Thomas Durst has a nice, short, devotional post drawn from Jeremiah 32:36-44, which he quotes from The Message. It’s titled Healing and Restoration.
Tag: Jeremiah
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Rightly Dividing or Slicing and Dicing – Jeremiah 4:23
In debates on creation and evolution I have occasionally encountered the ruin and restoration theory. This view allows an old earth, but does so in a different way. Genesis 1:1 is viewed as an original creation, and then the word in 1:2 normally translated “was” is instead translated “became.” I discuss the details in the article above.
But what I find even more interesting, and certainly more relevant to this Bible study blog, is the slicing and dicing that must be done on verses elsewhere in scripture in order to make them fit with this theory. In fact, one of my major complaints about dispensationalism is that it tends to make it next to impossible to read contextually. The context is created by the dispensations, but clearly not recognized by the writers of the text.
An example of this tendency is Jeremiah 4:23. This is summarized in a note in [tag]Scofield[/tag]’s Reference Bible: “Cf. Gen. i.2. “Without form and void” describes the condition of the earth as the result of the judgment (vs. 24-26; Isa. xxiv. 1) which overthrew the primal order of Genesis i.1.”
But if you look at Jeremiah 4, you find that the topic has nothing to do with any original creation, nor with a primal judgment but rather with a judgment on Judah for its sins. The prophet goes on to depict the destruction that will come on the land. There is no literary division between verse 22, clearly about Judah, and verse 23, which Scofield is claiming refers to another time and place.
The argument is that “without form and void” refers back to Genesis 1:2, as surely it does. But for what purpose does it make this reference? It intends to compare the judgment to a removal of all the blessings of creation and to evoke that primal emptiness as a hyperbolic description of the destruction to come to Judah. Is there justification for calling it hyperbole? Absolutely. First, I would accept this as hyperbole based on the context alone. The context clearly indicates the destruction of Judah by Babylon, and “without form and void” is hyperbole in connection with that destruction. But further, in verse 27, after providing this description of absolute destruction, we find this: “. . . yet will I not make a full end.” “Without form and void” is pretty complete. This is all allowable in poetic language.
To understand this as referring to another time and place is to take it completely out of the context of Jeremiah. Such an interpretation would mean that Jeremiah suddenly, in the middle of a comparatively coherent discussion of one topic, changes subjects for several lines without any indication that the subject has changed, and then switches back. Verse 28, for example, again speaks of this destruction as future.
If one can do that, then one can take any phrase or clause of scripture and force it to mean anything one desires.
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A Story of Three Prophets
This is a follow-up to my post Information or Conversation, and it would probably be a good idea to read that entry first.
One element of God’s method of revealing himself to people is that he chooses specific people to accomplish specific missions. I want to look at the time of the exile, and three of God’s messengers, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. Now there will be those who accept a later date for Daniel and will question my using him in this part of the story. Let me simply state that I do believe that the stories of Daniel, though not likely the entire book, date from the time of the exile,were later written down and collected in what we now have as the Aramaic portions of Daniel. For more discussion see Dating the Book of Daniel.
At the time of the exile there were three distinct situations, three distinct groups of people to whom God needed to communicate his message. The first was the people of Judah who were rapidly heading toward exile and destruction. The second group was those who were already exiled and living in Babylon. The third was the Babylonian court, both the Babylonian king and officials for whom God had a mission, but also the exiles who were living in a state of privelege and facing the temptation to compromise away their faith.
The inhabitants of Judah were living in a dreamworld of security, based on the belief that the presence of the temple, and thus God’s presence, protected Jerusalem no matter what. The exiles in Babylon generally felt abandoned by God and either waited expectantly for their soon return or began to simply give up. At the same time the king of Babylon took the view that he was favored of the gods because of his successes, and those who lived in his court faced the constant danger of compromise of their principles in order to gain power and favor and even permanence in their new situation. Any of these attitudes presented a barrier to God’s plan.
God’s response was not merely to protect the facts. The facts were that the exile would be long but temporary, and that in the end the people would return. Jerusalem would be destroyed, but it would be rebuilt. Nebuchadnezzar was a great king and conqueror, but he also was limited and temporary and the way to success for the Jewish young people who found themselves there was faithfulness, not compromise. But even if they suffered for their faithfulness, the consequences of compromise would be even deeper.
Those were the facts, but God still needed messengers. None of the audiences actually wanted to listen, but there were ways to make things clear.
For Judah, there was Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Not only one who could speak the message, but one who could weep the message, whose very life symbolized God’s love for Judah and his unwillingness to give up his people. God’s sorrow was expressed in the form of a prophet who spoke, suffered, cried, and was ignored, but who never gave up, who kept speaking until there was nothing left.
Ezekiel was himself an exile, capable of understanding the situation of the exiles. His inaugural vision (Ezekiel 1) reassured Ezekiel that God was still with the exiles, that in spite of judgment there was hope. The message became a part of Ezekiel. But the presentation was different from that of Jeremiah. Ezekiel was not allowed to mourn his own wife’s death (Ezekiel 24:15-27). Both his visions and his methods of expression were powerful and creative.
Daniel was one tempted to compromise in the court of the king. He had every opportunity to go over to the side of the winner, and to accept Nebuchadnezzar as the once and always king of the world. But he stood quietly for God and for faithfulness to his message.
Three messengers with similar messages, but different audiences, and different means to present that message–God involved in the daily activities of human beings, a microcosm of God acting in the flesh.
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Information or Conversation
I frequently get into discussions about the inspiration of the Bible. These discussions generally center around such texts as 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20-21, or Hebrews 4:12. Now all of these are good texts from which to study about the nature of scripture, but it interests me that we build theology from these texts which we then try to impose on the remainder of scripture, rarely bothering to spend time observing just how the process of revelation has functioned.
My idea here is not to find a different set of texts from which to extract theological propositions, but rather to look at the narrative, and ask how God has managed to reveal himself at various times and under various circumstances. By observing the narrative of scripture, we can get a better idea of what the propositions of scripture mean in practice. When 2 Timothy 3:16 says that scripture is profitable for certain things, we can ask precisely how scripture was used in accomplishing such things.
I’m suggesting here a focus on the story rather than on the commentary, or one might say the experience rather than the propositions. This is not because the scripture does not contain propositional truth. I believe one can derive propositional truths from the story and from the explicit statements, but if we read these always in the context of the story, we will get better defined and understood propositions. After all, there must be some reason why God put so much story in scripture, and why even all those propositions arrived in the framework of the story.
In a discussion some time ago, I annoyed someone when I made my normal suggestion to look at places other than these standard texts in discussing inspiration. In particular, I was recommending the story of Jeremiah and Baruch as they produced the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies (Jeremiah 36), to help us understand just how inspiration works.
What can we learn from this story?
- The prophecy itself may occur at some time earlier than the writing.
- It may not be the prophet’s own pen that does the writing.
- The writings of a prophet may be written at more than one time; this may point us toward an explanation for why we have multiple versions of the book of Jeremiah with material in a different order.
- The prophecy in both spoken and written form is produced in response to a need.
- God’s word sometimes comes at a considerable cost to the messenger.
Those are just a few things. As we read the story of Jeremiah we can learn not only about God’s method of revelation but how God’s inspiration works with the inspired person. This is one of the things I mean by participatory Bible study. “Participatory” can mean simply to participate in the process of study–everyone in a group reads a text, makes a comment, looks something up in a reference source, etc. What I mean is investing oneself in the actual story of the scriptures. My question here is not just how Jeremiah heard from God, and what Jeremiah had to say, but how can I hear from God. My question is how I can hear from God, how I can build a relationship with God, and how Jeremiah’s experience can help mine.
We go to the Bible looking for information; God goes to the Bible looking for conversation.
God doesn’t merely want to inform you. That could be done much more easily than the process that brought us the Bible. God wants to relate to you, have a conversation with you.
And if you can see that in Jeremiah, it’s going to help. The agony of his situation as people ignore his message. His horror as his nation continues to follow the path of destruction. His frustration as people won’t listen to his message. Then we get the command to produce this scroll. We see it destroyed and replaced. Live this with Jeremiah! How much is this like our Christian experience as God tries to get through to us, to get us to listen, to get us to persevere in his word?
Off and on I’m going to present essays on this topic. I’ll be following this with one on the three prophets of the exile, but there are many more experiences of scripture that can teach us about God’s revelation and how we receive it.