Texts in Conversation
In Jeremiah, God warns covenant-breakers that they will share the same fate of the calf cut in two during their covenant ritual. This parallels the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon, where slaughtered lambs symbolize the fate of oath-breakers.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
The Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon §§69–70
Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty (SAA 2 6)
Ancient Near East, Assyrian
547 (Ditto, ditto;) just as [thi]s ewe has been cut open and the flesh of [her] young has been placed in her mouth, may they make you eat in your hunger the flesh of your brothers, your sons and your daughters. 551 Just as young sheep and ewes and male and female spring lambs are slit open and their entrails rolled down over their feet, so may your entrails (and) the entrails of your sons and your daughters roll down over your feet.
Jeremiah 34:18
Hebrew Bible
15 Recently, however, you yourselves showed a change of heart and did what is pleasing to me. You granted your fellow countrymen their freedom, and you made a covenant to that effect in my presence in the house that I have claimed for my own. 16 But then you turned right around and showed that you did not honor me. Each of you took back your male and female slaves, whom you had freed as they desired, and you forced them to be your slaves again. 17 So I, the Lord, say: “You have not really obeyed me and granted freedom to your neighbor and fellow countryman. Therefore, I will grant you freedom, the freedom to die in war, or by starvation, or disease. I, the Lord, affirm it! I will make all the kingdoms of the earth horrified at what happens to you. 18 I will punish those people who have violated their covenant with me. I will make them like the calf they cut in two and passed between its pieces. I will do so because they did not keep the terms of the covenant they made in my presence. 19 I will punish the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests, and all the other people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf. 20 I will hand them over to their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals.
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Notes and References
“... A number of ANE treaties corroborate the ceremony here described (D. McCarthy 1963: 51-79). In another eighth-century treaty, this one in Aramaic between Bar-gaya of Katak and Mati'ilu of Arpad (Sefire I A 40), the curse attending the rite states: "[As] this calf is cut up, thus Mattieel and his nobles shall be cut up" (ANET3 660; CS II 214; Fitzmyer 1961: 181, 185; Beyerlin 1978: 260). See also, from the same general period, clauses in the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (ANET3 539 #70; Wiseman 1958a: 69-72 ##551-54). [...] The people, by walking between the severed parts of the animal, consented to similar treatment should they break the covenant. ...”
Lundbom, Jack R.
Jeremiah 21-36: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible 21B)
(p. 565) Doubleday, 2004
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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