Jeremiah: Chapters 36 to 45

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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.

Jeremiah: Chapters 29 to 35

Click here for the previous chunk of Jeremiah.

CHAPTER 29

Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles in Babylon.  At least it’s supposedly by Jeremiah.  Again, he specifically notes they’ll be away for 70 years.  At the very least, that strikes me as an inclusion by a future author, and maybe the entire thing is a forgery. 

It is all pretty standard.  They should be fruitful and multiply in Babylon because they’re the future of the Hebrew.  God wants the Hebrew destroyed for their sins. Jeremiah quotes God saying, “I am handling them over to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who will kill them before your eyes.”  Yikes.

Mind you, Jeremiah has no problem with these sorts of statements.  He doesn’t really have any strong loyalty to his people.  His loyalty is solely to God.  That’s a big part of the reason why people hate him so much.   Can you imagine if some big preacher went around screaming at people that God hates America and wants us all destroyed because of our sinful ways?

Hey wait – we have people like that: Westboro Church.  My God – Jeremiah is the ancient Hebrew version of the Westboro lunatics!

We’re supposed to be on Jeremiah’s side, but that’s tough.  He dwells too much on how people will be punished, and has too many petty disputes with his enemies.  He really isn’t interested in improving people, just in making them pay.  From some angles he is sympathetic because he genuinely believes God is compelling him to say these things, and he doesn’t like how it’s affected his life – but it’s God, dammit. 

Really, with Jeremiah it isn’t about likable or not; if you root for him or don’t.  He’s just plain compelling. 

CHAPTER 30

The next few chapters have a different feel.  They talk about the things no one associates with Jeremiah: hope and redemption.  Jeremiah tells people that God will save them eventually.  They’ll be punished, but after enough time God will come back to them and their land will be restored.

It’s a lot less personal than Jeremiah’s normal prophecies.  Part of me wonders if it’s a later addition/forgery or another prophet wandering in here, but I don’t want to be too skeptical.  Even Jeremiah is allowed to have some optimistic moments.  The fact that it sounds less personal might even work.  He’s good at dealing with the negative, but is a bit less familiar with the positive news.  Saying that God will return to them isn’t the same thing as giving us a precise duration (70 years) like a few chapters do).

CHAPTER 31

More good news.  They’ll return to Jerusalem and all will be happy.  God will be with them again. 

CHAPTER 32

We’re really approaching zero hour here.  Jerusalem is under siege by the Babylonians.  The king of Judah has Jeremiah confined to the court, because the last thing he needs is the damn prophet running around ruining everyone’s morale. 

Jeremiah stands to his position: God wants Babylon to take over and destroy Jerusalem.  It’s interesting because we often think of being religious and being patriotic as good things, and they typically go together.  That had certainly been the case for the Hebrew, who believe that God gave them the land for them because they were His people.  But this link of patriotism and religion doesn’t work for Jeremiah.  For him, it’s God and nothing else. 

There is a weird section here where Jeremiah is told by God to buy some land.  It’s notable because it’s the first mention of Jeremiah’s assistant, Baruch.  Later, Baruch gets his own book in the Bible.  It’s not in the Protestant or Jewish Bibles, but it is in the Catholic Bible.

CHAPTER 33

Jerusalem will be restored.  It’s another happy chapter.  There isn’t much to say about it, that I didn’t say in the previous happy chapters.  They really do feel a little out of place with the overall downbeat vibe of Jeremiah.  One really feels out of place here, where we just had Jerusalem under siege. 

CHAPTER 34

Back to the main narrative.  Now the Babylonian army is attacking Jerusalem itself.  That doesn’t change Jeremiah in the slightest.  There is none of this happy talk of the future where God will restore everything to the Hebrew.  Those chapters are always off on their own little island, detached from the rest of the action.  (That’s one reason I wonder if they were really written by Jeremiah.  At the very least, if he really did have these occasional positive moments, it would’ve made it easier for people to get along with him).

Instead, he issues more curses.  It’s the same stuff we’ve heard before.  Hand you over to your enemies.  Corpses food for birds and beasts.  Cities into a waste.  Rinse, lather, repeat.

CHAPTER 35

This is a weird little offshoot chapter.  It’s about a group called the Rechabites. They are sons I guess and they are faithful, so Jeremiah says don’t worry – God will let your family survive forever.  

Click here for the climax of the Jeremiah stories. 

Jeremiah: Chapters 21 to 28

Click here for the previous bunch of Jeremiah.

CHAPTER 21

This kicks off a section called “Oracles of the Last Years of Jerusalem.”  King Zedekiah is in Babylon, due to a lost battle with that power.  Judah hasn’t been completely taken over.  I guess they’re a vassal state. 

But Jeremiah is still in Jerusalem and he predicts more doom and gloom.  God will abandon them and let them lose.  Hell, that’s nothing.  God says, “I myself will fight against you with outstretched hand and mighty arm, in anger, wrath, and great rage!  I will strike down the inhabitants of this city, human beings and beast, they shall die in great pestilence.” 

Wow.  This is new.  Previously God had been upset with the Hebrew, but he’d never gone so far as to declare he’d fight against them in battle personally.  In the days of Moses, he’d just side with the good Hebrew to kill the bad ones. Now it’s God versus the Hebrew.

This couldn’t have helped Jeremiah’s popularity with the masses.

CHAPTER 22

This is a series of general prophecies about particular people and stuff.  Most is pretty forgettable.  I will say this: the opening is one of the few uplifting notes in Jeremiah, as he says eventually God will come back to them.

But for now, “I swear by myself, oracle of the Lord, this house shall be rubble.” 

While I can see why Jeremiah was unpopular in his own time, I do wonder one thing: do you think Judaism would survive without him?  He’s vital in interpreting the Babylonian Captivity.  Before it even happens, he’s saying it’ll happen because God wants it as punishment for his backsliding people.  With that narrative already set, the Jews of the Captivity can look back on Jeremiah and say he was right, and deep that narrative.  Without Jeremiah, it’s harder to create the narrative of “God is punishing us” from whole cloth. It helps to have a foundation already laid. 

And without that foundation, many likely will drift away from the religion.  He was our God, but then he stopped helping us – time for Baal or whatever.  Maybe that’s why the northern kingdom disappeared after losing their independence.  They lacked a Jeremiah. 

Just a theory.

CHAPTER 23

This chapter is all about Jeremiah’s problems with the prophets and priests.  He’s focusing on his own personal matters more than any larger cause.  Admittedly, those two do notably overlap. (Prophets do matter, after all).  But he’s focusing on them because he’s had run-ins with them.  These passages are both understandable, but always tinged with a bit of personal pettiness. 

Jeremiah compares them to Sodom and Gomorrah and says of the prophets that the Lord, “will give them wormwood to eat, and poisoned water to drink.”  Would Jeremiah really be so nasty in his prophecies if it weren’t for his own personal experiences here?  I think not.

Also, Jeremiah keeps saying “Oracle of the Lord.”  It goes beyond Isaiah’s “Lord of hosts” references (which Jeremiah also uses).  Jeremiah will insert it in the middle of a sentence sometimes, disrupting his flow.  It’s like he has OCD or Tourette’s Syndrome or something.   Sample; “Therefore I am against the prophets – oracle of the Lord – those who steal my words from each other.  Yes, I am against the prophets – oracle of the Lord – those who compose their own speeches and call them oracles.” 

CHAPTER 24

This is a short chapter.  It’s another analogy.  God has Jeremiah get two baskets of figs.  One is full of great figs and the other inedible, rotten figs.  We can already see where this one is going.

The good figs are the Jews in exile in Babylon.  God will look after them.  The bad figs are the ones left behind.  Fuck them.  God says, “I will make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a taunt and a curse, in all the places I will drive them.”  Basically, God will do to them what he’s already done to Jeremiah among them.

Also, those must be some pretty vile looking figs in Jeremiah’s basket. 

CHAPTER 25

I’m calling bullshit on this chapter.  I don’t think Jeremiah wrote this one.  I think this was inserted later on by a different guy. 

This one makes some incredibly specific predictions.  Most notably, in this chapter “Jeremiah” predicts that the Jews will stay in Babylon for 70 years.  Incredibly – you’ll never believe this! – that’s exactly what happens.  If you’re a believer, this is easy to explain – God told this to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah told everyone.

But I’m calling bullshit.  Aside from not being a believer, we already have evidence that these books can be tampered with.  Isaiah is clearly 2-3 different people – unless he lived the longest life of anyone since before Abraham.

One interesting moment.  Jeremiah – er, excuse me – “Jeremiah” has God say one remarkable thing: “I will send, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant.”  Wait – what: his servant?  His servant?  Did God just call the king of Babylon his servant?

His tool?  Fine.  His instrument of wrath?  That works.  But his servant?  That makes it sound like he’s deliberately taking orders from God.  In plain point of fact, he doesn’t believe in God at all.  It’s a bit out of line to call him God’s servant.

CHAPTER 26

Jeremiah damn near gets killed this time.  He’s doing what he always does – exactly what God wants him to do, uttering a series of downbeat jeremiads about how everyone is doomed.  In particular, he’s preaching the doom of Jerusalem in the court of the temple in Jerusalem.

Well, this is too much for the priests and prophets. They seize him, shouting that Jeremiah must die.  They ain’t just saying words, either.  They are primed to have him killed.

Jeremiah, to his credit, stands his ground as best as he can.  He tells them, “I am in your hands; do with me what is good and right in your eyes.  But you certainly know that by putting me to death, you bring innocent blood on yourselves, on this city, and its inhabitants.  For in truth it was the Lord who sent me to you, to speak all these words for you to hear.”  That takes guts.  Jeremiah isn’t cowering.  If he dies, he’ll die with his head held high.

And that’s enough to give the priests a touch of pause.  They take him to the princes instead.  And there their case falls apart.  They’re reminded of Micah (a minor prophet with his own book later on in the Bible) said similar things during the reign of good king Hezekiah.  No one killed him for it.  Another prophet named Uriah did likewise, though he fled to Egypt.

But precedent is on Jeremiah’s side, so he’s let go.  It was a close one, but he survives.

CHAPTER 27

Not too surprisingly after what just happened, this chapter is all about Jeremiah versus the prophets.  It’s nothing we haven’t read so far, though.  Jeremiah is still right and they’re still false prophets.  

CHAPTER 28

Jeremiah goes at it with Hananiah the prophet.  Or, as I should say, it’s Jeremiah versus Hananiah the false prophet.  Hananiah tells the people that all will turn out fine, and Jeremiah lays into him.  He essentially calls his rival a panderer; telling people what they want to here and ignoring any/all uncomfortable truths. 

Jeremiah does some prophetic performance art with a yoke, to symbolize what God wants to happen to the Hebrew.  Hananiah breaks the yoke, which just causes Jeremiah to declare: by breaking this wooden yoke, you’ve assured God will put an iron yoke on you guys. 

Click here for the next seven chapters of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah: Chapters 14 to 20

Here is the previous chunk of Jeremiah.

CHAPTER 14

Jeremiah foresees a drought, as God is so unhappy with his people.  In fact, God tells Jeremiah, “Do not interceded for the well-being of this people.  If they fast, I will not listen to their supplications.  If they sacrifice burnt offerings or grain offerings, I will take no pleasure in them.  Rather, I will destroy them with sword, famine, and plague.” 

WOW!  God is so damn cold-blooded right there.  And, of all prophets you have to tell, “don’t intercede for the well-being of this people” to, Jeremiah is probably at the bottom of the list.  If ever a prophet rooted for something like this to happen, it’s him.  Hell, when I first read it, I thought it was Jeremiah telling God not to backslide in punishing them.  Jeremiah doesn’t say that – but he also doesn’t urge God away from it.  Contrast this with Moses.  When God was upset with them during Moses’ time, Moses would also speak up for the Hebrew, no matter how poorly they treated him.

Jeremiah does speak up – but it’s not on behalf of the people. It’s on behalf of … Jeremiah.  He complains to God about how all the other prophets are telling the people that they won’t be abandoned by God.  Well, God sets Jeremiah straight.  They aren’t real prophets.  I haven’t spoken to them, but to you.

So Jeremiah doesn’t urge God from his path of anger.  The comparison with Moses really isn’t a nice one for Jeremiah.  To be fair, the Hebrew never wanted to kill Moses, but then again it’s not like all Judah is conspiring to kill Jeremiah.  But if you read Jeremiah’s prophesies, they all got it coming – every last damned (literally, damned) one of them.

CHAPTER 15

This is similar to the previous chapter.  Again, we get a cold-blooded God.  He begins by saying, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me, my heart would not turn toward this people.  Send them away from me and let them go.”  Hey, fuck the Hebrew.  When Jeremiah asks where the Hebrew should go, God replies, “Whoever is marked for death, to death; whoever is marked for the sword, to the sword; whoever is marked for famine, to famine; whoever is marked for captivity, to captivity.” 

God is just so gangster right there.  That might be his most cold-blooded line in the entire Bible.

Jeremiah never tries talking God out of it.  He just asks some questions to get more detail and takes notes. 

Again, Jeremiah does get around to bemoaning a fate – but again, the fate is just his own.  “Woe to me, my mother, that you gave me birth!” is how he begins.  He later begs the Lord: “Remember me, and take care of me, avenge me on my persecutors.”  That’s 12 words – and four of them are either me or my. 

Prophecy hasn’t been good for Jeremiah’s soul.  He’s supposed to be a prophet for the Hebrew, but all it’s led to is him wishing that they’d all die.  He really isn’t trying to steer them away from their fate at this point.  He’s given up on that.  He’s just railing against them for deserving it.  They hate him for saying that, and he hates them for hating him.  In his first batches of prophecies, there were occasional moments (well, maybe it was just moment singular) where Jeremiah held out hope for getting back in God’s good graces.  But they responded by wanting him dead, so now he’s just a prophet of doom. 

Jeremiah is full of pity for himself – “I did not sit celebrating in the circle of merrymakers” – and anger for everyone who goes against him.

CHAPTER 16

If anything, Jeremiah keeps digging deeper into bleakness.  I said earlier that he’s the Cassandra of the Bible.  But Cassandra just foresaw disaster, Jeremiah foresees disaster and uses that as a reason to get personally insulting about it.  He tells people that they’ll die, and it’s not a sorrowful prediction, but a vengeful one.  “Unlamented and unburied they will like dung on the ground.  Sword and famine will make an end of them, and their corpses will become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.”  He gets so angry because he thinks everyone has it coming.  That’s not Cassandra.

Also, did you really need to go to dung, Jeremiah.  That’s the second time he’s done that. 

The rest of just more railing against the people by the Lord.  At one point God says he’ll give people a double share of punishment for all their sins.  That’s right: double punishment.

CHAPTER 17

God tells Jeremiah, “For a fire has broken out from my anger, burning forever.”  That shows a problem I have with this book – it’s all so overblown.  Forever, Lord?  Really?  You’ll never let go of this?  C’mon!  Similarly, Jeremiah’s jeremiads often indicate that every deserves it. C’mon, man!

The highlight of this chapter is a section titled, “True Wisdom.”  The Bible has spoken plenty on wisdom so far, but none of it is even remotely close to the first line here: “Thus says the Lord: `Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings.’” 

Whaaaa?  First, that’s incredibly misanthropic. Second – this incredible misanthropy is the opening line of a section called True Wisdom?  Some of these lines tell us more about Jeremiah than God.

There are nicer moments.  For example, later on Jeremiah begins a prayer to the Lord with these words: “Heal me, Lord, that I may be healed.  Save me, that I may be saved.” That’s a downright beautiful sentiment.  But you know what?  That’s the opening of a section called, “Prayer for Vengeance.”  Man, even when Jeremiah sounds endearing there is a dark, misanthropic edge to it.  That line is just the opening of a prayer where Jeremiah calls on God to hurt his enemies. Given the sentiment – and how poetical he starts – I wonder if Jeremiah wrote any/many of my least favorite psalms.  He does sound like them here.

CHAPTER 18

Time for another analogy.  God wants Jeremiah to look at a potter in action.  Notice that when a vessel turns out badly, the potter throws it away and tries again? Well guess what? God thinks that’s a good idea and is planning on doing it to the Hebrew.

Later, there’s a section called, “Another Prayer for Vengeance.”  Heh.  Man, even the Bible editor titling these sections sounds bored with Jeremiah’s negativity. 

Wait – that isn’t fully fair.  This isn’t Jeremiah praying for his enemies to be killed.  This is about his enemies wanting to kill him.  Again.  Yeesh. 

Actually, this chapter makes me realize something.  I noted earlier how Chapter 53 of Isaiah seems for foreshadow Christian theology.  It talks of a servant of God who will be abused and blasted by the people, but will take their sins upon himself and suffer for them.  It’s a strong foreshadowing of Christ – but it can also almost all apply to Jeremiah. He’s blasted and suffering because he’s a servant of God, after all.

OK, but it doesn’t work out when you think it through.  Chapter 53 is from Second Isaiah, a prophet who lives during the Babylonian Captivity.  Jeremiah is pre-Babylon, so Second Isaiah can’t be foretelling Jeremiah – he’s after Jeremiah.

Also, Jeremiah isn’t really taking the suffering of the people upon himself.  He’s focusing solely on his own suffering.  In fact, he tells God, “But you, Lord, know all their planning for my death.  Do not forgive their crime and their sin do not blot out from your sight!  Let them stumble before you, in the time of your anger act against them.” 

Jeremiah isn’t taking their suffering upon himself.  He wants God to whack them because of Jeremiah’s own personal suffering.  So he doesn’t really work as the Chapter 53 foretelling, despite some parallels.

Again, Jeremiah treats God like a mafia don.  God – please kill all of my enemies.  I sure would appreciate it.  God is the original Godfather. 

CHAPTER 19

God has Jeremiah go back to the potter. This time it’s not really an analogy though.  Just grab a pot and take it to a place called Topheth.  Bring a bunch of people there with you and the pot.  Then Jeremiah shatters the pot and tells everyone that’s what God will do to them. 

And Jeremiah really outdoes himself with the dark visions.  Do you think dung references are bad?  Check out this, “I will have them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, they shall eat one another’s flesh during the harsh siege under which their enemies and those who seek their lives will confine them.”   Cannibalism!  And of close relatives no less! 

This harkens back to some of the darkest, nastiest speeches in the Torah. In particular, I recall Chapter 28 of Deuteronomy where Moses tells people that a woman will eat the afterbirth after giving birth.  Remember: Richard Elliot Friedman argued that Jeremiah wrote Deuteronomy. 

CHAPTER 20

This is Jeremiah at his most likable and sympathetic.  That is to say, this is Jeremiah when he’s being persecuted.  A priest named Pahhur hears Jeremiah’s latest jeremiad against the Hebrew and isn’t going to stand for it.  He has Jeremiah put in the stocks as punishment.  Around here, we’re getting a shift in focus.  We’re moving from just Jeremiah delivering his tirades to angry priest and prophets going after Jeremiah.  This isn’t the last of it; not by any stretch.

And once Jeremiah gets persecuted, it gets personal for Jeremiah.  He tells Pashhur that for his actions, the Lord now renames you, “Terror on every side.”  That doesn’t sound too good.  Jeremiah says that the bad priest will be terrorized on all sides and handed over to his enemies.  This is just Jeremiah issuing prophecies to settle scores against his enemies.  I can see why he’s upset, but it’s a bit petty for a prophet.

But then things shift to Jeremiah’s internal monologue. And this is where he becomes sympathetic.  Jeremiah feels his real problem is less the priests and the people who don’t like being called lusty camels, but God himself.  Jeremiah wails to God, “You seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced.  You were too strong for me, and you prevailed.”  This is not the normal way prophets talk to God.

Jeremiah goes on, “All day long I am an object of laughter.  Everyone mocks me. When I speak, I must cry out, violence and outrage I proclaim.  The word of the Lord has brought me reproach and derision all day long.”   It’s hard not to feel for him right here.  Even if you’re a non-believer like me and think the voices coming to him aren’t really from God but his own internal mind, the point is he thinks they come from God.  And these voices are telling him to issue a bunch of statements that will get him beaten up, neglected, and mocked.  No, that’s not fun at all.  And yet he does. 

He says, “I say I will not mention him, I will no longer speak in his name, but then it is as if fire is burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones.  I grow wearing holding back, I cannot!”  He wishes he knew how to quit the Lord, but that’s irrelevant – he can’t.  He hates how he’s treated and what his life has become – but it’s his life.  It’s his calling – it’s literally his calling. 

There is a price: “Yes, I hear the whisperings of many: `Terror on every side!’ Denounce, let us denounce him!  All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine.  `Perhaps he can be tricked, then we will prevail and take our revenge on him.’”  This is an amazing bleak and sad section.  Remember: for all the problems he is having with the priests and prophets – he’s the soon of a priest.  He really does know a lot of the people who are terrorizing him right now.  Like I said, if you can’t sympathize with Jeremiah around here, then you can’t sympathize with anyone.  This is like Job – only it’s a real person, not some parable.

But Jeremiah has an ace he can play when he feels this low: “But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champions.  .My persecutors will stumble, they will not prevail.”  Yes, they wait for him to fail and he does likewise.  And he thinks he can win, because the Lord is on his side. 

But while he’s suffering, Jeremiah would like some quicker action, please: “Lord of hosts, you test the just, you see mind and heart.  Let me see the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause.”  Please Lord, hurt them.

This culminates in one epic bout of self-pity – but I’ll allow as he’s earned some given his circumstances, “Cursed be the day on which I was born!  May the day my mother gave me birth never be blessed!  Cursed be the one who brought the news to my father, `A Child, a son, has been born to you!’ filling him with great joy.”  Jeremiah literally hates his life.  But he’s duty bound to stay the course.

He could use a hug right about now. Lord, for all this talk about you stretching out your hand, please stretch it out to give him a pat on the head or something.  

Click here for the next several chapters of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah: Chapters 7 to 13

Click here for the first part of Jeremiah.

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.