I'm currently reading the Oracles against Egypt and Babylon in the Greek translation of Jeremiah (Jer). My secondary resources include G. Walzer’s Commentary on Jeremiah in Codex Vaticanus Brill 2012 and J.A. Thompson Jeremiah NICOT, 1980. J.A. Thompson considers Jeremiah 50: 17-20 MT poetry. I went looking for a simple answer to the question: does the Greek translation of Jeremiah render this passage as poetry? It turns out that identifying poetry in the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible is not simple. To clarify, this is not a question about classical Greek poetry. It's a question about an attempt by the translator to transfer the salient features of Hebrew poetry into the Greek Version. In other words, can we detect a shift from poetry to non-poetry at Jer. 27:17.Jer. 27:17 ¶ Πρόβατον πλανώμενον Ισραηλ, λέοντες ἐξῶσαν αὐτόν· ὁ πρῶτος ἔφαγεν αὐτὸν βασιλεὺς Ασσουρ καὶ οὗτος ὕστερον τὰ ὀστᾶ αὐτοῦ βασιλεὺς Βαβυλῶνος. 18 διὰ τοῦτο τάδε λέγει κύριος Ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἐκδικῶ ἐπὶ τὸν βασιλέα Βαβυλῶνος καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν αὐτοῦ, καθὼς ἐξεδίκησα ἐπὶ τὸν βασιλέα Ασσουρ. 19 καὶ ἀποκαταστήσω τὸν Ισραηλ εἰς τὴν νομὴν αὐτοῦ, καὶ νεμήσεται ἐν τῷ Καρμήλῳ καὶ ἐν ὄρει Εφραιμ καὶ ἐν τῷ Γαλααδ, καὶ πλησθήσεται ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ. 20 ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις καὶ ἐν τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείνῳ ζητήσουσιν τὴν ἀδικίαν Ισραηλ, καὶ οὐχ ὑπάρξει, καὶ τὰς ἁμαρτίας Ιουδα, καὶ οὐ μὴ εὑρεθῶσιν, ὅτι ἵλεως ἔσομαι τοῖς ὑπολελειμμένοις ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, λέγει κύριος.
I searched the web for septuagint poetry. The top and only relevant hit:
Poetry in the Septuagint and Beyond | Andrei Desnitsky - Academia.edu
https://www.academia.edu/6167763/Poetry ... and_Beyond
A. Desnitsky’s paper[1] is not lite reading.
A relevant Feb 2005 exchange between Trevor Peterson and Albert Pietersma.
https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-g ... 33206.html
https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-g ... 33220.html
[1] if you're using a Macintosh the format may give you grief. It appears to be an MS Word file with complicated formatting including tables with embedded Hebrew and Greek fonts. I attempted to convert it into OpenOffice which wasn't successful. I opened it with MacOS TextEdit and saved it as a PDF. Not perfect but readable.