I know this may sound odd, but the end of Chapter 3 of Jeremiah, seems to me to be a fantasy The Great I Am is playing out with Israel, in His own mind!
You see, I Am is the husband. He married Himself to Israel sometime ago. He reminds Israel, frequently of that. Yet despite this Israel continues to play the harlot (See Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6, 13). It's odd to me in my cultural upbringing, to think of God referring to His people as a whore...and He married to her. Yet Jeremiah in the boldest of language shows that the God that he is conversing with, sees things just that way.
When you read it in its actuality the graphic use of language is quite disturbing. His insistence of using the allegory of infidelity in marriage throughout the messages that He continues to deliver to His servants is, to me, hard to listen to. Yet despite my delicate feelings being pricked regarding this vulgarity, I Am seems to see the situation in those precise terms.
What's even more strange is that in the opening of Chapter 3, He opens up by explaining to Jeremiah the course of action that any other red blooded man would choose whose wife proved unfaithful. He acknowledges that any other man, would never go back after a wife who had left him for another man. Yet this is exactly what I Am, is want to do. While she's out fornicating with every dude she can find out in the hills, and under the trees, He sits at home and sends her couriers with messages of devotion and love that are hers if she will just acknowledge that she has wronged Him (See Jeremiah 3:13), and then return to Him (v 14). True love and diligent devotion, indeed!
So He goes on in verses 20 through 25 to lay out His kinky fantasy: His wife, who has treacherously slept with every other guy she can find, comes to the recognition that she had a good man at home all along. She feels completely inadequate to return home to Him. Where as before she could lie about her incredible transgressions and not feel the slightest remorse or even break a sweat on her forehead(see Jeremiah 3:3), she now feels nothing but shame and remorse (see Jeremiah 3:24-25.)
Beyond comprehension, the Great I Am does the unthinkable: He not only takes her back in, but heals all of the wounds she incurred while doing what a harlot does on her back (see Jeremiah 3:22.)
At the end of His mortal ministry, Jesus pronounced that greater love has no man than this: that He lay His life down for His friends. Jeremiah is simply pointing out that the friend that He is lying His life down for, is his treacherous wife. All in hopes that she will finally love Him.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Studying Jeremiah
Nearly a decade ago, I read the Old Testament for the first time. I didn't get much out of it. Bits and pieces, but largely it was incomprehensible to me. I believe that largely this was so, because I didn't have the context to understand it...or because I was sleeping.
What is odd about this is that next to the Book of Mormon, the Old Testament (and it's LDS corollary: The Pearl of Great Price) is my favorite set of scriptures. That is not to denigrate the New Testament, because I do love it as well, but often times it seems that -a part from a whole lot of conjecture- there is even less contextual understanding about the New Testament to be had. Sadly, the Doctrine and Covenants has been equally neglected by me.
I don't believe that I am alone in my neglectful understanding of the Old Testament. Among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Protestant Christians alike I have heard the notion pronounced, "The New Testament did away with the need for the Old Testament." This pronouncement is accompanied by an attitude of disregard to ever make sense of the Old Testament.
Since that time I have read much and gained a lot of context. Authors such as Margaret Barker, Denver Snuffer, Hugh Nibley and a few others helped immensely.
This year in Gospel Doctrine we have been studying the Old Testament. I have exerted extra effort to attempt to have the proper context within the scriptures to correctly understand the stated purpose of each lesson. It has been amazing!
I'm not doing much else with this blog, so I figure that I can occasionally share some of my insights that I gain/have gained on this blog in hopes that I might be of some help to someone who cares or at least would like to care about the Old Testament.
A few things about Jeremiah: He lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah (although he was a Benjamite), -long after the Civil War that began during the reign of Rehoboam and Jeroboam. He lived after the time that the Northern Kingdom (Israel, also sometimes called Ephraim) had been overtaken by the neighboring Assyrians and carried away.
It seems that the citizens of the Southern Kingdom, loved to bask in their supposed superiority and greater favor in the view of YHWH. This they surmised because of their continued existence and prosperous reign in their promised/covenant land, long after the Northern Kingdom had been destroyed. This is not hard to imagine due to the competitive spirit that was exhibited by the landed tribes, almost from the beginning of their inhabiting the land.
One of the duties that the Lord gave to Jeremiah was to go and relay the message to the citizens of Judah, that God didn't really think too highly of them, and in fact was in the process of bringing in foreign armies to invade them unless they repented. As can be imagined, the citizens didn't take this very well.
Put yourself in that place. Imagine yourself as an ancient inhabitant of Jerusalem or the suburbs lying around. Except obviously to you, you are not ancient. Take away the obvious knowledge that the scriptures currently bestow upon you of your obvious wickedness and need for repentance. Let's say that you are a....camel trader. (I know of the historical arguments against the underwhelming presence of camel's in the middle east in the early BC era's; but dromedary's are talked about in the book of Jeremiah, so I am going to suppose that this was not a problem for our imagination.)
So you are a run-of-the-mill camel trader, at Joe's Camel Corral. You're busting your hump just like
everyone else, trying to eek out an existence for your average 12.3 kids. You pay your tribute to your tribal leaders like all good Israelites do, and you have your Temple of Solomon recommend that ensures you the ability to go up every now and then and kill a few doves or what have you, in order to obtain a little forgiveness for your occasional bad-used-camel deal, where you may or may not have told a sojourning stranger that he was buying a Bikaneri, when in reality it was a Kachchhi!
You've heard all of your life about the great dispensation head MOSES, and the love/favor that he secured with YHWH for you and the rest of the Israelites. You know the stories about an even earlier friend of YHWH's whose offspring you have been assured you are, named Abraham. So knowing that you are not only a descendant of Abraham, but that you are one who has received the covenant that YHWH gave through Moses, gives you a sense that you just need to be a good Israelite, not get stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath or sleeping with your neighbor's wife, etc., and one day you will be drinking camel's milk on the big cloud in the sky!
In addition to all of this, recently you have heard rumblings of a "Messiah" that is suppose to come and redeem all of Israel. Like the original King David, this guy is going to set in order all of the House of Israel and slay all of those wicked Philistines that keep robbing your camels: no Goliath to tall, because of course...you are YHWH's chosen people. He loves you, and He hates your neighbors that give you such a hard time. It's also important to remember to imagine that this belief is something that you believe is going to happen shortly (obviously because of your favor with YHWH), possibly in your lifetime.
As a people you have had wars with your neighbors. Many; and despite the occasional up's and down's, for you and your people, it is all viewed as an overall gradual rise up! You have even won some really BIG battles against some of the biggest nations around. Egypt, Assyria, you name it and Israel prevailed.
So with all of that, now imagine that along comes Jeremiah into this pretty picture. He says that as a people, you all use to be YHWH's chosen people..but now like your whore-for-a-sister Northern Kingdom Israel, you are about to be destroyed (see Jeremiah 3: 6-12). Yeah, that's right. You have been rejected by YHWH, he says. Additionally he says that from the very beginning, when they entered the promised land, your forefathers sinned against YHWH and haven't stopped clear down to your lifetime (see Jeremiah 2:7.)
So since the time of Moses, you have brought condemnation upon your head. YHWH, was patient with you, but you and your ancestors insisted on worshiping other gods (see Jeremiah 2:27.) Now YHWH, is going to destroy you unless you turn to Him.
"AH-HAH", you retort back to Jeremiah. "You are a deceiver! Because turning back to YHWH, away from whatever other gods we were 'allegedly' supposed to have worshiped is the exact premise upon which King Josiah operates. You see, he has purged the temple of all those old relics that our fathers use to spend their time talking about. And by means of a group of scribes called the Deuteronomists, he has correlated our doctrine, so that all of the old teachings as well as the new confirms what we currently believe today! He has even been so pious so as to stop referring to YHWH in such a term, and in all of our scriptures he has instructed us that the name of diety is to sacred to share, even for those who TRULY know it. So now we are to only refer to H-m in terms that keep H-m at a reverential distance. So, you see Jeremiah, we are turning back to H-m through following Josiah, our leader."
Now having imagined all of this, go back and read the book of Jeremiah. Read how Jeremiah told them that Josiah, this supposed righteous leader of theirs who had purged the people of "wickedness" was the one to which the Lord sent the first word to Jeremiah, that not only Israel had "played-the-harlot" but also that Judah was continuing to do the same thing IN THAT VERY DAY! (see Jeremiah 3:6-11.)
Realize how hard it would be in that time to recognize Jeremiah as anything other than some ranting-raving Benjamite. He was not the High Priest of the time. He did not come through the established Priesthood hierarchy of his day.
The only qualification that Jeremiah had for you to be able to recognize him with, was his message. Despite your belief that Josiah was righteous and wouldn't be leading you astray; Jeremiah was tasked with the job of telling you that everything you knew just wasn't so. Remember that in that task, he didn't have a position of authority over you, and as of yet the Babylonians hadn't come crashing through your gates.
In fact, it's important to remember that from the time that Jeremiah started preaching to the time that the Babylonians invaded, was nearly 50 years!
Now go and read that book, and think about the vast difficulty involved with the task that was placed upon the shoulders of those living in the time of Jeremiah: If they didn't recognize him, they would be destroyed as a people.
Then when you finish, I guess you should thank your lucky stars that the God who promised to be the same yesterday, today and forever; and to not be a respecter of persons..decided to challenge those people with having to recognize an authorized servant, with an authorized message, with his only bona fides being his message; and yet for you...all you have to do is believe the teachings handed down from your fathers that you are a chosen people whom God loves. Lucky for you, He hates your neighbors and doesn't ask much of you except to just have belief in Him.
 |
| this is an actual picture of me |
What is odd about this is that next to the Book of Mormon, the Old Testament (and it's LDS corollary: The Pearl of Great Price) is my favorite set of scriptures. That is not to denigrate the New Testament, because I do love it as well, but often times it seems that -a part from a whole lot of conjecture- there is even less contextual understanding about the New Testament to be had. Sadly, the Doctrine and Covenants has been equally neglected by me.
I don't believe that I am alone in my neglectful understanding of the Old Testament. Among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Protestant Christians alike I have heard the notion pronounced, "The New Testament did away with the need for the Old Testament." This pronouncement is accompanied by an attitude of disregard to ever make sense of the Old Testament.
Grow-Up
Since that time I have read much and gained a lot of context. Authors such as Margaret Barker, Denver Snuffer, Hugh Nibley and a few others helped immensely.
This year in Gospel Doctrine we have been studying the Old Testament. I have exerted extra effort to attempt to have the proper context within the scriptures to correctly understand the stated purpose of each lesson. It has been amazing!
I'm not doing much else with this blog, so I figure that I can occasionally share some of my insights that I gain/have gained on this blog in hopes that I might be of some help to someone who cares or at least would like to care about the Old Testament.
Jeremiah
I am going to start with Jeremiah.
A few things about Jeremiah: He lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah (although he was a Benjamite), -long after the Civil War that began during the reign of Rehoboam and Jeroboam. He lived after the time that the Northern Kingdom (Israel, also sometimes called Ephraim) had been overtaken by the neighboring Assyrians and carried away.
It seems that the citizens of the Southern Kingdom, loved to bask in their supposed superiority and greater favor in the view of YHWH. This they surmised because of their continued existence and prosperous reign in their promised/covenant land, long after the Northern Kingdom had been destroyed. This is not hard to imagine due to the competitive spirit that was exhibited by the landed tribes, almost from the beginning of their inhabiting the land.
One of the duties that the Lord gave to Jeremiah was to go and relay the message to the citizens of Judah, that God didn't really think too highly of them, and in fact was in the process of bringing in foreign armies to invade them unless they repented. As can be imagined, the citizens didn't take this very well.
Imagine...
Put yourself in that place. Imagine yourself as an ancient inhabitant of Jerusalem or the suburbs lying around. Except obviously to you, you are not ancient. Take away the obvious knowledge that the scriptures currently bestow upon you of your obvious wickedness and need for repentance. Let's say that you are a....camel trader. (I know of the historical arguments against the underwhelming presence of camel's in the middle east in the early BC era's; but dromedary's are talked about in the book of Jeremiah, so I am going to suppose that this was not a problem for our imagination.)
 |
| "I think this is good deal for you!" |
You've heard all of your life about the great dispensation head MOSES, and the love/favor that he secured with YHWH for you and the rest of the Israelites. You know the stories about an even earlier friend of YHWH's whose offspring you have been assured you are, named Abraham. So knowing that you are not only a descendant of Abraham, but that you are one who has received the covenant that YHWH gave through Moses, gives you a sense that you just need to be a good Israelite, not get stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath or sleeping with your neighbor's wife, etc., and one day you will be drinking camel's milk on the big cloud in the sky!
In addition to all of this, recently you have heard rumblings of a "Messiah" that is suppose to come and redeem all of Israel. Like the original King David, this guy is going to set in order all of the House of Israel and slay all of those wicked Philistines that keep robbing your camels: no Goliath to tall, because of course...you are YHWH's chosen people. He loves you, and He hates your neighbors that give you such a hard time. It's also important to remember to imagine that this belief is something that you believe is going to happen shortly (obviously because of your favor with YHWH), possibly in your lifetime.
As a people you have had wars with your neighbors. Many; and despite the occasional up's and down's, for you and your people, it is all viewed as an overall gradual rise up! You have even won some really BIG battles against some of the biggest nations around. Egypt, Assyria, you name it and Israel prevailed.
So with all of that, now imagine that along comes Jeremiah into this pretty picture. He says that as a people, you all use to be YHWH's chosen people..but now like your whore-for-a-sister Northern Kingdom Israel, you are about to be destroyed (see Jeremiah 3: 6-12). Yeah, that's right. You have been rejected by YHWH, he says. Additionally he says that from the very beginning, when they entered the promised land, your forefathers sinned against YHWH and haven't stopped clear down to your lifetime (see Jeremiah 2:7.)
So since the time of Moses, you have brought condemnation upon your head. YHWH, was patient with you, but you and your ancestors insisted on worshiping other gods (see Jeremiah 2:27.) Now YHWH, is going to destroy you unless you turn to Him.
"AH-HAH", you retort back to Jeremiah. "You are a deceiver! Because turning back to YHWH, away from whatever other gods we were 'allegedly' supposed to have worshiped is the exact premise upon which King Josiah operates. You see, he has purged the temple of all those old relics that our fathers use to spend their time talking about. And by means of a group of scribes called the Deuteronomists, he has correlated our doctrine, so that all of the old teachings as well as the new confirms what we currently believe today! He has even been so pious so as to stop referring to YHWH in such a term, and in all of our scriptures he has instructed us that the name of diety is to sacred to share, even for those who TRULY know it. So now we are to only refer to H-m in terms that keep H-m at a reverential distance. So, you see Jeremiah, we are turning back to H-m through following Josiah, our leader."
Keeping It Real
Now having imagined all of this, go back and read the book of Jeremiah. Read how Jeremiah told them that Josiah, this supposed righteous leader of theirs who had purged the people of "wickedness" was the one to which the Lord sent the first word to Jeremiah, that not only Israel had "played-the-harlot" but also that Judah was continuing to do the same thing IN THAT VERY DAY! (see Jeremiah 3:6-11.)
Realize how hard it would be in that time to recognize Jeremiah as anything other than some ranting-raving Benjamite. He was not the High Priest of the time. He did not come through the established Priesthood hierarchy of his day.
The only qualification that Jeremiah had for you to be able to recognize him with, was his message. Despite your belief that Josiah was righteous and wouldn't be leading you astray; Jeremiah was tasked with the job of telling you that everything you knew just wasn't so. Remember that in that task, he didn't have a position of authority over you, and as of yet the Babylonians hadn't come crashing through your gates.
In fact, it's important to remember that from the time that Jeremiah started preaching to the time that the Babylonians invaded, was nearly 50 years!
Now go and read that book, and think about the vast difficulty involved with the task that was placed upon the shoulders of those living in the time of Jeremiah: If they didn't recognize him, they would be destroyed as a people.
Then when you finish, I guess you should thank your lucky stars that the God who promised to be the same yesterday, today and forever; and to not be a respecter of persons..decided to challenge those people with having to recognize an authorized servant, with an authorized message, with his only bona fides being his message; and yet for you...all you have to do is believe the teachings handed down from your fathers that you are a chosen people whom God loves. Lucky for you, He hates your neighbors and doesn't ask much of you except to just have belief in Him.
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