1 William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah Chapters 1-25 (Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 2, 67. The inclusion of Israel in Yahweh's ריב has led some commentators, such as William Holladay, to argue for an early “northern recension” of Jeremiah oracles dating to the later years of Josiah's reign (615–609 BCE). Holladay suggests this northern recension included vv. 2:4-9; 3:1-2, 4-5, 12, 14-15, 18bβ, 19, 21a, 22-23, the poetic core of 24-25, and 4:1-2. While this is a tempting theory, questions abound as to whom this northern recension would have been directed? Perhaps it was the remnant of the tribe of Benjamin - Jeremiah's ancestral tribe - reincorporated into Judah after the fall of the northern Kingdom. But at what date would such a message of indictment have been appropriate for a shattered northern state? An indictment that was composed decades before invasion of Nebuchadnezzar loomed over the southern Levant?

2 What precipitated the divorce is not readily clear. Although the poem includes clear references to infidelity on the part of the wife (Jer 2:20, 23–25; 3:1-3, 6, 8), there are also indications that the indictment may address a divorce initiated by a wife (Jer 2:13, 17). A divorce initiated by a woman in the ancient Near East often carried an implicit assumption of infidelity and punitive stipulations identical to those of adultery. The complex themes of adultery, divorce, and remarriage following divorce characterize Jer 2:2-3:20, before the metaphor shifts to a child's rejection of their parent, although the two motifs begin to blend together in Jer 3:14.

3 Hermann Gunkel and Joachim Begrich, Einleitung in die Psalmen: Die Gattungen der religiösen Lyrik Israels (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1933), 329. Gunkel, who first identified the Gattung of the Gerichtsrede within the prophetic books, argued that the formal Sitz im Leben of these texts was secular adjudication at the town gates of ancient Israel. Following in Gunkel's interpretation of the town gate as the ריב lawsuit's Sitz im Leben was Hans Jochen Boecker, Redeformen des Rechtslebens im Alten Testament (Neukirche: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970), 10. Boecker identifies both the formal and actual Sitz im Leben of the prophetic lawsuit as the city gate. A major shift occurred with Herbert Huffmon and his 1959 article, “The Covenant Lawsuit in the Prophets” JBL 78 (1959): 285–95. Huffmon connects the prophetic lawsuit not to judicial process at the gate, but to international treaty language and covenant. G. Ernest Wright, based on Huffmon's connection to covenant, brought Deut 32 into the discussion of prophetic lawsuits—despite the absence of any reference to the term ריב in the text. Cf. G. Ernest Wright, “The Lawsuit of God: A Form-Critical Study of Deuteronomy 32,” pages 26-67 in Israel's Prophetic Heritage (eds. B. W. Anderson and W. Harrelson; New York: Harper & Row, 1962). The notion of covenant and treaty as the textual inspiration of the ריב lawsuit gained much stronger footing with an article by Julien Harvey, Le plaidoyer prophétique contre Israël après la rupture de l'alliance (Studia 22; Montréal: Bellarmin, 1967). Harvey argued that Hittite letters describing the breach of treaty with vassal rulers mirrored the form of the ריב lawsuit, but he never succeeded in establishing the historical connection between these texts. Eberhard von Waldow attempted to harmonize the legal aspects first identified by Gunkel and the covenant materials discussed by Harvey, claiming the form was derived from secular law but the content focused on covenant traditions; Eberhard von Waldo, Der traditionsgeschichtliche Hintergrund der prophetischen Gerichtsreden (BZAW 85; Berlin: A. Topelman, 1963). More recent work has raised critical skepticism over the identification of the ריב as a lawsuit based on a more precise legal definition of “lawsuit” in the ancient Near East. Cf. Michael De Roche, “Yahweh's Rîb against Israel: A Reassessment of the So-Called “Prophetic Lawsuit” in the Preexilic Prophets,” JBL 102 (1983): 563-574. Cf. Dwight D. Daniels, “Is there a ‘Prophetic Lawsuit’ Genre?” ZAW 99 (1987):339-360. Daniels rejects any connection between the term ריב and Israelite law, arguing the actual context of these texts derives from the “cultic sphere of sin and atonement.” Although ריב can be used in situations aside from legal contexts, ריב is not the only term drawing the readers' attention to the genre of law and legal texts. Such skepticism is also expressed by Robert Wilson, “The Role of Law in Early Israelite Society,” pages 90-99 in Law, Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World (eds. Baruch Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).

4 Initially, little attention was paid to the Sitz im Leben of the performance of the ריב lawsuits. However, Ernst Würthwein in his 1952 article asserted the performance of the prophetic lawsuit should have taken place in a cultic setting, during the oral pronouncement of the law. Cf. Ernst Würthwein, “Der Ursprung der prophetischen Gerichtsrede” Zeitschift für Theologie und Kirche 49 (1952): 1-16. Franz Hesse rebuked Würthwein's conclusions, arguing a prophetic indictment against Israel itself would have never been used in any cultic activity. Cf. Franz Hesse, “Wurzelt die prophetischen Gerichtsrede im israelitischen Kult?” ZAW 65 (1953): 45–53.

5 The questionable progress made in the realm of the prophetic lawsuits was also criticized by Robert Wilson, “The Role of Law in Early Israelite Society,” 93. Cf. Ibidem, “Form-Critical Investigation of the Prophetic Literature: The Present Situation,” pages 100-121 in Society of Biblical Literature Papers I (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1973).

6 J. R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible Commentary; New York, 1999), 258. Lundbom, drawing from the conclusions of De Roche, sees no generic connections between the so-called ריב texts and denies the existence of a “covenant lawsuit”.

7 Christof Hardmeier, “Die Redekomposition Jer 2-6: Eine ultamative Verwarnung Jersusalems im Kontext des Zidkijasaufstandes,” Wort und Dienst 21 (1991): 11–42. Christof Hardmeier, “Geschichte und Erfahrung in Jer 2-6: Zur theologischen Notwendigkeit eniner geschichts- und erfahrungsbezoge-nen Exegese und ihrer methodischen Neuorientierung,” EvT 56 (1996): 3-29. Hardmeier's reading allows for the possibility that the text of Jer 2-3 may originally stem from the era of Josiah's reign, but are to be read in light of the Babylonian threat to Jerusalem in the days of Zedekiah. Cf. Werner H. Schmidt, Das Buch Jeremia: Kapitel 1-20 (ATD 20; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 65–100.

8 Holladay, Jeremiah 1, 73.

9 Lundbom, Jeremiah 1–20, 258.

10 Cf. D. MacKenzie, “Judicial Procedure at the Town Gate,” VT 14 (1964): 100-104. The work by MacKenzie on court procedure in Judah and Israel is a useful analysis of all biblical texts that address the judicial process. However, he reconstructs a judicial process from texts that derive from many different localities and span several centuries, thus his conclusions may in fact amalgamate many different traditions operative within Judah and Israel, including postexilic reflections on a legal culture heavily disrupted by Assyrian and Babylonian invasions.

11 Contra Lukasz Popko, Marriage Metaphor and Feminine Imagery in Jer 2:1–4:2: A Diachronic Study based on the MT and the LXX (Études Bibliques 70; Pendé, France: J. Gabalda et Cie. 2015), 68. Based on his argument for the LXX of Jeremiah as an independent recension, Popko asserts that the marriage metaphor in Jer 2-3 is a secondary “prosaic insertion” to a poem that originally addressed a rebellious child's relationship with their father. The marriage metaphor was first inserted in Jer 3:6-11 and was inspired by the parable of the two sisters in Ezek 23 and the ריב lawsuit of Hos 2. However, he does not convincingly demonstrate that the LXX lacks all references to the theme of marriage in these chapters; in particular, the hapax legomenon כלולות “bridehood” (Jer 2:2), which the LXX renders as “the wholeness of your love” as opposed to the MT which reads “the love of your bridehood,” nevertheless suggests that the latter term was found in the Hebrew Urtext. Apparently, the author of the LXX interpreted the unpointed consonants (כללתך) as “wholeness” (כלילה), and thus rendered a genitival attributive construction. However, such an interpretation breaks the parallelism of the diptych: “devotion of your youth (חסד נעוריך); love of your bridehood (אהבת כלולתיך).” The parallelism is more compelling than the term “bridehood” implies when compared with Akkadian kallūtu: “status of a daughter-in-law/status of a woman living in a household other than her father's”. Cf. CAD K:85a. This abstract noun refers to a preliminary stage of marriage (so-called inchoate marriage), oftentimes when the future bride would have been little older than a child.

12 Jason Radine, The Book of Amos in Emergent Judah (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe 45; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).

13 For a thorough analysis of the meaning of the root ריב cf. James Limburg, “The Root ריב and the Prophetic Lawsuit Speeches,” JBL 88, 1969, (291–304), 309.

14 Cf. Wunsch no. 8 (= BM 31425 + BM 36799) (Cornelia Wunsch, Urkunden zum Ehe-, Vermögensund Erbrecht aus verschiedenen neubabylonischen Archiven (Babylonische Archive 2; Islet: Dresden, 2003), 32–39. I thank Prof. Bruce Wells for directing me to this publication during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature section on Biblical Law.

15 An entire tractate of the Mishna (m. Git 1.1) is devoted to the גט “document of divorce” (cognate to Akk. giṭṭu “document written on parchment”). The procedure described was highly formalized involving specific stipulations on the dating procedure and the necessity of witnesses. While it is difficult to establish what level of continuity the Rabbinic documents of divorce had with the biblical ספר כריתות, it is important to note that the Mishnaic authors themselves saw the גט“document of divorce” as directly related to the ספר כריתות. In fact, the Tannaim cite Deut 24 for clarification of legal issues regarding the composition of the documents (m. Git 3.2).

16 See the table in the appendix.

17 A table containing typical forms of the contingency clause is provided in the appendix. The terminology draws on contracts from the Old Babylonian Period, the Emar archives, the Neo-Babylonian period, biblical examples, and the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine.

18 The law from Deut 24:1 is also cited by the Pharisees in the parallel narratives of Matt 19:7 and Mark 10:4, when they demand an answer from Jesus as to whether a man could legally divorce his wife — to which the two gospels give conflicting answers of an unequivocal “no” (Mark), and an exception in the case of the wife's adultery (Matthew).

19 This parallel was most thoroughly discussed in David Daube and Calum Carmichael, “The Return of the Divorcee,” (paper presented at the Innaugural Jewish Law Fellowship Lecture June 10, 1987; Oxford: Yarton Trust for the Oxford Center for Post Graduate Studies, 1993). Daube and Carmichael repeatedly stress that this law has no parallel elsewhere in any law collection, biblical or Mesopotamian. Similarly, Jack R. Lundbom argues Jer 3:1 is a “rephrasing” of Deut 24:1–4. Cf. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, 300. Holladay also sees Jer 3:1 as “modeled on” Deut 24:1–4, but also argues for a connection to Hos 2:9, which he believes also presupposes the Deut 24 passage. Cf. Holladay, Jeremiah 1, 112. Cf. Mary E. Shields, Circumscribing the Prostitute: The Rhetorics of Intertextuality, Metaphor and Gender in Jeremiah 3.1–4.4 (JSOT Supp 387; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 2004), 4. Shields identifies the particle לאמר that precedes the conditional particle הן as “an indicator of citation”, which she connects to the similar formula seen in Hag 2:11.

20 Cf. Raymond Westbrook, “The Prohibition on the Restoration of Marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4” in Law from the Tigris to the Tiber: The Writings of Raymond Westbrook (vol. 2 Cuneiform and Biblical Sources; Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 403; repr. from Scripta Hierosolymitana: Studies in Bible 31 (ed. Sarah Japhet; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 399–404. Westbrook asserted that the legal principle underlying Deut 24:1–4 was what is called “estoppel” in Anglo-American common law systems. Estoppel is a type of legal impediment that prevents an individual from alleging or denying an act, which regardless of its legality, contradicts an earlier agreed upon legal fact - established by a court decision or the execution or breach of a contract - from which one has profited. In the case of Deut 24, the dissolution of the first marriage by the husband created a legal fact from which he profited (due to the wife's relinquishment of part or all of her dowry). Upon her enrichment from the conclusion of her second marriage, a legal impediment (related to the perceived pollution of the land) prevented the first husband from again profiting from his former wife by remarrying her.

21 An uncertainty shared by J. D. Martin, “The Forensic Background to Jeremiah III 1,” VT 19 (1969), 82–92.

22 I thank Prof. Dr. Reinhard Achenbach for bringing the extensive research on the subject of Jeremiah as a scholar of Torah in German-language scholarship to my attention. Cf. Eckart Otto, “Der Pentateuch im Jeremiabuch: Überlegungen zur Pentateuchrezeption im Jeremiabuch anhand neuerer Jeremialitera-tur,” ZAR 12 (2006): 245–306. Ibidem, “Jeremia und die Tora: Ein nachexilischer Diskurs”, pages 134–182 in Tora in der Hebräischen Bibel: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte und synchronen Logik diachroner Transformationen (eds. R. Achenbach, M. Arneth, E. Otto; BZAR 7; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007). Georg Fischer, Der Prophet wie Mose: Studien zum Jeremiabuch (BZAR 15, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010); Reinhard Achenbach, “‘A Prophet like Moses' (Deuteronomy 18:15) — ‘No Prophet like Moses' (Deuteronomy 34:10): Some Observations on the Relation between the Pentateuch and the Latter Prophets,” pages 435–58 in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (ed. T.B. Dozeman, K. Schmid, B.J. Schwartz; FAT 78, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2011). Ibidem, “The Sermon on the Sabbath in Jer 17:19–27 and the Torah,” pages 873–890 in The Formation of the Pentateuch Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (FAT 111; eds. Jan Gertz, Bernard M. Levinson, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Konrad Schmid; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). Christl Maier, Jeremia als Lehrer der Torah: Soziale Gebote des Deuteronomiums in Fortschreibungen des Jeremiabuches (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 196; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002).

23 Martha Roth, Scholastic Tradition and Mesopotamian Law: A Study of FLP 1287, A Prism in the Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia Ann Arbor (Ph.D Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1979).

24 Cf. Anne-Sophie Dalix, “Exemples de bilinguisme à Ougarit. Iloumilku: La double identité d'un scribe,” pages 81–90 in Mosaïque de langues Mosaïque culturelle: Le bilinguisme dans le proche-orient ancient. Actes de la table-ronde du 18 novembre 1995 organisée par Françoise Briquel-Chantonnet (ed. Jean Maisonneuve; Paris: Librarie d'Amérique et d'Orient, 1996). The name of Ilī-millku (written ding-ir-lugal) appears as the author (dub-sar) of two Akkadian legal documents from Ugarit: a record of land conveyance (RS 17.61/Ug V 9) and a record confirming the emancipation of a slave (RS 17.67/Ug V 10). Jean Nougayrol, the original editor, demurred from equating this scribe with the more famous Ilī-milku of the Ugaritic mythical texts due to a perceived chronological gap of one hundred years between the composition of the mythical texts under Niqmaddu II (14th century) and the legal texts (13th century); Jean Nougayrol, et al., Nouveaux texts accadiens, hourrites et ugaritiques des archives et bibliothèques privées d'Ugarit commentqires des textes historiques (première partie), (Ugaritica V., Mission de Ras Shamra, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1968), 13. However, this confusion was resolved by Dennis Pardee who determined that Ilī-milku wrote the mythical texts in the 13th century under Niqmaddu III; Cf. Dennis Pardee, The Ugaritic Texts and the Origins of West Semitic Literary Composition (The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 2007; Oxford/New York: Oxford University, 2012).

25 In Emar testaments, this formula is directed towards the widow who holds the estate of her deceased husband in a type of fideicommissum substitutio. This stipulation prohibits a widow from entering into any kind of relationship with a male outside of the immediate family under the penalty of the relinquishment of her bridewealth (kubbudda“u). This formula the only clear example of a prohibition against adultery (even though the husband is dead) found within the contracts of Emar.

26 The verb typically found here is amāru in the N-stem, meaning “she was seen/discovered” (in flagrante delicto).