by
Damien F. Mackey
After my having identified, in my revised version of Job’s Life and Times, a series of strong comparisons, of a variety of types, between Tobias and Job, I was able to conclude most confidently that: “Without doubt, Job was not an Edomite sheikh, but a true Israelite from the tribe of Naphtali. He was Tobias, the only son of Tobit and Anna”.
Here I move on to the second phase of this series, which is a consideration of whether the composite Tobias/Job can also be the prophet Jeremiah – this being a revised version of a previous article (of 1st October 2009) in which I had claimed just such a connection. This is trickier because, whereas the Book of Job is lacking in detailed (auto)biographical detail that might complicate any comparison, but presents Job generally as, Like Tobias, a pious man with a large family, who was tested, the Book of Jeremiah opens up with some specific details that immediately seem difficult to reconcile with Tobias/Job. According to Jeremiah 1:1-3, we have:
The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
[The lack of a full genealogy for Jeremiah here would urge me anyway to seek for an alter ego for him, given the great importance of Jeremiah and also the importance attached to genealogies by the Israelites].
Contrary to what my proposed thesis would require, Jeremiah is given as the son of Hilkiah (not Tobit), seemingly a priest, hence Levite (not Naphtalian), situated in Anathoth in Benjamin (not Ashtaroth in Bashan), at the time of kings Josiah and Jehoiakim (whereas Hezekiah and Manasseh would be more chronologically comfortable), even unto the captivity, which was of the Chaldean era (well beyond the Assyrian era of Hezekiah and Manasseh). Thus, none of these specific points in early Jeremiah appears to fit in with my proposed revised scenario.
Adding further discomfort for me is Jeremiah’s plea to the Lord in v. 6: “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy”. My thesis would have necessitated on the other hand that Jeremiah (who as Job may have lived to 140) was already an old man at the time of King Josiah, and even more so by the time of the Babylonian Captivity. I listed some of these difficulties, and a few others, at the beginning of my previous effort to identify Tobias/Job with Jeremiah as follows:
Some Preliminary Comments
Some notable factors militating against a possible identification, apart from the obvious one of (i) name dissimilarity (including that of the father), it would seem, are e.g:
(ii) the difference in age, with Jeremiah referring to himself as na’ar (usually translated as “a [mere] boy” or “a young man”), at the time of king Josiah, whilst Job would have been already, by my calculations, well advanced in years;
(iii) the fact that Jeremiah lived in Anathoth, just north of Jerusalem, whereas I have established TOBIAS = JOB in Ashtaroth Karnaim, in Bashan (Transjordan);
(iv) that Jeremiah is thought to have been a priest, from the nation of Judah, whereas my composite TOBIAS = JOB was a Naphtalian, of northern Israel;
(v) that Jeremiah was presumably celibate, whereas Job had married at least twice and had had many children; and
(vi) the fact that the ancient Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), in its “Hymn in Honour of Our Ancestors”, praising famous men, refers to both Jeremiah (49:6) and Job (49:9).
Obviously all of these points will need to be scrutinised and explained in this article.
Since that effort, I have embarked upon a radical revision of my already radical revision of the era of king Hezekiah in my university thesis: A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background (This thesis can be accessed at: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5973), according to which Hezekiah and Josiah were one and the same pious reforming king of Judah, and that Hezekiah’s evil son, Manasseh, was the same person as Josiah’s evil son, Jehoiakim.
This major addition to King Hezekiah, which is completely absent from my thesis, now takes enormous pressure off the required age for Jeremiah if he were Tobias/Job, so that he could now quite comfortably be the “boy” (na’ar) of Jeremiah 1:6 (point ii above), thereby rendering worthless my previous convoluted argument on this that: “The Hebrew word na’ar that Jeremiah uses to protest his unfitness to be a prophet (1:6), a word usually rendered as “mere boy” or “young man”, apparently does not necessarily mean that at all, but refers instead to someone ‘in transition’.”
With this clarified, let us now return to the former article to see if we can arrive at a solution more satisfactory than before:
According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, we know more about the details of the life of the prophet Jeremiah than we do about that of most of the Old Testament characters. Thus:
By: Emil G. Hirsch Victor Ryssel Solomon Schechter Louis Ginzberg
In the case of no other Israelitish prophet is information so full as in that of Jeremiah. The historical portions of the Book of Jeremiah give detailed accounts of his external life evidently derived from an eye-witness—probably his pupil Baruch. Jeremiah’s prophecies give an insight into his inner life, and by reason of their subjective quality explain his character and inward struggles. Of a gentle nature, he longed for the peace and happiness of his people, instead of which he was obliged to proclaim its destruction and also to witness that calamity. He longed for peace and rest for himself, but was obliged instead to announce to his people the coming of terrors, a task that could not but burden his heart with sorrow. He had also to fight against the refractory ones among them and against their councilors, false prophets, priests, and princes. ….
While this may be true in one sense, for the Book of Jeremiah is long and detailed, there is also much of a vital biographical or autobiographical nature that the Book of Jeremiah does not tell us about its leading character. For instance, we do not have the highly important detail of a genealogy, with only Jeremiah’s father, Hilkiah, being named (1:1). From this same verse, Jeremiah and his father are presumed to have been priests. And again Jeremiah, at the time of his prophesying, is said to have been residing “in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin”, which we know to be to the north of Jerusalem. But we are not told that this Anathoth was his place of origin (birthplace). Again, we are not provided with any details whatsoever about Jeremiah’s death. And we are never told of his age. Nor is Jeremiah supposed ever to have married or to have had a family (based on Jeremiah 16:2). So, in many aspects we know even less about the great prophet Jeremiah than we do about the prophet Job, as obscure as the latter may seem to be. For – apart from the fact that we are not told who Job’s father was, while we are told of Jeremiah’s – we know at least that Job was twice married; and we know the names of three of his daughters (Jemimah; Keziah; Kerenhappuch, 42:14); and we know also the names and locations of his three ‘friends’; and we have a genealogy and a geographical location for the young man, Elihu, who is the last to speak to Job before God intervenes in the debate. Finally, we are told of the nature of Job’s death (peaceful old age) and of his age at death (140 years).
By almost any tradition (Jewish, Christian, Moslem), Job and Jeremiah would be chronologically separated the one from the other by about one and a half millennia. They would also be considered to have belonged to different races, with Job being Arabian (or Edomite) and Jeremiah a Jew. And yet some of their utterances and lamentations are probably more like each other’s than like anyone else’s. I shall later demonstrate this with some telling examples.
Re the era and nationality of Job, I have already argued from various evidences (number of sons; wealth; geography; moral maxims; having the company of an angel), in Part One (Job’s Life and Times”), that Job was in fact Tobias, the son of Tobit (of the book of Tobit). ….
Thus I had concluded that Job was an Israelite, not a foreigner, of the tribe of Naphtali, taken into captivity by the Assyrians in the late C8th BC. This had enabled me to fill in many details of Job’s life, including his full genealogy (from Tobit 1:1). My conclusion seems to have been reinforced from an apparently most unexpected source – and this may have huge ramifications for the literary foundations even of western civilisation. For, the books of Tobit and Job, when combined, were found to be the very matrix for The Odyssey. See my “Was Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ Based on the Hebrew Books of Job and Tobit?” (variously, “Beware of Greeks Bearing Myths”) http://bookofjob-amaic.blogspot.com/search/label/Beware%20of%20Greeks%20Bearing%20Gifts
In this article I hope to do for Jeremiah the same that I had then endeavoured to do for Job, to fill in those crucial details about the prophet that are missing from the Book of Jeremiah. Now (and here is the preliminary nexus), given:
(i) that my reconstruction of Job has brought him all the way down to the approximate time of Jeremiah, at least to the era of the Fall of Nineveh during the reign of king Josiah of Judah (C7th BC), the very reign when Jeremiah began to prophesy to Judah [but see comments above about the merging of the era of Hezekiah with that of Josiah], and given
(ii) the undoubted likenesses between some of Job’s utterances and those of Jeremiah (with the latter usually thought to have influenced the Book of Job), and given
(iii) the renowned righteousness of Job (of which God boasts), but also of Jeremiah,
then I should like to pursue the further bold and original thesis according to which Job and Jeremiah were one and the same person – quite impossible, according to current (and even traditional) thinking. This will mean – and will now presuppose – that, by ‘Job’, I mean the composite character TOBIAS = JOB (in one article I had even used the composite name, TOB), with all of the (auto)biographical data that this equation now affords us.
This Jeremiah was a prophet who was appointed by God from the outset “over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). ….
I had been totally overwhelmed, as my thesis had progressed, by just what a complex period the era of king Hezekiah (in a revised context), c. 700 BC, had actually been; with so much important history converging therein. Hezekiah’s era, when Isaiah was the dominant prophet, was really the great era preceding that of the prophet Jeremiah. Enormously influential was Isaiah upon Jeremiah …. The time of Jeremiah, about whom I could not previously find much scope for enlargement, had seemed rather bland by comparison. [According to my new scheme, though, Isaiah and Jeremiah were close contemporaries]. I now realise, though, that that is far from being the case, and that Jeremiah (if in truth a composite biblical personage) was one of the truly great and interesting characters of the Old Testament. In fact, the composite picture at which we shall be arriving by the end of this article will be quite amazing, with other suggested ramifications also for future developments.
Already I have … provided some solid reasons why I think that Job was the Tobias of the book of Tobit; reasons sufficient for me to believe that the equation must definitely be correct. Even so, I had recently thought that it would be useful to be able to secure some further evidences – perhaps in relation to fully identifying the three ‘friends’ of Job (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar), and young Elihu, in order to ‘nail down’ the case so to speak. I had thought that Elihu seemed to be a particularly promising case with which to work, as he is the only person in the Book of Job who has a patronymic, given along with his geographical location. We are also told of his race. He is “… Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite, of the race of Ram …” (Job 32:2). The Septuagint even adds to all of this “of Ausitis” (i.e. of Uz). Now the great St. Thomas Aquinas had made use of this biographical data in relation to Elihu as an argument against Moses Maimonides and in support of Aquinas’ own view that the Book of Job was a true life event. Obviously this Elihu was a young man of some significance for him to have been given so impressive an introduction. Now if Elihu could be secured as an C8th-C7th BC character, I had thought, then that would greatly strengthen my claim that Job was of the same era as was Tobias.
Whilst, at this stage, I am still not entirely certain who Elihu was, I am working along the lines that he may have been a priest, that he may even have been the great Ezekiel, whose father was Buzi; this in combination with the prophet Zechariah, whose father was Barachiah (same as Elihu’s). The Buzi in relation to Ezekiel (1:1) may actually be meant to indicate that he was (like Elihu) of Buz (Buzite), rather than this being the name of his father. But that is only surmise at this stage. It is at least apparent that Ezekiel is, like Job, genealogically deficient, and that a proper genealogy for so great a man must needs be gleaned from somewhere else in the Scriptures.
Anyway, in the process of my trying to establish further details about Elihu and the three ‘friends’ of Job, the thought hit me that Job himself might also be Jeremiah. Now Jeremiah is perfectly well placed, chronologically, to have been TOBIAS = JOB in the latter’s much more mature years [‘mature years’ no longer has to be the case with my Hezekiah = Josiah scenario] (though the Book of Tobit does also briefly summarise the latter part of Tobias’ life and tells of his death). Whilst there are some very promising similarities between Job and Jeremiah (keeping in mind my new context for Job in c. C8th-C7th’s BC) – and one will pick up some stunning comparisons between their utterances just from reading the biblical commentaries – there do seem to be some manifest personal differences as well. And several of these at least would definitely appear to make it impossible for an equation to be established between the prophets Job and Jeremiah, even in my radically revised context. [These have already been listed above].
So, let us attempt now to rebuild the entire life of our composite prophet, by recalling and now enlarging upon his Tobias phase, and then by tackling the issue of whether he could also have been the prophet Jeremiah.
Part One: The Pre-Prophetic Phase
Tobias and his father Tobit were clearly Naphtalians from northern Israel (Tobit 1). Tobit, when blind [cf. Job 29:15: “I was eyes to the blind”] and about to send his son on the fateful journey to “Media” (which I have re-identified as Midian), imparted to his son a series of moral maxims (4:3-19), as well as reminding him that “we are the descendants of the prophets” (v. 12). This, I think, was not meant to be taken that these Tobiads were an established or official prophetic family, any more than were Amos and his family at the time of Amos’ call (Amos 7:14). And Tobit seems to clarify this in the next sentence, when he adds: “Remember, my son, that Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our ancestors of old …”. In other words this Naphtalian family was, like all Israelites, descended from the great Patriarchal prophets. Tobit does however explode with prophetic utterances in chapter 13 (e.g. v. 5, 9, 11, 14, 16-17), after his eyesight has been restored by the angel. The point that Tobit was intending to make to his son was that the latter ought to do, as had these great men of old, who “took wives from among their kindred”. And so he commands his son to “marry a woman from amongst the descendants of your ancestors; do not marry a foreign woman, who is not of your father’s tribe …”.
These maxims of Tobit, imparted to his son at a crucial point in the young man’s life, were to become one peg of evidence with which I fastened Tobias to Job, by arguing that the latter, when accused of immorality by his ‘friends’, answered them by using, as a ‘negative confession’ by way of defence in favour of his innocence, what Tobit had imparted to him as commandments. We are going to test later if we can use this same peg again for Jeremiah, who, like Job, was also the victim of cruel accusations. The command to marry a kindred wife might also become a testable issue for us later in regard to Jeremiah’s supposed celibacy and childlessness.
A Now Enlarged Geography and Life of the Holy Man
[New note: Given now my new scenario, that Jeremiah at the beginning of his prophesying in the 13th year of king Josiah - that is Hezekiah - was in “Anathoth in the land of Benjamin”, whilst the family had already been taken into captivity, to Nineveh, an explanation is needed. We learn from the Douay version of Tobit that the father of Tobias had been given a ‘roving commission’ by king “Shalmaneser” of Assyria, who “gave him leave to go whithersoever he would, with liberty to do whatever he had in mind”, 1:14. Naturally Tobit, given his great love of Jerusalem (1:6-8; 13:13-23), would have gone often to Judah, to Jerusalem. My suggestion is that he had left his son there under the charge of priests, for his education. And that is when the young Tobias, as Jeremiah, had commenced his prophesying. But the young man is not consulted by King Josiah 5 years later, in the king’s important 18th year, which would indicate to me that the young man was now back in Nineveh].
[There is no indication that Jeremiah had ever actually acted as a priest, which I do not believe he was].
Here I want briefly to recall the geography of the life of our composite character – which became so telling a factor in my clinching an identification of him, as Tobias, with Job of “the land of Uz” – but this time for the purpose of seeing if my previously revised geography, in a revised chronological context, can have any relevance also for reconstructing/leading into the life and background of the prophet Jeremiah. I shall also include here some other factors, for instance the status of Tobit, and later Tobias, during the phase of Assyrian captivity. …. -
We know the basic outline of Tobias’ childhood, that he was of the tribe of Naphtali, born to Tobias and Anna (Tobit 1:1; 2:1), and that the family had been taken into captivity by Shalmaneser [V] of Assyria. In my thesis I have identified this Shalmaneser with Tiglath-pileser [III], and have re-dated the capture of Naphtali to closer than is customary to the Fall of Samaria to the Assyrians (c. 722 BC, conventional dating). The young Tobias grew up in “Nineveh”, which can be a broad designation for a complex of cities (Genesis 10:11) [but see New note above, about his residing in Anathoth], not necessarily the classical Nineveh itself. When his father unexpectedly became blind, and with the family now destitute, the young Tobias’ call to manhood came in the form of a planned journey to, for him, the unknown land of “Media” – which I have argued was Transjordan – to “Ecbatana”, which was in this case the province of Batanaea (Bathania, or Bashan). [The fact that Tobias did not now the way to ‘Media’, 5:2, would favour Jeremiah’s ‘Anathoth’ rather than ‘Ashtaroth’ in Bashan]. Tobias was famously accompanied and guided on this journey by an archangel in human guise, Raphael, whom I have claimed is rather subtly referred to again in the Book of Job. Tobias then returns to Nineveh with a wife, Sarah, and now also with some wealth. He was probably in about his mid-20’s at this point in time.
It needs to be recalled that Tobit, the father, had been an important official during the reign of king Shalmaneser his captor. He was the king’s “keeper of provisions”, who had frequently travelled to “Media” to buy there “everything [the king] needed” (Tobit 1:13, 14). Perhaps it will be possible eventually to identify such an official in the neo-Assyrian records. But the family would suffer a dramatic reversal of fortune under king Sennacherib, whom the Book of Tobit gives as Shalmaneser’s “son” (1:15), against the conventional view that he was his grandson. In my thesis, though, I have firmly upheld the succession as given in the Book of Tobit: Shalmaneser to Sennacherib. The Tobiad family then became destitute and Tobit was persecuted, until the murder of Sennacherib and the reign of the next king, Ashurbanipal according to my revised reconstruction, whose vizier (or ummanu) was Tobit’s nephew, the famous Ahikar/Achior (the Achior of the Book of Judith).
We are told nothing further of Tobit’s involvement with the crown, at least in the Book of Tobit. And we are never told anything about the career of young Tobias, as Tobias. But, using the supplementary information of the Book of Job, we find that our composite character was a man of great importance, who had worn a “crown”, who was seemingly a judge, at the gates of a city, and who was respected by all men, including the aged, and even by gruff generals (Job 29:7-25). He comes to the Book of Job as a man of the vastest possible experience, righteousness and good works, who has seen everything, including the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms, of nobles and of judges (12:17-25).
It would not be surprising – in fact it would probably be inevitable – that Tobias, as a son of the once prominent Tobit, should, like his father, have been favoured by the Assyrian crown, now ruled by a king who had exalted to ummanu their relative, Ahikar. The vizier Ahikar, accompanied by his nephew Nadab, had actually come in person to the wedding of Tobias and Sarah (11:18), which may have been no small celebration. We are told at least that “… on that day there was rejoicing among all the Jews [Israelites?] who were in Nineveh” (v. 17).
At the very end of the Book of Tobit (14:15), we are told that the son, Tobias, lived to hear of the destruction of Nineveh, by Cyaxares of Media, whom the Codex Sinaiticus gives, most interestingly, as Ahikar.
Tobias was apparently no longer in Nineveh when the city fell; for he only “heard” of its destruction. By then he had buried both of his parents at Nineveh and had fled back to Bashan, where he had settled with Raguel, his father-in-law. As well as inheriting Tobit’s property, he would later inherit Raguel’s property (v. 13).
Does this have a resonance also in the life of Jeremiah? We shall see.
Here I want to propose a somewhat more expanded geography for TOBIAS = JOB, beyond the two basic locations of NINEVEH and BASHAN of the Book of Tobit (revised). And I also want to propose, in relation to this, that the famous trials of the holy man, that the Book of Job gives as having occurred in such rapid succession – and commentators have tended to take this apparent rapidity as being the reality, as an intensification of Job’s afflictions (whether true life or not) – were in fact (at least in some cases) well separated in time, and perhaps also in terms of geographical locus. This would be far more reasonable than the situation of utter torture for Job, without any time of relief, that the narrative might superficially tend to convey. Here I turn to the testimony of the German mystic, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, who claimed to have been favoured from childhood with having seen famous Old and New Testament peoples and events. I am well aware that the little excursus that follows may be of keen interest only to Catholics. And, whilst I cannot accept Anne Catherine’s proposed era for Job (see section below), I accept that this very holy woman was perfectly honest in her testimony that she had seen the real Job (though having no idea at all of how to put what she saw into a proper chronological – and sometimes geographical – perspective) and that she can give us an idea of how the succession of trials befell Job. I at least think that the mystic’s account of the relative chronology and geography of Job’s sufferings may have a lot to recommend it. Here are the relevant parts of Anne Catherine’s account of Job (in The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations, Vol. 1, ch. 11), to which I have added some comments:
[Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich on Job]:
The father of Job, a great leader of the nations, was brother to Phaleg [Peleg], the son of Heber. Shortly before his time occurred the dispersion of men at the building of the Babylonian Tower.
Comment: This reflects a traditional view that Job was the Jobab of Genesis 10:29; a view that one may find even in contemporary biblical commentaries. But I shall stick firmly to my own identification of Job as an C8th-C7th BC character, which I hope to have strengthened in this article. For one, the “Chaldeans [who] formed three columns” to seize Job’s camels and kill his servants, in Job’s third-listed trial (1:17), would be a complete anachronism, one would think, at the time of Peleg; but an organised Chaldean raiding force would be perfectly reasonable in my C7th BC context, when the Chaldean empire had begun to rise. Anne Catherine continues:
…. Job … dwelt in different places, and his afflictions came upon him in three different abodes. Between the first and the second, there intervened a period of nine years’ posterity; between the second and the third, seven years; and after the third, twelve years. His sufferings always befell him in a different dwelling place. But he never was so absolutely ruined as to have nothing left; he merely became quite poor when compared with his former circumstances. He always had enough left to pay all his debts.
Comment: This all sounds entirely reasonable. But does Anne Catherine’s notion of long time intervals between trials actually accord with the Bible? The German mystic, whilst admitting that it may not seem so, has offered the following eminently plausible interpretation of this aspect of the Book of Job:
Although in the Book of Job this narrative is given very differently, yet many of Job’s own words are therein recorded. I think I could distinguish them all. Where the story says that the servants came quickly one after another to Job with news of his losses, it must be remarked that the words: “And as he still spoke of it”, signify, “And while the last calamity was not yet effaced from the mind of men”, etc.
Comment: Again, this seems to me to be most reasonable.
Perhaps an intuitive person might even be able to pick up a clue or two from the text as to in which geographical locations some of Job’s trials had occurred, especially with occasional assistance from Anne Catherine. Though, as we shall see from the following passages, she herself is generally rather vague about locations, except in the case of Egypt.
…. Job moved with his followers northward from the Caucasus to a very miserable swampy region. …. After his first affliction, he removed further up the mountain range, the Caucasus, where he again began anew and where prosperity again followed him. ….
From this, his second dwelling place, Job went, accompanied by a numerous train of followers, to Egypt where at that time strangers called shepherd kings, and who were from his own native land, governed a part of the country.
Comment: The whole notion of a sojourn in the Caucasus region is extremely suspect if Job is to be identified with Tobias. Even during his period of dwelling within the Assyrian Empire, that far northern Caucasus region would seem to be far too distant. And it is certainly most inappropriate anyway as the location for Job’s first trial (in which context Anne Catherine places it), given that those who caused this trial were “the Sabeans”, a southern Arabian people having nothing to do with the Caucasus, who raided Job’s oxen and donkeys, also killing off his servants (1:15).
With regard to Egypt, commentators claim indeed to have found clear Egyptian elements in the Book of Job. Also, archaeological discoveries made during the twentieth century have … led researchers to speculate that the story of Job may have evolved from other cultural traditions, including the wisdom literature of the Edomites, Egyptian Pessimism, and Babylonian Skepticism. There is an Egyptian tale, for instance, that is thought to resonate with the story of Job. ….
Anne Catherine Emmerich continues:
[Second & Third Trials]
…. When Job returned to his native country, his second misfortune overtook him; and when, after twelve years of peace, the third came upon him, he was living more toward the south and directly eastward from Jericho. I think this country had been given to him after his second calamity, because he was everywhere greatly revered and loved for his admirable justice, his knowledge, and his fear of God. This country was a level plain, and here Job began anew. On a height, which was very fertile, noble animals of various kinds were running around, also wild camels. ….
Job settled on this height. Here he prospered, became very rich, and built a city. The foundations were of stone; the dwellings were tents. It was during this period of great prosperity that his third calamity, his grievous distemper, overtook him. After enduring the affliction with great wisdom and patience, he entirely recovered, and again became the father of many sons and daughters. I think Job did not die till long after, when another nation intruded itself into the country.
Comment: Certainly tradition locates Job’s tomb at Ashtaroth Karnaim “eastward from Jericho”, but not “directly” as Anne Catherine says. It is in fact much further to the north. The plain of Hauran in Bashan (“Ecbatana”) where TOBIAS = JOB went to live (Tobit 5:6) is certainly most “fertile”.
…. And it is perfectly in accord with my chronology that “another nation intruded itself into the country” during the long lifetime of TOBIAS = JOB. This was the Chaldean nation under Nebuchednezzar II [now identified with Ashurbanipal].
Other points of interest made by Anne Catherine concern Job’s own nature:
Job was unspeakably gentle, affable, just, and benevolent. He assisted all in need. He was, too, exceedingly pure and very familiar with God, who communicated with him through an angel, or “a white man”, as the people of that period expressed it. These angelic apparitions were like radiant, but beardless, youths in long white garments that fell in heavy folds or strips around them, I could not distinguish which. They were girdled, and they took food and drink. God consoled Job during his sufferings by means of these apparitions, and they passed sentence on his friends, his nephews, and his other relatives. He didn’t, like the nations around him, worship idols.
Once three sons were born to him at one birth, and three daughters at another.
… Satan incited his wicked neighbours against Job, and they calumniated him. They said that he did not serve God properly, that he had a superfluity of possessions, and that it was very easy for him to be good. Then God resolved to show that afflictions are often only trials, etc.
The friends who spoke around Job symbolized the reflections of his kinsmen upon his fate.
The history of Job, together with his dialogues with God was circumstantially written down by two of his most trusty servants who seemed to be his stewards. They wrote upon bark, and from Job’s own dictation. These two servants were named respectively Hai and Uis, or Ois. These narratives were held very sacred by Job’s descendants.
One can now only with difficulty trace the particular history of Job, for the names of cities and nations were assimilated to those of the land of Canaan, on which account Job came to be regarded as an Edomite. ….
Comment: Anne Catherine’s account of Job is perfectly compatible with what we know of the man from the books of Tobit and Job (presuming TOBIAS = JOB). And, if he is also the prophet Jeremiah, then she uses of him the very same word, “gentle”, as does the Jewish Encyclopedia of him, as Jeremiah (see our Introduction). [Cf. Jeremiah 11:19]. She even describes his appearance, as she does all major biblical personages: “… Job was a large, powerful man of agreeable appearance; he had a yellowish-brown complexion and reddish hair. Abraham was fairer”.
Her description of the angel-youth is uncannily like that given in Tobit 5, for the angel Raphael (though Anne Catherine of course knew of no connection between Tobias and Job).
From Anne Catherine’s account, too, we learn that Job’s friends were relatives. I had surmised this in my previous Jobian articles.
I cannot make much of the names of Job’s alleged trusty scribal servants, as given by Anne Catherine. Uis, or Ois, seems to be a version of the name, Uz, Job’s land. Interestingly, the prophet Jeremiah too tended to dictate his words to his own trusty servants, most notably Baruch (e.g. Jeremiah 36:4, 32).
Anne Catherine Emmerich attests that geographical names pertaining to Job have become a matter of “difficulty”, which is exactly what I had found in regard to the Book of Tobit. She also rejects a traditional view, that I too have rejected, that Job was an “Edomite”.
Generally, this all seems to be most acceptable.
It leaves us with a picture of TOBIAS = JOB that is somewhat expanded by comparison even with the composite one that I had drawn together in earlier articles. There is now scope for the holy man to have resided in more geographical locations – and with his series of famous afflictions being far more well spaced – than I had previously imagined.
Where else might he have gone?
That question now becomes relevant as we consider a stretching of our original matrix, TOBIAS = JOB, to embrace now the public face of the holy man as the prophet Jeremiah as well: thus TOBIAS = JOB = JEREMIAH.
Part Two: The Prophetic Phase
Before we tackle those six primary factors (i-vi) as listed in our Introduction, that – especially when taken in combination – would seem to militate against any possibility of an equation between Job and Jeremiah, let us begin on a hopeful note by pointing to some of the more patent similarities that commentators have pointed out between Job and Jeremiah. These of course relate to utterances rather than to details of biography, considering the distance in time that is presumed to have separated Job from Jeremiah. But if Job and Jeremiah are to be merged, as I am thinking, then I suspect that future research will bring to light far more parallels in the language of the two books than just the most obvious ones of which commentators generally seem to be aware. I certainly hope to add more in this article; although it will not be an exhaustive study of literary parallels as I am more interested at this stage with pointing out biographical likenesses.
Indeed, the sophisticated dialogue of the Book of Job is far more appropriate to the era of Jeremiah – being so like Jeremiah’s own utterances as we shall now discover – than to the far distant age of Peleg where Anne Catherine had situated Job, near to the time of Babel, when language had but few words (Genesis 11:1). Of course it would generally be argued that, though Job himself was a most ancient patriarchal character, the actual Book of Job would have been written about the time of Jeremiah – possibly even by Jeremiah himself. I would substantially agree with the latter part of this view, but would standardise the whole by saying that Job himself was in fact contemporaneous with the writing of the book that bears his name, the Book of Job – whether he, or some other contemporary scribe, actually wrote it.
Comparing the Words of Job and Jeremiah
No one doubts that there are similarities between the two, including Lamentations, usually attributed to Jeremiah. Though, because (as I am arguing) critics have only a one-dimensional view of the prophet/holy man, they tend to ascribe to each separate case (Job and Jeremiah) a different outcome, a different Divine response, that a fuller picture (for which I am striving) might determine to be an inadequate assessment. Also, because critics have no conception of Job’s being Jeremiah, they have not – as just said – engaged upon a detailed comparison of the two. But we are going to find that Job experienced in his own person and family – presumably by way of prophetic prediction/anticipation and symbolical ‘pantomiming’ – precisely the kind of misfortunes and tragedies that would later befall the nation of Judah for whose sake he (if he were also Jeremiah) would utter most of his prophecies. With this in mind, one could probably find endless comparisons and related scenarios between the books of Job and of Jeremiah. This is in fact one of the really important consequences of a comparison of Job with Jeremiah, if it is workable, that the holy prophet prefigured, in his own person, what would later happen to the nation of Judah. In this sense he was a classical example of “the Suffering Servant”.
Let us, as a preliminary, take just a few striking instances where Jeremiah threatens the land with disasters such as those that had befallen Job:
Job’s First Trial: “… the Sabeans fell on [the oxen and the donkeys] and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword …” (1:14, 15).
Jeremiah (12:12): “Upon all the bare heights in the desert spoilers have come; for the sword of the Lord devours from one end of the land to the other; no one shall be safe …”.
Job’s Third Trial: “… the Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword …” (1:17).
Jeremiah (33:5): “The Chaldeans are coming in to fight and to fill them with the dead bodies of those whom I shall strike down in my anger and my wrath …”.
Job’s Fourth Trial: “… another came and said … ‘and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people [Job’s children], and they are dead’ …” (1:18, 19).
Jeremiah (4:11; cf. 13:14): “At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: ‘A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse – a wind too strong for that’.”
Note the common factor in the first and fourth trial comparisons of Jeremiah’s use of the phrase “bare heights in the desert” ….
And, by way of summarising the Jobian type trials that awaited Judah, Jeremiah 5:17: “[The Chaldeans] shall eat up your harvest and your food; they shall eat up your sons and your daughters; they shall eat up your flocks and your herds; they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees; they shall destroy with the sword …”.
Commentator N. May is a typical example of one who sees what he perceives to be the distinct similarities between Job and Jeremiah, yet who claims to find distinct differences as well (because, in my context, he does not have the final outcome for Job):
http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/Issue6/Job_and_Jeremiah.pdf.
JBS 3/1 (January 2003) 22-26
JOB AND JEREMIAH: UNDERSTANDING THE DIVINE MORAL ORDER THROUGH LAMENT AND RESPONSE
In the books of Job and Jeremiah, both protagonists lament their respective worldly misfortunes, decrying the tribulations of human existence. In many respects, their passionate soliloquies result from similar quandaries: both Job and Jeremiah, possessing a troubled understanding of the divine moral order, express frustration with their unmerited suffering. ….
While Job elicits an authoritarian response from God, Jeremiah evokes one of new, covenantal devotion and prophecy. In response to ruthless persecution, Jeremiah laments his human existence in a similar manner as Job: “Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (Jer. 20:18) God responds through the later prophecies of Jeremiah, making two distinct, divine promises. First, God cites the past suffering of his people, foretelling future political retribution: “I am going to restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob, and have compassion on his dwellings; the city shall be rebuilt upon its mound… And you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Jer. 30:18-22). This political offer serves as the basis for God’s second promise, which is a refiguring of individual, moral retribution under the covenant. In sharp contrast from the moral futility of humans he implies in Job, God preaches principles of action and reward: “But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge” (Jer. 31:30). He continues to predict that the future descendents of Israel will be his devoted children. Unlike his response to Job, God’s prophecy promises just rewards in exchange for human devotion and moral excellence.
The new covenant with the people of Israel asserts: “[The people of Israel and Judah] shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jer: 31:34). So God’s message to Jeremiah and the future descendents of Israel is one of moral rewards and retribution, while his response to Job is one of authority and moral futility. ….
Jouette M. Basler and Wayne A. Meeks. HarperCollins Study Bible: NRSV. (New York: HarperCollins,
Likewise, contributors to The Jerome Biblical Commentary [TJBC] can pick up only the fairly obvious similarities between Job and Jeremiah (and Lamentations).
Thus, for example, R. Mackenzie (31:2):
Within the literary tradition of Israel, Jb’s [Job’s] closest connections are not with the wisdom books but with certain psalms, notably 49, 73, and 139. It is definitely influenced by Jer [Jeremiah], particularly by the so-called “confessions” ( Jeremiah 19:42), but as a whole, the book is a unique composition ….
[Job] 31:3: (II) Date. Indications of date are rather tenuous. Verses 3:2ff. probably indicate that the author had read Jer 20:14-18.
31:18: …. Job begins with the most radical possible declaration of his misery, uttering a rejection of life itself (cf. the parallel in Jer 20:14-18 …).
[Comment: We recall that Tobit, who I am claiming was his father, had expressed the same sort of death wish upon his becoming blind].
31:19 …. Job never does curse God, but these imprecations (like Jeremiah’s) are directed against something God has created.
Mackenzie has likened here Job 3:2ff:
‘Let the day perish in which I was born,
‘A man-child is conceived’.
Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it,
Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
Let clouds settle upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
That night – let thick darkness
Let it not rejoice among the
let it not come into the number
Yes, let that night be barren;
let no joyful cry be heard in it.
Let those curse it who curse the Sea,
those who are skilled to raise up Leviathan.
Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none;
may it not see the eyelids of the morning –
because it did not shut the doors
and hide trouble from my eyes.
Why did I not die at birth,
come forth from the womb and expire?’
The day when my mother bore me,
who brought the news to my father, saying,
‘A child is born to you, a son’,
Let that man be like the cities
that the Lord overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning
because he did not kill me in the womb;
so my mother would have been my grave,
and her womb forever great.
Why did I come forth from the womb
and spend my days in shame?’
[See also Jeremiah 15:10: “Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land!”)
Also in TJBC, G. Couturier writes of Jeremiah in comparison with Job (19:13):
After Jeremiah, it became an accepted idea that God himself forms the young child in its mother’s womb; the significance is that God knows man and stands as his unique master from the very first moment of his existence (Jb 10:8-12 …).
19:17 ….The girding of loins points to the promptness in the accomplishment of an order …. As well as to the mediate preparation for combat (Jb 38:3; 40:7). [See also Couturier 19:42].
19:33: ….Dirge over the land (9:9-21) …The explanation remains questionable; perhaps Jeremiah has simply personified death ( cf … Jb 28:22, etc).
19:50: …. Treacherous brook: During the summer, most Palestinian brooks dry up. Here and in Jb 6:16-21 they symbolize a profound deception; similarly, “broken cisterns” were give as a symbol of vain alliances (2:13).
And G. Wood, writing for TJBC on [the Book of] Lamentations, comments in 36:31, with reference to Lamentations 1:4, and also pointing to Job:
… as cruel as the ostrich: By bringing down upon herself the forces of Babylon, Jerusalem denied her children a future. Most birds lay their eggs in high, relatively safe nests; the ostrich lays them in the sand where they are more easily accessible to preying animals. Primitive zoology saw in this act proof of the stupidity of this awkward bird and of its unnatural cruelty towards its young (see Jb 39:13-17).
Finally, for this section (though we shall be returning to our comparisons again later), let us take a few points from Net Bible’s Jeremiah 20:7-18 http://net.bible.org/passage.php?passage=jer%2020:7-18#v5
Jeremiah Complains about the Reaction to His Ministry
20:7 Lord, you coerced me into being a prophet, and I allowed you to do it.
You overcame my resistance and prevailed over me. 1
20:8 For whenever I prophesy, 2 I must cry out, 3
“Violence and destruction are coming!” 4
This message from the Lord 5 has made me an object of continual insults and derision.
20:9 Sometimes I think, “I will make no mention of his message.
I will not speak as his messenger 6 any more.”
But then 7 his message becomes like a fire locked up inside of me, burning in my heart and soul. 8
8 sn Heb “It is in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones.” In addition to standing as part for the whole, the “bones” for the person (e.g., Ps 35:10), the bones were associated with fear (e.g., Job 4:14) and with pain (e.g., Job 33:19, Ps 102:3 [102:4 HT]) ….
Those who would cause me terror are everywhere! 10
They are saying, “Come on, let’s publicly denounce him!” 11
11 tn Heb “Denounce and let us denounce him.” The verb which is translated “denounce” (נָגַד, nagad) does not take an accusative object of person as it does here very often. When it does it usually means to inform someone. The only relevant passage appears to be Job 17:5 where it means something like “denounce.” What is probably involved here are the attempts to portray Jeremiah as a traitor (Jer 26:10) and a false prophet (see his conflict with Hananiah in Jer 28).
…. 20:14 Cursed be the day I was born!
May that day not be blessed when my mother gave birth to me. 19
19 sn From the heights of exaltation, Jeremiah returns to the depths of despair. For similar mood swings in the psalms of lament compare Ps 102. Verses 14-18 are similar in tone and mood to Job 3:1-10. They are very forceful rhetorical ways of Job and Jeremiah expressing the wish that they had never been born.
Now, consider this passage form the Book of Lamentations (generally attributed to Jeremiah), the classical “Dark Night of the Soul”, which, I suggest, is pure Job (Lamentations 3:1-24):
‘I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
against me alone he turns his hand,
again and again, all day long.
He has made my flesh and my
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me sit in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
He has walled me about so that I
he has put heavy chains on me;
though I call and cry for help,
he has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
he has made my paths crooked.
He is a bear lying in wait for me,
he led me off my way and tore
he bent his bow and set me
the arrows of his quiver;
I have become the laughingstock
the object of their taunt-songs
He has filled me with bitterness,
he has sated me with wormwood.
He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace;
so I say, “Gone is my glory,
and all that I had hoped for
The thought of my affliction and
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion”, says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in Him”.’
For one, he would have heard from his father Tobit (according to my reconstruction), who, after his sight had been restored, had exclaimed: (Tobit 11:15 cf. 13:2, 5):
‘Though he has afflicted me,
He has had mercy upon me’.
And then he himself would tell of his own afflictions, as Job (19:8-11):
‘He has walled up my way so
and he has set darkness upon
He has stripped my glory from me,
and taken the crown from my head.
He breaks me down on every
he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
He has kindled his wrath against me,
And counts me as his adversary’.
And so on. But then, like Jeremiah, he can burst forth with a statement of hope (vv. 25-26):
‘For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last He will
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God …’.
There is more pure Job to be found in Jeremiah 12:1-3, pleading his case with God, and querying the conventional wisdom (e.g. of Job’s friends) according to which only the righteous prosper:
‘You will be in the right, O Lord,
when I lay charges against you;
But let me put my case to you.
Why does the way of the guilty prosper?
Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
You plant them, and they take root;
they grow and bring forth fruit;
you are near in their mouths
yet far from their hearts.
But you, O Lord, know me;
You see me and test me – my
Thus e.g. Job (13:3 and 21:7, 14):
‘But I would speak to the Almighty,
and I desire to argue my case with God
Why do the wicked live on, reach old age, and grow
… They say to God, ‘Leave us alone!
We do not desire to know your ways …’.’
Much of what Jeremiah utters could be, I would argue, attributed to the life and influence of Tobit (his father according to this reconstruction). E.g.:
- his strict observance of Yahwism and the Law of Moses amidst his apostate nation (Tobit 1:3-8, 10; cf. Jeremiah 1:5; 7:1-34; 11:1-17);
- his charity, especially to the poor (vv. 16-18; 2:2-3; 4:16; cf. Jeremiah 7:5; 31:7-9); burying the dead (2:4-7; cf. Jeremiah 7:32; 8:2; 16:6; 20:6; 22:19; 25:33; cf. esp. Tobit 4:17 & Jeremiah 16:6);
- his being persecuted by the crown (v. 19; cf. Jeremiah ch’s. 37, 38);
- his complete destitution (v. 20; cf. Lamentations 3:1-24);
- ridicule by his neighbours (2:8; cf. Jeremiah 15:10; 19:8-10);
- his physical trials (2:10; cf. Jeremiah 17:14; Lamentations 3:1-24);
- kindness towards him of some officials (v. 10; cf. Jeremiah 36:8; 8:7-13);
- prayer of anguish and grief (3:1-6; cf. Jeremiah 4:19-31);
- death wish (v. 6; cf. Jeremiah 20:13-18);
- righteousness and good counsel (1:3; ch. 4; cf. Jeremiah 22:13-23);
- sense of justice (4:14; cf. Jeremiah 2:4-32; 21:12);
- legality and right conduct (5:3; cf. Jeremiah 12:1-3; 32:9-15);
- perennially blessing God (4:19; 11:14-15, 16, 17; ch. 13; cf. Jeremiah 10:12-13; 16:19-20; 33:11);
- generosity of heart (12:4; cf. Book of Lamentations);
- predicting the return of Israel (13:5; cf. Jeremiah 3:12-14; 4:1);
- predicting the exile and return of Judah and the glorification of Jerusalem (13:9-17; 14:4; cf. Jeremiah 23:5-8; 29:10-14).
Points of Seeming Difference Between Job and Jeremiah
I had listed these in the Introduction as:
(i) name dissimilarity (including that of the father);
(ii) the difference in age, with Jeremiah referring to himself as na’ar (usually translated as “a [mere] boy” or “a young man”), at the time of king Josiah, whilst Job would have been already, by my calculations, well advanced in years;
(iii) the fact that Jeremiah lived in Anathoth, just north of Jerusalem, whereas I have established TOBIAS = JOB in Ashtaroth Karnaim, in Bashan (Transjordan);
(iv) that Jeremiah is thought to have been a priest, from the nation of Judah, whereas my composite TOBIAS = JOB was a Naphtalian, from northern Israel;
(v) that Jeremiah was presumably celibate, whereas Job had married at least twice and had had many children; and
(vi) the fact that the ancient Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), in its “Hymn in Honour of Our Ancestors”, praising famous men, refers to both Jeremiah (49:6) and Job (49:9).
there saying that: “Obviously all of these points will need to be scrutinised and explained in this article”. So here we go …:
(i) Apparent Name Dissimilarity (Father and Son)
I have already tackled this sort of issue in other articles in which I have multi-identified (using alter egos) ancient historical and biblical characters. ….
Does the same situation now apply to the holy man and his father under consideration in this article?
TOBIT is named thus as the father of Tobias. In the case of Job, purely as Job, the father’s name is not an issue, however, as Job is nowhere accorded a patronymic. With Jeremiah, the father’s name, seemingly, is notably quite different from ‘Tobit’ or any likely variations of this name. It is ‘Hilkiah’ (Jeremiah 1:1). Name difference is not necessarily an insurmountable problem – even apart from my propensity at times to merge biblical characters of different names – since even in the Bible certain characters can indeed have different names (e.g. Solomon is also Jedidiah, 2 Samuel 12:24, 25; and Ater is also apparently Hezekiah, Nehemiah 7:21). [I need to add to this now. The names ‘Tobit’ and ‘Tobias’ I have argued in the previous article are based on the Hebrew name, ‘Obadiah, of which the name ‘Job’ also may well be a variant. To borrow from my forthcoming article, on Jeremiah as the prophet ‘Obadiah (all admit the similarity of the short Book of ‘Obadiah with the relevant part of the Book of Jeremiah), I propose that Jeremiah was also the prophet ‘Obadiah. In my thesis I had tentatively suggested that Jehu’s armour-bearer, Bidkar, may have been the faithful ‘Obadiah of the time of king Ahab of Israel. It is just possible, then, that the name of Jeremiah’s father, ‘Hilkiah’, is a progression from ‘Obadiah through an intermediary name like Bidkar, to Hilkiah].
(ii) Apparent Age Difference
Jeremiah, who had not been born of a prophetic line, was – like Amos, and just as reluctantly – called to be a prophet (cf. Amos 7:14-15; Jeremiah 1:6). [My new chronology has rectified this previous problem]. Thus Jeremiah was a na’ar; a man in vocational ‘transition’ [No, just a ‘boy’].
(iii) Apparent Geographical Difference
The fact that Jeremiah is thought to have lived in “Anathoth in the land of Benjamin” (1:1) is not necessarily a problem either for this reconstruction, for the prophet Job – as we suggested above – may have lived in some different places at different times. [See my earlier comments that Tobit may have left his son at Anathoth for educational purposes under the priests]. But I think that there is also to be considered the possibility that both “Anathoth” and “Benjamin” have been wrongly substituted in the Book of Jeremiah for, respectively, Ashtaroth and Bene Ammon {see TJBC’s comment on Obadiah 1:19, that (25:27): “Perhaps Benjamin should read benê ‘ammôn, the “sons of Ammon” (Pfeiffer, Introd. 585)”}. Tradition locates Job’s dwelling place in Ashtaroth Karnaim, in Bashan of Transjordan, broadly in the vicinity of the Midianites and the Ammonites.
If these are in fact scribal mistakes of a geographical nature in the Book of Jeremiah, then they have a precedent in the Book of Tobit – and for the very same region! For copiers of the popular Book of Tobit came to confuse “Media” with Midian and “Ecbatana” with Batanaea (Bashan), thereby rendering a ridiculous and illogical geography of Tobias’ journey with the angel. ….
In the case of Jeremiah, there is also to be considered the fact even of temporary “homelessness” (Lamentations 3:19): no home at all.
(iv) Apparent Tribal and Status Difference
Jeremiah was “of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin” (1:1), according to the translation of the Hebrew, which might not necessarily mean though that he was a priest, but just that he was then living amongst the priests there (or in Bashan …). Likewise we first meet the prophet Amos “among the shepherds of Tekoa” (Amos 1:1), which does not necessarily mean that Amos had actually hailed from there. …. Though different Hebrew prepositions are used in each case, respectively ba (for Amos) and min (for Jeremiah), it seems that the latter can be stretched to mean, as in the case of Amos, “among”. ….
Israelite Job was chosen to be the prophet Jeremiah to Judah, I suspect, because he was so utterly pure and righteous, and was just about the only good man left (cf. Jeremiah 5:1; 6:13; 8:10; 9:2-3). The career prophets of Judah had, it seems, all gone bad (v. 13).
(v) Apparently Different Marital Status
As to his presumably being un-married, Jeremiah was expressly told by God not to marry amongst the sinful Judaeans. “You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place” (16:2). If he were Tobias, as I am claiming, then his father Tobit had already told him, along similar lines, to marry, like the Patriarchs of old, amongst his own people and tribe (Tobit 4:12). And in fact Jeremiah explicitly, so I think, refers to his own children and says that they are dead (10:20): “… my children have gone from me, and they are no more …”.
(vi) Testimony of Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
It is interesting to note that, whilst one version of Sirach 49 (NRSV) mentions both Jeremiah (v. 6) and Job (v. 9), the latter is completely missing in the Douay version. In the first instance we read: “[Foreigners] burnt the chosen city of holiness [i.e. Jerusalem] and made its streets desolate: according to the prediction of Jeremias [Jeremiah]”. And, whereas NRSV has, in consideration of Ezekiel (in which book Job is actually referred to): “For God also mentioned Job who held fast to all the ways of justice”, the Douay instead has for this v. 9 a continuation from Jeremiah, without any mention whatsoever of Job (as Job). Thus: “… Jeremias. For they treated him evil who was consecrated a prophet from his mother’s womb, to overthrow and pluck up and destroy, and to build again and renew”. This would seem, by comparison with the NRSV, to have merged Jeremiah and Job into one (just as I am proposing to do).
I shall now also try to merge into one the details of the supposedly two lives.
[Here I had previously presumed that the prophet Jeremiah, as Jeremiah, must have been old from the start of his prophetic career – no longer the case].
Basically, from what we have reconstructed so far, our holy man, as Tobias, was a Naphtalian Israelite in Assyrian captivity for the duration of the Assyrian empire (from the time when Shalmaneser took Naphtali into captivity until Assyria’s demise). His father Tobit had been an official of some prominence under Shalmaneser, and his cousin, Ahikar, had risen to the highest office, even to becoming vizier after the assassination of Sennacherib. It is to be expected that Tobias, too, whose marriage to Sarah Ahikar had attended, would also have become an official of some note in the Assyrian empire. ….
By the time of the 13th year of king Josiah of Judah, our holy man – if he were also Jeremiah – was acting as a prophet to Judah (Jeremiah 1:2). [This was actually very early in his life, when he was still a boy. The 13th year of Josiah, my Hezekiah, would then have been the year before the famous 14th year of Hezekiah, when the Assyrian King Sennacherib came up against him, e.g. Isaiah 36:1. Assyria, then, is the mysterious ‘northern enemy’ of early Jeremiah, about whose identity commentators have puzzled. But the prophet was no longer in Judah to be consulted in the king of Judah’s important 18th year, when the Book of Moses was discovered, and when the prophetess Huldah was instead consulted. Also, Jeremiah’s curious trips to the Euphrates, 600 miles away, in Jeremiah 13, become far more explicable in the context of Tobias].
He …. was probably also regarded by the Judaeans as something of a foreigner, since he was a non-Jew [i.e. he was a northern Israelite], having grown up [partly] in Assyrian captivity far from Palestine. The Book of Jeremiah does not immediately give the impression, though, of a Job-ian background for the prophet. As we saw from our six points (i-vi) above, Jeremiah himself can be minimized: mistaken for a local Judaean resident; a young, inexperienced [that is actually true] and un-married celibate priest of no really official standing; none of which he actually was according to this reconstruction. The only clear point of contact between Job and Jeremiah would seem to be, as commentators have noticed, in their strikingly alike words and lamentations.
Though, I have now expanded somewhat upon the usual comparisons, and have further suggested that:
(i) Jeremiah was very much in the mould of Tobit, who I am alleging to have been his father; and that
(ii) Jeremiah, as Job, suffered in his own person and family what the nation of Judah would later suffer collectively.
This is all good as far as it goes, but it does not bring together specific life details of who are considered to have been two separate persons. So, how are we actually to fuse the living and breathing person JOB = TOBIAS with JEREMIAH.
Well, we need to go beyond the mere words, to finding some biographical clues in the Book of Jeremiah (that is perhaps short on such) that might resonate with the composite character whom we have already built up. Points that had enabled us to bind together Tobias and Job, such as those mentioned above: having seven sons; similar wealth; same geography; same moral maxims; etc., might again serve us – along with the already common utterances attributed to them, and of course their renowned righteousness – to bind our composite holy man to Jeremiah. Is there any evidence in the Book of Jeremiah that Jeremiah himself may, for instance, have been married, and had (had) children, and lived (or had lived) in Bashan, and had been wealthy, and had learned Tobit’s maxims, and so on?
I have already discussed Tobit’s life and maxims in connection with Jeremiah. But before I address all of these other issues, I should like to ponder upon – by way of possible further comparison between Job and Jeremiah, and perhaps of great thematic importance – the general observation (already introduced above) that all of the trials that had beset Job (loss of property and livestock and servants and wealth and family, with both nature and foreign tribes and robbers being the cause, followed then by personal sickness, grief and misery, with persecution from family, friends and neighbours), all of the things that had personally befallen Job and his family, including captivity, were signs of what was going to happen to the state of Judah. Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 15:3, 4.
Job was indeed a “suffering servant”. And this all fits nicely with Jeremiah’s constantly being asked by God to pantomime what was about to befall Judah and Jerusalem (e.g. the strange action of the Linen Loincloth in chapter 13; the visit to the Potter’s House, ch. 18). ….
I think that this idea of thematic comparisons is now a further area for some most fruitful comparisons.
The words themselves of, now Job, now Jeremiah, offer some striking comparisons. Thus for instance Job, recalling his own former bitterness and utter abandonment, could easily (if he had been contemporaneous with Jeremiah) have spoken these lamentable words of Jeremiah against Jerusalem (15:5, 7):
Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem?
Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?
I have stretched out my hand against you
I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork
In the gates of the land;
I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people ….
This is pure Job (e.g. 19:21): “Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!”, but no longer personalized; for it now embraces an entire nation.
Again, Jeremiah 25:18 and 29:18:
Let my persecutors be shamed,
but do not let me be shamed;
…. Bring on them the day of disaster;
destroy them with double destruction ….
I will pursue them with the sword
are so easily comparable with Job (19:28):
‘How we will persecute him!’
… be afraid of the sword.
For wrath brings the punishment of the sword ….
Elihu had put into Job’s mouth the words, “ … my wound is incurable, though I am without transgression …” (Job 34:6). But he (if Jeremiah), as Jeremiah, actually says:
Woe is me because of my hurt!
But I said, “Truly this is my punishment,
And, just as the poor comforter Eliphaz had urged Job: “Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way God will come to you” (Job 2:21), so does Jeremiah, speaking on behalf of God, thus accuse the false priests and prophets (was Eliphaz actually one of these?): “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 8:11).
But all this is not of course hard biographical detail. Most striking, then, in the latter context, may be – recalling the fact that Job had suffered the loss of seven sons – Jeremiah’s further words in Chapter 15 (v. 9): “She who bore seven sons has languished; she has swooned away; her sun went down while it was yet day …”. While Jeremiah is continuing here his oracle against Jerusalem, could it perhaps be that the prophet’s wife (Sarah?) had actually died in recent times, and that Jeremiah was spurred on to use this particular image again from his own bitter personal loss, in anticipation of the sadness that would also befall “the mothers” (v. 
of Jerusalem?
And who might Jeremiah’s (hence Job’s, in my context) wife have been?
Possibly that un-named and bereaved “She …” referred to above.
The only notable woman named in the Book of Jeremiah is the prophetess, Huldah, the wife of the prophet, Shallum, thought (based on 32:6) to have been Jeremiah’s uncle. So she could not have been Jeremiah’s wife ….
Women in Judaism – The Prophetess Hulda: Her Message of Hope ….
Hulda is a descendant of two great Jewish figures – Joshua (himself a prophet) and Rachav [Rahab]. Joshua – the preeminent student of Moses – conquered the Canaanites who were living in Israel and led the Jewish people into the land, ending their forty years sojourn in the desert. Rachav was a Canaanite woman who converted to Judaism upon recognizing the special relationship between God and the Jews. Rachav knew about both the miraculous Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt and the Divine protection they received during their stay in the desert. While the entire world had heard about these two extraordinary events, Rachav was the only person who internalized their significance and concluded that she, too, must join the Jewish nation. Once a woman of ill repute, Rachav thus merited to become Joshua’s wife and the progenitor of eight Jewish prophets, including Hulda.
Rachav’s lineage of prophecy, as carried forth by Hulda, expresses the intrinsic holiness of the Jewish people and their hope for redemption. Rachav was herself a shining example of hope, given her personal journey towards holiness. One may assume that Hulda inherited the spiritual genes of Rachav’s achievement, and used this gift to refine her feminine voice. In Hulda’s lifetime, when prophets were warning the Jewish people of their imminent exile from Israel, Hulda’s message was unique, because its darkness was imbued with a sense of light.
As mentioned in our previous class, we have little biographical information about Hulda. II Kings, 22:14 briefly describes her as, “…the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah son of Harhas…” Hulda’s family ties are a key to her spiritual strength. Her husband – whose name means “peace” or “wholeness” – was one of the great men of his generation. Shallum was a prophet, also revered for a particular mundane activity: each day he would transport water from the Jerusalem cistern to the city gates, in order to revive weary travelers.
The Midrash tells us that, in the merit of Shallum’s daily work and his prophetic gift, his wife received prophecy. In addition to her own righteousness, Hulda as Shallum’s life partner most probably shared his endeavors and was rewarded for her participation. As a prophetess, Hulda remained connected to Shallum, since both in their own way worked to revive and restore the Jewish people.
The Midrash relates a story that further develops the theme of “revival” that is at the center of Hulda’s life. When Shallum dies all of Israel attends his burial, which is interrupted by the sound of an approaching enemy. The crowd places the body in the nearby grave of the prophet Elisha and runs for their lives. Elisha’s body has the power to revive the dead (see Kings I, in which Elisha revives the son of the Shunamite woman). Upon touching Elisha’s body, Shallum is restored, in recognition of his having restored so many tired travelers. The commentator Radal tells us that the Elisha/Yoshiyahu story is recounted in Kings II 13:21-2:
“Some people were burying a man, and just then they saw the troop coming, so they threw the man into Elisha’s grave. The man’s body rolled over and touched the bones of Elisha, and [the man] came back to life and rose up on his feet.”
After Shallum is brought back, he and Hulda are blessed with a son, Chanamel. The name Chanamel implies “favor” (“Chen” in Hebrew) in God’s eyes. This child, also a prophet and a living miracle will play a role in the transition from First to Second Temple. We can assume that Hulda was profoundly affected by receiving back her husband and re-starting her family. This experience may have added dimension to her message of hope. Today’s Jewish woman is a spiritual descendant of Hulda and has access to the same eternal wellspring of optimism that is part and parcel of the feminine soul. Hulda’s story is embedded in the bedrock of the Jewish woman.
Its message is uniquely feminine, propelled through time by compassion, mercy and the ability to replace hopelessness with hope. These qualities, at once subtle and powerful, are the building blocks of female instinct, perception and wisdom. Properly developed through Torah study, they enable each of us to become our own Hulda and to affect our environment in a productive, personal way. As such, we are capable of imparting a message of hope to our own, admittedly beleagured generation.
Women in Judaism, Copyright (c) 2001 by Mrs. Leah Kohn and Project Genesis, Inc. ….
Commentators wonder why king Josiah – when the book of the Law had been discovered in the Temple by the high priest, Hilkiah, in king Josiah’s 18th year (2 Kings 22:3, – had sent his delegation, not to Jeremiah, but to the prophetess Huldah (v. 14). Why, they ask, did she take precedence over Jeremiah himself? Or even over her own husband, Shallum?
According to a Jewish legend, Huldah was chosen because Shallum was, at that particular time, absent amongst the captives of Assyria, consoling them – a most feasible situation according to my proposed reconstruction. This Shallum was the “keeper of the wardrobe …”, or “keeper of the threshold” (Jeremiah 35:4). The wife of a prophet was known as a “prophetess” (see also Isaiah 8:3).
By the reign of king Jehoiakaim, Shallum’s son Maaseiah had become “keeper of the threshold” (Jeremiah 35:4). Huldah was apparently consulted because her husband was away at the time and she would be privy to what were his current thoughts.
But why not Jeremiah? Was he also away at the time?
Huldah’s words to the king’s delegation seem to be quite blunt: “Tell the man who sent you to me, Thus say the Lord …” (v. 15). This might perhaps betray her as a ‘foreigner’ (… a non-Judaean) …. Now, according to Mariottini, Shallum was a relative of Jeremiah’s: “The husband of the prophetess Huldah (2 Ki 22:14; 2 Ch 34:22). He was the keeper of the sacred wardrobe and was probably the uncle of Jeremiah the prophet (Jer 32:7; compare Jer 35:4)”.
[http://www.claudemariottini.com/blog/archive/2009_04_01_archive.html]
And legends consistently have Jeremiah, Huldah and Shallum, all as distant descendants of the great Joshua, through Rahab. Mariottini also writes that: “The office of “the keeper of the wardrobe” is only mentioned in 2 Kings 22:14 and 2 Chronicles 34:22. This occupation may indicate that Shallum was in charge of maintaining the Levitical garments of the singers in the temple, who also were called prophets (1 Chronicles 25:1-7). This probably makes Huldah a person associated with music in the temple”.
Jewish legend has it, regarding the contemporary prophetic witnesses, that Zephaniah witnessed in the synagogue, Huldah in the academy and Jeremiah in the streets (was he now homeless?). Shallum and Huldah lived in “the Second”, or “Mortar”, supposedly a new district (suburb) of Jerusalem, though this is sometimes translated as ‘College”, for Huldah is supposed to have been in charge of an Academy (probably for women). …. Shallum and Huldah are considered to have been the guardians even of king Josiah of Judah in his earliest years, and Jeremiah, too, is thought to have mentored the young king.
Had the holy man’s first wife, Sarah, recently died when Jeremiah declared to Jerusalem “She who bore seven sons has languished; she has swooned away; her sun went down while it was yet day …”? Certainly, as I have shown in my thesis, the wives of the prophets Isaiah/Hosea (and Ezekiel) were symbolically referenced for prophetic purposes.
But what else – apart from similar words, sufferings and lamentations (and now, perhaps, a possible wife and seven sons) – are the points of biographical nexus between the composite TOBIAS = JOB, along the lines of Tobias and Job? For, on the contrary, Jeremiah appears on the surface of things not to have been particularly wealthy; and not to have lived in Transjordan, etc.
Well, so far I have argued that, as to:
God bound Jeremiah, not to celibacy, but to refrain from marrying in Judah. I have already referred to Jeremiah 10:20, which seems clearly to point to the prophet’s children, already deceased. And Jeremiah does intriguingly refer also to that woman with seven dead sons (as we found, a rare number of sons in the Scriptures).
Jeremiah famously, during the siege, purchases a plot of land from his uncle Shallum’s son, Hanamel (Jeremiah 32:6, 9), And we are told that Tobias “inherited both the property of Raguel and that of his father Tobit” (14:13). Was this the same property transaction as in the case of Raguel? A scenario similar to that in the Book of Ruth? And did Jeremiah then also marry (again, according to my reconstruction) as in the Book of Ruth?
Jeremiah may not have lived in Anathoth, but in Ashtaroth. [This still needs to be determined].
In this regard Jeremiah was, as we have seen, most like TOBIAS = JOB, whom his father Tobit had told:
“Revere the lord all your days, my son, and refuse to sin or transgress his commandments” (Tobit 4:6);
“… give alms from your possessions …” (v. 7);
“Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor …” (v. 7);
“Beware my son of every kind of fornication …. Marry a woman from among the descendants of your ancestors; do not marry a foreign woman …” (v. 12);
“…. In pride there is ruin and real confusion …. Idleness is the mother of famine” (v. 13);
“Do not keep over until the next day the wages of those who work for you, but pay them at once” (v. 14);
“… what you hate do not do to anyone” (v. 15);
“Do not drink wine to excess …” (v. 15);
“Give some of your food to the hungry, and some of your clothing to the naked” (v. 16);
“At all times bless the Lord …” (v. 19).
All of these commandments were of course being flouted by the nation in Jeremiah’s time, as most of the Book of Jeremiah tells. To give an example, though examples could be multiplied, we read in Jeremiah 5:7-9; 24-28:
… Your children have forsaken me,
and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
and trooped to the houses of prostitutes.
They were well-fed lusty stallions,
each neighing for his neighbour’s wife.
Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord ….
They do not say in their hearts, “Let us fear the Lord our God,
who gives the rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain,
and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest”.
Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have deprived
For scoundrels are found among my people;
they take over the goods of others.
Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.
Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich,
they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy ….
This is very much like Tobit. As I say, examples could be multiplied.
Always, in the midst of his accusing, does Jeremiah, like Job in his afflictions, “bless the Lord” (to use the words of Tobit). Cf. Job 9:1-12 with Jeremiah 10:12-16, as one of various examples.
Jeremiah was, like Job, a most righteous prophet and servant of Yahweh who seems to have imbibed the teachings and examples of Tobit, who may have lived in Transjordan and had been married, had owned property, but later lost his wife and seven sons, and suffered great personal misery and abandonment, and mockery and persecution from relatives and friends, who wished to die, but continued to bless God and hope for a happy outcome, and who in fact lived to see vindication and/or destruction upon all those who had so bitterly opposed him.
My composite Prophet [was very Jesus-like. As Jeremiah (as I think)] he was, as Pope Benedict XVI has written in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, “a figure of the Passion, who proclaims the failure of the current form of the Covenant and of the Temple that, so to speak, serves as its guarantee. Of course, he is also the bearer of the promise of a New Covenant that is destined to rise from the ashes”.
According to this reconstruction, Tobias/Job, now firmly established, was probably also (but less firmly established) the great prophet Jeremiah. A full integration of the chronology and geography of Jeremiah with Job/Tobias, though, will still need to be achieved.
Our Lady of Good Counsel
26th April 2012
