GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (49) when the bottom drops out

 

     The people who are preparing to go to Egypt approach Jeremiah and ask him to consult Yahweh for them so he can tell them what to do (42.1-3).  Jeremiah agrees and the people promise that they will listen to the message that God gives him and will do whatever Yahweh tells them, through Jeremiah, to do (42.4-6).  Our reading of the book of Jeremiah thus far will perhaps make us slightly hesitant to believe this promise to obey the word of the Lord…  “At the end of ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah” (42.7).

     Jeremiah tells the people that if they remain in the land, then God will “build them up and not pull them down; he will plant them and not pluck them up, because he is sorry for the disaster that he brought upon them” (42.10; cf. 1.10).  God, through Jeremiah, tells the people two additional things:

1-      Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon, because I am with you to rescue you from him (42.11; cf. 1.18-19).

2-      I will grant you mercy, and Nebuchadnezzar will have mercy on you and restore you to your native soil (42.12).

Again, the message is the same – don’t be afraid; if you serve the Babylonians, you will be able to remain in the land, the land that Yahweh promised to give to Abraham and his descendants (cf. Gn. 12.1-3; 15, 17, etc.).

     But, Yahweh continues, if you insist on going to Egypt in the hopes of finding peace, security and food there (cf. Numbers 11.4-6; 21.4-5), you will actually die by the sword, famine and plague in Egypt, where you believe that you will be safe (42.13-22).  As in chapter 21, so now again in chapter 42 – Jeremiah is presenting the people, as he had presented Zedekiah, with a choice between the “way of life” and the “way of death”.  This is precisely what Moses had done in the book of Deuteronomy, chapters 27-30.  To obey Yahweh would result in blessings, including prosperity “in the land” and disobedience would result in curses, including that of being exiled, uprooted, from the land.  Have the people taken the lesson from Zedekiah’s obstinate refusal to listen to Jeremiah (Yahweh)?  What happens next must have strained Jeremiah’s sanity to the breaking point…

     Remember the peoples’ promise to Jeremiah in 42.5-6?  “Whether what the Lord sends us through you be good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God”, they had said.  Once Jeremiah had finished relating Yahweh’s message to the people, Johanan and the other military leaders pronounce the following unimaginable, yet hardly surprising, words: “You are telling a lie” (43.2).  They then accuse Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe, of having conspired with the Babylonians to kill and/or exile the survivors and of having manipulated Jeremiah so he would give misleading counsel to the people and thus lead them into a trap (43.3).  This, of course, is exactly what will happen if they go to Egypt… the irony is agonizingly painful.  This sums up the people’s attitude throughout the 40 years that Jeremiah had preached to them – “We’re not going to believe what you say; we’re going to act in such a way that we believe is to our advantage but in reality, we are going to prove you right”.  And so,

“Johanan…took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to settle in the land of Judah from all the nations to which they had been driven…everyone whom Nebuzaradan…had left with Gedaliah…also the prophet Jeremiah and Baruch son of Neriah.  And they came into the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the Lord.” (43.5-7; cf. 40.11-12).

As unthinkable as it is, the survivors of Judah now exile themselves…to Egypt!  This action is a repudiation of the entire history of Yahweh with his people since the Exodus.  Most of the population of Jerusalem is now in Babylon, where God had called Abraham 15 centuries before, and the rest of the Judahites are now in Egypt, the place from which Yahweh had rescued them from slavery 7 centuries before.  The history of Yahweh and Israel has been erased.  The land is empty; the Temple is destroyed.  The people are back where they started, either back where the story began or back in the land of slavery.  But this is still not rock-bottom.

     Upon arrival in Egypt, Jeremiah performs yet another symbolic action.  He buries some large stones near the entrance to Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes (43.8-9).  As he does so, Jeremiah prophecies that Nebuchadnezzar will come and set up his throne and royal canopy above these buried stones when he campaigns against Egypt (43.10-13).  Even in Egypt, Jeremiah continues to preach – he rails against the idolatry that continues, even in Egypt (44.1-14)!  The people respond by saying that while they were back in Jerusalem, it was when they had stopped making offerings to the “queen of heaven” (a Canaanite divinity), then disasters had befallen them (44.15-19).  Even after all that they have experienced, the people have still managed to completely misread the meaning of the events.  Instead of reflecting upon the link between their suffering and their (breaking of the) covenant with Yahweh, they can only think in terms of their devotion to false gods.  Jeremiah then announces the doom of all those Judahites who had taken refuge in Egypt – they will all die by the sword and by famine (44.20-30).

     The short oracle contained in chapter 45 is dated to “the fourth year of king Jehoiakim” (i.e., 605 B.C.), yet it is placed here for obvious reasons (cf. 43.1-3).  In words reminiscent of his message to Ebed-melech, who had rescued him from the cistern (cf. 39.15-18), Jeremiah reassures Baruch that God will “give him his life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go” (45.5).

     The picture that is drawn in these chapters – which conclude the narrative portion of the book of Jeremiah – is bleak indeed.  Even as refugees in Egypt, the people of God persist in their failure to acknowledge Yahweh and yet further judgment is announced.  The words of Baruch are fitting: “Woe is me! The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest” (45.3).  The exiles in Babylon will have to take comfort from the promises of Jeremiah chapters 30-33 and wait and pray for their fulfillment (cf. Daniel 9.1-19).