Orthodox Icon of the Prophet Jeremiah

Jeremiah 20: 1-6

Now the priest Pashhur son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. ² Then Pashhur struck the prophet Jeremiah, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the LORD. ³ The next morning when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, The LORD has named you not Pashhur but “Terror-all-around.” ⁴ For thus says the LORD: I am making you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall kill them with the sword. ⁵ I will give all the wealth of this city, all its gains, all its prized belongings, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them, and seize them, and carry them to Babylon. ⁶ And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, shall go into captivity, and to Babylon you shall go; there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.

To be a prophet means that you will challenge the way things are, that you will incur the wrath of those who disagree with you, and that there will be consequences.  People don’t want to hear bad news, they often don’t want to hear what they are doing wrong, and especially within the context of the Temple or a church there can be a certain self-righteousness that looks down and says, “how dare you challenge me in this way.” Jeremiah is struck and placed in the stocks overnight, not a fun proposition but not one that is probably a significant deterrent, it is like spending overnight in jail for participating in a protest. Jeremiah is not deterred, he immediately turns to curse Pashhur, who struck him and placed him in stocks. Pashhur is:

Renamed to be identified with the horror that is coming
He will be a terror to himself and those he cares about
He will have to watch the destruction of his homeland and go into exile
He will watch his friends die, the things he trusted in destroyed
He will die, his friends will all die not here but in exile and their bodies will not return home
If this isn’t a curse, I don’t know what is. Jeremiah has endured much and has more to endure but we see him giving vent to one of his persecutors. Next we’ll see him vent to God.

The Prophet (nogard86 at deviantart.com)

Jeremiah 20: 7-18

⁷ O LORD, you have enticed me, and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.
 I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.
 ⁸ For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction!”
 For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.
 ⁹ If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,”
 then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
 ¹⁰ For I hear many whispering:
 “Terror is all around! Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”
 All my close friends are watching for me to stumble.
“Perhaps he can be enticed, and we can prevail against him, and take our revenge on him.”
                ¹¹ But the LORD is with me like a dread warrior;
 therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed.
 Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten.
                ¹² O LORD of hosts, you test the righteous, you see the heart and the mind;
 let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.
 ¹³ Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD!
For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.
 ¹⁴ Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me,
let it not be blessed!
 ¹⁵ Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying,
“A child is born to you, a son,” making him very glad.
 ¹⁶ Let that man be like the cities that the LORD overthrew without pity;
 let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon,
 ¹⁷ because he did not kill me in the womb;
 so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great.
 ¹⁸ Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?

This is pathos (suffering) laced language, and while some would want to break apart these verses between 7-10 where Jeremiah complains, 11-12 when Jeremiah turns to hope, 13 which bursts into praise and then 14-18 where self hatred and the desire for death come up I think they are all connected and need to be held together. This is a faithful monologue, it is difficult to hear, much less to find yourself needing to utter words like this, but it is the story of a faithful one abused, trying with everything within himself to trust God, to believe as he once did, and yet in the end there is the wish for it all to be over. The language is strong, stronger even than the NRSVs translation. As Brueggemann states: “The verb rendered “deceived” (NRSV enticed) could be rendered more strongly as “harassed,” “taken advantage of,” “abused,” even “raped.””[i] Jeremiah actually says either God you abused me or God you raped me (which fits well with the language of overpowering in the following verse). God has violated the prophet’s trust with the message he has been given, with the abuse he has endured, with the pain of announcing death and destruction. A person would have to be sick to want to be the bearer of a message of death. No doctor comes out cheerfully to tell a mother their child has died, no officer wants to write to a family their son or daughter will never return home, and yet Jeremiah is given the unwanted message that not only will many people die, but the temple and the city will be destroyed, that those who survive will be taken away as exiles to a foreign land. Jeremiah wants out, he no longer wants to speak, he no longer wants to be a prophet. “Just let me be like everyone else!” and yet God will not allow him to stay silent. Jeremiah is tired, ready to be done, ready to announce a message people want to hear and yet that is not his calling, at least not yet. The time of disaster is approaching.

Jeremiah cries for revenge on those who are persecuting him, and probably most painfully former friends. Jeremiah wants God to act, and yet on the other hand probably doesn’t because he knows at least in some shadowy way the disaster that is rapidly approaching and has no power to stop it. He desperately wants to believe and hope in God, desperately wants God to deliver him from this moment. He wants to sing, he tries to talk himself into it and quickly slides into a question of “what is it all for?” Wishing he was never born, even though earlier in Jeremiah 1 he was shaped in his mother’s womb now he wishes he died there.

What do we do with laments like this, with the heartbroken language of the wounded and weeping prophet? First I think we need to realize this is faithful language and that there may be those in our midst who can all too easily identify with what the prophet is saying. I know I find some resonance and can point to times in my life where the words I said were different but the feelings were essentially the same: I wanted to believe, and I felt abused, I wanted to hope and yet right now I just wanted it all over with. Jeremiah is given a hard task and he feels abandoned by God, and no simple statements of God’s presence will cure the broken heart in the moment. But Jeremiah does not give up on God any more than I believe God wants to give up on God’s people.

Jeremiah 19

Jeremiah by James Tissot

Thus said the LORD: Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jug. Take with you some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests, ² and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you. ³ You shall say: Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to bring such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. ⁴ Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, ⁵ and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind. ⁶ Therefore the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter. ⁷ And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth. ⁸ And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its disasters. ⁹ And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and all shall eat the flesh of their neighbors in the siege, and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.

¹⁰ Then you shall break the jug in the sight of those who go with you, ¹¹ and shall say to them: Thus says the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended. In Topheth they shall bury until there is no more room to bury. ¹² Thus will I do to this place, says the LORD, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth. ¹³ And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Topheth– all the houses upon whose roofs offerings have been made to the whole host of heaven, and libations have been poured out to other gods.

 ¹⁴ When Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, he stood in the court of the LORD’s house and said to all the people: ¹⁵ Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am now bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to hear my words.

What do you do with texts like this, where God’s heart is so broken that God rhetorically lashes out. How do you encounter the Lord who is so caught in God’s own pain over the abandonment of the people of God, how does the prophet react? This is rhetorical overkill and it is challenging to see the God of love present in the midst of cannibalism, horror, disaster, and slaughter. Is God so mad that, to use the language of Jeremiah in this section God is willing to pay back the sacrifices of some sons and daughters with filling Topheth with corpses that lie unburied for the animals to eat? Is this God we find in Jeremiah really what the ancient heretic Marcion would have called the evil demiurge, or is there perhaps something else we need to consider? For myself I believe there is.

In the time of Jeremiah life in Jerusalem has become ordered in such a way, a way that was so counter to the desire of shalom that the city was named for (Jeru-shalom- city of peace) that it is now a place where the Lord feels an outcast. Whether the idolatry was as drastic as the prophet announces is difficult to know, but life was no longer oriented around the Lord-and for the people of God when God’s power of life is absent death comes quickly (to paraphrase Brueggeman in his commentary on Jeremiah). Perhaps this rhetorical overkill is something like the effect of commercials turning up the volume to attempt to get a viewer or listener lulled into complacency to sit up and take notice. I am sure that for many in Jerusalem the thought of Babylon coming, laying siege to the city and taking the people into exile could never happen there. They are Jerusalem, they have a Davidic king, they have the temple, God turned away the Assyrians before: siege, plunder, exile, cannibalism-it can’t happen here.

Yet, one thing that is noticeable is that it never says the prophet delivers this over the top rhetoric, rather he tones it down “all the disaster that I have pronounced” is substituted for 13 verses of horror, and the court of the Lord’s house substitutes for Topheth, but the prophet in a very real way serves as a shock absorber for the message. Either the prophet endures the rhetoric of wrath on behalf of the people or the prophet spares us, the readers from reading the horror once again.

Jeremiah, like all the prophets do not attempt to be systematic theologians, rather they are more like poets and their language while powerful and evocative should not be read as legal treatises on the nature of God. Jeremiah allows us to see into the pain of God, and to endure with the wounded God the loss of a people and God’s struggle with how to deal with the abandonment by God’s people. If you want to find a God of wrath, the material is certainly there in scripture-but as a Lutheran I come from the perspective of a God who is love and so I have to wrestle with the rhetoric of Jeremiah and the woundedness of God. There may not always be easy answers, but like the Psalms this is more the poetic language of emotion rather than the language of logic.

  Jeremiah 18

Spoiled Clay

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ² “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. ⁴ The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.

 ⁵ Then the word of the LORD came to me: ⁶ Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. ⁷ At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, ⁸ but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. ⁹ And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰ but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. ¹¹ Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.

 ¹² But they say, “It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.”

It is hard for me to read this passage without hearing the lyrics of the contemporary Christian song:

Change my heart, O God, make it ever true
Change my heart, O God, may I be like you
You are the potter, I am the clay
Mold me and make me, this is what I pray

And while the lyric assumes a positive relationship between the vessel and God, this passage in Jeremiah does not. This passage, like Isaiah 45: 9 uses the image of a potter forming vessels as a distinction between the people of Israel and God, where God’s intent is for them to be formed in one way but they as a vessel are turning out to be spoiled in the maker’s hand. On the positive side, this is a world where turning is still possible, as Binaymin Lau (Lau, 2013, p. 47f.) draws the contrast between these words of Jeremiah and the words of the prophetess Huldah in 2 Kings:

Thus says the Lord, I will indeed bring disaster upon this place and on its inhabitants—all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read. (2 Kings 22: 16)

And even though there will be a reprieve for Josiah who will not see the disaster that is to come, there is no staving off the disaster. Here in Jeremiah’s words there is still hope that if the people will change God’s mind will change. There remains an opening and a plea for a turning away from the ways that have led the people into this situation, but the response is telling. It points to a reality that resistance to God practiced will eventually eliminate the capacity to choose life instead of death. (Brueggemann, 1998, p. 168) Perhaps like the addict who can no longer choose the way that they know leads to life, Judah has become addicted to the practices of death.

The Lost Identity

 ¹³ Therefore thus says the LORD:
Ask among the nations:
Who has heard the like of this?
The virgin Israel has done a most horrible thing.
 ¹⁴ Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion?
Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams?
 ¹⁵ But my people have forgotten me,
they burn offerings to a delusion;
they have stumbled in their ways,
in the ancient roads,
and have gone into bypaths, not the highway,
 ¹⁶ making their land a horror, a thing to be hissed at forever.
All who pass by it are horrified and shake their heads.
 ¹⁷ Like the wind from the east, I will scatter them before the enemy.
 I will show them my back, not my face, in the day of their calamity.
 
The Lord turns away, and the people lose their identity. Without God, Israel is no longer Israel. Their identity is tied to one another. Somehow they have become something so different than what God intended for them that God has removed his hand from the wheel and is turning away and attempting to forget the people who have already forgotten the Lord. Even though it means their destruction the Lord turns away.
 

Jeremiah by James Tissot

 ¹⁸ Then they said, “Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah– for instruction shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us bring charges against him, and let us not heed any of his words.”

Interesting that it is the religious leaders and not the military or royal authorities that make plots against Jeremiah, yet it is also these authorities that Jeremiah’s presence directly threatens. We will learn that there are those outside the religious establishment that will risk their own lives and reputations to help Jeremiah, but unfortunately the Bible and history is full of religious people who were more concerned with their own position and power than any type of adherence to God’s will.
 
 ¹⁹ Give heed to me, O LORD, and listen to what my adversaries say!
 ²⁰ Is evil a recompense for good? Yet they have dug a pit for my life.
Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them,
to turn away your wrath from them.
 ²¹ Therefore give their children over to famine;
 hurl them out to the power of the sword,
let their wives become childless and widowed.
May their men meet death by pestilence,
their youths be slain by the sword in battle.
 ²² May a cry be heard from their houses,
when you bring the marauder suddenly upon them!
 For they have dug a pit to catch me, and laid snares for my feet.
 ²³ Yet you, O LORD, know all their plotting to kill me.
Do not forgive their iniquity, do not blot out their sin from your sight.
Let them be tripped up before you;
deal with them while you are angry.
 
This is the classic imprecatory (cursing) prayer, like the imprecatory psalms from the book of Psalms. It stands in contrast to the sermon on the mount, and yet it would be easy to judge Jeremiah and the Psalmist without standing in their shoes. Ellen Davis, who taught Old Testament at Duke University and several other places shared a story about how she was told to pray the imprecatory psalms about someone who had betrayed her and then after a couple days she could no longer pray them. On the other hand, in the midst of Jeremiah’s pain he may, like Jonah, be all too aware of God’s tendency to forgive and want to ensure that God does not quickly forget and calls upon God to face them in the midst of God’s wrath. In contrast to Job, who does not want to face God in God’s anger, Jeremiah calls on God to confront his adversaries in God’s anger. Perhaps in the prayer God’s mind will change and perhaps in the prayer the prophets heart will change. At this point in the non-linear time of Jeremiah the window for God’s heart to change and the people’s behavior to change is still open.

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.

Jeremiah 13: 1-11: The Ruined Loincloth

 Thus said the LORD to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.” ² So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the LORD, and put it on my loins. ³ And the word of the LORD came to me a second time, saying, ⁴ “Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” ⁵ So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me. ⁶ And after many days the LORD said to me, “Go now to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” ⁷ Then I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing.

 ⁸ Then the word of the LORD came to me: ⁹ Thus says the LORD: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. ¹¹ For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen.

Throughout Jeremiah’s ministry words have failed to convince his listeners to turn from their path, and now God instructs Jeremiah to turn to a symbolic action. Whether Jeremiah actually makes the long journey to the Euphrates river multiple times or whether this is a dream sequence or whether he buries it at another river near his hometown (the Nehal Perat) is something that scholars will debate back and forth, but the symbolic nature of the Euphrates is powerful since it is where the people will cross as they go into exile. At issue within the symbolic representation of the loincloth is the people’s losing the meaning of their being set aside by God for a purpose.

Election, although freighted with all types of baggage with the way it has been used by religious groups, within both Jewish and Christian terms is not for the sake of the elect. The elect are there to be a blessing to the world around them, but too often they become fixated on their own status and they cling to that rather than clinging to the identity they were given by the one who set them apart. Israel was to cling to God and move in the ways God moved as a piece of clothing but to use Jesus’ words they have become like salt that has lost its saltiness and like the loincloth they have failed to be good for anything at this point. Perhaps it is only in this time where they are separated from God and feel that they are ruined that there can be the possibility of being made new and hearing and seeing once again who God is calling them to be.

 Jeremiah 13: 12-14: Filled with Drunkenness

 ¹² You shall speak to them this word: Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Every wine-jar should be filled with wine. And they will say to you, “Do you think we do not know that every wine-jar should be filled with wine?” ¹³ Then you shall say to them: Thus says the LORD: I am about to fill all the inhabitants of this land– the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem– with drunkenness. ¹⁴ And I will dash them one against another, parents and children together, says the LORD. I will not pity or spare or have compassion when I destroy them.

 Using the image of drunkenness indicates a state where decisions are impaired, where bad choices are frequently made and previous inhibitions may be cast aside. In the context of Jeremiah, the people have turned from God for a long time, they have chased other gods, other goods, trusting in their Davidic king, the temple and the city of Jerusalem to keep them safe. The very people who should be leading the people back to God: the priests, the prophets (other than Jeremiah and perhaps a few others) and the king on David’s throne have instead led them towards a path of destruction. The people are on a path to conflict with Babylon and yet they cannot see it yet, but the prophet sees. The people’s judgment and reactions are impaired unable to see the coming collision with the immovable object and God will not rescue them this time. Perhaps God is the immovable object, perhaps God is merely allowing the consequences of their previous bad choices to come to fruition like a person who after trying to prevent a person who is drunk from taking the wheel and sees them start the vehicle anyways. Regardless, God is no longer there offering a shield of protection to keep the people from hitting the bottom. God has begun to seem to the people no longer as their guardian but their oppressor and until they reach rock bottom they probably won’t be able to see God in a different light.

Orthodox Icon of the Prophet JeremiahJeremiah 13:15-17: A Prophet’s Plea

 ¹⁵ Hear and give ear; do not be haughty, for the LORD has spoken.
 ¹⁶ Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings darkness,
and before your feet stumble on the mountains at twilight;
 while you look for light, he turns it into gloom and makes it deep darkness.
 ¹⁷ But if you will not listen, my soul will weep in secret for your pride;
my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears,
because the LORD’s flock has been taken captive.
 

At the center of Israel’s life is the calling to hear (shema) which goes back to Deuteronomy 6:4

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone

And again in this plea the people are called to hear and give hear, to look, to listen and in language characteristic of Deuteronomy’s blessings and curses there is the other side of “if you will not listen” but instead of seeing the consequences for the people we see the consequences for the prophet. The prophet makes his plea as one who is brokenhearted reaching out yet again to the people who have failed to listen to him throughout his ministry and yet his soul still weeps for them and his eyes run down with tears because they will bear the effects of their inability to (or choosing not to) hear.
 
Jeremiah 13: 18-27 Corrupted Identity

¹⁸ Say to the king and the queen mother;
“Take a lowly seat, for your beautiful crown has come down from your head.”
 ¹⁹ The towns of the Negeb are shut up with no one to open them;
all Judah is taken into exile, wholly taken into exile.
 ²⁰ Lift up your eyes and see those who come from the north.
Where is the flock that was given you, your beautiful flock?
 ²¹ What will you say when they set as head over you those whom you have trained to be your allies?
Will not pangs take hold of you, like those of a woman in labor?
 ²² And if you say in your heart, “Why have these things come upon me?”
it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up, and you are violated.
 ²³ Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots?
Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.
 ²⁴ I will scatter you like chaff driven by the wind from the desert.
 ²⁵ This is your lot, the portion I have measured out to you, says the LORD,
 because you have forgotten me and trusted in lies.
 ²⁶ I myself will lift up your skirts over your face, and your shame will be seen.
 ²⁷ I have seen your abominations, your adulteries and neighings,
 your shameless prostitutions on the hills of the countryside.
Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will it be before you are made clean?

Everything is going to change and nothing is going to change. Everything external will change among the people, the king and queen mother will lose their places, places that were once open in hospitality will be closed by conflict, the honored will become dishonored and the powerful will find themselves powerless. But the prophet or God also has little hope or belief that anything will change, that the people’s identity has been corrupted  and they are less likely to change their ways than a person is able to change the color of their skin or a leopard could have its spots removed. The desire is for the unclean to be made clean, but the 13^th chapter ends in woe not knowing what it will take for the people to have a new heart placed within them and a new sense of identity as the people of God to live out of. They will need eyes to see and ears to hear, but for now the prophet sees them content in their deafness and blindness, unaware of their shame and their brokenness.