Word & World Journal, Fall 2002

Readers of Word & World have known forever that Terry Fretheim is an acute, reliable, generative reader of Old Testament texts with a sure critical grounding and an alert theological sensibility. And so it will be no surprise that Fretheim's uncommon gifts are once again on exhibit in this magisterial commentary, to the delight and benefit of his readers. Readers of the journal, however, may not be familiar with the new Smyth & Helwys commentary series in which this volume is one of the earlier publications.

The series from the newly organized press is a most ambitious one that has recruited recognized and reliable scholars to provide critical grounding in the biblical text, but then to focus upon "connections" (a technical term in the series) that will be of use to teachers and preachers in the church and of benefit to a church that is willing to study. The push toward "connections," as intended by the series and in the hands of Fretheim, is no popularization or trivialization but a move beyond the usual historical questions to show the ways in which the text still speaks, in the matrix of faith, to contemporary readers.The series is further enhanced by the imaginative use of "boxes" (another technical term in the series) that permits the commentator to employ a series of insets to cite other authors, make extrabibical connections, present representations in the history of religious art, or quote other materials. The result is an impressive, elegant commentary of the size and proportion of the Hermeneia series but--unlike the Hermeneia series--fully accessible to readers who are not overburdened with technical capacity. It goes without saying that Fretheim has made splendid use of the inventive format of the series so that his "connections" are rich and suggestive and the "boxes" offered provide contact with Berrigan and Bonhoeffer and a host of others from Fretheim's rich reservoir of resources. The format of the series is peculiarly suited to Fretheim's sensibilities and gifts, so that the commentary shows Fretheim, an exquisite theological interpreter, at his most exquisite.

Fretheim is, of course, on the front edge of critical study. A major shift has occurred in Jeremiah studies so that the "final form of the book" is taken to be addressed to the generation of exiles sometime after the period of the person Jeremiah. One consequence of this shift in perspective is that all the interpretive energy is no longer given to the earlier part of the book, to the materials that were commonly regarded as "authentic" from Jeremiah.

Now proportionate attention is given to the latter part of the book, that is undoubtedly later and that takes a big interpretive step beyond the horizon of the historical Jeremiah. Fretheim takes full account of this new perspective and, consequently, attends to the theological resources in the book that have long been underappreciated.

In the end, Fretheim is a theologian, and he attends finally to the character of God as given in the textual tradition. He is fully informed by the defining work of Abraham Heschel on pathos, and draws upon his own earlier important work on divine suffering. Out of that background, he pays attention to the pathos, power, and wrath of God that receive their most acute articulation in the tradition of Jeremiah. The commentary is especially suggestive concerning the "lamentations of Jeremiah" that bespeak the prophet's own pathos that is deeply congruent with God's own pathos in regard to the destiny of beloved Israel. In reading the text with Yahweh as a genuine character in the plot of the book, the commentary provides uncommon resources for the church in a technological society that wants to silence pathos and censor any "underneathness" that may be present in either God or in humankind. A technological society, perhaps like the ancient dominant society in Jerusalem, wants to silence anything that would disrupt autonomous well-being. Fretheim shows the ways in which the rhetorical strategies of the book were theologically subversive in the sixth century and suggests the ways in which these strategies continue to be subversive in our contemporary context that has all too much in common with that ancient time.

This commentary is a "must" for any serious Bible student. Its publication will of course enhance the series. Beyond that, this commentary will be a durable marker in our new learning of ways in which to be critical and theologically contemporary at the same time. Fretheim and Smyth & Helwys are to be congratulated on this publication. It pleases me to observe that I have been one of Terry's conversation partners in his preparation of the commentary, even if often a foil for his own alternative judgment. Fretheim has been among my most important conversation partners for a very long time. It is now a delight on my part to commend his book and to congratulate him for an uncommon piece of research that shows how the best "guild work" and the best "church work" readily converge when there are ample portions of learning, imagination, and discipline.

Walter Brueggemann

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Scholarly Reviews of Jeremiah

Concordia Journal, April 2006

Each commentary in this new series employs a wide array of art, photographs, maps, and drawings. An accompanying CD ROM reproduces the commentary text, the Sidebars (more involved discussions) and the visuals. Chapters explore a textual unit, and the discussion centers around two sections: Commentary and Connections. No translation is offered, but there are a number of Sidebars where Fretheim discusses textual difficulties and possible emendations.

In terms of words and verses, the book of Jeremiah is the longest book in the Bible. It is also one of the most complex as is evident in several ways including its structure and flow of thought, the person of Jeremiah, the historical setting of individual texts, and its relationship to a much shorter Greek version. Jeremiah taxes one's interpretive capacities at every turn, whether the issues are literary, historical, or theological. Yet for all of its difficulty, the book's depth of reflection on divine action and human response, as well as the range and rigor of its rhetoric, keeps it very much alive for those who dare enter this massive theological masterpiece.

Terence Fretheim offers a clear map to travel through this difficult terrain. For example, in well over two hundred Sidebars he discusses geography, ancient Near Eastern deities, Israel's history, word studies, and the like. Fretheim also interacts with scholars such as Abraham Heschel, Walter Brueggemann, William McKane, Robert Carroll, Ronald Clements, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and especially inspiring are the snippets from Daniel Berrigan's work in Jeremiah.

One of the most compelling questions of the book of Jeremiah that regularly punctuates the text either explicitly or implicitly is (e.g., 5:19; 9:12; 13:22; 14:19; 16:10; 22:8): "Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness?" Fretheim accents the prophet's answer by means of lex taliones, or, more popularly understood as "what goes around comes around." For example, God's not listening to the people (11:11 17) corresponds to the people's not listening to God; God has forsaken because the people have forsaken Him (2:13, 17, 19); God has abandoned (7:29) because the people have abandoned Him (15:6).

Another theme woven throughout this commentary is Jeremiah's fellowship with the feelings of God. The prophet lived not only his personal life but also the life of Yahweh. The text communicates not only the logos of Yahweh's Word but also His pathos. One way to understand this dimension of the book is that Jeremiah eats Yahweh's Word (15:17) and therefore embodies the Word in his ministry. And so sorrow, lament, weeping, wailing, grief, pain, anguish, regret, and anger are all ascribed to both Jeremiah and Yahweh. Fretheim's focus on this aspect of the book enables readers to see that judgment and lament texts need to be related to each other, for to divorce one from the other is to miss this key component of God's workings in Jeremiah.

This same line of thinking accents another of the commentary's major themes--Yahweh is a relational being, living and dynamic; one whose ways of relating to the world are best captured in the language of personality and activity. Fretheim beats this drum often and several times mentions that it is ironic some Christian theologies have difficulty with this language, for in Jesus Christ God has acted anthropomorphically in an unsurpassable way. With this emphasis on God's personhood, Fretheim contrasts the God of Israel with classical theism where God knows everything and controls everything; in so doing Fretheim posits a kind of open theism.

He supplies his own ongoing metaphor on what Jeremiah is finally saying. Israel's trip over the waterfalls is certain--her sin has brought the nation to the point of no return. This happened a century earlier due to the sins of Manasseh. But Yahweh is the kind of God who picks the people up from the rocks below the falls and continues to be about the business of building and planting the future, even when it does not look like He's got much to work with!

Fretheim also rightly highlights another ongoing message in Jeremiah--the moral order affects the created order. That is, because of human sinfulness it does not rain. The land is made desolate and polluted, and animals and birds are swept away. Moral order adversely affects cosmic order; human sin has a deeply negative effect upon the environment. This is just the opposite of claims made for Baal worship on the land's fertility. Yet, in failing to connect these texts to the Pentateuchal blessings and curses in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 (as Fretheim does, for example, in his discussion on cannibalism) he misses the rhetorical nature of Jeremiah's message--namely, that these cataclysmic changes in nature indicate that the people are under God's curse.

Another weakness in the commentary is that Fretheim believes only exilic readers are in view of the author(s) of these texts. This quote is representative: "These verses have been shaped to speak to an exilic audience that has already experienced the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile" (60). In this move, the original audience and the oral qualities of Jeremiah are subsumed under a redactional prerogative. In privileging the Sitz im Literatur over the Sitz im Leben Fretheim omits the idea that versed in an oral tradition Jeremiah could have written his texts to be heard and not only to be read. If the Homeric epics in their written form still retain oral structures, it seems worthwhile to attend to this possibility in the studies of Jeremiah.

The problem is that as a redaction critic Fretheim retains as a cardinal doctrine of his education that originally prophetic texts were disparate units now blended into one. With redaction criticism the reader is not confronted with the "historical" prophet, still less, the oral communication of the prophet, but rather with the "presentation" of the prophet, to use a term introduced by Peter Ackroyd. Whereas form criticism believed oral utterances lay "in, with, and under" the received text, redaction criticism has essentially abandoned the task of discovering the original prophetic words. The idea is that the oral nature of texts has been completely subsumed due to the many redactional layers placed over the original text. Unfortunately, Fretheim's commentary is built upon these methodological presuppositions.

Another flaw, though much more minor, is that it is not until the end of his commentary that Fretheim defines what he means by "exiles." The reader is left wondering if he means exiles left in Judah, those in Babylon, those in Egypt, or a combination thereof. In chapter 40 and following the reader is offered a clear definition of who the exilic audience of the book actually is--those who are in Babylon.

And why Fretheim consistently translates Torah as "law" and not as "revelation," "instruction," "teaching," etc. is a mystery.

And yet these are only minor bumps in the road--for few interpreters of the Old Testament go so quickly and reflectively to the heart of a text as does Terence Fretheim. He is attentive to theological substance and stylistic detail. As a Lutheran interpreter of the Old Testament, he winsomely discusses incarnational and sacramental aspects of the text. His Law and Gospel discussions--especially in terms of the relationship between the Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants--are simply outstanding. So if one wants to hear the word of Yahweh afresh in the study of this most important prophet, Fretheim's commentary gives the reader a whole new set of ears for careful listening.

Reed Lessing