Abstract
Jeremiah 1.4-10 presents the first encounter between God and Jeremiah, an encounter which results in Jeremiah’s commission to be a prophet of God. The text is characterized by two literary devices: (1) the use of stereotypical expressions, which have led exegetes to treat vv. 4-10 as ‘the call proper’ of Jeremiah’s commission, and (2) the presence of two guiding themes—namely, verbal skill and physical strength. These themes highlight Jeremiah’s qualifications as God’s prophet, compel the reader to heed the text’s content, and prepare him/her for the next two dialogues, which this article claims constitute Jeremiah’s true call to the prophetic mission. The aims of this article are: to present detailed philological and thematic analysis of vv. 4-10; to evaluate the contributions of multiple translations to our understanding of the text and to offer a new translation; and to show that this text does not fulfill the requirements of ‘a call proper’ to Jeremiah. These insights dispel any remaining confusion about the meaning of Jeremiah’s call proper.
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