Jeremiah 1
Jeremiah 2
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
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1. The first few verses of Jeremiah give us what will become a familiar trope of Jewish literature: the foolishness of trusting in "gods" that you can make yourself out of common items. You walk into the woods, chop down a tree, cut the material into a god. Then you worship it. Stupid, right? Jeremiah is probably the earliest full example of this trope, since Isaiah 40 probably dates to the late exile. Deuteronomy 4:28 may imply it.
"They are scarecrows in a cucumber field" (10:5) is striking because many Israelites who worshiped Yahweh probably believed the other deities were real even if they did not worship them. At the very least, Jeremiah questions an idol that you make for yourself.
I always think of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart when I read this trope. The African novel argues that this understanding of religious objects is not correct. It argues that the object is meant to help a person focus on the deity that is not the same as the wood or stone. It is an icon like a picture or, less exactly, the rosary. I've always wondered if Achebe was intellectualizing something that in practice was much more like the rhetoric of the trope.
2. Jeremiah 10:6-10 then praises Yahweh in contrast to these manufactured deities in a way that foreshadows second Isaiah. "Yahweh is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath, the earth shakes. And the nations cannot endure his anger." Powerful poetry.
I might note that a good deal of Jeremiah so far has been poetry. The prophets were poets, which means that a good deal of prophecy in the Old Testament is in poetic form. The key structure of Hebrew poetry is of course parallelism -- say it, say it again (synonymous parallelism) or say it, say the opposite (antithetical parallelism). I'm simplifying for memory purposes.
The precise will no doubt come up for air -- it's not exactly the same thing and it's just something that contrasts, not necessarily the opposite. I know. I just wanted to help you with your ongoing therapy with the real world.
3. Jeremiah 10:11-16 is magnificent praise of Yahweh. By contrast, those who didn't make the skies and earth will perish from the earth and the skies (10:11). (A nice little chiasm for you IBS fans)
This verse is in Aramaic. How magnificent. He uses the language of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors to dismiss their gods! What a zinger!
I might also note that this is the second or third time while reading Jeremiah this time through that I have noticed a possible allusion to Genesis 1. This seems significant to me in terms of its dating.
What magnificent praise of Yahweh in these verses in relation to his power over nature. The contrast with the "delusion" of the other gods' existence is, again, very striking in a henotheistic world. You can see again the anticipation of second Isaiah.
In contrast to Yahweh, we humans are "stupid and without knowledge." That's for sure.
4. The last part of the chapter forebodes the impending judgment that is coming from Babylon. Although I could be wrong, it feels to me like it must have felt after Josiah was killed in battle and the Assyrians were defeated by the Babylonians. The sense of foreboding must have been immense. Babylon just felt like Assyria had felt a little over 100 years before.
"My tent is destroyed" (10:20). Is this an allusion to the destruction of the temple? "There is no one to stretch my tent again." "My shepherds are stupid," is perhaps an allusion to the priests who ran the temple -- the ones who thought everything is ok because "This is the temple of the LORD."
The chapter ends with a plea from Jeremiah to Yahweh (10:23-25). Discipline us but please not too much that we are destroyed. Save your destruction for foreign nations. Reminds me a bit of Habakkuk, who comes from this same period as well.
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