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BIBLE STUDY -- YHVH’S PROPHETS

AN OBJECT LESSON

THE LESSON OF THE FIGS

From Jeremiah 24; 26

As time passed, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon captured King Jeconiah of Judah, the son of Jehoiakim, and took him to Babylon. He also took with him the leaders of Judah and the craftsmen and smiths from Jerusalem. Then Adonai gave me a vision of two baskets of figs placed before the temple of Adonai. The figs in one basket were freshly ripened figs which were very good. But the figs in the other basket were so bad that they were not fit to be eaten. [What do you see, Jeremiah?] Adonai asked. [Some very good figs and some very bad figs,] I answered. [The good figs are a symbol of the people of Judah whom I permitted to be exiled to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans,] Adonai said. [I will watch over those exiles and take care of them and some day will bring them back to this land. I will build them and not destroy them. I will plant them and not tear them up. I will give them hearts to know that I am YHVH; then they will be My people, and I will be their YHVH. They shall return to Me with hearts filled with joy. But the spoiled figs are a symbol of King Zedekiah of Judah, his princes, and the others of Jerusalem who remain in this land, as well as those who live in Egypt. I will make them disgusting to the other kingdoms of the earth. They will mock them, taunt them, and curse them wherever I scatter them. I will send war, famine, and plague upon them until they are destroyed from the land which I gave to them and their fathers.] During the first year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Adonai gave another message to Jeremiah. This is what Adonai said, [Go stand in the courtyard of the temple and speak to the people of Judah who come to worship here. Tell them exactly what I Command you to say; do not leave out a word. Perhaps they will listen and turn from their evil ways. If they do, I will change My mind and will not bring the punishment which I have prepared for them. Here is what I want you to tell them: This is what Adonai says, ‘If you do not listen to Me and live by the teaching I have given you and turn from your evil ways, and if you refuse to listen to the prophets whom I constantly send to you, I will destroy this temple as I destroyed the tabernacle at Shiloh, and I will make Jerusalem a curse among all the nations of the earth.’] There was a large audience in the temple that day, including priests and prophets. When Jeremiah finished speaking what Adonai had told him to say, the priests, prophets, and all the people seized him, crying out, [Now you’ll die for this! Who do you think you are to prophesy that Adonai will destroy this temple, as the tabernacle at Shiloh was destroyed? How dare you say that Jerusalem will be desolate without one survivor?] News of this spread quickly to the princes of Judah, and they hurried from the king’s house to hold court at the New Gate, the entrance to the temple. [Execute this man!] the priests and false prophets cried out to the princes. [You have heard yourselves how he has spoken against our city.] But Jeremiah spoke to the princes and the people. [Adonai sent me to say these things about the temple and Jerusalem,] he said. [Every word I have said is from Adonai. If you will only turn from your sin and obey Adonai your YHVH, He will withhold the punishment He has planned for you. Of course, you can do anything you want with me, but if you kill me, you will be killing an innocent man. This will cause you and your city and its people to be guilty of killing an innocent man. Whatever I have said, I have spoken from Adonai.] [This man does not deserve to die,] the princes and people said to the priests and false prophets. [He has told us what Adonai Commanded him to say.] Some of the older men stood up and said this to the people: [In the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, Micah of Moresheth gave this prophecy: ‘The hill of Zion shall be ploughed as a field. The city of Jerusalem shall be heaps of stone. The mount where the temple stands shall become a forest.’ Did King Hezekiah and his people kill Micah for saying those things? No, instead they asked Adonai for mercy, and Adonai withheld the punishment He had planned for them. If we murder the prophet Jeremiah, what may Adonai do to us?] Now about that same time another of Adonai’s prophets was speaking against Jerusalem and Judah. His name was Uriah {or Urijah} the son of Shemaiah, who lived in Kiriath-jearim. When King Jehoiakim and his officers heard his prophecies, they tried to kill him. Uriah learned of their plans and ran away to Egypt. But Jehoiakim sent Elnathan the son of Ashbor and some other men to capture Uriah and bring him back. When they did, King Jehoiakim killed him with the sword and had him buried with the common people. Jeremiah might also have been put to death had it not been for a high official of the king, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, who was there with Jeremiah. It was Ahikam who helped convince the princes not to execute Jeremiah.

COMMENTARY

GODS, GHOSTS AND DEMONS

The ancient Babylonians believed they were constantly surrounded by a host of gods, demons and spirits. Each city was dedicated to one particular god, who had its own temple. If a city grew powerful, its god became important throughout the land. When Babylon ruled the empire, for example, its god Marduk was highest of all Babylonian gods. Like their ancestors the Sumerians, the Babylonians and Assyrians worshiped gods whom they believed to control nature. Harvests, storms and fertility were in their power. Even the sun, moon and stars represented gods. Other deities supervised hunting, war, healing and death. The Mesopotamians believed their gods could live anywhere. A divine being might be present in any ordinary object -- a plough, a lamp or a club. Even a mountain, river or tree could house a god. But much of the time, a Mesopotamian deity lived in the idol that stood on a pedestal in his temple. Most of these idols, made of rare wood, precious stones and gold, were carried away by ancient conquerors. Only cheap clay imitations, worshiped in private homes, have survived to modern times. Special temple workshops were devoted to the construction and repair of idols. After performing rituals to {open} the god’s eyes, purify his mouth and give him life, priests adorned the human-shaped statue with robes, jewellery and a crown. Sacred religious ceremonies reflected things the god was believed to do. Carried by priests, a city’s idol was taken to visit idols in other temples. With great pomp, the statue {married} -- sometimes another god, but other times the god was offered a human as his marriage partner. The meals of the gods were important events. Three times a day, priests carefully prepared platters of food. A table was set and meals were served to the city’s god and other idols in the temple. Sometimes the {leftovers,} which were considered sacred, were sent to the king. Even those who were not priests took part in directly worshiping the god. In festival processions, such people paraded behind the priests in order to be near and glimpse the god. They brought animals, milk, wine and honey as offerings. Worshipers confessed as many sins as possible, real and imagined, so that the god would be pleased with their professed purity. If a worshiper neglected his religious duties, an angry god would no longer protect him from the many evil demons around him. These demons greatly outnumbered the good beings, or genii. They tormented the Babylonians with everything from headaches and quarrels to accidents and crop failures. The demons were joined in plaguing the living by ghosts of people whose lives had been unhappy or whose graves had been forgotten. The Babylonians had countless magic chants and rites, usually involving fire, to drive away these spirits. People even consulted special priests called {diviners.} These men predicted the future by examining the intestines of animals, the flight of birds, and drops of oil on water. But in spite of all these precautions, the worshiper had little hope. Life in the dusty underworld of the dead was without light or food. Only war heroes were privileged to drink fresh water. Life after death was only a little more frightening than life on earth.

BIBLE STUDY -- YHVH’S PROPHETS

JEREMIAH BEATEN

JEREMIAH’S TROUBLES

From Jeremiah 20-21

When the priest in charge of the temple, a man named Pashur the son of miner, heard Jeremiah prophesying, he had Jeremiah beaten and put in stocks by the upper Benjamin Gate of the temple. All night Jeremiah remained in the stocks, but when morning came, Pashur released him. [Adonai has changed your name, Pashur,] Jeremiah told him. [You are no longer Pashur, but Magor-missabib, ‘Terror Surrounding You,’ for Adonai will cause you to be a terror to yourself and all your friends. They will die by the enemy’s sword while you watch them. I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon. He will kill some and take others to Babylon as captives, and there they will die as slaves. I will let them take away to Babylon all of the precious treasures of this city, including the treasures of the kings of Judah. And you, Pashur, will be carried into captivity in Babylon, you and your family. You will die there and be buried with all those to whom you have falsely prophesied that there would be no trouble.] Then I cried out to Adonai because of all my troubles.

This was my cry:

[You have persuaded me, O Adonai, that You would help me, for You are stronger than I, and You have caused me to do what You want. But the people of the city, laugh and mock me all day, whenever I speak for You, I must shout of violence and destruction. All day long the Word of Adonai, has become a reproach and derision. But if I say that I will no longer speak of You or mention Your Name, then Your Word becomes a burning fire, contained in my bones, and I grow weary of holding it in, for I cannot. But everywhere I hear their whispers, everywhere I hear their threats. ‘Stop him!’ they cry. ‘Silence him!’ they shout. Even my friends join in and wait for me to fail. ‘He will be attracted to do something wrong,’ they say. ‘Then we can take our revenge upon him.’ But Adonai is with me as a great Warrior, so those who persecute me shall stumble and fall before Him; They shall not defeat me. They shall be shamed for they shall fail and will bear the marks of dishonour which shall never be forgotten. O Adonai of hosts, Who knows the righteous Who sees the heart and mind, take vengeance on my enemies, for I have committed them to You. Sing to Adonai! Sing praises to His Name! For He has rescued the needy from the hands of those who do them evil. Cursed be the day that I was born; Let the day my mother bore me be not blessed. Cursed be the man who came to my father saying, ‘your son has been born,’ which made him very glad. Let that man go clown like the cities which Adonai cut down without mercy. Trouble him throughout the day with cries of battle, for he did not kill me at my birth. If only I had died within the womb, so that my mother would have become my grave, and I would have been buried there all her life. Why was I ever born? For my life has been trouble and sorrow, and my days have been shame.] Adonai gave Jeremiah another message one day. It began when King Zedekiah sent Pashur to beg Jeremiah for help. [King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has made war against us,] the king said. [Ask Adonai to do a miracle for us and force Nebuchadnezzar to retreat.] Here is the message Jeremiah sent back to the king. [Adonai YHVH of Israel says, ‘I will make your weapons worthless in your hands, with which you want to subdue the Babylonians and Chaldeans besieging you outside the walls. I will bring these enemies into the very midst of your city and will help them fight against you with a mighty arm, for I am very angry with you. I will strike down the men and animals of this city with a great plague. Then I will give King Zedekiah, his servants, and the survivors of Judah to Nebuchadnezzar as captives. They will slaughter them without pity and without mercy.’ Adonai says also, ‘Tell these people that I have offered them life or death. Whoever stays in Jerusalem will die by the sword or by disease. Whoever goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans will live. I have condemned this city to destruction, for I am no longer its friend but its enemy. Jerusalem will be captured by the king of Babylon and he will destroy it with fire.’ Adonai says further, ‘Tell the king of Judah to hear the Word of Adonai.

Here is a prophecy for the house of David:

[‘Be just in the morning and deliver the victim from the robber, lest My wrath blaze forth like fire, and burn without quenching, because of your evil practices. I have set Myself against you, O Jerusalem, O mistress of the valley, O rock of the plain. For you boast that none can conquer you or punish you for your evil. But I Myself will punish you according to the things you have done. I will kindle a fire in your forest which will devour everything around it.’]

COMMENTARY

ISRAEL’S CAPTORS: THE BABYLONIANS AND THE ASSYRIANS

When the Jews of Jeremiah’s time were taken captive to Babylon, they faced a culture shock similar to that which the northern Israelites had faced a century earlier when exiled to Assyria. In each situation, the lives of the Jewish people changed drastically from what they had known in Palestine. The Akkadian language of Mesopotamia {Babylon and Assyria} sounded nothing like the language the Israelites spoke. But as neighbours, the Babylonians and Assyrians understood each other. The sound of their dialects was different, but the basic vocabulary was the same. An Israelite who settled in Assyria encountered many of the same gods, hymns, poetry, laws and styles in art as those who settled in Babylonia. The Assyrians imitated the Babylonians in matters of religion and culture, but the Assyrians were more gifted in matters of war and politics. Both the Babylonian and Assyrian countryside were unlike what the Israelites knew. The Assyrian landscape was full of small villages, whose people farmed the lands of the wealthy that surrounded them. Crops were abundant and rainfall plentiful. But the Babylonian countryside was laced with canals, for farming depended on the unpredictable flooding of the rivers to keep the canals filled and water available. Babylonians in general preferred to live in cities; only the Chaldeans in the south lived in tribal groups. The condition of slaves in Assyria and Babylonia was alien to the Israelites too. Israelite Law commanded that Hebrew slaves be given their freedom after seven years. But here slaves were treated like animals; they were branded and wore large identification tags around their necks. Yet these slaves managed business, were permitted to earn money and save it, and even have slaves of their own. These were things an Israelite slave could not do. The Jews were accustomed to buildings made of stone. But since stone was scarce in Babylonia, the poor lived in huts made of branches cemented with mud. Some houses, constructed of sun-dried brick, had beehive-shaped roofs. A coat of whitewash sealed the thick clay walls. Inside homes, there was little furniture. Mats and rugs were used for beds; only the wealthy slept on beds raised off the floor. Chests and large pottery jars served as closets and bureaus, and were hung high on the walls out of the reach of rodents. Food was simple, basically onions and barley bread, accompanied by barley beer and palm-tree wine. Like their captors, the Israelites soon learned to bathe daily in the public canals and water cisterns. They discovered that rubbing oil into their bodies softened heat-dried skin. They gradually adopted their captors’ habit of wearing several layers of clothing despite the intense heat. No matter what the differences were, the Israelite captives found themselves fitting very well into the Babylonian and Assyrian societies. Israelite bakers, weavers, merchants and musicians put their skills to good use, and the need for scribes was never ending.

"In every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him."

Acts 10

Confusion happens when clarity is missing. When speaking about the law in the Bible some have been trained to believe that it needs to include the sacrificial system. The sacrificial system was established as a result of the golden calf altar at Mount Sinai as a reminder to everyone that it was mankind who broke the covenant that was confirmed only a few weeks prior. The physical limitations posed by being unable to offer a sacrifice or the redemption from the sacrificial system in no way voids the rest of the Creator’s instruction.

What was the first thing the people did when they gathered in Jerusalem after returning from exile?

#quiz #jerusalem #exile

PS: Discussions are very welcome, but please do not give the answer away in your discussions.

Hint: Ezra 3

Thought for Today: Thursday October 02

Yeshua as Human, was a gentle and compassionate person. When He came into the world, there were few hospitals, few places of refuge for the poor, few homes for orphans. There were no hospitals to treat the mentally ill, nor shelters for the homeless… our Moshiach changed all that. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, opened the eyes of the blind, and the crippled walked again. Wherever the true believers have gone, His followers have performed acts of kindness, love, and gentleness. Follow their example today and let others at work, school, home or internet see the Moshiach’s gentleness and compassion in you.