THE CALL OF JEREMIAH by DAVID TUDOR ... - David T Williams

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whole passage reads as a single dialogue between God and
Jeremiah, sparked off by the question of the drought (Holladay
1983:152) and involving the question of false prophecy. This dialogue
with its repeated interchanges also includes what could well be
classed as a "confession" (Jr 14:19-22) in its usual form of poetry. The
unity of the passage is also seen in its theme of punishment for
Judah's sins, in the references to true, thus effective, prophecy and
false prophecy (Jr 14:11, 13f, 18, 15:1 etc) and in references to
intercession (Jr 14:11, 20f, 15:1) which run through the entire
passage.
However, because of its nature of partial prose and poetry, it has
usually been split, treating the poetry as authentic to Jeremiah and the
prose to an exilic situation. Further support for this is claimed in the
reference to Manasseh (Jr 15:4) which is believed to be Deuteronomic
(cf 2@Ki 21:11f). However, as Thompson (1980:378) remarks,
Jeremiah would surely have had a full knowledge of Manasseh.
Although he sees a literary arrangement, he also (1980:377) sees a
basic unity in the passage. Nicholson (1970:101) also sees some
unity, so treats Jeremiah 15:1-4 as arising from 14:17-22 and 14:11-16
as dependent upon 14:1-10, thus treating the prose as later. However,
Jeremiah 14:17f follows very naturally as a response to 14:13f, and
15:2f returns to the original theme of natural disaster of 14:1, giving an
overall unity. Bright also (1965:103) sees a unity, ascribing essentially
the whole passage to Jeremiah, although perhaps on different