GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (38) A Tale of Two Sisters

“I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
    nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery;
for the men themselves go aside with whores,
    and sacrifice with temple prostitutes;
thus a people without understanding comes to ruin.

Though you play the whore, O Israel,
    do not let Judah become guilty.” (Hosea 4.14-15)

 

“The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and played the whore there? And I thought, “After she has done all this she will return to me”; but she did not return, and her false sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this her false sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense, says the Lord. Then the Lord said to me: Faithless Israel has shown herself less guilty than false Judah.” (Jer. 3.6-11)

 

“See, everyone…will use this proverb about you, “Like mother, like daughter.” You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children…Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways, and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it. Samaria has not committed half your sins; you have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed.” (Ezekiel 16.44-52)

 

 

     Two sisters imitating each other’s promiscuous ways – where does this image, used to depict the people of Yahweh, come from?  First of all, let’s review the history.  Following the death of King Solomon in the late 10^th century B.C., the United Kingdom of Israel split into the Northern and Southern kingdoms.  The capital of Israel to the north was the city of Samaria while Jerusalem remained the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah, under the reign of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son.  Jeroboam, the first ruler of the Northern Kingdom, fearing pilgrimages by his subjects to the Jerusalem Temple (cf. Jer. 41.4-8), set up two shrines – one at either extremity of his kingdom – in the hopes of satisfying his subjects’ religious needs without them having to cross the southern border.  Interestingly enough, both shrines featured a statue of a golden calf, most probably following the Canaanite habit of portraying Baal astride a bull[1] (cf. 1 Kings 12.25-33; Ex. 32).  This politico-theologically expedient course of action by Jeroboam would become a byword in the subsequent history of Israel; “the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat” became a cipher, the very template of apostasy.[2]  The climax of Baal worship in Israel occurred in the Northern Kingdom during the reign of King Ahab in the 9^th century, and was greatly encouraged by his Phoenician wife, Jezebel (cf. 1 Kings 16.29-33).  Indeed, the cult of Baal became so widespread that only 7,000 subjects of the Northern Kingdom were said to be faithful to Yahweh during the reign of Ahab (1 Kgs 19.18).  The prophets Hosea (8^th century), Jeremiah (7^th C) and Ezekiel (6^th C) all portray the estranged kingdoms of Israel and Judah as two sisters who prostitute themselves with false gods, especially Baal and his consort Asherah, the goddess of fertility (cf. Jer. 17.2; 2 Kgs 23.4-7, 14-15).[3]

     In the 8^th century B.C., the Assyrian empire held sway in the Ancient Near East.  In the year 722, the Assyrians besieged Samaria and exiled the population of the Northern Kingdom to eastern regions of their empire (cf. 2 Kings 17).  Jeremiah refers to this event as Yahweh’s divorce from Israel (Jer. 3.8).  Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel castigate Judah as Israel’s younger sister, who should have taken a lesson from what happened to the Northern Kingdom and re-order her behaviour accordingly.  Unfortunately, Judah not only ignored the warning, but also sunk lower than Israel in her “affair” with Baal and other false gods.  Hosea had an obvious influence on Jeremiah,[4] and Jeremiah in turn influenced Ezekiel.  Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, was from a priestly family (cf. Ez. 1.1-3) and was a younger contemporary of Jeremiah in Jerusalem.  Ezekiel was taken to Babylon in the second deportation in the year 598.  It is fascinating to speculate about a possible personal acquaintance between the two prophets who both lived in the capital as the Babylonian noose tightened around Judah.  The fact that these prophets accuse Israel/Judah both of adultery against their divine “spouse” and rebellion against their divine “father” (i.e., Yahweh) demonstrates the flexibility of their imagery of the dysfunctional relationship between Yahweh and his people (cf. Jer. 3.19-22).

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[1] In Aramean sculptures, Baal stands upon a bull, which may connect with the calf-images made by Aaron and King Jeroboam I (cf. Ex. 32.4; 1 Kings 12.28), these being regarded, in all probability, as pedestals for the invisible Yahweh.

[2] Cf. 1 Kings 16.3, 26, 31; 21.22, 52; 2 Kings 3.3; 9.9; 10.29; 13.2, 11; 14.24; 15.9, 18, 24, 28; 17.21; 23.15.

[3] The personification of Israel and Judah as women (“sisters”, “daughters”) should not be taken as being a sexist, patriarchal and oppressive depiction of women in a general sense.  Ancient Near Eastern peoples were indeed characterized by patriarchal societal structures; however, in Hosea 4.14-15, it is made quite clear that Israelite men were just as guilty of indulging in sexual fertility rituals within the context of Baal worship as the women were.  It is indeed the case that in the Bible, Yahweh is almost exclusively referred to with male imagery, and the people of God with female imagery (bride of Yahweh, bride of Christ, etc.).  This reflects that just as men (and parents) took the initiative in matters of marriage in the ANE, so Yahweh is depicted as taking the initiative when it comes to establishing a covenant with his people, whether it be depicted in terms of marriage or that of an Emperor-vassal relationship.

[4] Both Hosea and Jeremiah use the image of an unfaithful wife to describe Israel, and they both spend considerable time denouncing Baal worship: Clements, R.E. Jeremiah, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988, pp. 29-31.