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Jeremiah 7 and 44 1. "AND THE WOMEN MAKE CAKES FOR THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN" JEREMIAH 7 AND 44 Twice in the book of Jeremiah, in Jer 7:16-20 and in 44:15-19, 25, the people of Judah are condemned for worshiping the Queen of Heaven. The initial passage, Jer 7: 16-20, reads: (16) "And as for you [Jeremiah], do not pray for this people, do not lift up for their sake cry or prayer, do not intercede with me [Yahweh], for I will not heed you. (17) Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? (18) The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the Queen1 of Heaven, and they pour out libations to other gods in order to provoke me. (19) But is it I they provoke?" says Yahweh. "Is it not they who are shamefaced?" (20) Therefore thus says Y ahweh:2 "Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on human and on beast, on the tree of the field and on the fruit of the ground, and it will bum and not be extinguished." 1The consonantal Hebrew text reads lmlkt, "for the Queen of." But the Masoretic tradition here, and in Jer 44:17, 18, 19, and 25, vocalizes limleket, as if the word were lml'kt, "for the work of [heaven]," i. e., "for the heavenly host." Many Hebrew manuscripts in fact read lml'kt (with an >aJep) in 7: 18 and in 44:17, 18, 19, and 25. The Tg and Pesh support lmi>kt in all five instances, as, apparently, does the Gin 7:18 (t? stratig,). But as is commonly recognized, the Masoretic pointing is an apologetic attempt to remove any hint that the people of Judah worshiped the Queen of Heaven. See R. P. Gordon, "Aleph Apologeticum," JQR 69 (1978-79), 112. The correct reading is lemalkat, "for the Queen of," supported by Aquila, Symmac~us, and Theodotian, by the Vg, and by the G of 44:17, 18, 19, and 25. 2MT 'dny yhwh is expansionistic; omit 'dny with the G. 6 Under Every Green Tree This censure is part of a longer unit which runs from Jer 7: 1 to 8:3. In this long unit various religious behaviors are attacked. Jeremiah 7 begins with Jeremiah's temple sermon (7:1-15), in which the people are criticized for trusting in the idea that Yahweh's temple is inviolable. Appended to the temple sermon are denunciations of several cult practices: the worship of the Queen of Heaven (7:16-20), reliance on sacrifice and offerings without true faithfulness (7:21-28), child sacrifice (7:29-34), and the worship of astronomical bodies (8:1-3). Commentators assign the temple sermon and its appended sayings to sometime during the reign of Jehoiakim, in the last decade of the seventh century .3 The setting, of course, is Jerusalem. The sayings appended to Jeremiah's temple sermon come from the hands of the Deuteronomistic editors of Jeremiah.4 This means that we do not in fact know from Jeremiah 7 whether Jeremiah himself prophesied against the cult of the Queen of Heaven or, more important for our purposes, whether the Deuteronomistic editors are accurate in locating the cult in late pre-exilic Jerusalem. But Jer 44:15-19, 25 indicates that the Deuteronomistic tradition is reliable. This passage, which is like 7:16-20 part of a longer unit (44:1-30) criticizing the people for false worship, is from the mouth of the prophet himself. It reads: (15) And all the men who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the 3So, for example, J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB 21; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 58; B. Duhm, Das Buch Jeremia (Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament 11; Tubingen und Leipzig: J. C. B. Mohr, 1901), 74; W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 252; W. Rudolph, Jeremia (3d ed.; Tilbingen: J.C. B. Mohr, 1968), 1; P. Volz, Der Prophet Jeremia (KAT 10; Leipzig: A. Deichertsche, 1928), 100; A. Weiser, Das Buch des Prophet en Jeremia (A TD 20, 21; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1952), 70. 4Note the characteristic Oeuteronomistic phraseology dbrty ... dbr in Jer 7:22 and dbrt . .. hdbrym in 7:27. Similarly, see hyyty /km />lhym in Jer 7:23. See further F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1973), 253 (point 6) and 254 (point 20). .
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