Jeremiah Chapter 12: No flesh is safe...

Lincoln by Daniel Chester French begun 1911 and open to the public 1914

 The Prophet Jeremiah by Michelangelo, 1542-1545               Chapter 12

 

Immorality and corruption are widespread in Judea and all attempts at ethical reform have collapsed. Jeremiah does perform his duties as Prophet, but he poses the question to God that we still ponder to this day; why is there evil and why does God permit it?

 Rabbi: Referring to 12:1-2 “You will win, O Lord, if I make claim against you, / Yet I shall present charges against you: Why does the way of the wicked prosper?...You have planted them, and they have taken root…

This is the first time that Jeremiah or anyone in the text has asked the questions: Why is there evil? Why is it allowed to exist? 

Julie: Jeremiah is calling God out and he is respectfully requesting an answer. If you are all powerful, why not stop it?

Rabbi:  referring to 12: 5 “If you race with the foot-runners and they exhaust you/ How then can you compete with horses?”

  God replies by advising Jeremiah to toughen up. He is telling him that the task set before him will get even tougher. Your own townspeople have turned against you, so be prepared for far worse.

12:7 God is lamenting that he is forced to punish Israel, the bride that he loves.

Julie: This is sort of like, I had to smack her for her own good – she made me hit her.

Rabbi: And, those who punish you (referring to the Babylonian Empire) will be smacked down as well.

Julie: Are the Babylonians being punished because they have gone too far? It is God‘s plan to use them to punish Israel? If so, why punish them if they are merely fulfilling his goal?

Jerry: Is this Jeremiah’s interpretation or is this God’s voice? I can’t tell which is which.

Rabbi: Maybe their (the Babylonian Empire’s) usefulness is up. Maybe they have punished the Jews too harshly, but we as a people are meant to grow from this experience.

Joel: There was a documentary about Abraham Lincoln on PBS. The amazing thing is that Lincoln went from being a moderate on slavery which meant simply to not  advance slavery into new territory, to advocating settling  freed African Americans in Liberia, to writing the Emancipation Proclamation, to advocating blacks to get the vote, all in a space of 5 years. It’s an amazing evolution.

Jane: Lincoln always thought that black people were inferior until he met Fredrick Douglas. Emancipated slaves were protected under the War Powers Act. This was a specific legal decision based on his executive prerogative as the head of the Army. He may not have believed that black people were equal, but he did believe they were entitled to the same rights as whites under the law.

Joel: I believe that the Prophets went through the same process.  Like Lincoln, the Prophets saw death all around them and that all that death had to have a higher purpose. For Lincoln it was the 650,000 deaths of the Civil War. For the Prophets it was the Babylonian invasion and exile. We, the Jews were to be transformed by the experience, the cauldron of “the fiery furnace” first mentioned in Deuteronomy.

Jerry: Jeremiah is asking the question – “How long will we be in exile?”

Rabbi: The Prophets were good at reading the political tea leaves. They couldn’t predict the length of time they would be in exile, but they knew exile was a real possibility.

12: 14-15 “…I will uproot the house of Judah…then, I will take them back into favor…”

Julie: they will be punished but eventually they will be brought back. It is the shaping of this historical material that leads the Prophets to create a new Judaism, a more modern Judaism