contains neither the addition to
the date, _that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon_,
nor the two statements that his was the Northern Power which would waste
Judah and which she should serve for seventy years (verses 1, 9, 11, as
also the similar reference in verse 12), all of which are inserted in the
Hebrew text but not without a sign of their being later intrusions upon
it.(334) And indeed it is inconceivable that the Greek translator could
have omitted the four references to Nebuchadrezzar (including that in
verse 12) had he found them in the Hebrew text from which he worked.
Probably, therefore, Jeremiah did not include them in the first version of
his address; and for this he had reason. His purpose in the address was to
declare the fulfilment of the substance of all his previous prophesying,
and this had been not that the Chaldeans, but that _a northern power_,
would prove to be the executioner of God's judgment upon Judah. The
references to Nebuchadrezzar were added, possibly by Jeremiah himself or
by Baruch, as the Chaldean doom steadily drew nearer. The interesting
thing is that the earlier version of the address survived and was used by
the Greek translator.(335)

Verses 12-14, indicating the destruction of Babylon in her turn after
seventy years, are, in whole or in part, generally taken as a post-exilic
addition.(336) Omitting verse 14, the Greek inserts between 13 and 15 the
Oracles on Foreign Nations, which the Hebrew postpones to Chs. XLVI.
ff.(337) In the uncertain state of the text of 12-14 it is impossible to
decide whether this was or was not the original position of those Oracles.

The rest of the chapter, verses 15-38, is so full of expansions and
repetitions, which we may partly see from a comparison of it with the
Greek, as well as of inconsistencies with some earlier Oracles by
Jeremiah,(338) of traces of the later prophetic style and of echoes of
other prophets, that many deny any part of the miscellany to be Jeremiah's
own. Yet we must remember that his commission was not to Judah alone(339)
but to _the nations_ as well, against many of which XXV. 15-38 is
directed; and the figure of the Lord handing to the Prophet the cup of the
wine of His wrath is not one which we have any reason to doubt to be
Jeremiah's. Sifting, by help of the Greek, the Hebrew list of nations who
are to drink of the cup, we get Judah and Egypt; Askalon, Gaza, Ekron, and
the remnant of Ashdod; Dedan,