Exegeting God: Prophetic Sign Acts and Inner-Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jeremiah

Abstract In this article, I investigate key features of the literary logic and function of Jeremiah’s sign acts that have remained widely overlooked by modern biblical scholarship. What has gone unnoticed is the densely allusive texture of the central elements and activities of the sign acts examined (Jer 13:1–11; 16:1–9; 18:1–11; 19; 25:15–29; 27; 32:1–15; 35; 43:8–13; 51:59–64). My argument is that the sign acts are best construed as an ancient exegetical enterprise; they are an expression of the enormously creative literary imagination in ancient Israel. They are exegetical in nature, I suggest, both genetically and functionally. Stated otherwise, the sign acts are products of inner-biblical exegesis, and they are deployed within the Jeremianic corpus in service of exegetical ends. By attending to the creative exegetical transformations that the sign acts effect vis-à-vis their antecedent literary materials, it is possible to detect a concerted effort to disclose, explicate, adjust, and amplify the representation of divine action found in the earlier Jeremianic traditions. Jeremiah’s exegetical sign acts emerge as a sophisticated exegetical discourse about YHWH’s workings behind the events of the Babylonian exile, expressed in the medium of imagined and imaginative prophetic performance.