Jeremiah 41


Jeremiah 41 is the forty-first chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. This chapter is part of a narrative section consisting of chapters 37 to 44. Chapter 41 recounts the murder of Gedaliah, the Babylonian governor of occupied Judah, and the chaotic situation which followed this event. Jeremiah himself is not mentioned in this chapter.

Text

The original text was written in Hebrew. This chapter is divided into 18 verses.

Verse numbering

The order of chapters and verses of the Book of Jeremiah in the English Bibles, Masoretic Text, and Vulgate, in some places differs from that in the Septuagint according to Rahlfs or Brenton. The following table is taken with minor adjustments from Brenton's Septuagint, page 971.
The order of Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint/Scriptural Study based on Alfred Rahlfs' Septuaginta differs in some details from Joseph Ziegler's critical edition in Göttingen LXX. Swete's Introduction mostly agrees with Rahlfs edition.
Hebrew, Vulgate, EnglishRahlfs' LXX
41:1-1848:1-18
34:1-2241:1-22

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets, Aleppo Codex, Codex Leningradensis.
There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Marchalianus.

Parashot

The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex. Jeremiah 41 is a part of the "Sixteenth prophecy " in the section of Prophecies interwoven with narratives about the prophet's life . : open parashah; : closed parashah.

The assassination of Gedaliah (41:1–10)

Verse 1

  • "Family": lit. "seed"
Ishmael and his men murdered Gedaliah and others in Mizpah during a mealtime when the covenant community is celebrated and the people were less guarded.

Verse 2

  • "Smote Gedaliah": The day when Gedaliah was murdered was remembered as a fast day by the post-Captivity Jews, because on that day the hope of living a separate life in the promised land vanished, and the murder was likely avenged by a third deportation of Jews as mentioned in Jeremiah 52:30.

    Johanan rescues the captives (41:11–18)

Verse 16

Johanan led a group to defeat Ishmael at Gibeon, southwest of Mizpah, freeing their captives after Ishmael and 8 others escaped to Ammon.

Jewish

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