The Torah and the King: Zedekiah’s Edict (Jer 34) and Deuteronomistic redaction

The notion that the Torah represents a supervening »rule of law« that circumscribes the political and legal authority of the king stems from a particular Deuteronomistic scribal circle that worked long after the Davidic monarchy had ended. Using Zedekiah’s edict (Jer 34:8–22) as a case study, this paper examines how Deuteronomistic redactors recast the final normative legal act of an independent Judahite king as his pious application of Pentateuchal law