A Mouth Full of Fire: The Word of God in the Words of Jeremiah

"I am putting my words as a fire in your mouth; these people are tinder and it will consume them." (Jeremiah 5:14)

In the book of Jeremiah, not only is the vocabulary of "word" and "words" uniquely prevalent, but formulae marking divine speech also play an unprecedented role in giving the book's final form its narrative and theological shape. Indeed, "the word of the Lord" is arguably the main character, and a theology that is both distinctive and powerful can be seen to emerge from theunfol...