Evil-Merodach and the Deuteronomist 185 explains why Jehoiachin received new clothes: “And [Evil-Merodach or Jehoiachin] changed [Jehoiachin’s] prison garments so that all his life [Jehoiachin] might constantly eat bread before [Evil- Merodach]”(32). Construed in such a way, v. 29 would state that Evil- Merodach wanted to have Jehoiachin at his banquets as long as the latter lived and thus forcefully demonstrate the Babylonian king’s preparedness to translate the one-time acts of grace reported in vv. 27- 28 into a permanent arrangement. At the same time, it emphatically would not claim that this arrangement actually remained in force until Jehoiachin’s death and certainly not that it survived Evil-Merodach’s removal from power (33). Since such a comment does not have to postdate Jehoiachin’s demise, there is nothing in 2 Kgs 25,27-30 to preclude placing it in Evil-Merodach’s reign. Even more importantly, the fact that despite the major shift in the audience’s perspective on 2 Kgs 25,27-30 that must have taken place in 560 BCE the fragment retained its pride of a place as the epilogue of the entire Former Prophets suggests that after this date there was no Deuteronomistic activity in the corpus — and perhaps no Deuteronomistic activity whatsoever. A Deuteronomist living after Evil-Merodach’s downfall, and certainly after Cyrus’ takeover, could be reasonably expected to try to prevent 2 Kgs 25,27-30 from defeating its original purpose and to that end either compose a sequel (especially if Jehoiachin retained his lofty throne under Evil- Merodach’s successors) or delete the fragment altogether and provide the corpus with a different epilogue. A highly noteworthy implication of this having failed to happen is that after 560 BCE there was no one (32) In other words, I read the predicate of v. 29b as an indicator of modality; on perfect forms with waw as such indicators, see G. HATAV, The Semantics of Aspect and Modality. Evidence from English and Biblical Hebrew (Studies in Language Companion Series 34; Amsterdam – Philadelphia 1997) 142-161. Another possibility is that the verb refers to Jehoiachin’s future presence at Evil- Merodach’s banquets as guaranteed by the removal of his prison garments. GKC § 112x(a) points out that waw-consecutive perfect may be used “to announce future events… when joined to a statement concerning present or past facts, especially when these contain the reason for the action etc., expressed in the perfect consecutive” and cites Gen 20,11; 26,22; Judg 13,3; Isa 6,7; Hos 8,14 as examples. (33) Another advantage of this construal is that it prevents v. 30 from sounding like an almost meaningless variation on v. 29b. If my translation is correct, the narrator stresses that by inviting Jehoiachin to dine at his table and to that end issuing him new garments (v. 29) Evil-Merodach went far beyond his father’s practice of sustaining the captive king (v. 30).