah is never said to ‘hear’ God’s words.36 It is always the ‘word’ of the LORD, singular, that comes to Jeremiah. We shall explore the implications of this presently. Secondly, the book of Jeremiah is not a work of systematic theology; its use of language is fluid, reflecting the span of years over which it was written and the range of genres by which its message is conveyed. The aim of the following analysis is not to
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