Jeremiah Chapter 13; Your Shame Shall Be Seen

Flax plant in bloom

Flax

                                                                 

 

 

                                                                         Chapter 13

 

As one would teach a child with concrete examples, so God directs Jeremiah with very specific directions involving a loincloth. A piece of intimate apparel worn directly against the loins, Jeremiah is told to bury it so that it decays. An initial reading of this opening verse appears surreal, embarrassing or even pointless, but further reflection reveals that there is a method to this madness. God is fed up and resorts to using his servant Jeremiah as his lead actor and performance artist who will instruct Zion. Jeremiah is meant to experience, on both a visceral and an emotional level, the moral decay of the nation. The people will be humbled to the core of their being

Linen found in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea

Jonathan: referring to 13:1-11 God is commanding Jeremiah to perform a series of actions revolving around a loincloth.

Rabbi: A linen loincloth is a priestly garment. The foot note says that unwashed linen is of a very rough texture.

Ceil: This is very intimate imagery.

Joel: They are being shamed. Jewish morality dictates being humble, demure and clothed. It’s a horrible sin to expose ones private parts in public.

Julie: referring to 13:13-14 “ …and the Kings who sit on the throne of David, and the priests and the prophets and all the inhabitants of Israel…and I will smash them one against the other…

All strata of the nation from the top to the bottom will be taught a lesson. They will be humiliated and brought down to the same level.

Ellen: This sounds like God is getting rid of everyone. I recently saw a documentary called “Fresh” where a farmer killed all his livestock in order to begin with healthy naturally raised animals. It was easier for him to kill them all than to dither with which animals had been genetically altered or managed with antibiotics. So he killed them all.

Julie: This is hubris of the worst kind when someone believes he has the authority to end life. This is because animals are seen as a commodity.

 

Ian: This makes me think of a forest fire that cleans the land from which new growth will then grow.

Ellen: It is the power structure that needs cleansing.

Joel: It’s a selective fire.

Ethan: God is quick to punish but he is also forgiving.

Ceil: The people are brought to the brink and they have the choice to draw back but they don’t.

Rabbi: At this point they do not have a real choice. That possibility has already passed.

Joel: Individuals will die but the nation will survive.

Ellen: This is like orthodox theology. If your actions are not acceptable then all will pay. What’s the point of trying to change? What is the motivation?

Joel: The Medieval Rabbis would then wrestle with the idea of divine reward in the hereafter. This theology begins with Ezekiel and Daniel and goes through the book of the Maccabees. It is picked up in Talmudic discourse. The Rabbis would say that suffering on earth is not

the final punishment. Conversely, if you do good deeds you will be rewarded. But there is no mention of that is this book.

Rabbi: Jeremiah is a very moody Prophet. We see the arch of his life. The people oppress him and he suffers. We see his emotional experiences.

Bill: So, who will survive in exile?

Rabbi: Isaiah says 10%.

Ellen/Bill: We discuss this often –Can we ever live up to God’s expectations?

Ian – The bar is high but it is meant to push us forward.

Ellen: It is immoral to push others to fit a specific morality, whether it is God’s or the Prophets

Jerri: We all have on our 21^st Century goggles and the danger is if we view this situation not simply as modern western people, but as Monday morning quarterbacks. You have to keep this in perspective.

Ceil: But, some things remain true.

Joel: Maimonides would say all of this is a rationalization because we cannot understand God’s mind. When we read the text it appears to be as if God is human, but that is only to understand him better through a human framework.

Ethan: If God can see the past, present and future why is he always so surprised by what occurs and what people do?

Rabbi: The bigger picture is that the Babylonians are coming to wipe out the Judeans, meaning us. How do they understand the geo-political

situation in the context of God? How do they rationalize the moral situation as to why things happen?  We are always living in this tension between our moral actions bringing on Divine retribution and the issue of suffering if there is no communal or individual belief in God.

Julie: Crap just happens!

Ellen: I don’t think God is just going to destroy only the depraved. I believe he would kill moral atheists too just because they don’t believe in him.  If I don’t believe in God is it OK for God to kill me? Jeremiah is “quoting “God.

Joel: We can’t begin to understand God or to try and judge his ways. God kills as part of the natural order of things. That’s really why murder is forbidden to us and capital punishment is proscribed.

Bill: Jeremiah is not saying that God will punish all people. He is saying that those people who are part of the Covenant and have not fulfilled it will be punished.

Ellen: Wars did not occur because we worshipped other gods – they occurred because God directed us to kill others. God asked us to annihilate the Canaanites.

Joel: I know this sounds heretical, but the way God reveals himself as described in Genesis and Exodus to the Prophets changed over time. You can’t judge the Bronze Age God of Exodus against the moral teachings of Isaiah and Jeremiah. They conceive of God in related, but frankly more modern terms.

Ceil: God reveals different faces for different reasons

 

Jerry: Ellen’s point is valid. We feel bad reading all these stories about killing other people in the name of God. This is not moral behavior as we know it.

Ellen: It isn’t moral because God is not always moral.

Rabbi: Yes, it is hard to read this.  But there has never been an ideal world where all people lived in peace. The ancient world was harsh and difficult and we had to contextualize why we suffered. Our survival as a people was dependent upon group cohesion. The Babylonian Exile was one of the most significant traumas in our history and some of the Prophets played a significant role in trying to explain it so that the people, as a nation could come through it intact.

 

                                                   About Linen

The textile linen is made from the Flax plant. The oldest known sample is believed to be 36,000 years old. The mixing of linen with other fibers was considered forbidden in the Torah and is mentioned in Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11. The Jewish historian Josephus suggested that this prohibition was meant to keep the common folk from wearing the official priestly garp. Garmets of mixed fibers were worn by" heathen priests" therefore, Jewish priests possibly used this as a way to seperate themselves from association with idolatry.