Month: July 2023

Week 31  Lamentations 5

Right near the end of his lament Jeremiah says: it was our ancestors who sinned, but they died before the hand of punishment fell. We have suffered the punishment they deserved.
I wonder what Jeremiah is getting at here.
Is he saying that a guy breaks the law and doesn’t suffer any consequences?
Does Guy #1 break the law and then – later in time – Guy #2 gets punished instead of Guy #1?
Does guilty Guy #1 get off scot-free but Guy #2 – who’s maybe an innocent guy – just suddenly get hit with Guy #1’s consequences?
Breaking it down this way makes no sense to me. Quite a few times I’ve read that every single individual person gets the benefit of a personal review and assessment. What I’ve worked at deserving is what I’ll get.
It’s possible that Jeremiah was thinking here about how things play-out on a more macro-scale. For instance a government can make an evil law that works out pretty well for some people in the short-term (a bad law can be rewarding). But it’s still a bad law. And over the long-haul it’s badness ends up damaging people.
One of the Basic Rules in the bible is that I get to input a whole bunch of consequential actions over the course of my life. And eventually my consequences come full circle.
I don’t think Jeremiah is arguing against that. But I’m just not sure what he is arguing.

Note: quote from Lamentations 5:7 (NLT)

Week 31  Lamentations 3

Jeremiah puts together a long list of what he calls afflictions that come from the rod of the Lord’s anger. The afflictions aren’t against Israel…they’re against him! I counted 21 of them. (There’s at least 21 because if there were 2 in one verse I only counted 1 (for example Jeremiah says the Lord has attacked me and surrounded me with anguish and distress).)
Anyway here are 10 of the things the Lord did to Jeremiah:
1. He brought Jeremiah into deep darkness
2. His hand was heavy on Jeremiah
3. He broke Jeremiah’s bones
4. He buried Jeremiah in a dark place
5. He bound Jeremiah in heavy chains
6. He shut out Jeremiah’s prayers
7. He twisted Jeremiah’s road with many detours
8. He blocked Jeremiah’s path
9. He shot his arrows into Jeremiah’s heart
10. He rolled Jeremiah in the dust.
That’s 10 afflictions and there’s at least 11 more. Summing up how he felt about things Jeremiah says: I will never forget this awful time. And that sounds like a pretty typical and understandable reaction.
So it’s a bit of a surprise when Jeremiah wraps it all up by saying: yet I still dare to hope when I remember that the unfailing love of the Lord never ends. By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each day.
I’d class that as a non-typical reaction. Somehow Jeremiah’s reflection on the Lord looks like it’s totally independent of his own excruciating and oppressive personal circumstances.

Note: quotes from Lamentations 3:1 5 2-16 20 22-23 (NLT)

Week 30  Jeremiah 37

The Lord told Jeremiah to buy some land. This wasn’t exactly textbook real estate advice. The Babylonian army was threatening to take over Judah. Soon enough none of the locals would own any land. Babylon would own it all.
Anyway Jeremiah didn’t argue. He bought the land. Then decided to go and check it out. As he was leaving Jerusalem he was stopped at the city gate and interrogated. The story says the arresting official was a sentry named Irijah son of Shelemiah and grandson of Hananiah. At first the names seemed like an irrelevant detail. What difference did it make who arrested Jeremiah?
But then I realized that even though I didn’t know Irijah I did remember Hananiah. Nine chapters ago Jeremiah had locked-horns with him when Hananiah had flat-out contradicted Jeremiah’s forecast. True Prophet vs. False Prophet. Jeremiah then predicted that Hananiah would die before the end of the year. That forecast proved out. Hananiah died two months later.
Maybe that’s what accounted for Irijah’s check-point challenge. Hananiah was Irijah’s grandpa and any enemy of his grandpa was his enemy too. And so Irijah used his legal authority to stymy a guy his family disliked.
The story was a reminder to me that for all the ways that life in the OT is hard to make sense of there are other ways where the ancient world sounds exactly the same as today.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 37:13 (NLT)

Week 30  Jeremiah 27

Jeremiah made three predictions about what would happen when Babylon attacked & conquered Jerusalem:
– the temple bronze would be carted off
– the gold artifacts would be taken
– eventually those treasures would be returned to Jerusalem.
When a prophecy is first given it’s a wait-and-see proposition. But since I’m reading the prophecy after the fact I don’t have to wait. I can just ask:
– was the bronze carted off?
– were the gold items taken?
– were the treasures returned?
If the answers are ‘yes-yes-yes’ then Jeremiah’s prophecy came true. And since I’ve already read Kings & Ezra I know the answers are ‘yes-yes-yes’:
– the bronze was carted off (2 Kings 25)
– the gold was taken to Babylon (2 Kings 25)
– the gold utensils were eventually returned (Ezra 1).
The three events took place.
Accurately forecasting the future was easy enough for Jeremiah because he just repeated what the Lord told him. And it was easy enough for the Lord since time works differently for him – and in fact maybe time doesn’t apply to him at all.
But the accuracy is pretty impressive.

Note: the three predictions are in Jeremiah 27:19 21 22. Added note: some bible readers figure Jeremiah couldn’t possibly know the future. Which means his apparently accurate predictions weren’t predictions at all. They were post-dictions – “forecasts” written after they’d happened. My concern is that then the bible becomes a kind of semi-stupid anthology written by lying scammers for careless dupes. Which makes it a Book for Gulls.

Week 30 Jeremiah 29

Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Jewish people who were exiled in Babylon.
In that letter two dishonest prophets were named:
Ahab son of Kolaiah &
Zedekiah son of Maaseiah.
They were self-appointed prophets to the exiles. But Jeremiah wrote that they had told lies in the Lord’s name. That likely meant that A&Z said something like this (for instance): “the Lord told us that you-all would be freed from captivity next month”. So the one problem was the lie itself (no one returned home). And the second problem was that the lie was compounded when they said that the Lord said it.
This story sounded quite a bit like the story of Hananiah in the last chapter. Hananiah had said the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says… – when in actual fact the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel hadn’t said anything even vaguely like what Hananiah said.
And another prophet – Shemaiah – shows up right after A&Z. The Lord said that Shemaiah: has prophesied to you when I did not send him and has tricked you into believing his lies. Shemaiah had tried to fool people with his fake prophecy by saying the Lord endorsed it.
The outcomes were all bad:
A&Z were publicly executed by Nebuchadnezzar
Hananiah died two months after his prophecy
Shemaiah didn’t live long enough to see much of anything.
Jeremiah’s point? A) don’t manufacture fictitious futures and B) don’t double your trouble by crediting the Lord with your fabrication.

Note: Jeremiah 28:2 29:31 26 (NLT)

Week 29  Jeremiah 22

Back in May I looked at the fifteen kings of Judah who reigned after Solomon. The kings were: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah.
My goal was to rate them on a Quality of King Scale to see who was the best (I figured it was Josiah) and who was the worst (Amon). But I cheated a bit because Josiah was not actually the last king of Judah. There were four more after him. And I was reminded about my cheat when I saw these three subtitles in Jeremiah 22:
A Message about Jehoahaz
A Message about Jehoiakim
A Message for Jehoiachin
(A fourth subtitle – A Message for Zedekiah – was missing since he wasn’t mentioned until chapter 24.)
So anyway a complete list of kings would have included these last four ‘let’s-pretend’ kings.
I looked at Jeremiah’s comments about them:
Jehoahaz: he will never return (to Jerusalem). He will die in a distant land
Jehoiakim: his family will not weep for him when he dies…He will be buried like a dead donkey
Jehoiachin: he will die in a foreign land…His life will amount to nothing
Zedekiah: he will be disgraced and mocked, taunted and cursed.
I didn’t rate these four on my King Scale. But if I had they’d likely be at or near the very bottom.

Note: posts on the fifteen kings are at May 24-31 2023. Quotes from Jeremiah 22:11-12 18-19 26 29 24:9 (NLT)

Week 29  Jeremiah 14

Enough-was-finally-enough and so the Lord told Jeremiah: do not pray for these people anymore. When they fast in my presence, I will pay no attention. When they present their burnt offerings…I will not accept them.
That’s pretty definitive: Do Not Pray For These People Anymore. But then a couple of verses later Jeremiah said this: Lord have you completely rejected Judah?…Lord, we confess our wickedness…For the sake of your name, Lord, do not abandon us…Please don’t forget us! That sounds quite a bit like a prayer to me. A pretty good prayer. A prayer that Jeremiah wasn’t supposed to be praying.
So the Lord got even more emphatic: even if Moses and Samuel stood before me, pleading for these people, I wouldn’t help them!
Prayer has the capacity to bend events. To alter outcomes. I read king Hezekiah’s story a couple of months ago. When Isaiah forecast Hezekiah’s death Hezekiah prayed. And so he didn’t die! In Hezekiah’s case prayer changed his future. He was going to die right away – but then he prayed and got an extra fifteen-years of life. Injected into the stream of events his prayer reorganized things. Outcome A was definitely going to happen. But prayer was added and Outcome B happened instead.
So prayer can & does change things. But it looks like by the time Jeremiah 14 arrived praying’s Can-&-Does Phase had progressed to the Can’t-&-Doesn’t Phase.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 14:11-12 19-21 & 15:1 (NLT). The Hezekiah story is in 2 Kings 20:1-7.

Week 29  Isaiah 53

Yesterday I was looking at Isaiah’s Servant – what he was like & what happened to him. Visible things. Obvious things. His sad & adversity-plagued life. His death.
Isaiah was also interested in explaining not-so-obvious things. What the Servant was actually accomplishing behind the scenes. The meaning of his life. I found a couple of those today:
• The Servant will carry our weaknesses
• He’ll be weighed down by our sorrows and diseases
• He’ll be wounded and crushed for our sins
• He’ll be beaten that we might have peace
• He’ll be whipped, so we will be healed
• The Lord will lay on him the guilt and sins of us all
• He’ll make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear their sins.
So the Servant didn’t just live his own life & die his own death. He was also a stand-in for sinners. A kind of pinch-hitter for the rest of us.  Scapegoat for the World.
Yesterday it looked like the Servant would have an unlucky & unfortunate life. But today Isaiah makes it clear there’d be no accident: it was the Lord’s good plan to crush (the Servant) and fill him with grief.
The “good plan” of the Lord will be a hard and bitter plan for the Servant. Still…Isaiah predicted that when the Servant sees all that will be accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. In retrospect it’ll be worth the very high cost.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 53:4-6 10 11 (NLT)

Week 28  Isaiah 53

Isaiah was talking about an anonymous person that he called “the Servant”. Isaiah didn’t name any names. He only gave hints. The Servant stayed in the shadows. A bit of a gray man. Mysterious & enigmatic.
I decided to look for concrete things that Isaiah said about the Servant – observable & testable things. What he was like & what happened to him. A guy would have to fit that description to be the Servant. He couldn’t be just anybody. I found twelve things:
• There was nothing beautiful or attractive about his appearance
• He was despised and rejected
• He was a man of sorrows
• He was acquainted with bitterest grief
• He was wounded and crushed
• He was beaten
• He was whipped
• He was oppressed and treated harshly
• He was led as a lamb to the slaughter
• From prison and trial he was led away to his death
• He had done no wrong and he never deceived anyone
• He was counted among those who were sinners.
The one stand-out feature in this list is that even though the Servant was treated like a criminal he had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone.
Anyway today I was just looking at Isaiah’s summary of a) what the Servant was like and b) what happened to him. They seem pretty objective. Seem like they have a high testability rating. Whoever the Servant turns out to be I know he has to check all twelve boxes.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 53:2 3 5 7 8 9 12 (NLT)

Week 28  Isaiah 34

At first I don’t pay much attention to the animals wandering through the ruins of depopulated cities and what’s left of a landscape that sounds like a post-nuclear wasteland.
At first it sounded like a worldwide apocalyptic event that effected everyone. But farther down it sounded like a specific end-of-existence forecast for Edom. I stalled trying to figure which it was. I think that’s maybe why my mind drifted to the animals.
I wondered if the twelve animals were from the Leviticus Unclean Food List. When I cross-checked I saw that pelicans owls ravens ostriches & hawks were prohibited. But not hedgehogs jackals desert-creatures wolves hairy-goats night-monsters or tree-snakes.
When I checked another version of the bible I saw that some of the names were different. I looked at a third and fourth version. The only name that was exactly the same in all four versions was Raven.
Some versions had kind-of comparable names (owl great-owl & screech-owl).
But some weren’t similar (pelican desert-owl horned-owl cormorant).
I saw one animal that was called Jackal in three versions but Dragon in the other.
Anyway I got sidetracked wondering about the animals.
In the end I remembered the point of the chapter. The Lord will bring chaos and destruction to that land. Burning pitch. Smoky skies. Deserted land. No one will live there anymore…It will be called the Land of Nothing. In Nothingland there’ll be nothing but wild animals.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 34:11 10 12 (NLT)