Freeing the Burden of Prophecy 353 Petersen’s argument, however, needs to be carefully nuanced. There is no question that one key concern in the book of Jeremiah is the battle between true and false prophecy, and Jeremiah 23,9-40 brings focus on this issue. In the process of attacking opponents (called the “prophet and priest…in my temple”, v. 11; “prophets of Samaria”, v. 13; “prophets of Jerusalem”, vv. 14.15), the one responsible for 23,9-40 attacks them for speaking “visions from their own minds” (v. 16) rather than “from the mouth of the Lord” (v. 16). The concern is not particularly over the means of the prophecy for even the legitimate prophet who stands in the “council of the Lord” is identified as one who is able “to see or to hear his word” (v. 17). Rather, the concern is over the source of the prophecy: “their own minds” versus “the Lord”. In light of this, when v. 28 proclaims: “Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully”, the focus is not on the means (dream vs. word), but rather on the source (human vs. divine) and quality (false vs. true) of the revelation. This is made clear in v. 30 which points to false prophets as stealing from one another “words supposedly from me”, and the dreams which are prophesied are explicitly identified as “false dreams”. Petersen makes a valid point. Jer 23,34-40 does appear to prohibit asking for revelation from God using the terminology ma¢¢˝’ YHWH. It assumes a context in which mah ma¢¢˝’ YHWH has become the stock way among the people of asking a prophet for a word of God on a certain issue. This section, then, does appear to move in a different direction than v. 33 and also go beyond the earlier sections which call the people to discern carefully the source of the prophetic message. It speaks to a particular crisis in the history of Israel in which the prophetic process is now curtailed from the side of the people: they are no longer to approach prophets for new revelation, for God has already provided revelation they have ignored. This curtailing of the prophetic process, however, is not an anomaly in the Jeremianic tradition (40). It can also be discerned in (40) Both CARROLL, Jeremiah, 480 and FRETHEIM, Jeremiah, 340, follow Petersen in linking the expansion of vv. 34-40 to the same period as Zech 13,2-6, but Carroll admits that this “is quite likely, though not capable of demonstrable proof” and Fretheim shifts the focus (“more likely”) to the tradition-history of the group responsible for the book of Jeremiah, who were defending the prophecy of Jeremiah, “in the face of critical voices”. JONES, Jeremiah, 315 sees it rather as the work of “either Jeremiah himself or a prophet in the tradition”.