Jeremiah 39:3 and History: A New Find Clarifies a Mess of a Text

News of an exciting find has been making the rounds of the media and biblioblogdom.  It seems to me that what has been missing so far in treatments of the find is sufficient background in Assyriology to understand, not the tablet, but some of the ins and outs of the biblical text it supposedly confirms (according to some), or is more or less irrelevant to (according to others). I have read the posts by Chris Heard, Claude Mariottini, Jim West, Doug Chaplin, and Peter Kirk. This post takes its own way. I trust it will be found helpful.

This is the first post in a series. For later installments go here, here, and here.

Jeremiah 39:3 is rife with textual difficulties. The correct interpretation of the names and titles contained in it has eluded biblical scholars in the past because the obvious place to go to clarify its problems, the corpus of texts studied by Assyriologists, is little studied by them.

Assyriology is a field of study the advances of which have had a very uneven impact on the study of the Bible and translations thereof.  Jeremiah 39:3 is a case in point, but it is by no means the only one. It is truly a case of: the harvest is bountiful, but the workers are few.

In light of all we know about personal names and official titles of the Neo-Babylonian era, three names and three titles are discernible in the garbled text Jer 39:3 contains.[1] With names and titles given according to the pronunciation they would have had at the time, Jer 39:3 is to be understood as follows:

All of the officers of the king of Babylon made their entry, and occupied the middle gate – Nergal-šarri-uṣur governor of Sinmagir, Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the Rab-ša-rēši, Nergal-šarri-uṣur the Rab-mugi, and all the other officers of the king of Babylon.

The personal name Nergal-šarri-uṣur, the name of both the first and third official, is known from neo-Babylonian sources. Nergal-šarri-uṣur son-in-law of Nabu-kudurri-uṣur (= the Nebuchadrezzar of Jer 39:1) ruled Babylonia from 560 to 556 bce. It is possible that the Nergal-šarri-uṣur who served as governor of Sinmagir for Nabu-kudurri-uṣur (605-562 bce) according to this text in the eleventh year of King Zedekiah (Jer 39:2: 586 bce), and said son-in-law of said Nabu-kudurri-uṣur who later ruled in his stead, are one and the same person.  Nergal-šarri-uṣur governor of Sinmagir also appears in a prism fragment preserved in Istanbul. The prism dates to  Nabu-kudurri-uṣur's seventh year. A fine discussion of the text of the prism fragment is provided by David Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets (HSS 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) 92-97.

The best way to construe Sinmagir or Simmagir when used in reference to high officials in Akkadian is disputed. As Kevin Edgecomb pointed out in offline correspondence, Sinmagir appears as the name of a king in the famous Sumerian King List. The best explanation I have heard so far - and it is Kevin's - is that 'of Sinmagir' is short for 'governor of (the house of) Sinmagir.' The phrase attested elsewhere, šanû ša sinmagir, would then mean ‘the deputy of the governor of Sinmagir.’

The personal name Nabu-šarrussu-ukin follows a well-attested pattern and was attested before the  discovery by Michael Jursa of a tablet including the name. As David Vanderhooft remarked, “A certain Nabû-šarrūssu-ukīn held the office of rēš šarri under Amel-Marduk in 561 B.C.E.” (The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets [HSS 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999] 151). It is possible that this is the same individual named as present in Jerusalem 25 years earlier according to Jeremiah 39:3. For details of Jursa's tablet discovery among the many that have yet to be collated and published in the mass in possession of the British Museum, go here.

The tablet includes both the name and the title “Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the Rab-rēši [short for rab-ša-rēši],” is dated to the tenth year of Nabu-kudurri-uṣur, and is, in all probability, the very same person referred to in Jer 39:3.  Rab-ša-rēši (rab-sārîs, a loanword, in Hebrew) is a well-attested title for a royal official, and is often translated “chief eunuch.” Said translation, however, is considered misleading by some scholars. Discussion of the issue is not possible here.

The title of the last person to be mentioned, another Nergal-šarri-uṣur, is ‘Rab-mugi,’ another high official of some sort. The title is well-attested in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian documents. See CDA, p. 215.

It does not matter what translation of the Bible you have (I checked NRSV, NIV, REB, NJB, NAB, and NJPSV): they all contain misinterpretations of one or more names and/or titles contained in Jer 39:3. Still, it must be observed: anyone with training in Assyriology could have come to the same, basically irresistible conclusions outlined above, which I came to. If I am the first to do so, I would be surprised.

Until now, the one missing piece of the puzzle was the exact name underlying –nebu Sarsechim in MT Jer 39:3 and Nabousachar in LXX Jer 46:3. Theoretically, an Assyriologist steeped in onomastica might have come up with the correct interpretation before Jursa’s discovery of the name Nabu-šarrussu-ukin on a tablet of the British Museum. [UPDATE:  David Vanderhooft, cited above, did come to this conclusion in the 1990's.  For details go here.]  

Bible scholars knowledgeable in Assyriology are rare birds. The reverse is also true.

In all probability, as said before, the ‘Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the chief eunuch’ of Jer 39:3 and the ‘Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the chief eunuch’ of Jursa’s tablet are one and the same person. For an identical conclusion, see Kevin Edgecomb's comment to Chris Heard's post. To suggest otherwise is a function of pre-understandings brought to bear on the text.

On the one hand, it is sensible to expect that in a case like Jeremiah 39, names and titles may have become garbled in the course of the textual transmission. In fact they have, big time. On the other hand, it is reasonable to expect that said names and titles nevertheless go back to reliable sources, oral or written. Jeremiah 39 is a pretty straightforward narrative, with theological and nationalistic biases by all means. But there are no imaginable theological or nationalistic reasons why an author would have invented names and titles for the high officials of Nebuchadnezzar’s army who presided over Jerusalem’s destruction.

Jursa’s tablet clarifies a mess of a text in the Hebrew Bible. For an identical conclusion, see Kevin Edgecomb's comment to Chris Heard's post. To suggest instead that it clarifies nothing at all, or that there was nothing to be clarified in the first place, just “confirmed” or “proven right,” misses the boat.

UPDATE: see now Chris Heard's new post, which aligns nicely with the above, and Peter Kirk's second comment here.  SECOND UPDATE: Charles Halton's comment below and another post by Chris Heard. THIRD UPDATE: Kevin Edgecomb's post, which includes a helpful review of an excellent book by John H. Walton. FOURTH UPDATE: offline, Kevin Edgecomb has convinced me that 'of Sinmagir' is to be understood as 'governor of Sinmagir.' I have modified my post accordingly. Here is a summary of his argument.

Bibliography: CDA = A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (ed. Jeremy Black, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate; SANTAG 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, ²2000).

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[1] Its text is thoroughly garbled in all three traditions in our possession (MT Jer 39:3; LXX Jer 46:3; Josephus, Antiquities X, 135), just in different ways.

Comments

[Charles Halton]

John, this is a really great post. I am planning on writing a post of my own exploring some of the themes that you have raised. Keep up the great work. Here is some more info that might be of interest:

The Names and Their Meaning

Nergal-šarri-uṣur--Talqvist has several attestations 163 (Nergal.LUGAL.ŠEŠ.PAP) a possible meaning for this name is "May Nergal guard my king" cf. Stamm 180 Nabu-kibsi-uṣur "May Nabu guard my steps"

Nabu-šarrussu-ukin is not attested in Talqvist or Stamm. This name probably means something like "May Nabu establish his king."

Nabu-kudurri-uṣur This name means "May Nabu guard my boundary stone/border." Talqvist translates this name as "Nabu, guard the border!" The syllabic spelling is Nabu-ŠA.DU.PAP

The Offices
Sinmagir/Simmagir--CAD: The Simmagir is a high official and the term is spelled both syllabically and logographicly as (LÚ.)UD.SAR.ŠE.GA. This title is attested in the Neo-Babylonian Period under the kings Šamaš-šum-ukīn and Nebukandezzar and Achaeminid period at Nippur. There is also a locality called Bīt Sin-magir.

Rab-ša-rēši CAD: This office designates a commander of court attendants or military officers. The term is often written logographically as LÚ.GAL.SAG and my idiomatic rendering of this is "The big guy over the chiefs (lit. heads)" The title is very common in the Neo-Babylonian period.

Rab-mugi CAD: This term is common in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods and is a high military official who occasionally functioned as a special envoy to foreign rulers. I am not sure of the meaning of the second part of this phrase. Mungu means "stiffness or paralysis" but this probably has no relation to rab-mugi. Also, a term with similar spelling appears in lists of professions.

Sources:
Stamm: Johann Jakob Stamm, Die Akkadische Namengebung, Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1939.

Tallqvist: Knut L. Tallqvist, Neubabylonische Namenbuch zu den Geschäftsurkunden aus der Zeit des Šamaššumukîn bis Xerxes, 1906.

CAD: Chicago Assyrian Dictionary

[John Hobbins]

Charles,

thanks for chiming in here. You add some nice details to the mix. It's great to have someone else online who reads Akkadian. And thanks for sourcing your work.

Two remarks.

Nabu-šarrussu-ukin probably means "May Nabu establish his kingship."

šarrut- (with a macron over the u) + šu = šarrussu. Cf. belussu.

In CDA, Simmagir is said to derive from the Elamite, but with a question mark.

[Charles Halton]

Thanks for catching the -ship part that I forgot to write. Sharp eyes!

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

Tadmor also mentions Sin-magir as a title AB II Kings, p 319: "The enigmatic smgr is to be taken as a transcription of the title, Sin-magir, a Babylonian minister (W. von Soden ZA 62 [1972], 84-90; cf. AHw 1045)." It seems that the transition between understanding of smgr/Sin-magir in relation to Nergalsharezer as a location to that of a title has been in progress since some time in the 1970s, probably related to the readings of the title in earlier and later periods than those of Nergalsharezer, who (co)incidentally owned much property in the area of Bit-Sinmagir (see CAH 3/2, p. 241). It's an entirely understandable conflation. The possibility exists that the title "Sin-magir" was originally based on the location, as governors there were responsible for the defenses just north of Babylon itself, a great responsibility. Charles, if you have it handy, does CAD give bibliography on developments concerning the Sin-magir title?

[G.M. Grena]

Thanks for the reference to LXX 46:3, & your overall informative blog! Without studying the subject in detail, I was not aware that a similar list was in the LXX. I added this info to the Wikipedia entry for the tablet.

[John Hobbins]

For completeness, it might be nice to add a reference and link to the parallel text in Josephus (Antiquities, X, 135). The link is: http://pace.cns.yorku.ca/York/york/showText?text=anti
Then put in Book "10" and Section "135."

That's a nice comparative table of translations you have posted on Wikipedia.

[G.M. Grena]

Thanks for your suggestion & compliment! Actually I added several more versions to the table throughout the day, & still have a few more to do tomorrow. I will definitely integrate your suggestions as well. This has turned out to be a very interesting little investigation! I was surprised to discover that some Catholic translations parse it into EIGHT names! But even more shocking was that several versions only give TWO, & omit this now-famous one.

[John Hobbins]

A translation to add is NJPSV (not online to my knowledge), which has "Nergal-sarezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim the Rab-saris, Nergal-sarezer the Rab-mag."

Strictly speaking, the Hebrew (that is the MT or Masoretic text) does not read as it appears in the Wikipedia entry. The Hebrew reads (I divide the text into subunits according to its subdivision by Masoretic accents):

נרגל שר־אצר
סמגר־נבו
שר־סכים רב־סריס
נרגל שר־אצר רב־מג

The maqqephim (character code 05BE in unicode; they look like high-riding hyphens) should not be left out. They indicate how tradition understood the text, albeit wrongly.

[G.M. Grena]

I see 3 of them in my edition of Green's Interlinear, but are the other 3 really the same in the Masoretic for "SR-A$R" & "SR-CKYM", or should that be a different symbol? (Pardon my ignorance of modern Hebrew; I mostly think in terms of Paleo.)

[John Hobbins]

The letters of the Hebrew in the Wikipedia entry are correctly given. It's the maqqephim that need to be added.

[G.M. Grena]

I'm done for the day ... with a total of 44 versions listed now. Shockingly, the 1395 Wycliffe version GOT IT RIGHT!!!

By the way, your NJPSV ended with a period: "Nergal-sarezer the Rab-mag."

Is that correct? Or did the list end with a comma like nearly all the other versions & you just typed a period to end your sentence?

Thanks again for all your help!

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Assyriology is a area of research the developments of which have had a very unequal effect on the research of the somebody and translations thereof. Thanks for sharing this interesting post.