CHAPTER 7
After six chapters of almost entirely poetic verse, we get
this one, which is almost all prose.
It’s more denouncing.
Jeremiah apparently stands at the temple gate and tells everyone to get
bent. More or less, yeah, that’s what
he does. He tells them that if they
think they can ignore God and then get away with it with some thoughtless
sacrifice, they’ll learn the hard way just how wrong you are. God will cast them out of his sight.
CHAPTER 8
More of the same.
People continue to misbehave, and God will punish them like only God
can. “Death will be preferred to life
by all the survivors of this wicked people who remain in any of the places to
which I banish them.” Bummer.
Also – that isn’t really true. The banished Jews won’t find themselves yearning for death, but
yearning for forgiveness. But Jeremiah
is always a real Debbie Downer.
He gets off a few good lines here. God is befuddled with how the Hebrew keep violating his ways,
saying, “Even the stork in the sky knows its seasons.” Heh.
Even birds know when to fly south and north – why don’t these guys know
when to turn to the Lord? (To be fair,
they’re always supposed to turn to the Lord.
Anytime they don’t is denounced.
Stocks don’t have to fly the same way all of the time). Jeremiah does say that no one is really good
in Jerusalem and how all the sacrifices are hypocritical – but that just sounds
a little hysterical when you get down to it.
At the end of the chapter, Jeremiah states how bad he feels
for the doom that’s coming. He says,
“My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” I don’t doubt his genuine grief in his mind – but it’s just that:
in his mind more than his heart. He
seems to be willing to think of people as good on in an abstract sense. He really gets his passions burning when he
denounces them as wrong. He doesn’t
like people that much; maybe the concept of people – but not the actual flesh
and blood ones before him. They sin too
much. He doesn’t like the notion of the
people suffering their fate, but he really doesn’t like seeing people earning
it.
Also, I get a bit of a kick out of hearing Jeremiah say, “My
joy is gone.” My, that’s too bad – he’s
normally such a ray of sunshine, too.
CHAPTER 9
The Cassandra of the Bible gives more generalized slander
towards the Hebrew. They suck. They all suck. Every. Last.
Fucking. One. Jeremiah makes
this clear, saying, “Be on your guard, everyone against his neighbor, put no
trust in any brother. Every brother imitates Jacob, the supplanter, every
neighbor is guilty of slander. Each one
deceives the other, no one speaks the truth.”
Wow! No
exceptions! Me thinks the prophet doth
curse too much. Also, he even works in
a dig at Jacob, for stealing Esau’s birthright. We haven’t heard that one before; at least not since Esau
himself.
So God will destroy the Hebrew. Because “they have abandoned my law.” By this time, we’re passed the reign of Josiah, and the following
kings have abandoned his religious reforms.
That, of course, was centered on the book of Deuteronomy, which Jeremiah
may have written and which his dad may have presented to Josiah. So no wonder Jeremiah is so cheesed at the
course of the people. That explains why
he proclaims that the Lord now says, “I will turn Jerusalem into a heap of
ruins, a haunt of jackals. The cities
of Judah I will make a waste where no one dwells.”
In part it’s because of theological differences. He thinks the people really abandoned the
Lord. But there is a personal grudge in
this as well. That’s his reform
movement they’ve tossed on the ash heap.
Jeremiah goes so far as to proclaim, “Corpses shall fall
like dung in the open field.” Gross,
Jeremiah – really gross. Did you have
to compare people to corpses? What
would Dale Carnegie say?
CHAPTER 10
This attacks idolatry.
Yeah, it’s still bad.
Also, Jeremiah finds a new favorite insult: stupid. (For those in sabermetric circles, let me
restate my belief that Jeremiah is the MGL of the Bible). Jeremiah says, “Everyone is too stupid to
know” and then later adds, “How stupid are the shepherds.”
In many ways, that’s the worst insult you can give someone
in the Bible. Hey, we expect there to
be sinners and backsliders and screw ups?
But stupid? Ever since Jacob
back in Genesis, God has favored the smart and savvy – even if they are morally
questionable, like Jacob. We have
entire books of the Bible that do little more than laud having wisdom. Calling people morons – that’s the cheapest
shot in the Bible.
CHAPTER 11
This is mostly stuff we’ve already heard: be faithful to the
Lord or else, it takes more than just sacrifices to appease the Lord, etc.
But the end part is a little different. An event is alluded to here, without quite
being spelled out. Apparently, there
was a plot to kill Jeremiah. That isn’t
terribly surprising, given that he claims the Hebrew are a bunch of lying,
deceitful, stupid, lustful, whorish camels who deserve God’s wrath for what
they’ve done. I’m not trying to defend
any conspirators – I’m just noting that yeah, I can see why this is the prophet
people want to kill.
He is able to escape them, though. Yeah, otherwise the next 41 chapters would all be funeral
arrangements.
CHAPTER 12
This one has an unexpected start. Oh sure, Jeremiah is laying into someone again – but this time
it’s God. Huh. That’s a new direction. He sounds positively Job-ain as he declares
to the Lord, “I must lay out the case against you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper, why do all the
treacherous live in contentment? You
planted them, they have taken root.
They flourish and bear fruit as well.”
Yeah, that’s Job.
The Bible doesn’t give us a clean answer, either. Again – it’s like Job. But this is unexpected. Well, let’s think for a second. This was the first chapter I read one day –
and then I looked back at the last chapter from the day before. Right – this
comes right after a plot to kill Jeremiah.
Previously, Jeremiah had called people lusty camels and they just took
it. Now they want to knife Jeremiah.
So Jeremiah fells like Job – adrift and abandoned. He’s convinced of his righteousness because
he knows he’s a prophet for the Lord.
But the bad guys are the popular ones, and they want to kill him. What’s up with that, Lord?
However, Jeremiah isn’t Job. When Job has a problem with
someone, he argues with them. Jeremiah
wants God to kill them: “Pick them out like sheep for the butcher, set them
apart fro the day of slaughter.” To be
fair, Job just had lousy friends.
Jeremiah has people who want him dead. (Then again, death itself might
be preferable to hanging out with Job’s “friends.”)
God replies, but doesn’t really respond specifically to what
Jeremiah said. He pledges he’ll abandon
the Hebrew to their fate, and turn their lands into a devastated
wilderness. So I guess the bad guys
will get there.
One other notable part I should note in passing. Jeremiah complains to God of the people in
Judah: “You are upon their lips, but far from their thoughts.” This is part of a key theme of the
prophets. It isn’t enough to do the
rituals. You must be doing them for the
right reasons. Moral righteousness
matters, folks.
CHAPTER 13
This is mostly another chapter denouncing the Hebrew as a
bunch of worthless rotters. In fact, in the one really original part, God wants
Jeremiah to demonstrate that they are literally worthless rotters.
God tells Jeremiah to get a loincloth and wear it without
putting it in water. (I guess you’re
not supposed to do that, given what happens to this loincloth). Then Jeremiah is to hide it away in the
wilderness for a time and go back and find it.
OK, Jeremiah does all this. When
he comes back to it, the loincloth, “was rotted, good for nothing!” God tells him that’s the point – now tell
all the Hebrew that this is what they are.
It’s like God is trying to get Jeremiah beaten up or
something.
Click here for the next bunch of chapters.
Click here for the next bunch of chapters.
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