04_Reasoner_388-404 28/10/14 10:43 Pagina 395 THE REDEMPTIVE INVERSIONS OF JEREMIAH IN ROMANS 9–11 395 the olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 represents another sort of in- version besides the literary reversal with the early chapters of Jere- miah. The Romans 11 portrait of the cultivated olive tree that receives wild branches grafted into it “subverts the prevailing prac- tice among olive cultivators”, as Esler has shown so well 23. Before presenting the verbal parallels in the olive tree intertex- tuality proposed as the sixth connection between Jeremiah and Ro- mans 9–11, I offer two possibilities that are best grouped with the olive tree complex of intertextual links: Jeremiah’s picture of a for- eign vine that turns to bitterness (Jer 2,21). There are no catchwords between the description of Israel as a vine that has gone awry, becom- ing a foreign or wild vine in Jer 2,21 and Romans 11. However, the description of this vine as foreign — hyrkn in MT; a;mpeloj h` avllotri,a in LXX— seems to be explicitly switched in Romans 11. For the olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 repeatedly emphasizes that the branches that have been cut off from the cultivated olive tree still retain their identity as belonging to that cultivated tree by nature (kata. fu,sin in 11,21 and ou-toi oi` kata. fu,sin evgkentrisqh,sontai th/| ivdi,a| evlai,a| in 11,24). Jer 2,21 exclaims how the choice vine has turned to bitterness — pw/j evstra,fhj eivj pikri,an. The word pio,thj in Romans 11,17 may be a reaction to pikri,a. In his dis- cussion of the “reversals” that Deutero-Isaiah makes of Jeremiah, B. Sommer notes that often there is a common word both texts share. He also notes a case in which similar sounding words func- tion as the catchword for such reversals; ~wqm in Isa 54,2 picks up ~yqm in Jer 10,20 24. It is possible that the reworking of Jeremiah’s olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 includes an alliterative move from Jeremiah’s “bitterness”, pikri,a in LXX Jer 2,21, to the “fat- ness”, pio,thj( in Rom 11,17 25. The clear catchwords in the association of Jeremiah’s olive tree in Jeremiah 11 and Paul’s olive trees in Romans 11 are the feminine evlai,a (Jer 11,16; Rom 11,17.24) and the plural kla,doi (Jer 11,16; Rom 11,16.19.21). Just as we saw an inversion of the foreign vine to the olive branches that continue to belong to the cultivated olive 23 P. F. ESLER, “Ancient Oleiculture and Ethnic Differentiation: The Mean- ing of the Olive-Tree Image in Romans 11”, JSNT 26 (2003) 103-124; quo- tation from 123. 24 SOMMER, A Prophet Reads Scripture 39. 25 LXX Jer 15,17 also has pikri,a.