COLNE AND VILLAGES TEAM
LENT BIBLE LECTURES 2011
I had an interesting conversation with a churchgoer towards the end of January.
“I heard you were doing Jeremiah this year,” he said. “I had a look at it, and wondered why on earth you were doing it. Then I thought ‘Well, that’s probably what he will tell us’.”
Well, I hope I will!
The Old Testament is increasingly a foreign country to most Christians. At the most, even in a Church School, only a few selected stories are told, and we scarcely, if ever, hear it read. Some of the books are long—Jeremiah is 52 chapters, the third longest in the Bible—and it is full of names and places we have never heard of.
In this first talk, which I have called ‘The Context’ I want to start with two images. The first is that of the wood and the trees. “I can’t see the wood for the trees,’ we sometimes say.
When we are reading the Bible we sometimes jump right into the text and start looking at the trees in minute detail without having the slightest idea of what the wood looks like or where it even is. So, we need to look at the shape and position of the wood before we can start seeing where the individual trees fit in!
The second image I want to use is that of a Bridge.
You may have heard the story about two blondes walking on paths on opposite banks of a River. “What’s it like on the other side?” shouts one blond. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to the other side” replies the other. That’s rather like most people’s attitude to the Old Testament. It’s a foreign country, very scary, we might get lost, and we don’t want to go there.
To understand Jeremiah—or any other piece of Scripture, we need to take the first step and cross that bridge
A tutor of mine at the Seminary in Austin Texas described the work of understanding and interpreting the Old Testament in this way. “We must imagine a bridge between ourselves and 6th century Judah. We must cross that bridge, and settle down there, and find as much out as possible about the prophet, about his background, and about the times in which he lived. Then we must cross the bridge back to our own time, bringing that message with us to a very different world, and see what it has to say to us here.”
I want to do four things tonight.
- Firstly to look at where Jeremiah fits into the whole pattern of the Hebrew Scriptures.
- Secondly to look at the very basic question, “What is a prophet?’
- Thirdly to place the book of Jeremiah in a geographical and chronological context. Where and when did all this happen?
- Fourthly to look at the basic structure of the book.
So, firstly, where does Jeremiah fit into the whole pattern of the Hebrew Scriptures?
The Hebrew Bible is arranged rather differently than the Old Testament to which we are accustomed. It falls into three major sections, Torah, Prophets and Writings.
The Torah is made up of five books, while the Prophets is made up two collections of four. The Former Prophets comprise what we would describe as the ‘historical books’, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings; while the Latter Prophets are the three great ones, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, along with ‘The Twelve’ who, in Hebrew, are considered as one book. Daniel, one of the latest books in the Old Testament to be written, is counted by the Jews amongst the ‘Writings’
When the Hebrews Scriptures were translated into Greek, the historical sense of Greek culture impelled them to rearrange the contents according to a chronological scheme. So, for example, the Book of Ruth (one of the Writings) is placed in its historical context between Judges and Samuel, and the ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah’ (also one of the Writings) is placed after the Book of Jeremiah itself).
This chronological scheme, ancient as it is, blinds us somewhat to the logic behind the carefully crafted arrangement of the Hebrew Scriptures. ‘Real’ scripture for the Jews is the Torah, the five Books of Moses. Torah does not mean ‘Law’ as much as ‘Instruction’ or ‘Guidance’. The detailed regulations delivered by yhwh to Moses for the everyday life of the people in the Land are interspersed with narratives about God’s saving acts and his providential guidance of his people until they arrive at the edge of the Promised Land.
The whole of the Torah is read in a weekly cycle in Synagogue. Following that central reading is a second one, Haftorah. This is taken from the Prophets (in the wider Hebrew sense). It is not part of a sequential reading scheme, but reflects or comments upon the Torah reading. The Psalms are used in Synagogue worship, but on the whole, with a few notable exceptions such as the Book of Esther at the Feast of Purim, the writings have no official role.
This sense that the Prophets comment or reflect upon Torah is an important one. If Torah reflects the dialogue between yhwh and his people at the crucial, formational time in the wilderness, then the Prophets reflect his continuing dialogue with them in the face of their disobedience once they entered the Land. This is shown both in the largely narrative ‘Former Prophets’, and in the largely oracular ‘Latter Prophets’. That distinction between narrative and oracle is hard to maintain however, and reminds us that the separation between history and preaching is a Greek invention, however ancient it might be. Elijah, the archetypal prophet of Israel, appears in the purely narrative books, while Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel contain significant chunks of ‘history’ embedded amongst their oracles.
The Great Five are never to be exceeded—Torah stands alone. But in Hebrew Scripture it is followed by two lesser collections of four, reflection upon the working out of the Covenant made in the wilderness once the people had come into the Land.
If that is the Scriptural context of Jeremiah, then before we turn to study his book in detail, we also need to know something of the institution of prophecy.
The catchphrase ‘prophecy’ covers an enormous range of activity, from the wild bunch who swept up King Saul into their prophetic ravings[1] to the sublime poetry of ‘Second Isaiah’[2] A distinction is often made between prophetic activity as described in the historical books, which is often crude, ecstatic and ritualistic, and the ‘pure preaching’ of the Latter Prophets, whose work is, indeed, largely oracular. To understand this rather false distinction we have to remember that Old Testament theology in the 19th and early 20th centuries was dominated by German Protestantism. The critique of the Temple cultus which occurs in several of the prophets, not least Jeremiah, was seen, through Lutheran spectacles, as evidence that the ‘writing prophets’ were progenitors of the Protestant preachers of the Reformation, opposed to the priestly rituals of the Old Testament, and determined to institute the pure worship of God through preaching. Prophecy in the Old Testament, as far as we can discern its historical development from the relatively little evidence that we have, does, indeed, have a variety of expression. But one only has to read of some of the bizarre activities described of the prophet Ezekiel to see that there is not too great a difference between him and some of the roving bands of prophets depicted in the books of Samuel and Kings. All three of the great prophets indulged in symbolic activity, and all three were from priestly families. Indeed the only prophetic book which describes activity which is firmly outside the context of ‘official’ Judaism is that of Amos, who says to the King “I am not a prophet nor a prophet’s son.”[3]The nineteenth century Germans undoubtedly preferred, despite the evidence, to imagine Isaiah sitting in his study, carefully crafting an inspirational sermon which would turn the Israelites back to God, and away from priestcraft.
In fact, prophecy, priesthood and political leadership in Israel and Judah were very closely intertwined, and prophecy is often the expression of critique of the system from one who is part of it.
Prophecy is an almost universal phenomenon in traditional societies. It is based upon a number of premises:
Firstly that there is a god or gods, secondly that the divine is able and willing to communicate with humanity; thirdly that such communication is for the benefit of the whole society, of a group within that society, or of a representative person such as the tribal leader; and fourthly, that the communication is mediated through some sort of ‘specialist’, a priest, shaman, witch doctor or whatever. The communication may be initiated by the human element, often as a response to some disaster or danger, or by the divine, often as a warning.
Some societies believe that the divine communicates through signs hidden in the natural world—for example, astrology, chiromancy (palm reading), and the Roman practice of divining through the livers of animals. Almost every society values the importance of dreams. In many societies, prophetic persons enter an ecstatic state through music, dancing or mind-altering drugs. Lots, omens and chance events also have wide significance.
Prophecy may be delivered in poetry or prose; in ecstasy, or with the full engagement of the prophet’s creative mind. It may be delivered simply in the form of words, or as symbolic acts which may or may not receive a commentary from the prophet himself. Most, but not all these prophetic phenomena are found within the Old Testament.
The Hebrew scriptures reflect their own very particular knowledge and experience of God, an experience which became more sharply distinguished from that of the other Semitic peoples around them as time progressed. Yhwh made very distinctive claims upon them, and the prohibition of the depiction of their God was one of the foremost of these. The claim, strongly developed by the time of the exile, that their God was the only God was another. Until the latest period of the Old Testament there were no intermediaries. Under Babylonian and Persian influence a belief in angels developed, but in the earlier period God was God and communicated directly. Hence there is a particular prohibition against ‘wizards and those who have familiar spirits’[4] When Saul feels abandoned after the death of his mentor Samuel, and receives no communication from God either by urim (a form of lot)or by dreams or by prophets then he turns to necromancy, and consults the Witch of Endor[5]. This is a significant element in Saul’s downfall!
Ecstasies, dreams, prophetic acts and signs are all, however, part of the commonplace of prophetic activity in the Old Testament, and all have a place in the ‘major prophets’, and Jeremiah is no exception.
As well as setting Jeremiah in the context of Israelite prophecy, we must also look at his historical setting.
In looking at the history, we are fortunate that the Book of Jeremiah contains a fair amount of historical information. This allows us to correlate it with the information given to us in the Second Book of Kings—indeed the last Chapter of Jeremiah is an exact copy of 2 Kings 24-25.Also, by the time we get to this period the annals of the Great Powers, Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, are sufficiently complete to allow us to correlate the situation in Judah with the wider world.
We have to remind ourselves, however, that neither the author of 2 Kings nor the compiler of Jeremiah set out to write history or biography. Their writing is theological. On a human scale we look with interest, fascination, or despair, at the unfolding human events which led to the Destruction of Jerusalem. But the writers of Scripture are concerned with the facts only in so far as they help us to understand yhwh’s viewpoint, and are the setting for his Word.
It is the way in which such oracles continue to speak to those of very different times and conditions which make them scripture. The Word of God through Jeremiah overflows its original context and continues to speak to us today.
Jeremiah’s oracles, like those of the other prophets, were not delivered into a vacuum, but to a specific situation in a specific place and time. If we are, metaphorically, to cross the bridge to 6th century Judah, and to return to reflect upon the significance of his message for our own time, we need to find out as much about it as is possible.
The first three verses of the book act as a Title, and briefly set the activity of Jeremiah in a historical context.
The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.
The word of the LORD came to him
in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah,
and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah,
down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile[6].
We have here three Kings, Josiah, Jehoiacim and Zedekiah—a fourth one, Jehoiacin is not mentioned here. Who were they, and, just as important, when were they?
Jeremiah began to prophesy in the thirteenth year of Josiah, King of Judah, that is in 626 BCE.
The Northern Kingdom of Samaria had fallen to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and for the last 95 years the tiny kingdom of Judah has gone it alone. Josiah, grandson of the good King Hezekiah, and son of the most evil King Manasseh, was one of the great ‘hero-kings’ of the Hebrew Scriptures. He came to the Throne at the age of eight, and, as a young man discovered the scroll of the law in the Temple. Having had it read to him, he set in train a process of Reformation. Because he turned back to the Law and Covenant, and restored the Temple and removed all the images, his reign is seen as a Golden period for Judah. Josiah was a Good King. The story is well worth reading in 2 Kings 22-23. Yet in retrospect Josiah’s reign was an Indian Summer—a last glow before the onset of the chill winter of Babylonian oppression.
The political history of the small countries like Israel and Judah and their neighbours was largely determined by the fortunes of the great powers. In that way the world was no different then than it is now.
In Old Testament times Egypt was the great and enduring power to the West. To the north and east a number of empires successively rose and fell, first Assyria, then Babylon, later the Medes and the Persians, eventually the Greeks under Alexander the Great, and finally, in the time of Jesus, the Romans. All of these empires had their ups and downs, times when the imperialistic ambitions seemed unstoppable, and times when internal weakness and division took their attention away from the wider world.
If Egypt was strong and Babylon weak, then the smaller kingdoms came under the sway of Egypt and paid tribute—a sort of protection money—to Pharaoh.
Similarly if Egypt was weak and Babylon strong they paid tribute to the Babylonian king. But particularly in the case of Babylon and Assyria, it was not just a matter of money flowing to the larger power. The exercised a cultural influence over their smaller tributaries. Whether out of expectation from the greater power, or from a desire to please by the smaller one, it became customary to adopt at least some of the Assyrian or Babylonian gods, along with their idols, and their forms of worship. For most of the smaller nations, who had many gods, it was no problem at all to adopt the gods of their overlords as one more among many. For the fiercely monotheistic Jews, however, this expectation caused great tensions between the ‘very bad kings’ who ‘did evil in the sight of the Lord’ and encouraged such practices, ‘bad kings’ who turned a blind eye, and ‘good kings’ who took positive steps to root them out. As shall see, much of the content of Jeremiah’s prophecy is directed against foreign gods and religious practices. This does not imply any lesser fervour or devotion to yhwh, but a failure to understand the uniqueness of Israel’s God, and the unique obligations he placed upon them.
When both powers were weakened, as from time to time they were, then the smaller countries in between could flex their muscles. The period of David and Solomon was one of these, when the united Kingdom of Israel and Judah reached its widest bounds and its greatest power. The days of Solomon always were (and still are) looked back to as Israel’s greatest moment.
The reign of Josiah was another period when Egypt was weak, and Assyria was becoming fatally so. Josiah’s reign, though not to be compared to Solomon’s, was a golden time for Judah. Politically and socially the nation prospered, and it is no co-incidence that the Reformation of Josiah’s reign was a reassertion of Judah’s religious identity and political independence.
This was the period in which Jeremiah began to prophesy, and the earliest section of the book (Chapters 1-6) reflects this period. We will turn to a closer study of the prophecies themselves later on.
During the reign of Josiah, Egypt began to gain in strength, and Assyria fell to the rising power of the Babylonian Empire, and in 612 BCE was definitively defeated. Babylon became the new power of the north, and the remaining small independent kingdoms such as Judah became pawns in the continuing power struggle.
As we have already seen, when one power was strong the payment of tribute was usually sufficient for a smaller nation to retain its independence.
When both powers were weak the smaller nations had the opportunity to flourish.
When both powers were strong, however, and were fighting for dominance, the smaller nations were put in an impossible situation.
The end result was often the destruction of that nation as an independent entity, with all the brutal consequences of slaughter, demolition and exile. This is what had happened to the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 bce when it fell to Assyria and was destroyed.
Imagine the situation today of a small shopkeeper who has two rival gangs demanding protection money from him. Which one should he go with?
Towards the end of his reign Josiah backed the wrong horse. 2 Kings 23 tells of his death in battle at Megiddo against the Pharaoh Neco. His eldest son Jeoahaz , Judah’s new King, was taken off into captivity, and an enormous tribute was exacted from Judah of a hundred talents of silver and one talent of gold.
After three months Neco installed another son of Josiah as King in Jerusalem, Jehoiacim. During his eleven year reign the fortunes of Egypt, his protector, waned, and he dallied with Nebuchadrezzar, the King of Babylon.
In scriptural terms, Jehoiacim ‘did evil in the sight of the Lord’, politically, he simply did his best to maintain his throne, and protect his nation, in impossible circumstances.
Just as Jehoiacim dies, we are told that “The King of Egypt did not come out again from his land, for the King of Babylon had taken over all that belonged to the King of Egypt from the Wadi of Egypt to the River Euphrates[7]”.
Jehoiacim had played a dangerous game. He began as a tributary of Egypt, switched his allegiance to Babylon, and then back again to Pharaoh. Now Pharaoh had returned to Egypt with his tail between his legs, and with no further no power to protect his former tributaries. Judah was at the mercy of Nebuchadrezzar, who had little time for turncoats.
Jehoiacim’s eighteen year old son, confusingly called Jehoiacin, came to the throne at this fatal moment.
As Jehoiacim died and his son came to the throne, in 597 bce Nebuchadrezzar was already approaching Jerusalem to teach the wider world a lesson about fidelity. There was no room for negotiation now!
In 597 bce Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians following a siege. Jehoiacin surrendered to Nebuchadrezzar, and was taken off into exile, with all his household, and with all the prominent Judeans, including princes, priests and artisans. “No-one remained except the poorest people of the land”[8] Yet even at this stage Nebuchadrezzar gave Judah one last change. The king was taken peacefully into captivity, where he lived in some style. The Temple was stripped of all its costly treasure but not destroyed, and a puppet government led by the King’s uncle Zedekiah, was left in place. For ten more years Judah struggled on. Ironically Jeremiah, who had preached that Babylon was the place where the future lay, was allowed to stay in Jerusalem, presumably as a reward for backing the Babylonian cause, as it would be seen in political terms.
At this stage, with a savage punishment only ten years in the past, with Babylon unstoppable and Egypt now in terminal decline, the reason for Zedekiah’s decision to rebel against Nebuchadrezzar are impossible to fathom, but rebel he did! Nebuchadrezzar’s vengeance was swift. The final fall of Jerusalem in 586 bce was conclusive. Zedekiah’s sons were slaughtered before him, his eyes were put out, and he was taken off in chains to Babylon. This was no house arrest, or polite royal exile as Jehoiacin had suffered, but the full and brutal force of Babylonian justice. The remaining metalwork of the Temple was plundered, and the building itself along with the Royal Palace and all the walls of the city completely destroyed. Finally the chief priest and a representative group of remaining officials were put to death before the rest were taken off to exile in Babylon. Again we are told that ‘only the poorest of the land remained’[9], but again Nebuchadrezzar left a Judean in charge, a man called Gedaliah, this time as Governor under direct Babylonian authority. Gedaliah reassured his remaining troops that all that was needed for their prosperity was obedience to the King of Babylon, but they panicked, killed him and fled to Egypt. They took Jeremiah with them. Part of the final irony of Jeremiah’s message is that, he continued even in his final exile, to curse Egypt and those who had fled there, even though he was one of them, and to preach that the future lay in Babylon.
Having looked at the historical background of the book, we turn now to its structure.
When we jump, without orientation, into a long Prophetic book like this we are tempted to paraphrase Salieri’s comment about the music of Mozart—too many words! Where do we start? Besides the historical background, a look at the structure of the book gives another peg on which to hang our reading. As well as knowing where the wood is we need to know its shape and structure so we can look at the trees effectively.
The Book begins with an account of the Call of Jeremiah in the 13th year of the reign of Josiah.
Chapters 2-5 date from the reign of Josiah, following on from Jeremiah’s call. They are largely ‘oracles’, that is prophetic sayings, usually in the form of poetry. We don’t know how long Jeremiah prophesied during this period, or what sort of reception he got. Preaching against the unfaithfulness of Judah with other gods is the principal theme of this section.
The rest of the oracles in the first major section of the book (7-25.38) date from the reign of Jehoiacim, during the period when Judah’s fate became increasingly clear. At a time of great political confusion Jeremiah’s message was an uncompromising one of submission to Babylon—not a theme to bring him great popularity at the time! Just imagine the fate of a prominent clergyman preaching an uncompromising message of submission to Germany in 1941!!!
The second major section of the book (Chapters 26-45) is largely narrative, some dating from the reign of Jehoiacim, but the final section (36-45) dealing with the siege and fall of Jerusalem during the brief reign of his young son, and its tragic aftermath. This largely narrative section of the book is often known as “The Memoirs of Baruch the Scribe” who is identified as Jeremiah’s Scribe and Assistant during this period.
Chapter 36-45, sometimes called the ‘Passion of Jeremiah’ covers the period from the siege of Jerusalem and its first fall in 597 to its final fall, and the exile of King Zedekiah ten years later.
The end of Jeremiah has five chapters of ‘Oracles against eight foreign nations’ beginning with Egypt,and concluding with a lengthy and crushing prophecy of doom against Babylon. We have to remember that this is a theological work, and God’s use of Nebuchadrezzar as his tool does not give him a special position, nor exempt him from God’s requirements.
The final Chapter of the Book is lifted directly from 2 Kings 24 &25, a historical postscript to Jeremiah’s prophecy.
The context of Jeremiah is crucial. He ministered at a time of unique national crisis, and as a prophet was required by God to deliver a message which was, in contemporary political terms, at the best unacceptable, at the worst, treason. In this book we see Jeremiah’s own struggle with his burdensome vocation, set alongside the struggle of the people of Israel to understand the shattering experience of Destruction and Exile, and to see God’s future for them.
Next week we will look at Jeremiah’s Call, and his first period of prophesying in the reign of Good King Josiah.
Chris Sterry 14.iii.11
[4] e.g. And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. Lev.20.6
No comments:
Post a Comment