Jeremiah Chapters 34-35; In the seventh year...

               

                                                                   Chapter 34

God has directed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem as punishment for neglecting the freedom promise of the Sabbatical year.

Bob: Referring to 34:2-5 “…You will be captured and handed over to him (Nebuchadrezzar)…you will not die by the sword. You will die a peaceful death…”

 Why bother saving (Judah’s King) Zedekiah? He’s part of the old guard.

Bill: Referring to 34:5 “… so they will burn incense for you…”

Does the use of incense mean that he will die a good death? I thought he was a puppet King not worthy of a good death.

Rabbi: It just means he will be remembered.  Jeremiah is saying that the King will have a peaceful death.

Joel: I thought Zedekiah was taken back into captivity to Egypt and blinded. Doesn’t sound so peaceful to me.

Jerry: I think Joel is right.

Bill: So Jeremiah’s vision of a peaceful death for Zedekiah is incorrect prophecy.

Julie: Well, after he is blinded, he has a peaceful death. After reading the Prophets, I wish we had a Jewish slave’s perspective on all this as commentary. We don’t get the slave’s voice.

Ceil: Jeremiah 34:8. After the Sabbatical year a slave was supposed to be set free. This is not the same as our notion of American slavery where it was in effect held in perpetuity.

Jerry: This (the Biblical definition of Slavery) seems to be describing indentured servitude.

Rabbi: Slavery was indentured servitude based on a system of working off a debt.

Jane: Isn’t this similar to our military? The poor make up most of the military because their options are limited and they are offered a career or a free education in exchange for their service.

Rabbi: So we see in 34:10 that there is a new twist. The people let the slaves go but then take them back into bondage. After Exodus, (in the book of Leviticus) God established the Sabbatical year. They people clearly know they are to give up their slaves, this but do not keep their promise.

Joel: I’m still upset about Zedekiah. He is going to die very badly.

Rabbi: Let’s not over- read this. He is promised that he will not die by war.  Zedekiah attempts to get his people to comply with God’s demand in order to free the slaves, but they violate that covenant. He is exiled, but he does not get to die in his palace.

Julie: Referring to 34:18 “I will make the men who violated my covenant, who did not fulfill the terms of the covenant which they made with Me, (like) the calf they cut in two so as to pass between the halves.” Rabbi, what is the significance of this calf reference?

Rabbi: God is calling attention to the people’s public affirmation of the covenant as referenced by Abraham’s sacrifice from Genesis 15:7 but, then they disregard this affirmation by walking through the two halves of the cow, forgetting their promise. In the ancient Near East, if you transgress the boundaries of a sacrifice, agreement markers or the like, you violate that agreement. Remember Moses throwing the two tablets of the Law at the Children of Israel after the debacle of the Golden Calf. This is similar.

Editor’s Note –Genesis 15:  at God’s bidding, Abraham offers a three year old heifer, a three year old she-goat, a three year old ram, a turtle dove and a young bird as sacrifice. He cuts each animal, with the exception of the young bird, into two parts. God promises Abraham prosperity and peace in the Promised Land, the legacy of ancient Israel, but explains that the people must first endure four hundred years of oppression. As the sun sets, a flaming torch passes between the animal parts as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham.

Julie: There is lots of physical learning and physical symbols going on in these

stories. Very much like performance art.

Joel: How much text did the Prophets actually know? What did they have at their disposal? This quote would suggest the text of Genesis, but did he actually have it? His audience must have known this story. It’s like Abraham Lincoln saying “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln’s audience had to know the biblical text in order to understand Lincoln’s speech. In other words, for a joke to be funny there has to be an unspoken understanding amongst the audience or the joke wouldn’t make sense.

Rabbi: It’s impossible to really know for certain how much text he had, but I imagine Jeremiah would use references to earlier written text in order to teach the people. They must have been familiar with some of the references, otherwise why use them?

Bill: Maybe God was coaching them.

Rabbi: Well yeah, the prophets are teachers. We will see in Chapter 35 that now we are traveling back 15 years before Zedekiah to the time of king Yohakim. Referring to 35:3 “So I took Jaazaniah son of Jeremiah…” This is not the prophet Jeremiah. This is another Jeremiah.

Bill: referring to 35:5-6 “ I set bowls full of wine and cups before the men  of the house of the Rechabites, and said unto them, “have some wine.” They replied, “We will not drink wine, for our ancestor Jonadab son of Rechab, commanded us: “You shall never drink wine, either you or your children, nor shall you own such things; but shall live intents…”

Why can’t they drink wine?

Rabbi: The Rechabites are not Jews. Their descendants trace back to Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. They are an Arab tribe that is nomadic preferring to live in tents and in contrast to the Jews they are adhering to the customs and covenant of their beliefs.

Bill: There is a Midrash that Jethro was a convert to Judaism.

Julie: I’m not sure I understand why they are coming into Jerusalem.

Rabbi: The Babylonians are coming so they are seeking protection inside the city walls against the Babylonians.

Julie: The city will be sacked anyway.

Rabbi: Yes but the Rechabite peoples are promised that their line will continue not because they follow the word of God, but because they have adhered to the precepts of their own declamations. They made a covenant on their own terms and they have kept their word.  The Jews have not been able to do this. God recognizes this and rewards them with a continued lineage. They are allowed to survive and even prosper. What makes this fascinating is that it is in the books of the Prophets where the notion of God, the nations and their respective destinies have been expanded. In the Torah, the plan concerns Israel and its destiny among the nations. It is primarily centered on Israel alone. It is in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the rest where other nations are held accountable as well. It is not enough that God uses the other nations to punish Israel for its misdeeds. What is important is that now each nation has a destiny based on its own deeds, its own system of rewards and punishments as per its accomplishments and collective behavior. The nations will be brought to account. This is a global scheme, far reaching, fascinating and much more modern. It’s not all about us any longer.

The words of Jeremiah remind us that the Biblical reality forms a complex web of morality, behavior and destiny where we are all bound together, whether we like it or not.  Even today the fate of the Jewish People as a separate autonomous religious and or ethnic group in exile or for that matter in Israel is offset by the common good of all the nations. The question” Is it good for the Jew’s” is always framed by the bigger question, “Is it also good for humankind?”

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremiah Chapters 29 - 30 ; You Shall Be My People

 

Chapter 29

Jeremiah has sent a letter to the exiled community leaders in Babylon directing them to tell the Jewish rank and file to carry on with their lives. Special emphasis is placed on refraining from following the diviners and false prophets in their midst. The exiled are told to suck it up and endure for an unspecified amount of time, until God brings them back to Israel. For those who have managed to avoid exile, they too will be punished and the land purified of their presence via pestilence, famine and the sword. It would seem that they are the carriers of spiritual and physical contagion, which if left unchecked would infect the returning Israelites.

 Ellen: Jeremiah gives these false Prophets too much energy. Why even react to them?

Joel: Jeremiah is a very specific personality. He’s a bit of a neurotic nudge. I think he can’t help but being annoyed at anything that rankles his defended personality.

Rabbi: Jeremiah is being persecuted! Even paranoids have enemies. These people can actually cause Jeremiah harm, so this is not just about neurotic behavior.

Ceil: Well, Jeremiah tends to be pettish!

Joel: Yeah, he is easily annoyed.

Rabbi: referring to 29:24 Shemaiah sent letters to all the people in Jerusalem to build houses and dwell in Babylon. Shemaiah wants the priests to rebuke Jeremiah for directing the people to accept their fate/punishment. Shemaiah wants Jeremiah to be punished.

Joel: People don’t want to hear that they must endure exile. This is counter- intuitive. A fight or flight instinct dictates that you run or mount an offensive. Exile sounds like submission to the enemies of Israel.

Ceil: Jeremiah is telling them to assimilate but only up to a point. They must remember who they are.

Rabbi: There is a shift in tone now. We can begin to see that Jeremiah is an optimistic realist.

Bill: Jeremiah has come a long way – he’s like the Energizer Bunny. He’s ready for the next round.

                                         

                                                           Chapter 30

Jeremiah is directed by God to write down his words which are to be committed to scroll. God is making the promise to restore the people of Israel. This is like a promissory note whereby God is paying the people with hope so that they will invest in their future. It’s a lot like a business contract.

Bill: referring to 30:10-11. God is going to handle those who have mistreated Israel, even though it was God’s hand that used Babylon to carry out the punishment of exile in the first place.

Joel: Corrupt empires are deserving of this punishment.

Ellen: I’m not sure that I know any longer why this (these books) is important to read. I really don’t! I see people behaving in history and the Prophets are like any leader saying stuff in order to get the people to stay together. They have to say the right thing in order to keep people along a certain path, but I don’t see any spirituality in this. It’s just politics being used by religion. I liked the early books much better. I liked the story of the Garden of Eden. It seems a lot more relevant even though it’s older.

Julie: There is a lot of repetition in the Prophets – same old, same old done in various ways in order to reach different people.

Paul: The value of reading these books, (the Hebrew Bible) is that they function like a compass. There are obstacles along our path and we can decide to go around, over or under them. It’s a compass of experience which we must negotiate.

Rabbi: I like this metaphor but I believe that Jeremiah is addressing a collective experience. It is not about the individual. We as a nation are meant to survive.

Joel: Whether these books actually happened or not Judaism functions under the logic of history. It reveals itself through history. It creates a history with a divine purpose and even if you don’t believe in God, it has great ramifications regarding secular ideas about progress and moral development. You can’t divorce Judaism from history. If you do you are stuck with myth and that’s a whole other story.

Ellen: I want the Torah to have amendments like the Constitution.

Rabbi: They do. Any amendments can be found in the Talmud and commentaries. That’s the purpose of them.

Whether we like those amendments or not, it is another story and entirely up to us. As Reform Jews we are often stuck with amendments to ritual behavior of the Orthodox world, when we as a movement have a history of secularizing Judaism or stream-lining it. How can we make the Torah relevant, when we may not believe in history as God’s particular punishment or reward? How can we remain Jews when laws regarding Temple purity are striven to be maintained in our local synagogue and we may question the legitimacy of those very arguments or requirements?  Our ability to make the Prophets meaningful is their very genius. We are forced to confront our own identity as individuals and as Jews belonging to a community precisely because Jeremiah asked the hard questions in the face of dissolution and annihilation. It is those very questions which posit “What is a Jew? Who is a good moral God-fearing Jew? Who survives and at what price? It is these questions which may be answered through moral, ethical and/or observant ritual behavior. Both exist in Judaism and both are actively addressed. But, it is up to us to make the personal or communal assessment as to how to these issues play out in our daily lives. The fact that Jeremiah presents us with as many questions as answers is our legacy. It is a personal commitment to moral behavior writ large and played out on the global stage. It is this personal commitment which makes up the greater tribal identity, that of B’nai Israel.