Ezekiel: Chapters 8 to 15

Click here for the opening of Ezekiel.

CHAPTER 8

Time for the trippy side of Ezekiel to come out.  We get a charming introduction – “I was sitting in my house” – hey, a nice personal touch!  It’s not really describing the scene much, but you rarely get first person in the Bible at all.

Anyhow, Ezekiel gets his mind blown by another vision.  A vision of a man as brilliant as polished bronze comes to Ezekiel and transports Ezekiel to the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.  While there, Ezekiel sees all manner of abominations.  Ezekiel is horrified at the sights – and especially in this place!  Clearly, people deserve the punishment coming to them soon.

CHAPTER 9

The vision continues, with God saying that the abominators will be slaughtered. Bummer.  Then Ezekiel – unlike Jeremiah, ever – pleads with God to not do this.  No dice, says God.  Their sins are too great.

This is a vision that could only come from someone in Babylon.  After all, if he were still there, plenty could deny it.  But who in Babylon can say that God transported them to Jerusalem to see what was going on?  

Again, though, this is entirely outside all prophetic tradition for the Hebrew.  That people would accept Ezekiel’s astonishing claims despite his breaking with precedent and his rather, uh, unorthodox behavior is a sign of how desperate they were for some contact with the Lord.  Also, he’d continue to get support later on because he’s saying that Jerusalem will fall – and it does.  Like Jeremiah, he helps explain the calamity before it happens, so people can more easier adjust their theology instead of entirely abandoning their God (as the lost 10 tribes did) when things fall apart on them. 

CHAPTER 10

The vision continues, and Ezekiel learns what the memorable vision from Chapter 1 was.  It was a cherubim.  They had some cherubims in the Holiest of Holies in the old Temple, two with their wings stretched out, by the Ark of the Lord.  But I can’t imagine that they looked much like Ezekiel’s memorable depiction of the four-headed whatever.

CHAPTER 11

God continues talking to Ezekiel.  He tells the prophet that the people of Jerusalem will be destroyed and devastated because of the abominations that Ezekiel saw there during this odd journey/vision. 

Ezekiel begins telling people this prophecy, and someone named Pelatiah drops dead right in front of Ezekiel.  However, this is still in the vision, not real life.  So it’s not a real death.  It’s just meant to symbolize what will happen to Jerusalem. 

But there will be a happy ending. God will renew his oath to the Hebrew and the survivors will be allowed to return at some point. Finally, the vision ends, and Ezekiel begins to tell everyone what he saw.  If I were one of the Hebrew, I’d have trouble believing him.   Jeremiah might’ve come off like a misanthrope, but Ezekiel comes off like a whacko.

CHAPTER 12

Now that he’s fully back from his vision, Ezekiel does what he does best – engage in some showmanship.  God tells him to go around with a packed bag, as if he’s going of to exile.  Also, at night he is to dig a hole through the wall of where he is living.  The packed bag represents the Hebrew going off to exile.  I don’t quite get the dug hole, but it’s related somehow. 

It doesn’t go too well.  People hear his bleak prophecies and think he is wrong.  Yeah, that isn’t too surprising.  People believe what they want to believe.  Besides, how can they tell that his guy is a true prophet, or just some crazy guy who eats cow manure?

Also, one thing I noticed in this chapter, Ezekiel has his own favorite phrase.  Just as Isaiah had “Lord of hosts” and Jeremiah had “oracle of the Lord” so does Ezekiel have a signature phrase: son of man.

Pretty much every time God goes to talk to him, he begins off by saying “Son of man.”  I haven’t noticed much of it until now, but God drops, “son of man” on Ezekiel six times.  I like this phrase.  It just sounds nice and separates us from God.  Ezekiel and Isaiah both have nice signature phrases, but Jeremiah’s “oracle of the Lord” lags behind.

CHAPTER 13

This is mostly a chapter of Ezekiel doing an imitation of Jeremiah.  Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel has to contend with a rival pact of prophets.  Like Jeremiah, the rivals foretell happy tidings.  Jerusalem won’t fall!  All is well!  Remain calm!  People like hearing them because it’s what they want to hear.

But Ezekiel is critical, so people don’t like him as much.  He complains of his rivals, “They have led my people astray, saying, `Peace!’ when there is no peace, and when a wall is built, they cover it with whitewash.”  Oh, so that’s where the phrase “to whitewash” comes from (and yes, he does use it repeatedly in this section).  Huh.  So we get that from the Bible, too.  For the most part Ezekiel doesn’t have nearly as good a way with words as Jeremiah or Isaiah, but I’ll give him that one.

He also attacks witches.  So apparently they had witches then.

CHAPTER 14

The first half of this chapter if fairly generic, boilerplate Bible stuff.  Idolatry: it’s bad.  Just say no to idolatry, got that kids?   Good.

The second half is a little better, as Ezekiel tells everyone about the need for a just cause, and he namedrops three greats to look up to: Noah, Job, and Daniel.  Wait – Daniel?  He hasn’t even shown up yet.  In fact, from what I know he’s late exile and Ezekiel is still early exile.  So how can Ezekiel mention Daniel?  (In fact, scholars believe that Daniel was written centuries later, so that really sounds off).  Well, the footnotes can explain this one.  There was a popular heroic figure in the Near East called Daniel.  So the Bible’s Daniel isn’t the first Daniel.  I guess.  

Anyway, that’s a pretty eclectic mix – Noah, Job, and this Daniel person.  If nothing else, it means the Book of Job should’ve been written before the exile began.

Oh, and at the end of the chapter, something somewhat famous happens – we meet the Four Horsemen!  Well, they aren’t the four horsemen.  Not yet anyway.  But God does say, “Even though I send against Jerusalem my four evil punishments – sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague – “ Wait, let’s end the quote there.  War, famine, disease – those are three of the Four Horsemen.  This has beasts, not death, but it is very similar.  I think the Four Horsemen come from the end of the New Testament and the Book of Revelations.  Well, that author was likely cribbing from Ezekiel.  (That makes sense.  Ezekiel is our most visionary Old Testament figure and Revelations is the most visionary New Testament book).  He just shifts wild beasts to death.  Admittedly death sounds more imposing, but it’s also a bit redundant of the others.  From a logical point of view, Ezekiel holds up better.  (Looks at the last sentence).  Wow – there is something I never expected to write!

CHAPTER 15

This chapter is a short one.  It’s also poetry, the first poetry in all of Ezekiel so far.  (This is very different from the poetry-heavy Jeremiah and Isaiah). 

But I don’t quite get the poem.  It’s a parable of the vine.  Apparently, there is some wood in a vine (really?  I had no idea) and it makes good kindling.  So will it be with the people of Jerusalem.  OK, I guess it makes sense.  But talking about wood in a vine threw me.   I guess that’s my ignorance of vines showing.  I’m sure it makes more sense back in the day.  People lived closer to nature then.  They had more experience then I do with things like vines.

Click here for the next part of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel: Chapters 1 to 7

Click here for the previous entry, the Book of Baruch:

CHAPTER 1

The last big ass book of the Old Testament begins in rather spectacular fashion.  We’re with Ezekiel, a priest taken to Babylon after the loss of independence (but before the full destruction of Jerusalem) and the word of the Lord comes to him.

Well, the Bible says it’s the word of the Lord, but its really more the vision of the Lord.  For a vision is just what Ezekiel gets.  Something trippy, psychedelic, and completely unlike anything we’ve seen so far in the Bible.

Ezekiel is standing there when a great storm wind arose, and out of it came a big cloud, with a creature coming out of it.  It was a multi-headed beast, with four faces on each head.  Each beast had a human head, an ox head, a lion head, and an eagle head.  Oh, and it had hooves like a bull.  Some wheels came out with it and all the creatures moved together, always in the same direction.

What.  The.  Fuck? 

We’ve had a bunch of prophets so far, but you rarely ever get visions.  Jacob had his vision of a ladder – but wait, that was a dream.  You almost never get actual visions.  God is too disembodied, too removed from nature to make him a God of visionaries.  In that regard, Ezekiel truly is an original.  With the multiple heads, it sounds more like a long lost Hindu god, with their multiple limbs sometimes. 

The creature approaches Ezekiel, and that’s where our intro chapter ends. OK, it has my attention.

CHAPTER 2

A voice speaks from the creature to command Ezekiel into his calling as prophet.  He thus becomes the first person called to prophecy outside the Promised Land since the very early days. 

The message is pretty generic here (it’s a short chapter – 10 verses).  But essentially, Ezekiel is to tell everyone God’s ways, and don’t worry if they don’t sound receptive to the message.

CHAPTER 3

Ezekiel is given a scroll.  It’s a scroll for him to eat.  Wait – what?  A scroll to eat?  This creature doesn’t quite understand how scrolls work, now does he?  The point is to digest the information on the scroll – literally and figuratively – and then Ezekiel will be able to tell people God’s ways.  It’s an interesting idea, but it just sounds odd.  Eat a scroll?  He’s God – couldn’t he put the message in some bread or something?  Where are fortune cookies when you need them?

Ezekiel is given more information on his mission.  He is to be a guide and warner to the people.  If he warns them against evil and they do evil anyway, then that’s on them and they’ll be punished by God, but Ezekiel won’t.  But if he doesn’t warn them from evil and they do it, then it’s on Ezekiel.  So talk, dummy.  On the other hand, he can also guide people to salvation and if he does that he and they will both be rewarded.  So he sounds sunnier than Jeremiah.  It sounds like a reasonable offer God is making. It’s surely a better deal than the one Jeremiah had, where he had to keep haranguing people until they wanted to kill him and no good came to anyone for it.

The chapter ends on an odd note, as God says Ezekiel should be mute – unless, that is, God tells him something to say.  I can see how that would make his prophecies more effective, but that would be quite the cost to never be able to speak your own thoughts.

That ends the opening chapters where we get Ezekiel’s calling.  We get nothing like this in Isaiah or Jeremiah.  Isaiah just has prophecies to begin with – he’s much less clear as an individual than Jeremiah or Ezekiel.  Jeremiah has a wee bit of biographical info, but by the second chapter he’s in his first tirade, calling people a bunch of lust-fueled camels. 

What do we know of Ezekiel?  Well, I guess he’s our visual learner.  He learns by digesting info when backed up by spectacular images.  He’s more like a Native American prophet, in that he has these wild visions of supernatural creatures.  Personally, I have trouble relating to Ezekiel.  As you might expect form someone reading the Bible, I’m bookish, and the other guys are about words.  Ezekiel doesn’t quite fit in like that.

CHAPTER 4

Now that Ezekiel has gotten his message, its time to start spreading it. This is a crucial time, too, for back in the Promised Land, Jerusalem is under siege. 

Ezekiel’s first public act of prophecy is performance art.  God instructs him to take a clay tablet and draw the city of Jerusalem on it.  Then Ezekiel is to face it lying on his left side fro a year.  Then he will face it while lying on his right side for 40 days.  While laying on his left side, Ezekiel is to take the guilt of Israel upon himself – to be the scapegoat from the Torah, essentially.

If nothing else, this is a lot less confrontational than what Jeremiah did.  And by first trying to take the sins upon himself, he’ll come off better among him neighbors than Jeremiah ever did.  Personally, I just find it weird.  Jeremiah can be a jerk, but you knew what he meant when he called you a lusty camel.  Ezekiel?  A guy lying on his side facing a clay tablet – that’s something a little too avant-garde for my tastes.

It gets more interesting, though.  Yeah, I guess interesting is one word for it.  God tells Ezekiel to eat barley cake with a special topping – human excrement.  No joke, God tells Ezekiel to eat shit.  Again, if I’m a passerby seeing it, I’m not going to get the point.  I’m going to be revolted.  It’s supposed to represent something about the people of Jerusalem.  Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound very good.  Because – duh – it’s shit he’ll be eating.

Ezekiel protests to God that this is too much, and Ezekiel wins a minor victory.  God says if shit is too much, that’s fine – eat cow manure instead.  Um… as minor victories go, that’s pretty damn minor all right.  He’s still eating shit.  And I still don’t quite get how it’ll help him spread God’s word.  If nothing else, it’ll make his breath much worse.

CHAPTER 5

God gives Ezekiel a new bit of performance art prophecy.  He’s to take a sharp sword and shave his head and beard.  Really?  If I’m Ezekiel, at a certain point in time I’ve got to be wondering if God is just joking with me. 

What would the people by Ezekiel think when they see this?  Many, like Ezekiel, are priests are know the old scrolls.  God has never told his prophets to shave with a sword.  He’s never had them lie on their sides for a year.  Or become mute.  And certainly not eat shit.  I’m flatly amazed he had any credibility with people.  A guy eating cow shit and shaving with a sword says he’s hearing the Lord’s voices, and maybe you assume he’s nuts.  But he had credibility.  The era must help him gain credibility.  They are cut off from the Holy Land, the Temple, cast adrift – and here’s a guy saying God talks to him.  Sure, let’s see what he says.

God has Ezekiel engage in some symbolic destruction of Jerusalem to represent how his people will be thrown to the winds or destroyed, and all that.  In it’s own way, this is more effective than all Jeremiah’s tirades.  It’s less personal when it’s a clay tablet.

We finally get away from performance art to words of the Lord.  It’s standard stuff.  God is punishing the Jews for their misbehavior.  Yeah, so we’ve heard.

CHAPTER 6

This is just 14 verses of typical stuff.  God is cheesed and so everyone will be punished.  Many will die and the people will be scattered.

While I have trouble wrapping my mind around Ezekiel’s odd behaviors, at least it’s original.  His prophecies are rather routine stuff at this point.  He’s foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, and we’ve just read the Book of Jeremiah on that very thing.

CHAPTER 7

This chapter has the header, “The End Has Come” and it’s exactly what you’d expect.  It’s a lot like what Jeremiah said about Jerusalem, but without the personal malice and deep-seated anger thrown in.  Ezekiel sounds a lot more mournful that Jeremiah ever did, as he proclaims, “An end! The end comes to the four corners of the land!”  Still, the people have it coming and God is right. 

Click here for the next bit of Ezekiel. 

Ezekiel main page

Chapters 1 to 7
Chapters 8 to 15
Chapters 16 to 23
Chapters 24 to 32
Chapters 33 to 39 
Chapters 40 to 48

Book of Baruch

Click here for the Book of Lamentations.

CHAPTER 1

Here it is: the seventh and last Bible book in the Catholic Bible but not in the Protestant or Jewish Bible.  We only have record of it in ancient Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, and that’s why it’s not in the other Bibles.

Fun fact: Baruch is one of the only (maybe the only) Biblical characters we have an actual autograph for.  When digging through ancient ruins, someone unearthed a cuneiform scroll (which people used to affix their names to documents) to Baruch.  I forget what exactly what it was – “Baruch, son of Neriah, son of Mahsieh” or something like that which indicates that this Baruch is the Bible’s Baruch.

It’s neat because not only does he have his own Bible book, but he’s arguably the guy who wrote much of the Bible.  Biblical scholar Richard Elliot Friedman advanced the argument that Jeremiah wrote Deuteronomy and the entire cycle of history books from the Deuteronomic point of view (Joshua, Judges, the Samuels and the Kings).  Since Jeremiah appears to have used Baruch as a scribe (in the Book of Jeremiah) that means Baruch was the guy who wrote it down for him.

Maybe.  Jeremiah as the author is just a theory. 

I thought I’d note that here, but it has nothing to do with this book.  In fact, Baruch has nothing to do with the Book of Baruch.  This is a strange and utterly inessential Bible book.  Though only six chapters long, it’s a compilation of four different things, none of which seem to have anything to do with each other.  Most mention Baruch or are supposedly by Baruch, but that could easily be utter fiction. 

The first document is a letter from Baruch in Babylon to Jerusalem.  The only thing interesting is that Baruch is supposedly in Babylon, when we know that Jeremiah fled to Egypt. 

This is just the same theology we’ve already read in Jeremiah and Lamentations and much of Psalms.  Except it was better put in all of those places.  Short version: God punished the Jews because they deserved to be punished.

CHAPTER 2

Remember that letter I was just talking about?  It keeps going.  Oh, and just like we were told in Lamentations, this part insists that the baby-eating by new moms foretold in Deuteronomy actually happened.  This particular reference to cannibalism doesn’t hold much weight, as it may have been written so very long after the fact.  Perhaps the book was originally written in ancient Hebrew, but I don’t see much evidence for it. The grab bag nature of the Book of Baruch makes me think that this is just a collection of stuff not good enough to make it into other Bible books.

CHAPTER 3

Among other annoying parts of this book, the chapter breaks really suck.  The letter we began Baruch with ends at verse 8 here.  What – it would’ve killed you to let Chapter 2 go eight verses longer and then give us a nice, clean, sensible chapter break?

With the end of the letter, we get our second random source.  It’s a poem praising wisdom.  Well, that’s nice, but we’ve already had tons of commentary about how wonderful wisdom is earlier in the Bible.  This adds nothing to it. 

One random thing: the underworld is referred to as Hades, not Sheol.  Remember folks – our only sources for this book are in ancient Greek, not Hebrew.

CHAPTER 4

Naturally, the poem about wisdom doesn’t end with the conclusion of Chapter 3.  It has to end weirdly in the middle of Chapter 4.  Look, there are plenty of times in the Bible that chapter breaks are weird, bizarre, and clearly sub-optimally placed.  But I don’t complain about them too much usually because there is usually something of note in the material.  Not in Baruch.  The material is utterly flaccid.

Oh, our third document begins, and it’s a weird poem.  It’s called Baruch’s Poem of Consolation.”  Baruch addresses the scattered Jews.  Then Jerusalem addresses – yes, the city itself speaks – to its neighbors.  Then our gabby Jerusalem talks to the scattered Jews.  Then Baruch addresses the city. 

Uh, OK.  Sure, why not?

CHAPTER 5

This is the rest of the poem.  It’s just nine verses long.  Apparently, you couldn’t add the last nine verses to the previous chapter, for no apparent reason.

CHAPTER 6

And now, in a massive change of pace to everything that’s previously happened in Baruch – we get a well-timed chapter break!  The fourth document begins with the start of a new chapter.  Why couldn’t they do that with the other documents?  I have no idea, but they didn’t.  Also, it’s 72 verses, so the longest document of all, yet it’s the one that is contained in just one chapter.  Again – why bother having that nine-verse Chapter 9?

As for the material, it’s a letter from Jeremiah.  Well, it’s supposed to be Jeremiah, but it seems like a clear forgery.  Put the words in the name of the now-respected prophet in order to give them more weights – that’s an old trick of forgers. 

This seems to be a forgery not only because Jeremiah never once insults the Hebrew.  (He’s Jeremiah!  Insulting the Hebrew is what he does!)  No, it’s more than that.  Jeremiah spends virtually the entire letter insulting the Babylonians.  Problem: he’s not in Babylon.  This is written by someone with enough experience to really get sick of them due to long-term proximity.  So, not Jeremiah.

It’s almost all an attack on idolatry.  Again, this is another Baruch chapter with a theme we’ve seen tons of before. 

It has one nice line.  “Jeremiah” insults the priests of Babylon, saying: “Their tongues are smoothed by woodworkers, they are covered with gold and silver.”  The notion of a silver-tongued orator I’ve heard before, but not “smoothed by woodworkers.”  I like that.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Blah.  This might be the least essential book in the Bible so far.  At least Chronicles tries to tell a history (though one already told in the Bible).

This is a grab bag of themes we’ve already seen tons of before, and all better done that as expressed in Baruch.  I don’t believe any of them come from Baruch of Jeremiah.  It’s just an utterly useful Bible book.  It’s in the Catholic Bible only, a point that is a clear advantage of Protestants and Jews. 

Click here for the start of Ezekiel.

Book of Lamentations

Click here for the end of Jeremiah.

CHAPTER 1

This is a poem mourning the loss of Jerusalem.  Get used to it – that’s what the entire chapter is. 

At first it describes Jerusalem as a widow, with no one left to mourn for her.  That said, the characterizations seemed more like a whore.  That’s too harsh and nasty, but there is an undercurrent of criticism that isn’t always such an undercurrent.  Ultimately, the poet responsible for this believes that this is God’s just punishment for the sinful ways of the people of Jerusalem. 

Early on, the authors writes of the abandoned city, ‘She has no one to comfort her from all her lovers.”  Calling Jerusalem a she and then noting many lovers – that doesn’t sound like a positive connotation in the Bible.  Later on, the poem shifts to first person and Jerusalem itself cries out, “I cried out to my lovers, but they failed me.”

Maybe I’m thinking this in too sexual of terms.  I keep going back and forth with this.  At times I think I’m making too much of it, but then I look at it, and again – since when is it a good thing in the Bible for any sort of female to have multiple lovers?  However, I look at the poem in that direction – that it’s criticizing Jerusalem for unfaithfulness – and I see something else.

There is a lot of serious mourning here.  The poet flatly breaks down in tears later on.  He is horrified how desolate the city is.  No, it’s not a poem primarily criticizing the city.  It’s one primarily mourning it. But the mourning is tinged with this sense of deserving it.

Also, the line, “Her uncleaniness is on her skirt” made me thing of Monica Lewinksy.  I doubt that’s what it means, but that’s where my mind went.

I’m not very happy with my analysis of this chapter, but that’s life sometimes.

CHAPTER 2

Lamentations is a collection of five poems around the same theme – the loss of Jerusalem, with each chapter being a different poem. 

This one starts off by noting God’s anger.  It sounds positively Jeremiah-ian when it declares, “The Lord has become the enemy, he has devoured Israel.”  Well, Jeremiah would probably say Israel has become the enemy, but the result is the poet thinks that God is personally against his supposed people. 

Our poet takes this especially hard, so much so that he ends up vomiting.  Really.  He writes, “My eyes are spent with tears, my stomach churns.  My bile is poured out on the ground at the brokenness of the daughter of my people.”  Stomach churning then bile pouring?  Yep, sounds like someone just puked. I do believe that’s the first puke in the entire Bible.

He sounds desolate, and mirrors what is said in the Book of Deuteronomy, as he writes, “Must women eat their own offspring.”  When I first read those lines of cursing in Deuteronomy, I figured it was some hyperbole; poetic license.  But we’re hearing the same things here.  Maybe these Lamentations were written long after the fact and were cribbing from Deuteronomy.  But then again …Jerusalem was under siege.  Surely some did resort to cannibalism when the food ran out. Yeah, maybe some mothers really did eat their own newborn.  Yikes.  Maybe not, but I’m starting to wonder.

CHAPTER 3

This is easily the longest poem in Lamentations.  At 66 verses, it’s exactly three times longer than any of the other chapters.  Incredibly, it’s exactly three times the length  of all the other chapters. Yes, that’s right, every other chapter in the book is exactly 22 verses long.  Neat.

This one starts off with utter despair.  I know Lamentations is all about despair, but nothing and I mean nothing out-despairs the early parts of Chapter 3.  Our poet tells us that, “Even when I cry for help, [God] stops my prayer.”  Wow.  That’s a novel concept - -God using his all mighty power to prevent people from praying.  That’s a new one.

Later on, he tells us: “I have forgotten what happiness is.  My enduing hope, I said, has perished before the Lord.”  Normally people turn to the Bible to find hope, yet hear we see a section of the Bible itself without hope.

But the mood doesn’t last.  About a third the way through, he makes a turn, noting: “But this I will call to mind; therefore I will hope.”  OK, good.  I was beginning to wonder about this guy.  I’m glad to hear he’s found reason for hope.  Sure life sucks, but he finds his rock to hold onto: “For the Lord does not reject forever.”  You know, speaking as a non-religious Bible reading, I find that to be an especially wonderful statement.  It’s one of my favorite lines in the Bible so far.  And it makes sense.  If you were all powerful and all mighty and all that – would you really want to waste your time on grudges?  What’s the point of being omnipotent if you’re going to waste it on eternal pettiness?

He goes on, and looks forward to the day when God will come back to the Children of Israel.  It looks like it’s going to end on an uplifting note, and I’m sure the poet things it does – but it’s the worst kind of uplifting note.  You know what’ll really prove God is back on the side of the Hebrew?  If he kills their enemies.  Yes, this lovely poem ends screaming for vengeance.

This is like the long lost 151^st psalm.  It contains many elements of psalms; both the best and worst of them.

CHAPTER 4

This one puts the focus back on Jerusalem.  It’s called, “Miseries of the Besieged City.”  Once again, we’re told that women have eaten their own newborn: “The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children!”  Again – did this really happen?  Maybe.  It just might have happened. 

It features some good lines, too.  “Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young.”  That’s a nice analogy for a people who feel totally adrift.  Later we’re told, “Better for those pierced by the sword than for those pierced by hunger.”  Plenty of parts in the Bible (or many other places) feel that the dead have it better than the living, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sentiment so succinctly put as here. 

Much like Chapter 3, this one ends on a note of revenge.  This time, there’s a specific target: Edom.  Apparently, Edom is gloating at the destruction of their bossy neighbor.  Laugh it up, Edom boy. You’ll get yours. 

CHAPTER 5

This is just another plea to the Lord to be remembered.  Unlike the other poems, which all sound like they take place in the immediate aftermath of Jerusalem’s fall, this one sounds like it’s from later.  The poet writes, “Our ancestors, who sinned, are no more; but now we bear their guilt.” 

I guess that’s why it’s at the end of the book.  It’s more a longing to return that a horrific memory of what was lost.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

It’s a decent enough chapter and the poems read fairly well.  It’s certainly not the most ambitious book in the Bible, but it hits its mark for the most part.

Click here for the next book, Baruch.