Jer. 17:1).30 Van der Ploeg and Lemaire associate the rise of the writing prophets with what they take to be the marked increase in the use of writing in Israel and Judah during the last two centuries of the monarchy. Although van der Ploeg cautions against the view that Israelite prophets were ‘authors’ in the modern sense (i.e., concerned in the first instance with the production of texts), he contends that in an era of abundant writing, it is unlikely that the divine oracles would long have been