CHAPTER 36
We get some weird alternating back-and-forth here. Every
other chapter lately has been part of the main narrative. Chapter 32 had a siege in Jerusalem, 34 had
the siege still going on, and now back in Chapter 36 we’re back at it.
The star of this chapter is Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch. Well, star is probably too strong, but he is
a key player. His main duty is to
transcribe Jeremiah’s writings. OK, that
means Jeremiah is likely illiterate.
That isn’t too surprising given the era – but actually it is a little
surprising. This man is the son of a priest, after all. But he has Baruch write down all his
prophecies instead of doing it himself.
He wants Baruch to write them down and read them by the
temple. You see, Jeremiah can’t do it
himself. He’s been banned from the
temple. That isn’t terribly surprising
if you’ve been following along so far.
Baruch does it, reading them from a place near the temple (within
shouting distance, quite literally). The
place belongs to a man named Gemariah, whose father Shaphan had been the
secretary of state under Josiah. There
is the old Josiah connection again. He
was the reformer king when Deuteronomy was “uncovered” (re: written) and
Jeremiah is a big proponent of the laws of Dueteronomy.
Baruch is asked about his scroll, and acknowledges that he
transcribed it all from Jeremiah. Once
he says that, people advice him to go into hiding, and he does so (as does
Jeremiah). The scroll of Jeremiah’s
prophecies – essentially, the first draft of this book I’m reading – is given
to the king. He has it all read to
him. Every so often, the king cuts a
piece off of it and throws it in the fire.
No, he isn’t a fan. That isn’t
too surprising. After all, he’s on the
verge of having his kingdom destroyed by Babylon, and here is Jeremiah saying
that God wills Babylon to take Jerusalem to punish the Jews.
The king is so offended he orders Jeremiah and Baruch
arrested. But it’s too late – they’ve
gone into hiding. While in hiding, they hear their scroll has been
destroyed. Well then, that means they’ll
have to write it all over again. And so
they do.
I’ll say this much for Jeremiah. While he clearly isn’t the most pleasant of
all prophets, he certainly has the courage of his convictions. Sure, Moses had to deal with problems, too,
but back then God would always help out with miracles. Jeremiah is out there on his own, facing down
his critics with nothing more than his own convictions. But he keeps rising up, despite his own internal
qualms about it.
CHAPTER 37
With Jerusalem struggling to hold out, Jeremiah continues to
issue his depressing prophecies. He’s
asked by the powers that be to ask God for help. They don’t get the answer they like. Jeremiah let’s them know that the news from
God hasn’t changed – they are doomed and may as well give up. They didn’t like being insulted by Jeremiah
when things were going well, but this is too much.
Jeremiah goes to his native territory of Benjamin to do some
business dealings about land (it’s a call back to the land stuff mentioned in
Chapter 32). However, he’s picked up by
authorities who find the whole thing rather suspicious – and they have a
point. Here is Jeremiah, the man who
consuls them to surrender to the enemy – trying to skate out of town. Oh, you say you’re doing business dealings in
the land of Benjamin! BAH! They don’t believe them. They thing he’s defecting. It’s a reasonable guess, given how little
loyalty Jeremiah has shown to the state. (I don’t really doubt Jeremiah, as he
consistently is willing to say things that put himself in harm’s way).
Please note, the people putting him under arrest are the
princes – the same guys who saved him from being lynched in Chapter 26. They were willing to defend him when his
prophecies were just a matter of theology, but now Jerusalem itself is imperiled. They throw him in the dungeon. When he’s taken out, he repeats his previous
statements – Babylon will win because God wants them to.
Jeremiah then says the most naïve thing in the book, perhaps
in the Bible. He tells the king: “How
have I wronged you or your officials, or this people that you should put me in
prison?” Seriously, Jeremiah? You don’t get it? The nation is about to collapse and you’re
saying “Good! We deserve it!” C’mon!
Still, on points Jeremiah is right – he is an established prophet and
precedent says that prophets should be given some leeway. He is taken out of the prison and held in
court. Essentially, he’s under house
arrest. Really, he’s been treated a lot
nicer than I would’ve expected.
CHAPTER 38
Jeremiah’s treatment worsens as the war goes worse. This chapter is as close as Jeremiah comes to
death; and this is a prophet with more than his share of close shaves.
The prophet sticks to his approach, and even tells people at
the court that everyone will die except those who willingly surrender to the
outside army. Man, that’s borderline
treason. It’s loyal to God, but not to
the state. Actually, this highlights
something interesting about the modern world.
The most religious people are often the biggest backers of the
regime. Not always, but by and large you
find a strong streak of churchmen backing up established order. Here in America, the religious are often the
most self-consciously patriotic.
Jeremiah is an oddity: he’s fully loyal to God, but shows essentially no
loyalty to his land.
The princes – again, the people who saved his ass in Chapter
26 – are the ones most irate at him.
They tell the king that Jeremiah is weakening the resolve of the
people. It’s impossible to argue against
that. Jeremiah is doing just that.
The king has no interest in defending the troublesome
prophet. He puts Jeremiah in their hands
and they throw him in a cistern in the royal palace. (checks dictionary). Ah, they put him in a tank to store
water. Except this tank has no water in
it. It has just mud and Jeremiah sinks
into the mud. In a bleak book, this is a
new low.
Fortunately for him, some guys still take seriously the
notion that he’s a prophet of God. They
must be other survivors supporters of the Josiah-era reforms. The main guy is Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian,
and he intercedes with the king to get Jeremiah taken out of the cistern before
he dies.
So Jeremiah survives, and shortly afterwards the king asks
Jeremiah for some help. Wait a second,
says Jeremiah, how do I know you won’t have me killed if you tell me what the
Lord is thinking? The guy swears he
won’t be put to death. Jeremiah then
gives the king the same bad news as before: Jeremiah is doomed and the only way
to save himself is to surrender.
The king keeps his word and even comes up with a cover
story. If anyone asks, Jeremiah is to
say that he asked to be not sent back to his earlier prison sentence. The princes ask, and Jeremiah gives the stock
answer. What is interesting here is that
the king’s resolve is clearly crumbling.
We’re also told that they’re running out of break for everyone, so it is
nearing the end.
I wonder what the source for the two paragraphs is. We’ll soon see that the king isn’t going to
last much longer (spoiler!) so either Jeremiah told the story (possible) or it
was invented and later inserted (also possible). It makes it look like even the King will
still look to Jeremiah and his moral authority.
Then again, it is believable that as things get desperate the king would
turn to anyone for advice, even the gloomiest guy that ever spoke with God.
CHAPTER 39
Jerusalem falls. So
it falls before the leaders can kill Jeremiah.
The leaders make a break for it.
The king is captured, and forced to watch as his sons are killed in
front of him. Then his yes are gouged
out and he’s brought back in chains to Babylon.
He does survive, but that’s a hell of way to survive. The princes also make a break for it, and are
killed.
Jeremiah is released from custody put under the care of
Gedaliah, who is given control of the land by the Babylonians. Jeremiah gives one of his rare good sermons,
praising Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian who saved Jeremiah from the cistern.
CHAPTER 40
This is just a chapter of plot points. Babylon still has the land, and Gedaliah is
their appointed governor. Jeremiah
consuls the people to serve their new overlords, but naturally not everyone is
on board. The chapter ends with the
readers learning that a man named Ishmael is taking steps to kill Gedaliah.
CHAPTER 41
And so Ishmael kills Gedaliah. This is bad news. The Hebrew just lost a war to Babylon, and
now they kill the Babylonian-appointed governor. Do Ishmael and friends have a plan on what to
do next?
Nope. They really
don’t. They hightail it out of the old
Promised Land and escape back to Egypt.
This is the punishment Moses warned about at the end of
Deuteronomy. If they can’t fulfill God’s
laws, he’ll send them back to Egypt where they’ll beg to be enslaved, but no
one will buy. It’s impressive how the
old prophecy of Moses is being so eerily fulfilled. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. The common way for Biblical scholar belief is
that Deuteronomy was first written during the reign of Isaiah and then later
modified. The modifications came around
here. These are all evidence on behalf
of Jeremiah being the author of Deuteronomy.
He’s the right man in the right place at the right time with the right
message. If it wasn’t him, it was one of
the very few people that stood by him for all of these disastrous years.
(Well, technically speaking it would be Baruch, Jeremiah’s
scribe that wrote it, but it’s largely the same thing).
CHAPTER 42
This is a strange chapter.
On the face of it, there is nothing strange about it. This is just a continuation of the narrative
of the last several chapters. But the
motivations and actions of the characters are so odd.
It reads a little like a later addition to the chapter, in
part because it goes back in time a bit.
Last chapter ended with everyone running away to Egypt. But here, that hasn’t happened yet. Instead, Ishmael and friends ask Jeremiah for
some advice. Would you kindly ask God
for some help? Pray for us and tell us
what to do, and we promise we’ll do whatever he says.
So Jeremiah praises for them to God and waits for the
All-Mighty’s response. In a stunner, the
news comes back positive. God repents
his treatment of the Hebrew (!!) and says that if Ishmael and friends decide to
stick around, God will look after them.
Wow – just the prophecy the Hebrew have long been looking for from
Jeremiah! Boy, they will be really
motivated to defend their lands now, right?
Nope. They
immediately tell Jeremiah to forget that.
We’re getting out of here.
Wait – what? Huh? What the hell is going on? As near as I can tell, they asked Jeremiah to
talk to God, hoping/expecting that he’ll report back more gloomy tidings. Then Ishmael can run away with divine
sanctification. He’s bitten off more
than he can chew, has only belatedly realized that and is looking for Jeremiah
to provide him an escape hatch. Only he
doesn’t get it, so he’ll run away.
That’s one theory.
The other theory is that this chapter is a later
addition. Both are reasonable theories,
but my hunch is that it’s the latter. I
say that because if this were part of the original story, it would flow
better. Like I said, this story with its
odd motivations comes after the previous chapter ended with everyone running
away to Egypt.
Why add in this story later on? Look at how it makes everyone look. The Hebrew that fled are now even worse than
they were before. Even when God takes
pity on them, they still blow him off.
And it just adds to the overall rejected trajectory of Jeremiah.
Oh, and God sure is cheesed.
Jeremiah reports to them that for ignoring God yet again, the Lord is
now doubly decided to lay into them.
“You shall become a malediction and “a horror, a curse and a reproach,
and you shall never see this place again.”
Guys, go fuck yourself.
Sincerely, God.
CHAPTER 43
This just continues Chapter 42. When Jeremiah finishes laying into them, they
respond like you’d expect: “You lie.”
They accuse Jeremiah of setting them up to be slaughtered. And again, based on Jeremiah’s track record,
I don’t totally fault them for wondering that. After all, he’s long said that
God will have his revenge on them, and may God is double dealing them to make
it happened. I don’t totally fault them
for doubting Jeremiah, but they are wrong to do so. Jeremiah may not be loyal to Judah, but he’ll
always report his prophecies honestly, no matter what the personal cost. If his story has shown anything, it’s shown
that.
They all go to Egypt, and Jeremiah goes with. God tells him to put up some stones by the Pharaoh’s
Temple, saying that the Babylonians will build a throne to themselves
there.
CHAPTER 44
We’re nearly the end of the Jeremiah stories. Chapter 45 is just a brief blurb, and the
last seven chapters are essentially an appendix of various prophecies about
various nations. This is by and large
our last big one on Jeremiah and the Hebrew.
They’re all in Egypt now.
I guess it would be at least a moral victory for Jeremiah if the Hebrew
were at least chastised by their loss of land.
You’d think that might be the case.
After all, those taken to Babylon will feel that way, redouble their
efforts at being loyal to God and come away with their religious convictions
strengthened.
Well, that maybe what’s going on in Babylon, but it’s a very
different story for Jeremiah in Egypt.
They are sacrificing to other gods, and openly flouting Jeremiah. Their rationale for doing so is rather
interesting, too. They note how in the
good old days, they’d sacrifice to the Goddess of Heaven. But then they were told to switch it up and
sacrifice to God – and look what good it did them? So the Goddess of Heaven it is.
Jeremiah urges them to hear the word of the Lord, but he’s
always really sucked at that. He hasn’t
gotten a single person to move closer to God.
By those standards, he’s a miserable failure of a prophet. So he just curses them. They want God to go fuck himself? Then they can go fuck themselves. It’s interesting: here Jeremiah is cursing
them out. And they respond in the most
crippling way of all: they do try to lynch him, they do throw him in any
cistern. They are just indifferent. Want to talk about God, Jeremiah? Go for it.
No ones cares.
Why is this crowd so very different than the faithful in
Babylon? I have one main theory. The ones going off to Babylon are the
leaders, whereas these are mostly poor peasants. The Babylon crowd have a lot more invested in
the official religions because they are the ones in charge of it (and the
literate ones who can actually read it).
This Goddess of Heaven jazz is a folk religion. It’s not sanctioned by scripture, but just
believed by commoners in their day-to-day life.
They didn’t have to start praying to the official God until near the end
when thinks were going bad. Since things
kept going bad when they switched to him, they consider him to be a failed
God. So they’re back with their Goddess
of Heaven.
Here’s another theory on why the Egypt crowd drifts away: the guy pushing them toward God is Jeremiah. While he is devout and courageous, he’s alienated virtually every single person he’s ever met, save a few like his trusty scribe, Baruch. In that respect it’s probably for the best for the Babylonian crowd that Jeremiah isn’t around them.
It’s probably a combination of reasons why the exiles in
Egypt fall away while those in Babylon stay true; but probably more of the
former than the latter.
CHAPTER 45
This is just five verses long. It’s just Jeremiah having Baruch put words on
a scroll. Most notably, we get a final
prophecy from God to Jeremiah: “What I have built, I have tearing down; what I
have planted, I am uprooting: all this land.
And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them! I am bringing evil on all flesh – oracle of
the Lord – but I will grant you your life as spoils of war, wherever you may
go.”
That’s a fittingly downbeat endnote. Don’t seek great things for yourself! God will let Jeremiah live, but that’s about it.
Oh, there are seven more chapters, but they are disembodied
from the main narrative. Essentially,
we’re leaving our boy Jeremiah on a note that amounts to: well, the good news
is God will let you live. But that’s
about it.
Click here for the final chapters in Jeremiah.
Click here for the final chapters in Jeremiah.
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