Jeremiah 17

The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen; with a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts, and on the horns of their altars, ² while their children remember their altars and their sacred poles, beside every green tree, and on the high hills, ³ on the mountains in the open country. Your wealth and all your treasures I will give for spoil as the price of your sin throughout all your territory. ⁴ By your own act you shall lose the heritage that I gave you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.

Walter Brueggeman has an excellent line about this passage:

It (Judah’s idolatry) is written on the ultimate places of memory, on the heart and on the altar. The record on the heart is the very antethesis of the torah on the heart (31:33). Something will be written on the heart, either sin or torah. (Brueggemann, 1998, p. 156)

This chapter brings together a lot of varied styles and probably comes from various places in Jeremiah’s ministry, but it all centers around issues of the heart, and specifically the poet’s heart and the people’s heart. Here the heart of the people is directed away from God, towards the high hills, the green trees and the poles, probably indicating worship of Asherah and Baal. Now the degree that the people are worshipping other gods compared to turning away from God’s vision for their lives we will never know, but from Jeremiah’s view they have turned their heart to other gods and placed their place in other things. Their turning has left a permanent mark on their heart and on their worship and the consequences of this turning away from the source of their life is dire.

 ⁵ Thus says the LORD:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the LORD.
 ⁶ They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
 ⁷ Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
 ⁸ They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
 ⁹ The heart is devious above all else;
 it is perverse– who can understand it?
 ¹⁰ I the LORD test the mind and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.
Now the oracle switches styles to reflect a more poetic style and reflects the language of the psalms or wisdom literature. The contrast between a shrub in the desert and the tree planted by water contrasts between the wise choice (trusting God) and the unwise choice (trusting in mortals). On the one hand, this seems readily apparent, but Jeremiah is probably protesting the practice of making alliances with nations like Egypt to protect the nation from the threat of the armies of Assyria or Babylon. Throughout the book of Jeremiah these alliances prove to be unreliable leaving the people of Judah captive to Babylon. Even when later Jeremiah will urge the people to not resist Babylon it is more attractive to rely on a foreign power that can challenge the armies that march upon the nation. Here the heart again becomes one of the images and it is a devious heart, yet it is also searched out by God.

 ¹¹ Like the partridge hatching what it did not lay,
so are all who amass wealth unjustly;
in mid-life it will leave them,
and at their end they will prove to be fools.

This little wisdom snippet may be a part of what lies ahead or it may be its own little pithy saying comparing those who amass unjust wealth with the partridge that hatches other birds eggs. Just like placing trust in mortals is a bad idea, so is placing ones trust in wealth for it will ultimately abandon them as well.

¹² O glorious throne, exalted from the beginning,
shrine of our sanctuary!
 ¹³ O hope of Israel! O LORD!
All who forsake you shall be put to shame;
those who turn away from you shall be recorded in the underworld,
for they have forsaken the fountain of living water, the LORD.
 ¹⁴ Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed;
save me, and I shall be saved;
for you are my praise.
 ¹⁵ See how they say to me,
“Where is the word of the LORD? Let it come!”
 ¹⁶ But I have not run away from being a shepherd in your service,
nor have I desired the fatal day.
 You know what came from my lips;
it was before your face.
 ¹⁷ Do not become a terror to me;
you are my refuge in the day of disaster;
 ¹⁸ Let my persecutors be shamed,
but do not let me be shamed;
let them be dismayed,
but do not let me be dismayed;
bring on them the day of disaster;
destroy them with double destruction!

The  prophet lifts up a prayer in the language of lament.  He begins by praising God as many lament psalms do and then he present his case. The prophet claims to have been faithful and has been wounded in remaining faithful. He is taunted by those who mock him saying, “Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come!” and yet Jeremiah has remained true. As a prophet he is caught between God and the disobedient people and Jeremiah asks not to receive terror from both sides for God is all the prophet has left. I read this as the prophet asking to be removed from this place between so that his persecutors may be shamed, not him, they may be dismayed, not him, and they may be destroyed, not him.

Orthodox Icon of the Prophet Jeremiah

 
¹⁹ Thus said the LORD to me: Go and stand in the People’s Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, ²⁰ and say to them: Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates. ²¹ Thus says the LORD: For the sake of your lives, take care that you do not bear a burden on the sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. ²² And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the sabbath or do any work, but keep the sabbath day holy, as I commanded your ancestors. ²³ Yet they did not listen or incline their ear; they stiffened their necks and would not hear or receive instruction.
 ²⁴ But if you listen to me, says the LORD, and bring in no burden by the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but keep the sabbath day holy and do no work on it, ²⁵ then there shall enter by the gates of this city kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials, the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and this city shall be inhabited forever. ²⁶ And people shall come from the towns of Judah and the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, from the Shephelah, from the hill country, and from the Negeb, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and frankincense, and bringing thank offerings to the house of the LORD. ²⁷ But if you do not listen to me, to keep the sabbath day holy, and to carry in no burden through the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates; it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched.

In a world where God is not central the Sabbath is neglected. When people trust in their own works, in wealth and in their own abilities to bring about prosperity there is no need for a day of rest. The Sabbath becomes another day for commerce, for work, for making and selling, for travel and for burdens. The most challenging thing that God commands God people is to rest and to trust in God to provide. Paradoxically it is this additional work which will undercut the value of the rest of the work. If the people rest they will be secure, they will have a king and be safe and they will receive the gifts from the surrounding world coming to them, yet if they work harder and harder to attain these things they will fall away and become more and more distant as the nation separates itself from it source of life and its reason for being

Jeremiah 15

The Prophet Jeremiah by Michelangelo

Anger and Regret
Then the LORD said to me: Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn towards this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! 2And when they say to you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them: Thus says the LORD:
Those destined for pestilence, to pestilence,
and those destined for the sword, to the sword;
those destined for famine, to famine,
and those destined for captivity, to captivity.
3And I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth to devour and destroy. 4I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what King Manasseh son of Hezekiah of Judah did in Jerusalem.

5 Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem,
or who will bemoan you?
Who will turn aside
to ask about your welfare?
6 You have rejected me, says the LORD,
you are going backwards;
so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you—
I am weary of relenting.
7 I have winnowed them with a winnowing-fork
in the gates of the land;
I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people;
they did not turn from their ways.
8 Their widows became more numerous
than the sand of the seas;
I have brought against the mothers of youths
a destroyer at noonday;
I have made anguish and terror
fall upon her suddenly.
9 She who bore seven has languished;
she has swooned away;
her sun went down while it was yet day;
she has been shamed and disgraced.
And the rest of them I will give to the sword
before their enemies,
says the LORD.

Jeremiah can be a very harsh book since it comes at the point of the story between God and God’s people where there is no easy way to fix the brokenness, it is a story where something will have to die for the possibility of new life. The leadership of Judah have become attracted to the Assyrian culture which seemed so powerful here at the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry (the fact that it refers to what King Manasseh did points to an early date since Jeremiah begins his ministry in the time of Josiah, Manasseh’s successor). Even here at the beginning God seems to be at the point of being out of patience, of not wanting to hear from the prophet- and yet perhaps through the prophets intercession God will seemingly grant more time or at least allow the political situation to develop. Yet, God seems to swing from unrelenting anger in the first four verses to a tone of regret in 5-9 where at the beginning we see the anger for what the nation became and then in 5-9 the regret over the brokenness of the relationship. I’ve mentioned before that the God portrayed in Jeremiah has very human emotions and has been deeply wounded by the brokenness of the relationship with God’s people and is finally at the point where God can no longer abide with them in the same place. The old covenant which God has held to and yet the people have not, where God has tried to give the blessing and apparently held back the woes of the Deuteronomic covenant, this covenant is finally beyond reconciliation in the way that it is. For new life and a new covenant something has to die so that something new can live.
God is weary, worn, tired and heartbroken. Wrath and anger in Jeremiah are not signs of a cruel and vicious God, but rather a God who was so deeply involved with the people that God was wounded and heartbroken. As harsh as the language of Jeremiah is, and indeed as offensive as it may at points be, it is the language of relationship. For all the violence and destruction of the language you can never say that the God that Jeremiah points to doesn’t care.

Job by Leon Bonnat (1880)

Taking God to Task
10 Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me. 11The LORD said: Surely I have intervened in your life for good, surely I have imposed enemies on you in a time of trouble and in a time of distress. 12Can iron and bronze break iron from the north?
13 Your wealth and your treasures I will give as plunder, without price, for all your sins, throughout all your territory. 14I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn for ever.
15 O LORD, you know;
remember me and visit me,
and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors.
In your forbearance do not take me away;
know that on your account I suffer insult.
16 Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O LORD, God of hosts.
17 I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,
nor did I rejoice;
under the weight of your hand I sat alone,
for you had filled me with indignation.
18 Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail.

19 Therefore, thus says the LORD:
If you turn back, I will take you back,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless,
you shall serve as my mouth.
It is they who will turn to you,
not you who will turn to them.
20 And I will make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,

says the LORD.
21 I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.

Jeremiah has been given a rough calling, to proclaim a message that nobody wants to hear and to be considered politically traitorous and religiously dangerous. Jeremiah’s words have not made him any friends and many enemies, and here we see Jeremiah tormented by the calling God gave him. I think most leaders who have faced opposition can relate to these words, maybe not quite to the level of Jeremiah, but there are times where we lament our calling and the pain and loneliness it can bring. To wonder if it would be easier to never have existed or if somehow our life were to end. I don’t know if Jeremiah ever contemplated suicide, but he certainly despaired of his life getting better. He lived in a rough time to be a prophet, and these words are especially surprising if they do come early in his ministry in the time of Josiah, a time that most voices in the bible considered a time of great revival and return to God’s ways. Yet, Jeremiah seems to be the one called on in the midst of all the trumpets of celebration to play the dirge. He is off key with everyone else of his time and because of that he is an outsider and is persecuted. Yet God’s words to the prophet are not encouraging, instead they are letting Jeremiah know it is going to get worse. There is no easy balm here, there is no springs of renewal, only the long journey into the wilderness of desolation. Jeremiah turns to the tradition of laments, like in the Psalter where the psalms of lament call upon God, the lift up the reality that God knows what is going on and they call on God to act. Unlike most the Psalms of lament though God does not answer in the expected way. The prophet goes so far as to accuse God of being unreliable, of in effect saying, “God you deceived me, you lied to me, I have done everything you have asked and you have allowed everyone else to prosper while I remain with a wound that won’t heal. Jeremiah gives us an incredibly rich, if sometimes combative set of language to be in conversation with God about, and yet, God’s answer is harsh as well. It is almost as if Jeremiah screams at God from his wounds and God yells back. “If you turn back…if you utter what is precious…” and in a world where there is a woundedness that will not heal, where preachers and prophets and people run into persecution for attempting to be faithful to the calling God has for them. Perhaps there is the freedom to vocally wrestle with God, to scream at God in frustration and to know that we may not always like God’s answers. Yet in the midst of all of this God promises God’s presence “I am with you…I will make you… I will deliver you.” In the midst of the darkness and depression, in the midst of the times when God’s faithful want to scream that they feel betrayed, in the midst of all the pain and confusion, perhaps the gospel is the presence of God that does not abandon in precisely those moments. In those moments where we may not want God around that God does not abandon and journeys with us through the darkest days.

Jeremiah 14

The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought: 

² Judah mourns
and her gates languish;
they lie in gloom on the ground,
and the cry of Jerusalem goes up.
³ Her nobles send their servants for water;
they come to the cisterns,
they find no water,
they return with their vessels empty.
They are ashamed and dismayed
and cover their heads,
⁴ because the ground is cracked.
Because there has been no rain on the land
the farmers are dismayed;
they cover their heads.
⁵ Even the doe in the field forsakes her newborn fawn
because there is no grass.
⁶ The wild asses stand on the bare heights,
they pant for air like jackals;
their eyes fail
because there is no herbage.
⁷ Although our iniquities testify against us,
act, O Lord, for your name’s sake;
our apostasies indeed are many,
and we have sinned against you.
⁸ O hope of Israel,
its savior in time of trouble,
why should you be like a stranger in the land,
like a traveler turning aside for the night?
⁹ Why should you be like someone confused,
like a mighty warrior who cannot give help?
Yet you, O Lord, are in the midst of us,
and we are called by your name;
do not forsake us!
¹⁰ Thus says the Lord concerning this people:
Truly they have loved to wander,
they have not restrained their feet;
therefore the Lord does not accept them,
now he will remember their iniquity
and punish their sins. 

There is a connection between the vision of shalom that the people of God are called to live in and not only their own health, but the very health of the earth around them. The turning away of the people has effected everything and nobody is able to avoid the drought. Even nobles who have the choice wells and access to the best water are no longer able to have their servants successfully draw water. Farmers in their fields are directly affected as their crops are unable to grow and life itself hangs by a thread. Even the wild animals abandon the natural order, does no longer care for their fawns, wild donkeys can find no food foraging in the mountains. Everything is dying in the midst of the drought. And in a turn of lament, whether the prophet or the people call on God. In the tradition of the Psalms of lament they cry out in their distress calling on the Lord to act, to rouse Godself from slumber, to act like God has acted in the past, to demonstrate God’s power. Finally as the land dies and the events of the people’s rebellion is coming to fruition, both in the approaching armies of the Babylonians and in the oppressive lack of moisture which is killing the animals and crops of the fields. Yet the prayer comes too late, God is not willing to quickly and easily accept the words that come before God. Too many times in the past the turning has been superficial and now God has turned God’s back upon the people of the covenant, allowing the negative side of the covenant-the woes-to come to pass. The iniquity and sins will not be forgotten or passed over, forgiveness is not granted, the past is not forgotten.

The wrath of God can be a troubling concept for many, myself included at times, especially the way in which it can be utilized to be a tool of fear and oppression. Yet, there is a very real sense where God does care, where God does take sides and where we need to wrestle with the ways in which forgiveness is not cheap, where reconciliation is often a hard and painful process and where our actions (or inactions) cause pain and harm not only to ourselves but the world around us.

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn 1630

Jeremiah 14: 11-22

11 The Lord said to me: Do not pray for the welfare of this people.¹²Although they fast, I do not hear their cry, and although they offer burnt-offering and grain-offering, I do not accept them; but by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence I consume them.

13 Then I said: ‘Ah, Lord God! Here are the prophets saying to them, “You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.” ’ ¹⁴And the Lord said to me: The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.¹⁵Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name though I did not send them, and who say, ‘Sword and famine shall not come on this land’: By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. ¹⁶And the people to whom they prophesy shall be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword. There shall be no one to bury them—themselves, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their wickedness upon them. 

¹⁷ You shall say to them this word:
Let my eyes run down with tears night and day,
and let them not cease,
for the virgin daughter—my people—is struck down with a crushing blow,
with a very grievous wound.
¹⁸ If I go out into the field,
look—those killed by the sword!
And if I enter the city,
look—those sick with famine!
For both prophet and priest ply their trade throughout the land,
and have no knowledge. 

¹⁹ Have you completely rejected Judah?
Does your heart loathe Zion?
Why have you struck us down
so that there is no healing for us?
We look for peace, but find no good;
for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.
²⁰ We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord,
the iniquity of our ancestors,
for we have sinned against you.
²¹ Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake;
do not dishonor your glorious throne;
remember and do not break your covenant with us.
²² Can any idols of the nations bring rain?
Or can the heavens give showers?
Is it not you, O Lord our God?
We set our hope on you,
for it is you who do all this.

Perhaps the role of the prophet is not to give up, to be willing to wrestle with God-even when God is unwilling to hear any longer. Moses wrestled with God for the sake of the people several times in the Exodus and God changed God’s mind, and here Jeremiah enters in to once again plead for the people even after God instructs him not to pray for them any longer. Jeremiah refuses to give us, refuses to stay silent. Once again he searches for a way, reminding God that the priests, the prophets and the leaders have failed the people, they have set them on a course for war with Babylon while promising peace. They have trusted in their own strength and the strength of allies like Egypt and have not accepted that it is God’s hand that is moving with the Babylonians and they are to accept their rule for the time being. The Lord is not having any of this, the prophets and leaders will indeed bear the consequences with the people, but there is no turning back from the death that is coming and will soon be all around. Death in the fields, death in the city, death from war and famine and sickness, and the shattering of all that was. The world that the people of Judah know is about to die, they will now be exiles in a foreign land, the remnant of a once proud people.

Jeremiah refuses to give up, returning to the language of lament, searching for hope in the hopelessness. Trying once again to call on God to be God, to be their hope, to save the people not because they deserve it but because it will bring glory to God. Jeremiah fears that if God turns this time the stump will be destroyed to the point it will never rise again, that the people will be wiped out and that death will triumph. Jeremiah continues, even in his own woundedness, to pray for and appeal for the people against the command of God. His love of the people, of Jerusalem and the temple push him to this even though he has been considered a traitor by all of these throughout his ministry. Grace and healing may be coming, but it is not before the people passes through the valley of the shadow of death. With the approaching armies of Babylon death is coming. But we looking back know that God will not turn God’s back forever.