2 Baruch

Historical printed page 485

II BARUCH 9. 2—10. τὸ 2 captured in the seizure of the city. And we rent our garments, we wept, and mourned, and fasted ix. 2=XXV. seven days. ; = 1,2 And it came to pass after seven days, that the word of God came to me, and said unto me: ‘ Tell 3 Jeremiah to go and support the captivity of the people unto Babylon. But do thou remain here amid the desolation of Zion, and I will show to thee after these days what will befall at the end of 4,5 days. And I said to Jeremiah as the Lord commanded me. And he, indeed, departed with the people, but I, Baruch, returned and sat before the gates of the temple, and I lamented with the following lamentation over Zion and said: 6 ‘Blessed is he who was not born, Or he, who having been born, has died. 7 But as for us who live, woe unto us, Because we see the afflictions of Zion, And what has befallen Jerusalem. 8 I will call the Sirens from the sea, And ye Lilin, come ye from the desert, And ye Shedim and dragons from the forests : Awake and gird up your loins unto mourning, And take up with me the dirges, And make lamentation with me. 9 Ye husbandmen, sow not again; And, O earth, wherefore givest thou thy harvest fruits? Keep within thee the sweets of thy sustenance. to And thou, vine, why further dost thou give thy wine ; For an offering will not again be made therefrom in Zion, Nor will first-fruits again be offered. IX. 2. The first fast of seven days. - Fasting was the usual preparation for supernatural communications. Cf. Dan. ix. 3, 20-21; and see note on v. 7. X. 1. God. This word is found only twice again, i.e. liv. 12; Ixxxii.9. Its use is more frequent in 4 Ezra. 2. We have here a violation of the true historical tradition. According to Jer. xliii. 4-7, both Jeremiah and Baruch were carried down into Egypt. In 1 Baruch i. 1, Baruch appears in Babylon five years after Jerusalem was taken. In 4 Baruch, too, Jeremiah is taken to Babylon, but by force. The references to Jeremiah in connexion with Babylon probably belong to Β΄. In Ixxvii. 17-19, &c., Baruch writes to the brethren in Babylon, never to Jeremiah ; while in 4 Baruch he directs his letter to Jeremiah. But later Judaism, according to Pesik. R. 26 (131» ed. Fried- mann) held that Jeremiah accompanied the exiles part of the way to Babylon. support. So I render according to a recognized meaning of the Syriac verb paSs. Ryssel thinks that this verb goes back to ὃ P35, and that 25 was to be understood with it. Thus he arrives at his rendering ‘care for’. But this is most unlikely; for in xliii. 1 we have the actual Syriac phrase in full which corresponds to the Hebrew ab pon, ie. oS oh There we should render as in Hebrew, ‘direct thy heart,’ &c. Now it is noteworthy that the clause in our text ‘ go and support’ recurs practically in xxxiii. 2, but there «οἱ is used instead of poo/. ooh is a Syriac equivalent of 27. Hence there we render ‘make ready’. In Ixxvii. 12 yet another verb, wus, is used in nearly the same sense as pro! in x. 2. Returning now to xxxiii. 2 we recognize at once that there is a slight corruption in the text : ‘make ready the rest of the brethren tint Babylon, against whom has gone forth the sentence that they should be led into captivity.’ Here the brethren are first of all said to be already ‘in Babylon’, and then in the next clause to be sentenced to exile to Babylon. Thus ‘in Babylon’ may be corrupt for ‘for Babylon’. It must be confessed, however, that the original standing behind these words is very uncertain. 5. This lament of Baruch prepares for the third fast of xii. 5. before the gates of the temple. This is the scene of the following lamentation, and also that in xxxv. 1. A passage in the beginning of 3 Baruch seems to be derived from our text: οὕτως ἐκάθητο ἐπὶ τὰς ὡραίας πύλας ? ἐν ry x τῶν ἁγίων ἅγια. Mount Zion, on the other hand, is the scene where revelations are accorded to him xiii. 1, &c. ᾿ 6. Blessed is he who was not born, &c. -Cf. Eccles. iv. 2--3, from which the text may ultimately have been derived. Cf. 4 Ezra: it is said that it were better man had not been born at all than be born to have to face future torment and judgement (e.g. vii. 66, 116, 117). But it is the present woes of Jerusalem that here are said to make the unborn blessed, and those in Sheol (xi. 7) happy in comparison with the living. 8. Sirens. These are said in 1 En. xix. 2 (Greek version) to have been the wives of the angels who went astray. Here they are sea-nymphs, as in Greek legend. The Greek translators of the O.T. used the term for ostriches and jackals. Lilin, night-demons. Male and female demons named Lil and Lilit belong to Assyrian and Babylonian demonology. The Lilith (nos) are mentioned in Isa, xxxiv. 14, along with the satyr yyy, Shedim, Male demons, to which various origins were assigned. See my Commentary, 7 loc. dragons. So, too, Pesh. renders ὉΠ in Isa. xiii. 22. But the word may mean ‘jackals’. 10. The writer of x. 6—xii. 4 resigns absolutely all hope of the restoration of Jerusalem, as Β΄ does throughout. 485