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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