Jeremiah
With Isaiah and Amos, I made the
generalization that the messages of the prophets are rightly
called burdens,
but that they are burdens worth bearing.
I would make the same generalization about Jeremiah and
Ezekiel.
Jeremiah is another of those books
that’s a
burden to us. It
presents some real
difficulties in interpretation and understanding. With most books,
it’s helpful to start with
the overall structure of the book and then try to organize the
details within
that overall structure.
But this is not easy at all with
Jeremiah. Like the
book of Isaiah,
Jeremiah was not written at one time.
Instead, it contains messages delivered over quite a few
years, starting
in the reign of Josiah and ending with the reign of Zedekiah. The messages can be
anywhere between 638 and
586 BC. There are
many different
messages given on many different occasions.
A big problem for us is that the
present
arrangement is not chronological:
Chapter 28 indicates it’s written in the first year of Zedekiah
(597 BC).
Chapter 32 indicates it’s
written in the tenth year of Zedekiah (587 BC).
Chapter 35 is from the time
of Jehoiachim (609-597)
Chapter 37 is back to the
reign of Zedekiah
Chapter 45 is in the 4th
year of Jehoiachim (605)
Adding to the difficulties for us,
the fact
that the Septuagint (LXX) translation presents the material in a
different
order.
Ch. 49:34-39
Ch. 50-51
Ch. 47:1-7
Ch. 49:7-22, 1-6, 28, 33, 23-27
Ch. 48
Ch. 25:15-39
Ch. 52
The Septuagint version differs
from the
Masoretic text in other ways as well, and it’s difficult to know
exactly why.
Were there two different versions of Jeremiah’s book, both of
which remained in
circulation after his death?
Did the
Septuagint translators try to rearrange things for the sake of
an audience who
needed a more chronological approach?
Impossible to know.
A partial explanation of the
strange order of
Jeremiah is in Chapter 36.
Jeremiah is
commanded to put all his messages into a book.
Baruch helps him with this, and, since Jeremiah is
confined, Baruch then
reads the messages in the temple.
The
people respond fairly favorably (some of them, perhaps,
remembering the great
revival of Josiah’s days), and the leaders even ask that the
message be read to
them. And then word
gets to the king—who
has the book read out to him (sure enough) but then gets angry. Into the fire goes the
book. Jeremiah gets
Baruch a new scroll, has Baruch
transcribe the messages again, and then adds “many like words.”
While this explains the
difficulties of
Jeremiah, it still leaves us with something of a dilemma in
terms of
approach. Do we
look at Jeremiah as a
random anthology? Or
can we can we find
a pattern in the current order.
For more than 30 years, I have
been giving
guest messages at various places.
I tend
to put my notes in a drawer at home.
They’re not very well organized, but what’s there is
often more
interesting (and more important) that what I teach in my
classes. Someday, I’ll
do something with the material, and what I’ll probably end up
doing is arranging
things thematically: chronological order wouldn’t work.
Maybe this is what we are getting
with
Jeremiah. The
Septuagint order makes
sense in terms of chronology, but the Masoretic text might have
a pattern we
don’t see at first. Maybe
we are supposed
to see Jeremiah’s call, messages of judgment, refusal to heed
the messages, the
hope that will follow judgment, the Chaldeans as instruments of
God’s judgment
on the nations, God’s judgment of the Chaldeans, God’s judgment
on Jerusalem
and Judea, and, finally, a hint of hope.
Thinking along these lines make
things easier, but the
historical context is some help too.
At the death of Amon (son of
Manasseh), his
son Josiah (640-609) came to the throne and there was a time of
revival.
Josiah has the temple repaired, and, as that's happening, the
priests discover
a copy of the law that had been neglected.
Bad news: they see what's in store
because of
the years of apostasy. The prophetess Huldah advises
repentance...but
warns that, while punishment is delayed, it isn't to be
avoided.
Still, Josiah does his best.
There is a
great Passover feast. Idolatry is gone, "And like unto him was
there no
king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and
with all his
might, according to all the Law of Moses."
And yet despite all this, the
prophetic
message was still gloomy: destruction is ahead. The
wickedness of
Manasseh means the price will be paid.
Now this is perhaps troubling
theologically,
but from a political/historical point of view it's obvious
truth. The bad
decisions of earlier generations often come back to haunt their
descendants.
Anyway, the end is a dreary one,
described in
some detail by the author of II Kings (just maybe, Jeremiah
himself!).
Josiah seems to have thought that
Egypt was
weak enough for him to block their expansion north.
Perhaps he was right,
but wars are unpredictable, and he died in battle against the
Egyptians.
His sons and his grandson can't
seem to play
the political game successfully either.
The game is complicated
here. The last
four kings of Judah include three sons of Josiah and one
grandson. All of
them have more than one name, and some of them similar names
(e.g., Jehoiakim
and Jehoiachin) so it’s hard not to get confused--as I have done
plenty of
times. Here's the brief summary.
Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans
(aka
Babylonians and neo-Babylonians) took Nineveh in 612 BC.
With Assyria on
its last legs and Egyptian power waning, Nebuchadnezzar is free
to push in to
Syria and Judea.
Josiah's son Jehoahaz reigns
briefly, but
Pharaoh Necho removes him and installs Eliakim (another son of
Josiah) as an
Egyptian puppet, changing his name to Jehoiakim.
Nebuchadnezzar then invades, and
Joiakim
switches his alliance to Nebuchadnezzar. After a time, he
rebels, and Nebuchadnezzar
attacks.
Jehoiakim dies, and his son
Jehoiachin
(Coniah) takes his place. Nebuchadnezzar besieges Babylon,
takes
Jehoiachin and thousands of others captive into Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar puts Jehoiachin's
uncle
Mattaniah (another son of Josiah) on the throne and changes his
name to
Zedekiah. Zedekiah rebels, Nebuchadnezzar returns, kills
his sons in
front of him, and pokes out his eyes. This time, it's
disaster: Jerusalem
is destroyed along with the temple, and there is another round
of deportations.
This time, Nebuchadnezzar leaves
in charge
Gedaliah, a governor, who treat s the Jews well. But a
conspiracy hoping
to get a native ruler back assassinates him, and, when it's
clear the Chaldeans
are going to take revenge, the conspirators flee to Egypt—taking
Jeremiah with
them!
Among the burdens of Jeremiah:
1.
His
personal sacrifice (16:2).
He will have
no wife or children.
2.
He
begins young.
3.
Unlike Isaiah and Amos who promised victory over enemies
to a repentant
Israel/Judah, Jeremiah has to preach capitulation. No use resisting
Nebuchadnezzar!
4.
He
faces opposition from those who *should* be on his side and
claim to be
speaking for God.
5.
He
has to stand in the gate of the temples with a “house of
thieves” type message
(7:1-11)
6. He would rather not have to get
into these
conflicts, “Woe is me that I was born a man of strife and
contention” (15:10)
7.
He
has to deal with heart problems: more difficult than externals. “The heart is
deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked. Who
can know it?”
(17:9).
8.
He
has to deal with worst kind of treachery. He compares infidelity
to God to
infidelity to a husband.
9.
He
has to deal with people who have given up hope of change. “There is no hope—we
will walk after our own
devices” (18:12).
10. Jeremiah put in the stocks by
Pashur,
governor of the Temple (Jeremiah 20)
11. Jeremiah 20:7-18 (Jeremiah’s
lament at
being a prophet--Why was I ever born?)
12. Jeremiah 28 (Hannaniah taking
Jeremiah’s
yoke)
13.
Jeremiah
32 (Jeremiah in prison)
14.
Jeremiah
38 (Jerusalem besieged, Jeremiah asked to prophesy and then told
to shut up!)
15. Jeremiah 41 (Ishmael’s
conspiracy against
Gedaliah)
16.
Jeremiah
44 (Captives explain their struggle by saying it’s because they
haven’t burned
incense to the queen of heaven!)
[What makes
up for this? A couple of things, perhaps. Note the
hope in Jeremiah 31:31, the New Covenant. Note also the
line in Ecclesiastes 7:3 that sorrow is better than
laughter. There's a sense of that here, and in Lamentations
3:16-30.]