Jeremiah 37


Jeremiah 37 is the thirty-seventh chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It is numbered as Jeremiah 44 in the Septuagint. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. This chapter is the start of a narrative section consisting of chapters 37 to 44. Chapter 37 records King Zedekiah's request for prayer, Jeremiah's reply to the king, and Jeremiah's arrest and imprisonment.

Text

The original text was written in Hebrew. This chapter is divided into 21 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some ancient manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets, Aleppo Codex, Codex Leningradensis.
There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Marchalianus.

Parashot

The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex. Jeremiah 37 is a part of the "Fifteenth prophecy " in the section of Prophecies interwoven with narratives about the prophet's life . : open parashah; : closed parashah.

Verse numbering

The order of chapters and verses of the Book of Jeremiah in the English Bibles, Masoretic Text, and Vulgate, in some places differs from that in the Septuagint according to Rahlfs or Brenton. The following table is taken with minor adjustments from Brenton's Septuagint, page 971.
The order of Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint/Scriptural Study based on Alfred Rahlfs' Septuaginta, differs in some details from Joseph Ziegler's critical edition in Göttingen LXX. Swete's Introduction mostly agrees with Rahlfs' edition.
Hebrew, Vulgate, EnglishRahlfs' LXX
37:1-2144:1-21
30:1-9,12-14,16-21,23-2437:1-9,12-14.16-21,23-24
30:10,15,22none

Structure

The New King James Version divides this chapter into the following sections:

Verse 3

This "Pharaoh" is Hophra, the fourth king of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt, ruling 589-570 BCE. His name is written as Ουαφρη, Ouaphre in the Greek Old Testament, Ἁπρίης Apries by Herodotus and Diodorus, or Waphres by Manetho, who correctly records that he reigned for 19 years. He forged an alliance with Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon, sending an army in the summer of 588 BCE. This caused the Chaldeans to temporarily lift the siege in Jerusalem to deal with the Egyptians, but eventually failed to prevent the fall of the city in July 587 BCE. In 570 BC Hophra was forced to rule together as co-regents with Amasis, but three years later Hophra was overthrown and executed, while Amasis continued to be a sole ruler until his death in 526 BCE.

Verse 12

The meaning of the Hebrew in this verse is uncertain: the nineteenth-century biblical commentator Alexander Maclaren suggests that Jeremiah went with a group of Benjaminites, reading "in the midst of the people" with "to go into the land of Benjamin". He argues then that "the others seem to have been let pass, and only Jeremiah detained".

Jewish

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