Jeremiah 48 As Christian Scripture

An insightful contribution to Old Testament studies, showing how the bloodthirsty oracle of Jeremiah 48 contains a positive Christian reading.


“All Scripture is God-breathed” – and yet some parts seem rather less God-breathed than one might imagine, or even like. The prophecy concerning Moab in Jeremiah 48 is one such text, since it appears to equate the Lord’s work with bloodshed and curses those who withhold their swords. How, if at all, might such a passage inform the Christian community of faith?

In this sophisticated study Julie Woods identifies some salient features of Jeremiah’s Moab oracle by means of a careful analysis and comparison of both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah 48. She also explores the implications of links between the Moab oracles in Jeremiah 48 and
Isaiah 15-16.

The focus then moves to theological hermeneutics via an examination of some recent Christian interpretations of the oracle (from Walter Brueggemann, Ronald Clements, Terence Fretheim, Douglas Jones, and Patrick Miller). Building on the observations of these scholars and the conclusions reached from her own textual analyses, Woods provides an innovative Christian reading of the oracle (including two imaginative film scripts to bring the text to life). Perhaps one of the more surprising proposals is that Easter is the ultimate horizon of Jeremiah 48.

Julie Woods earned her PhD at Durham University in 2009, working with Walter Moberly. Since then she has been lecturing in Ols Testament studies at seminaries in Southeast Asia.