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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.

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