GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (40) Prophetic Pain, part I


     Everyone has their breaking point.  Everyone is vulnerable to psychological distress and the experience of doubt regarding the goodness of God and of life itself.  Jeremiah was indeed well acquainted with pain.  His language sometimes resembles that of Job (cp. Jer. 20.13-14 with Job 3.1-7, 11-16).  I believe that the “painful” tone of much of Jeremiah’s writing is that of a tired preacher, an exhausted messenger.  Think about it – Jeremiah warned his contemporaries (in vain) of coming disaster for 40 years, after which time Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed.  Not only was he called to deliver a message that no one wanted to hear, but Jeremiah also had to face hostile (and potentially deadly) opposition, even from those people closest to him.  As he experienced this solitary suffering, Jeremiah recorded 6 “lamentations”[1], i.e., 6 cries of distress to Yahweh, both expressing his anguish and requesting that God defend him and avenge him on his enemies.  These cries resemble those psalms in which a righteous, innocent person is unjustly persecuted by “wicked” people and pleads with God to take up their cause (e.g., Ps. 22).

     The first two “psalms of lament” are found in Jer. 11.18-23 & 12.1-6.  The circumstances which gave rise to the first lament is a plot against Jeremiah’s life by his neighbours in Anathoth.  Jer. 11.18-23 contains the three elements of the conventional structure of lament prayer: complaint (vv. 18-19), petition (20) and divine response (21-23).[2]  The language of “evil/right” and the summons to Yahweh to “judge and test” is court language.  The final noun of the petition, “cause” (11.20), means a legal case.  The petition addressed to Yahweh seeks positively for acquittal and negatively for a countersuit against the offender.  When the juridical language is recognized, the plea for “vengeance” is not a request for blind capricious retaliation, but for the implementation of a just legal claim and the implementation of Yahweh’s justice on which the speaker has every right to count.  This is the court petition of one unjustly treated, addressed to a reliable judge against the unjust perpetrators.[3]  The divine response in 11.21-23 moves beyond the person of the prophet to endorse a view of historical processes under God’s troublesome governance.[4]

     The second lament is composed of a complaint (12.1-4) and a response (12.5-6).  The complaint raises the most fundamental question of faith, i.e., the reliability of Yahweh to stand by and look after faithful covenant partners.  Indeed, this text poses the problem of theodicy more frontally than any other OT text.[5]  Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?  God’s answer to Jeremiah’s complaint is not an easy one.  Yahweh informs his prophet that the worse is yet to come.  Jeremiah will have to live with the uncertainty that arises from living an unjust situation all the while having faith in a just God.  Yahweh warns Jeremiah not to trust anyone (12.6).  The isolation of the prophet with this response is not unlike a citizen who learns of conspiracy in government (cf. Jer. 11.9) but can find no place to report it.  However, at the end of the divine response, we are not given an answer to the question of God’s justice vis-à-vis human injustice.  Yahweh’s response resembles that of the whirlwind speech of Job 38—41, which simply overrides the theodic question.  Fidelity and obedience to Yahweh must be its own reward.  To serve such a God is an inescapable destiny once one has grasped a certain reading of reality.  The response only summons Jeremiah to more radical obedience.[6]


[1] “They seem to be the most direct, candid, and intimate prayers that we know about in the OT”: Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 114.

[2] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 115.

[3] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 116.

[4] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 117.

[5] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 118.

[6] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, pp. 119-20.

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