Category Archives: Biblical Reflections

Jeremiah 13: Weeping for Those Who Don’t Hear

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.

Jeremiah 12: The Disillusioned Prophet and the God who Listens

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Jeremiah’s Petition

Job by Leon Bonnat (1880)

Jeremiah 12

You will be in the right, O LORD,when I lay charges against you;
but let me put my case to you. Why does the way of the guilty prosper?
Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
² You plant them, and they take root; they grow and bring forth fruit;
you are near in their mouths yet far from their hearts.
³ But you, O LORD, know me; You see me and test me– my heart is with you.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
⁴ How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither?
For the wickedness of those who live in it the animals and the birds are swept away,
and because people said, “He is blind to our ways.”

The question of theodicy, how can the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer is one that the bible wrestle with again and again, and here Jeremiah lays it before God. Jeremiah lays out the difference between himself as the righteous one and the ‘wicked ones’ who believe that God is blind to their ways and Jeremiah is ready for God to judge. Jeremiah is worn out, tired and brokenhearted and is ready to be done with it, ready for God to judge his opponents not knowing how long of a journey he still has before him. While most commentators see God’s response as harsh, that has as much to do with the tone they hear it in as the words themselves (that and they way they divide the text which I will address below). I hear it somewhat differently

God’s response

⁵ If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?
And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you fare in the thickets of the Jordan?
⁶ For even your kinsfolk and your own family, even they have dealt treacherously with you;
they are in full cry after you; do not believe them, though they speak friendly words to you.

God’s response to Jeremiah is one of warning of what is still to come. Jeremiah’s journey is not going to be an easy one going forward with betrayal coming even from his own household. Jeremiah this is probably one of those points where Jeremiah needs to be heard and hear that God is still active. In Jeremiah it is often difficult to know where God is speaking and where Jeremiah is speaking. Two of the scholars I respect greatly see God speaking from verse 5 through the end of the chapter, (Brueggemann 1998, 102-123) (Elizabeth Acthemeier, et.al 1999, VI:679f.) but I am going to propose a different reading with Jeremiah picking up at verse 7

Jeremiah’s reponse

⁷ I have forsaken my house, I have abandoned my heritage;
I have given the beloved of my heart into the hands of her enemies.
⁸ My heritage has become to me like a lion in the forest;
she has lifted up her voice against me– therefore I hate her.
⁹ Is the hyena greedy for my heritage at my command?
Are the birds of prey all around her?
Go, assemble all the wild animals;
bring them to devour her.
¹⁰ Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard,
they have trampled down my portion,
they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
¹¹ They have made it a desolation; desolate, it mourns to me.
The whole land is made desolate, but no one lays it to heart.
¹² Upon all the bare heights in the desert spoilers have come;
for the sword of the LORD devours from one end of the land to the other;
no one shall be safe.
¹³ They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns,
they have tired themselves out but profit nothing.
They shall be ashamed of their harvests because of the fierce anger of the LORD.

Jeremiah no longer is concerned for his relations, his family, his heritage. He feels betrayed and so he is ready to surrender them to the consequences of their actions. He is ready for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field to pick over the bones of his homeland, his own village and his family. Jeremiah at this point sees no hope, all he can see is the betrayal and devastation that is coming. The prophet’s broken heart has left him in a state of absolute depression where there is no longer any profit, any joy.

God’s response

¹⁴ Thus says the LORD concerning all my evil neighbors who touch the heritage that I have given my people Israel to inherit: I am about to pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. ¹⁵ And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again to their heritage and to their land, everyone of them. ¹⁶ And then, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, “As the LORD lives,” as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people. ¹⁷ But if any nation will not listen, then I will completely uproot it and destroy it, says the LORD.

God desires God’s people back. There is no easy way around what is coming, even in the reforms of Josiah at the time Jeremiah begins his time as a prophet only brought about superficial changes and God desires something much deeper. The only way a new relationship can begin is for the old one to die so a new one can take it’s place. The Babylonian exile, while an event of horror in the memory of the Jewish people was also a time where they went through a process that they re-identified who they were in their relationship with the Lord. The Lord is unwilling to sit by and not be active, the Lord can no longer abide the way things are where the treacherous thrive and the guilty prosper, yet God still loves the people and desires to have compassion on them and wants them to live out of their identity.

Jeremiah 11: From Blessing to Curse

The Things That Deceive: Jeremiah 10

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Ishtar Vase from between 1999 and 1500 BCE

Mocking the Idols: Jeremiah 10: 1-16

Hear the word that the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel.
² Thus says the LORD:
Do not learn the way of the nations,
or be dismayed at the signs of the heavens;
for the nations are dismayed at them.
³ For the customs of the peoples are false:
a tree from the forest is cut down,
and worked with an ax by the hands of an artisan;
⁴ people deck it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.
⁵ Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak;
they have to be carried, for they cannot walk.
Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good.
⁶ There is none like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is great in might.
⁷ Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? For that is your due;
among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is no one like you.
⁸ They are both stupid and foolish; the instruction given by idols is no better than wood!
⁹ Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz.
They are the work of the artisan and of the hands of the goldsmith;
their clothing is blue and purple; they are all the product of skilled workers.
¹⁰ But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.
At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation.
¹¹ Thus shall you say to them: The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.
¹² It is he who made the earth by his power,
who established the world by his wisdom,
and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.
¹³ When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,
and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightnings for the rain, and he brings out the wind from his storehouses.
¹⁴ Everyone is stupid and without knowledge;
goldsmiths are all put to shame by their idols;
for their images are false, and there is no breath in them.
¹⁵ They are worthless, a work of delusion;
at the time of their punishment they shall perish.
¹⁶ Not like these is the LORD, the portion of Jacob,
for he is the one who formed all things,
and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the LORD of hosts is his name.

The people of Jeremiah’s time, like people in our own time, live in a world of multiple allegiances and gods and one of the central commandment of the Jewish people was not to create an image for their God. There is always the temptation to attempt to place our hopes in the things that we create, and so Jeremiah like Isaiah (see for example Isaiah 44: 9-20) has a section of mocking the idols as powerless. Yet these idols are things that are consuming the most precious resources: gold, silver, the finest clothing, the best wood, caring sculpted by an artisan and yet they are nothing. The Hebrew word hevel comes up three times in this section talking about the idols, this is a word which goes back to the name Abel (from the Cain and Abel story) which is most famously picked up in Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of Vanities,says the teacher
Vanity of Vanities! All is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:2

The word translated vanities (hevel) is literally mist, smoke, vapor-it is something that when grasped onto vanishes within one’s grasp. Those who are trusting in these things they created are finding the objects of their trust are no more reliable than the evanescent vapor of a morning fog.

In our own time we have our own idols as well, they may not be stone, wood or metal statues but they may be individuals (athletes, politicians, actors, musicians); military might or power, security, wealth, fame, position or status or any number of other things. They may be external things we give our allegiance to or they may be things we create (or at least believe we create) with our own hands. Often they are tied up with our wealth and where our wealth is directed. And just like the people of Jeremiah’s time who invested their wealth into the creation of images of gods, we too invest our wealth where our gods are. As Walter Brueggemann can point out false economics and false religion are tied together (Brueggemann 1998, 103) or as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also Matthew 6: 21.

The Leaders who Lead Astray Jeremiah 10: 17-25

¹⁷ Gather up your bundle from the ground, O you who live under siege!
¹⁸ For thus says the LORD:
I am going to sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time,
and I will bring distress on them, so that they shall feel it.
¹⁹ Woe is me because of my hurt! My wound is severe.
But I said, “Truly this is my punishment, and I must bear it.”
²⁰ My tent is destroyed, and all my cords are broken;
my children have gone from me, and they are no more;
there is no one to spread my tent again, and to set up my curtains.
²¹ For the shepherds are stupid, and do not inquire of the LORD;
therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.
²² Hear, a noise! Listen, it is coming—
a great commotion from the land of the north
to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair of jackals.
²³ I know, O LORD, that the way of human beings is not in their control,
that mortals as they walk cannot direct their steps.
²⁴ Correct me, O LORD, but in just measure;
not in your anger, or you will bring me to nothing.
²⁵ Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not know you,
and on the peoples that do not call on your name;
for they have devoured Jacob;
they have devoured him and consumed him,
and have laid waste his habitation.

Who is the mourner, is it the prophet, is it Zion personified, or is it God? Any of the three, and perhaps all of the three are mourning together. The reality is that for those who are willing to listen, which seems to be few if any, they are to flee like the people of Israel fleeing at the beginning of their exodus in the wilderness. In the midst of the wounded God, wounded prophet and a wounded people we see at the center of things are the leaders who have led the flock astray. This is not the world where everyone makes their own decision on things, in fact the Davidic and priestly leadership would claim divine authorization, and yet they had not inquired of God. Rather they had probably looked out for their own interests, ensuring their own comfort, and operating much as any other nation’s leaders operated. If the leaders don’t live out the vision of God’s peace what hope do the people have.

At verse 23 we have a shift and the prophet is talking back to God, pleading both for God’s mercy and justice at the same time. Much as Psalm 6 begins with an appeal for God to act justly but not in anger:

O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger,
Or discipline me in your wrath. Psalm 6:1

The plea is for God to calm down, to make decisions after God’s anger has dissipated which places the prophet in a precarious place (which any person who has told a person who is raging to calm down knows) and then also calls on God to pour out God’s wrath on the nations around Jerusalem. To hold them to the same standard that Jerusalem is being held to.

Being the set aside people of God is a dangerous position, God has high hopes for them. The calling is a gift and a challenge at the same time. The people have failed in their vocation and are now enduring the wrath and the grief of God. Wrath is an uncomfortable term and I probably need to spend some time talking about it, but ultimately God is not passive-God does take sides and one of the hopes that Christians have is that God will not allow injustice to continue indefinitely. Unfortunately, many times this image of God’s wrath has been used as an object of fear to prop up the unquestioned authority of the church or particular leaders, and this would not be that different from Jeremiah’s day with the temple and king.

Review of Jeremiah: The Fate of A Prophet by Binyamin Lau

Jeremiah 9: 2-26: Death in and of the Land

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Speaking for the Earth

Jeremiah 9: 2-16

² O that I had in the desert a traveler’s lodging place,
that I might leave my people and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors.
³ They bend their tongues like bows;
they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the LORD.
⁴ Beware of your neighbors, and put no trust in any of your kin;
for all your kin are supplanters, and every neighbor goes around like a slanderer.
⁵ They all deceive their neighbors, and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongues to speak lies;
they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.
⁶ Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit!
They refuse to know me, says the LORD.
⁷ Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts:
I will now refine and test them, for what else can I do with my sinful people?
⁸ Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaks deceit through the mouth.
They all speak friendly words to their neighbors,
but inwardly are planning to lay an ambush.
⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD;
and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?
¹⁰ Take up weeping and wailing for the mountains,
and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness,
because they are laid waste so that no one passes through,
and the lowing of cattle is not heard;
both the birds of the air and the animals have fled and are gone.
¹¹ I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals;
and I will make the towns of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.

¹² Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the LORD spoken, so that they may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? ¹³ And the LORD says: Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, or walked in accordance with it, ¹⁴ but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them. ¹⁵ Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am feeding this people with wormwood, and giving them poisonous water to drink. ¹⁶ I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known; and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.

In Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax the words of the Lorax are ignored by the Onceler and the effects of the Onceler’s actions are felt by the birds of the air and the animals of the field. Human action becomes tied to the well being of the earth and animals-and this is a very biblical thought. Within Jeremiah it is not only the people of Israel who will suffer for their inability to live in harmony with vision of shalom, it is the mountain and the wilderness and the pastures that are also laid waste (which the pastures and fields would be devastated by an invasion and forests become converted to siege engines), cattle and birds become the food for the invading army as well as the people fleeing the fight and the only animals that remain are the scavengers. Although this is a very dark view of the coming days for Jeremiah’s people it also reflects both the reality of warfare of that time and this connection between the faithfulness of God’s people and the well being of the earth.

It is also interesting that the primary thing lifted up as the cause at this point is falsehood, deception and lies. Either God or the prophet (or both) wish there is someplace else they could go away from this people because trust has been broken and now nothing that is said is able to be trusted. Lies, in the prophets words, have become a game where people intentionally lie to one another and yet in a world of speaking points and zingers I sometimes wonder what happened to truthful speech. In a world where fear often makes truthful speech difficult (particularly around any controversial issue) Oftentimes the lies that cover up an action cause as much or more damage to trust as the action itself and they poison the waters of a relationship. Between God and God’s people the waters of the relationship have been poisoned and it is reaching for a painful (for both parties) ending.

Ringed Round By Death

Jeremiah 9: 17-26

¹⁷ Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider,
and call for the mourning women to come;
send for the skilled women to come;
¹⁸ let them quickly raise a dirge over us,
so that our eyes may run down with tears,
and our eyelids flow with water.
¹⁹ For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion:
“How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed,
because we have left the land,
because they have cast down our dwellings.”
²⁰ Hear, O women, the word of the LORD,
and let your ears receive the word of his mouth;
teach to your daughters a dirge, and each to her neighbor a lament.
²¹ “Death has come up into our windows,
it has entered our palaces, to cut off the children from the streets
and the young men from the squares.”
²² Speak! Thus says the LORD:
“Human corpses shall fall like dung upon the open field,
like sheaves behind the reaper, and no one shall gather them.”

²³ Thus says the LORD: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; ²⁴ but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the LORD; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD. ²⁵ The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will attend to all those who are circumcised only in the foreskin: ²⁶ Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all those with shaven temples who live in the desert. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.

An invocation of the rituals of death is what is called for in the disaster to come, but there aren’t enough people to cover the process of mourning. In our own situation it would be likened to a situation where there are not enough funeral directors, counselors, pastors and others to lead the funerals and so others are having to learn how to lead the mourning. In the ancient world, mourning was women’s work and the public display of grief was a way in which the dead were honored (which for most of us is a foreign concept-many of the Lutheran funerals I preside over the family members ‘bravely hold back tears’). But here we have a situation so dire that there are not enough mourners to go around and so the daughters of the survivors are all taught their identity as wailing women, and mourners, as those who give voice to the pain of death. They are entering a time where bodies once honored cover the ground like the sheaves of wheat after a harvest or like the excrement in a cattle pen. Death enters from every direction and is all around, coming into the home, the public spaces and it doesn’t discriminate between children, the young adults or the elderly. Life may continue but it is ringed round by death.

Wisdom and wealth have failed as a source of life. In wisdom literature, particularly in the book of Ecclesiastes, the wise person realizes that these can not be a source of ultimate meaning or joy. Ecclesiastes in many cases understands what Existential philosophy would discover two millennia later that:

¹⁶ I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.

¹⁸ For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. I said to myself,

“Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But again, this also was vanity. ² I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” ³ I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine– my mind still guiding me with wisdom– and how to lay hold on folly, until I might see what was good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life. ⁴ I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; ⁵ I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. ⁶ I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. ⁷ I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. ⁸ I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines.

⁹ So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. ¹⁰ Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. ¹¹ Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:16-2:11

Wisdom or wealth are not enough, they are ultimately ‘hevel’ (the Hebrew word translated as ‘vanity’- it is literally smoke, mist or vapor) they are worthless. Nor is ethnic identity or religious practice enough for none of these can bring one into the vision that God had for God’s people. Jeremiah’s argument here foreshadows what Paul will say to his communities in the New Testament:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. Galatians 5:6

Surface rituals are not leading the people to a practice of steadfast love, justice and righteousness, instead they have substituted what Brueggemann refers to as ‘surface rituals’ (Brueggemann 1998, 101)and what God is seeking is not a mark on the flesh but a transformation of the heart, which God will promise later in the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 8:4- 9:1: The Headstrong People and the Heartsick Prophet and God

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I am trying something a little different as I start again with Jeremiah: rather than breaking each section into several posts throughout the week I am going to try to do one larger post for those who enjoy this type of Biblical reflection but to where those who don’t read this part of the blog don’t have multiple posts weekly on Jeremiah. I have also been given the honor of reviewing Binyamin Lau’s Jeremiah: The Fate of the Prophet and that should be coming in the next couple weeks as well as integrating some of his insights into my journey through Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 8:4-17
4 You shall say to them, Thus says the LORD:
When people fall, do they not get up again?
If they go astray, do they not turn back?
5 Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding?
They have held fast to deceit, they have refused to return.
6 I have given heed and listened, but they do not speak honestly;
no one repents of wickedness, saying, “What have I done!”
All of them turn to their own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
7 Even the stork in the heavens knows its times;
and the turtledove, swallow, and crane observe the time of their coming;
but my people do not know the ordinance of the LORD.
8 How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us,”
when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie?
9 The wise shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what wisdom is in them?
10 Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely.
11 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
12 They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
yet they were not at all ashamed, they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time when I punish them,
they shall be overthrown, says the LORD.
13 When I wanted to gather them, says the LORD,
there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.
14 Why do we sit still? Gather together, let us go into the fortified cities and perish there;
for the LORD our God has doomed us to perish, and has given us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against the LORD.
15 We look for peace, but find no good,
for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.
16 The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;
at the sound of the neighing of their stallions the whole land quakes.
They come and devour the land and all that fills it, the city and those who live in it.
17 See, I am letting snakes loose among you,
adders that cannot be charmed, and they shall bite you, says the LORD.

If you have been following through Jeremiah to this point you could be forgiven for thinking you have read much of this before. Much as people agonizing over the brokenness of a relationship or the ending of a marriage often revisit the same material again and again trying to make sense of the reality of the changes they are dealing with, we see God continuing to struggle through God’s own disillusionment and emotions. As I’ve mentioned before the God portrayed in Jeremiah struggles with very human emotions and struggles against the coming disaster, desiring any evidence of a return to the way things could have been. Yet the falsehood of the people, which begins at the top with the prophets and the priests, has set them on a course that is moving away from God. Over and over we hear God saying, turn, return, repent but the people are charging towards their own destiny as a horse charging in battle. Even the law has been corrupted by the scribes, whether it is by their interpretation of it or their actual recording of it we do not know, but this is a world where only a select few were literate and they were the interpreters of God’s will to the people.

Two things that caught my attention reading through this, one is the reference to the fig tree, in verse 13, that neither puts our figs and even its leaves are withered. I am becoming more and more convinced of the influence of Jeremiah’s imagery on the New Testament, and in Mark 11(as well as Matthew) we encounter Jesus encountering a fig tree with no fruit, cursing it and it withers-which is a direct allusion to the temple. In earlier posts I have also talked about the vine/vineyard imagery. Both figs and grapes are common parts of the agricultural life of the people in Judah. The other image is the transition to snakes in verse 17, which may also point back to Numbers 21 where the Lord sent snakes among the people in their journey in the wilderness and Moses eventually was commanded to make a bronze serpent that the people could look upon and live.

God continues to agonize over the judgment that is coming upon God’s chosen people. If there was some way to restore the relationship without the removing of God’s protection and the harsh reality of the coming Babylonian invasion God seems open to it, but the direction of the people has moved away from God’s pursuit, and soon God’s people will also join in the grieving.

Jeremiah 8: 18-9:1
18 My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.
19 Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land:
“Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”
(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”)
20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
21 For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
9:1 O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!
Who is doing the weeping here, is it the prophet or is it God, or perhaps it is both. The prophet is so closely tied into God’s emotions and yet these are his people too. There is a heartsick God and a heartsick prophet who are mourning for the people whose path is taking them to a place where they will experience hurt and destruction. It is like the parent watching a child go down a path that they know will cause them pain but no words they say will turn them away, or it is like the person who loves the addict but has to allow them to follow the path they are on until they are ready to receive treatment not as a punishment but as a new opportunity. The old African American spiritual points to the reality of a the region of Gilead, East of the Jordan, being famous for a balm, an aromatic resin famous for its properties of easing pain and covering the smell of a festering wound:

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 2006)

But in contrast to not only the words in the song and the hopeful nature, Jeremiah and God see no healing, even in Gilead. There is no prescription medication or course of treatment that will ease the pain of what is to come.

The City Becomes a Desolation: Jeremiah 7:27-8:3

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Jeremiah 7: 27-8:3

²⁷ So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. ²⁸ You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

²⁹ Cut off your hair and throw it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights,
for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation that provoked his wrath.

³⁰ For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the LORD; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. ³¹ And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire– which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. ³² Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter: for they will bury in Topheth until there is no more room.³³ The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the animals of the earth; and no one will frighten them away. ³⁴ And I will bring to an end the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for the land shall become a waste.

8:1 At that time, says the LORD, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs; ² and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they have inquired of and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground. ³ Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says the LORD of hosts.

It has been a little while since I’ve posted anything on Jeremiah. This has been sitting as a draft for a couple months and it was going to be posted the day the tornadoes went through Moore, Shawnee and Newcastle Oklahoma and I didn’t want any association with the title and what happened there. (Also as an excuse my son who had some of my resources on my e-reader with him while he was in Oklahoma for the first part of the summer) but recently I’ve had a couple events that have encouraged me to get back to Jeremiah, so here you go.

We return to the language of horror and disgust precisely to attempt to get past the walls of resistance that the people have put up around them. Are the people practicing child sacrifice, we will never know, but to the Jewish mind this is the most revolting of the practices of the world around them. A time when death is so prevalent that there is no longer the ability to separate the dead from the living because there are no places left to bury the dead. Death is so prevalent that it invades into the everyday experience of the people and they cannot help but be defiled by the presence of death in their midst. The dead are left in the open for the crows and wild animals to consume, and the wild animals have the run of the land—no one is there to stop them. This is the image of a slaughter. There is no more joy, no more happiness, no more celebration, it is the ending of the world as they know it.

Even kings and priests and officials are not exempt from the sacrilege. Their honored bones are laid upon the ground, prophets have no honor, and they are valued as crap. What remains is the image of the boneyard of Ezekiel 37 where no life seems possible. The world where death and defilement has been kept at bay is suddenly turned upside down and death is everywhere around.

The Prophet Who Hears and The People Who Don’t: Jeremiah 7: 16-26

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Jeremiah 7: 16-26

¹⁶ As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. ¹⁷ Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸ The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. ¹⁹ Is it I whom they provoke? says the LORD. Is it not themselves, to their own hurt? ²⁰ Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: My anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on human beings and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.

²¹ Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. ²² For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. ²³ But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” ²⁴ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. ²⁵ From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; ²⁶ yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.

Now the audience shifts from Jeremiah speaking to those who listen at the temple gate to God speaking to Jeremiah. Jeremiah seems to have become the one who God can speak to when everyone else has stopped listening and now God tells Jeremiah not to intercede for the people anymore. God is tired of listening, God is at the point of giving up. God is tired of being patient, of waiting for the people to return. On the one hand we see a religious practice within the families that are putting a lot of effort into worshiping other gods as a household, on the other hand the cultic practice of the temple is lifted up as something that replaced obedience. Sacrifices and religious practice have replaced the central command to hear and listen.

The prophetic and the priestly voice are in direct contest to determine who will speak for God. Often this is the case, the priestly voice is the voice of the settled people where the prophetic is calling people back to obedience. The priestly voice is focused on maintaining an institution, while the prophetic is concerned with faithfulness to their calling. There is always the temptation within a priestly role to tell people what they want to hear, while prophets tend to say the things nobody wants to hear. Ideally an individual would be able to fulfill both callings, but the reality is that both find themselves in tension with one another.

Prophets are rarely appreciated in their own time and in their own lifetime, and sometimes even when they are recognized they are also de-fanged. For example, with Martin Luther King, Jr. we have all become familiar with his ‘I have a dream speech’ but much of his criticism of the war in Vietnam or economic injustices have been muted under the remembrance of him purely as a person who advocated for greater inclusivity of people of all races. I think something similar has happened with Jeremiah, select portions of Jeremiah have made it into the various lectionary systems and Jeremiah doesn’t have the memorable stories of Daniel or Jonah and so his protest is included, he is honored and his protest is forgotten.

Railing Against the Temple: Jeremiah 7:1-15

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Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple by El Greco (1600)

Jeremiah 7:1-15

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ² Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship the LORD. ³ Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. ⁴ Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.”

⁵ For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, ⁶ if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, ⁷ then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.

⁸ Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. ⁹ Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known,

¹⁰ and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”– only to go on doing all these abominations? ¹¹ Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the LORD. ¹² Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. ¹³ And now, because you have done all these things, says the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, ¹⁴ therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. ¹⁵ And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim.

Jeremiah 7:1-8:3 is generally thought of by scholars as Jeremiah’s temple sermon, it breaks from the form of poetry in 4-6 and places Jeremiah at the gate of the temple proclaiming against the temple authority. Long before Karl Marx and other modern philosophers talked about religion serving to legitimate the dominant class the prophets railed against the priestly and monarchical authorities propping up their own positions with claims of divine right. To use the language of Liberation theologians God is exercising a preferential option for the poor and oppressed (if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan and the widow-these are those without a method of support in the society) and God is not willing to be in competition with other gods-idolatry and injustice are the two rallying cries of the prophet. Specifically appealing to the ten commandments as a central part of the covenant that the people are to live out of and contrasting that to the appearance of trusting in the temple and land rather than the Lord.

Jesus also had significant issues with the temple establishment in his own day, and it is not by chance that Jesus quotes Jeremiah 7:11 when he comes into the temple and throws out the moneychangers. Often there is a focus on the moneychangers, but if you read the context of this within Matthew, Mark and to a lesser extent Luke you can see that the issue is with the temple establishment in general. There is always the danger of any religion becoming a way of authorizing the status quo and it is the prophets who come and upset and challenge this. God has strong words for the temple authority in Jeremiah’s and Jesus’ time and in both cases that temple would be in ruins in the generation that followed.

The position taken by Jeremiah would be viewed as treason by the state, it would be challenging the ideological underpinnings of the religious and the monarchical authorities, it calls people not to trust in the temple. It attempts to show the people that the temple and the sacrifices they offer cannot cover up a destructive way of life that is out of alignment with God’s covenant with them. In the gate of the temple Jeremiah is called to challenge the foundations of the way of life of the people and God once again cries out for the people to return to the covenant so once again God may dwell in their midst.

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular