GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (36) Yahweh’s rival for Romance, part I
“How can you say, “I am not defiled,
I have not gone after the Baals”?
Look at your way in the valley;
know what you have done—
a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,
a wild ass at home in the
wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind!
Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves;
in her month they will find her.” (Jeremiah 2.23-24)
Which god? Yahweh & the idols.
The Bible is very aware of the fact that the word “god”[1] is not
univocal; i.e., during the biblical period, just like today, the word “god(s)”
means different things to different people.
Every tribe/nation/civilization throughout history has had its own
pantheon of divinities,[2] most of
whom represented different aspects of the natural world; e.g., the goddess of
fertility, the god of thunder – the Sun itself was sometimes worshipped as
being divine. Monotheism – the belief
that there is only one God (capital “G”) – developed gradually during Israel’s
early history. Before encountering the god
who called him to leave his country and journey to the “Promised Land”, Abraham was a typical Mesopotamian
polytheist; i.e., he worshipped many different gods (cf. Joshua 24.2). There is no indication in the Abraham story
that he ever became a strict monotheist.
At no point in the story does the god who called him tell Abraham that
he is the only God. What Abraham knew was that this god was his god, that this god had called him
and had made promises to him.
The one true God.
Centuries
after Abraham, after rescuing his people from slavery in Egypt through the
leadership of Moses,[3] Yahweh
reveals himself to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai as the one true God and
prohibits the manufacture of idols (Ex. 20.1-6). “There is one God, and Israel is his
people”. It was common practice in the
ancient world for gods and goddesses to be symbolized by statues, before whom
their worshippers would offer both animal and human sacrifices. As Yahweh gives his “law” to Moses and the
Israelites, a unique change is occurring
in the history of the Ancient Near East – a people will commit itself to
worshipping only one God and they will do so without building an idol of their
God, without representing him with a statue.
So, the (Hebrew) Bible emerged from the nation of Israel and tells the
story of this people and the God they worshipped – the God who had called
Abraham to be the “father” of the chosen nation and had revealed himself to
Moses as the one true God.
What about the other
nations?
Though Israel was the nation specially chosen by Yahweh, the other nations
– sometimes referred to as the “pagans” or the “gentiles” – also figured into
God’s plan of salvation. In fact, God’s
promise to Abraham to make of him a
great nation included hope for all the
nations of the Earth. God promised
Abraham that through him and his descendants, all the nations of the world would be “blessed”. In the context of the book of Genesis, to say
that someone or something will be “blessed” is to say that that person or thing
will experience healing from the “curses” pronounced on humankind and all of
creation after Adam & Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden (cf. Gn.
3). After the “fall” of Adam & Eve,
the whole world finds itself under a divine curse – doomed to corruption, decay,
violence and death. The Creator’s
intention in making the world was that it be a place of life, light, beauty, justice,
peace and vitality. The Bible tells a
story about the Creator’s plan – beginning with Abraham – to once again “bless”
his world and undo the effects of the curse.
Israel’s
unfaithfulness to the covenant with Yahweh.
So, the
election of Abraham’s descendants
(Israel) as his special people was the Creator’s way of addressing the problem
of humanity’s rebellion against him.
However, Israel often mistook her responsibility to manifest genuine
humanness for all the nations of the Earth for a private privilege (that of
being God’s favourite people). Predictably
enough, throughout her history, Israel
also repeatedly rebels against Yahweh, worshipping other gods and refusing to
listen to the call of the prophets to return to God’s law, to be faithful to
the covenant that Yahweh established between himself and his people. The
people of the solution had also become part of the problem. It’s like if an ambulance on the way to the
scene of an accident is itself involved in an accident. Now the ambulance and its crew, who were
supposed to rescue the victims of the original accident, are themselves in need
of rescue. Israel had been chosen by God
to be the agent of salvation, of rescue for the whole world, but now Israel herself needs to be rescued so
that God’s salvation can extend, through
Israel, to all peoples. However,
there were consequences to rebelling against Yahweh. In the book of Deuteronomy, there is a double
list of blessings for covenant faithfulness and curses for being disloyal to
the agreement with Yahweh (cf. Dt. 28).
The most disastrous possible consequence for having broken the covenant
was for Israel to be exiled from the Land that God had promised to give to Abraham…
The curse of exile.
The exile of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in the 6th
century B.C. seemed to destroy the hopes of the Abrahamic promises ever coming
true. Even after a small minority of
Jews had returned to the Land of Israel a couple of generations later to
rebuild the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, there was no sign of the promises
coming true; Judea remained a small province in the vast Persian empire and
would remain subjugated to a series of pagan empires during the centuries
leading up to the birth of Jesus. The Jewish
hope during the “Second Temple Period” was for this situation of “exile” and
servitude to pagan empires to come to an end and for Yahweh to decisively act
to rescue Israel from her enemies and inaugurate the “Age to Come”, a worldwide
period of justice and peace, with Israel recognized as being the chosen people
of the Creator (as well as perhaps ruling over/taking revenge on the pagan
nations!).
[1] When the word “god” is spelled with a
capital “G”, it is assumed that the author is discussing (the god who is
perceived by a certain person or group to be) the one true God.
[2] It appears that most ancient cultures
were polytheistic, i.e. they believed in several gods. However, there are some researchers that
claim that there is evidence that monotheism (belief in one God) existed in
many ancient cultures before degenerating into polytheism over time.
[3] To whom the God of Abraham had revealed
himself as “Yahweh” (“I AM”, “LORD”): cf. Exodus 3.1-15.
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