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Week 25 Jeremiah

Jeremiah ends with a kind of Appendix 1 & Appendix 2.
Appendix 1 lists the number of people exiled in the three deportations to Babylon.
Deportation One: 3023 people
Deportation Two: 832 people
Deportation Three: 745 people.
Total: 4600 captives went into exile.
A pretty small number. When I think back to the census numbers that I read in Numbers and 1 Chronicles I realize that a nation of hundreds of thousands – maybe a couple of million – has shrunk to less than 5000.
Then I see Appendix 2. King Jehoiachin was the second last king of Judah. He had left Jerusalem in Deportation Two and spent decades in jail. He was the last surviving king in the bloodline of David but fortunately not the last  surviving person. I check a couple of cross-references and see…
That Jehoiachin had a son named Shealtiel
That Shelatiel had a son named Zerubbabel (the Zerubbabel I was reading about last month in Ezra)
And those three –Jehoiachin-Shealtiel-Zerubbabel – are all cross-referenced over into Matthew’s gospel genealogy. Ten generations after Zerubbabel I see Joseph’s name – Joseph the husband of Mary the mother of the Lord.
So things are eventually going to work out okay. But at the end of the book of Jeremiah you realize that the Abraham-Judah-David line of descent seems to be cutting things pretty close. And so is the nation as a whole. There’s only a few left standing.
Enough…but not with a lot to spare.

Notes: Appendix 1: Jeremiah 52:28-30; Appendix 2: 52:31-34. Jehoiachin-Shealtiel: 1 Chronicles 3:17; Shealtiel-Zerubbabel Ezra 3:2; and Matthew 1:12 & 16.

Week 25 Jeremiah

In chapter forty-four Jeremiah told Israel why their current disaster had happened… They had: burned incense and worshipped other gods.
I’ve been seeing different reactions to Jeremiah’s unhappy prophecies. Disdain disregard animosity hostility belligerence. Like that. But in this case the people challenged Jeremiah’s Reason Why.
They checked the record and figured their best days correlated with times when they were idolaters: in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and had no troubles! But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshipping her, we have been in great trouble and have suffered the effects of war and famine.
Their equations were:
Worshipping the Queen of Heaven = good times.
Not worshipping the Queen of Heaven = bad times.
I don’t think there’s any reason to say there weren’t any good times when idolatry was popular. There must have been some evidence to back that up.
If the equation was worshipping the Queen of Heaven = immediate and disastrous bad times that would’ve been one thing. But it hadn’t worked that way. So Jeremiah had two problems. First was his glass-almost-empty message. And second was that based on observation his message could be disputed.
So no matter how iron-clad the message sounded it was a waste of Jeremiah’s breath if the audience believed they had good reason not to believe.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 44:3, 17-18 (NLT).

Week 25 Jeremiah

After the fall of Jerusalem…
After the exile to Babylon…
After the assassination of the interim governor…
And while they waited for the Babylonian hammer to fall on them again the people came to Jeremiah with a what-to-do? question. Should we stay here? Or should we high-tail it for Egypt?
Jeremiah’s answer was pretty clear…Stay put! He offered a simple formula:
Choice A will lead to Results-Package A (positives)
Choice B will lead to Results-Package B (negatives).
If the people chose Choice A and stayed in Jerusalem then several things would happen (for example, they would live longer). I don’t know what-all other benefits would have been included but by not choosing Choice A it would mean that all those potential A-Results would get taken off the table. That’s what choosing Choice B would mean. All the promised A-Results were gone and the outcome values were reset to Results-Package B. The B-Results that were future possibilities would be actualized when Choice B was selected.
Anyway for whatever reason the people crazily chose Choice B. And their future at that moment switched onto track B.
The people could have chosen A. But they did choose B.
The story doesn’t spell out why the people made that choice. But it does spell out that a) choices are important and that b) choices come with add-ons.

Note: the story of Jeremiah’s two choices is in Jeremiah 42.

Week 24 Jeremiah

The troops are lined-up like Davy Crockett & Jim Bowie.
King Zedekiah is staring over the ramparts. Looking straight at national disintegration.
Coming up on zero hour.
And Jeremiah is prophesying: everyone who stays in Jerusalem will die from war, famine, or disease, but those who surrender to the Babylonians will live.
Back in April I read the story of Micaiah – he preached a Doomsday forecast to Jehoshaphat & Ahab. On their side Ahab’s prophets prophesied A Sweetness-and-Light forecast. So Micaiah’s Prophecy was offset by a Contrary Prophecy.
That’s not what happened with Jeremiah. No other prophet was tipping the balance with an alternate story. Instead a group of officials just told the king: this man must die! That kind of talk will undermine the morale of the…fighting men, as well as that of all the people.
No one was asking is-Jeremiah’s-prophecy-true? The question was…how does his prophecy make us feel?
So it looks like back in Jeremiah’s day they were using a kind of Audience-Emotional-Response Feedback Scale. A prophecy is given, and then if the audience felt upset annoyed fearful de-motivated anxious or like that then the prophecy was automatically wrong. It’s a pretty handy way of arriving at right-wrong – if the message makes me feel disconsolate it’s just disregardable noise.
Poor old Jeremiah. Not pliant enough to adjust. Not able to make a concession. Not a team-guy. I’m not sure how successful he’d be in Alberta.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 38:2, 4 (NLT). The Micaiah story is in 1 Kings 22.

Week 24 Jeremiah

I was reading chapters 34-35-36 today.
Jerusalem’s Big Bad Wolf – Nebuchadnezzar – was huffing-&-puffing at the gates and while that was going on the Lord told Jeremiah to: go to King Zedekiah of Judah and tell him… So luckily for me I’d been reading about Zedekiah approximately 28-days ago (May 21 post was the-final-four). At that point I’d decided to track the kings of the southern kingdom for Character Quality but I also decided to eliminate the last four kings because they were puppets to foreign states. Those last four ‘kings’ were: Jehoahaz-Jehoiakim-Jehoiachin-Zedekiah. I remembered Zedekiah and I knew he was the very last king (because his initial was the very last letter of the alphabet).
Anyway the point is that Jeremiah gave his message to Zedekiah – the last king – in chapter 34. So then I started reading chapter 35 and saw this: this is the message the Lord gave Jeremiah when Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah. Hmmmm…
This was a good reminder that the bible isn’t moving ahead in chronological sequence. The 66-books aren’t necessarily chronological and the book’s contents aren’t necessarily either.
That’s not really a glitch. I was reading a modern novel where the author was bouncing back-and-forth from present to past. A chapter would start with something like: Twenty years earlier.
Is writing non-chronologically a problem? I doubt it.
Is it worth keeping in mind? No reason not to.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 34:2, 35:1 (NLT). I forget which novel – maybe a Jack Ryan story.

Week 24 Jeremiah

When I’m reading-through I usually think my job – my only job – is to read through. It’s not to do other things. Which isn’t always the easiest thing to do and I got a reminder of one of those Other Things today – prayer.
Prayer is a totally different exercise to reading-through. But it’s hard to keep the two separated because most of what I find out about prayer I find in the bible.
Jeremiah 20 is pretty much a verbatim prayer. Since I’m reading-through I can’t avoid it. And so I incidentally find out something about prayer.
It’s a Downside Prayer. Jeremiah identifies a bunch of the price-to-pay social outcomes that come with being a prophet:
Now I am mocked by everyone in the city…
These messages…have made me a household joke…
I have heard…many rumors about me…
My old friends are…waiting for a fatal slip.
By the end of the prayer Jeremiah hasn’t turned the psychic-corner – the last five verses talk about how he wished he was dead.
Jeremiah reminds me that following the Lord isn’t a cakewalk. Plus I might end up losing friends. And along with that he reminds me of a couple of things about prayer:
I can pray when things are pretty bad
My prayers might be untidy
I can pray but still end up feeling awful.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 20:7, 8, 10 (NLT). Added note that’s not in Jeremiah but that I think is true: a poor prayer is better than no prayer.

Week 24 Jeremiah

The Lord told Jeremiah: if I announce that a certain nation…is to be uprooted…but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I planned. And if I announce that I will build up…a certain nation…making it strong and great, but then that nation turns to evil…I will not bless that nation as I said I would.
It’s a helpful bit of insight about how the system works.
The Lord sees that Nation A is evil so he plans to eliminate Nation A. If Nation A makes no adjustments it will be eliminated. But if it turns to the Lord then Nation A can sidestep annihilation.
And the reverse is true. Nation B is good. The Lord plans to back-up Nation B. But if Nation B turns around and rejects the Lord then Nation B will experience negative consequences.
This is a useful thing to keep in mind reading the prophets. The prophets give messages that are future-predictive. The Lord tells them something is going to happen. What that could mean is something is absolutely going to happen no matter what. But it could also mean something is definitely going to happen (unless something else changes).
Tracking prophecies to see if they’re qualified or unqualified would take too much time right now.
But I’ll keep in mind that not everything that sounds like it’ll definitely happen will.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 18:7-10 (NLT)

Week 23 Jeremiah

Chapter fifteen is ominous. The Lord said that even if two stellar characters like Moses & Samuel begged him to cut Judah slack he wouldn’t do it. The only thing that Judah could expect (actually there were four things) was Death War Famine & Captivity (and the next verse piles on a follow-up Quartet of Destroyers). It’s pretty grim.
As I’m reading along I’m kind of lulled into a dark reverie where I don’t bother thinking much about what’s behind the Death-War-Famine-Captivity (best guess is idolatry disobedience injustice and like that). So I’m jolted when I read why: because of the wicked things Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.
Manasseh! I posted on Manasseh last month when I was reading 2 Chronicles. He was an outrageously terrible king. One of the worst. But then that maybe-most-despicable king repented. And he was forgiven.
I go back and reread the story. Manasseh was humbled. He called out to the Lord. The Lord heard him forgave him restored him saved him.
Looked like everything was good.
But now I see that everything wasn’t good.
I don’t exactly understand the inner workings of the system but Manasseh had been instrumental in importing a bunch of the worst possible evils into Judah. And unfortunately his repentance didn’t make the effects magically disappear.
Manasseh was forgiven but his evils hung around. Now compensation was required.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 15:4 (NLT). Manasseh’s story is in 2 Chronicles 33.

Week 23 Proverbs

I noticed it in chapter seven where a guy is willingly seduced sexually by an energized woman – the thing about the way. The story starts when the eyes-wide-open guy: takes the way to her house (where I guess he got his racy & tantalizing sexual experience). At first I was thinking about the issue of Pre-Sexual-Activity Decision-Making. But then Solomon goes on to say that the guy discovers – or will discover – that the woman’s place is just a whistle-stop on a longer trip. In reality: her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death.
So then it occurred to me that even though Solomon  was talking about an erotic adventure that wasn’t all he was talking about.  He was thinking about things that take me along the-way-that-leads-to-the-grave.
I got out a wordbook and looked up the word way. Most of the references in Proverbs 1-9 fall into either Way #1 or Way #2. Way #1 is the way of evil the way of evil men the way of the wicked the way to Sheol and the evil way. Way #2: the way of the good person the way of wisdom the way of life the way of righteousness the way of understanding.
Proverbs – at the simplest level – is recommending Way #2 as its preferred option.
So as enigmatic & indecipherable as Solomon might get at some points, here at the front end he’s presenting me with a pretty basic choice.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 7:8 & 27. References to Way #1 – 2:12, 4:14, 4:19, 7:27, 8:13, & Way #2 – 2:20, 4:11, 6:23, 8:20, 9:6 (NASB)

Week 23 Jeremiah

Jeremiah begins his book with the account of how the Lord gave him his assignment as a prophet. There were two things I noticed.
The first was that there was a Pre-Life Element to Jeremiah’s story that he wasn’t likely aware of. Something earlier was going on. The Lord told him: I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world. So…that’s pretty interesting since my guess is that most modern people don’t much buy into the idea of pre-conception goings-on (unless they belong to, say maybe an eastern religion that does believe there are pre-conception goings-on). But the Lord tells Jeremiah that his Material-World Day One was not the point when things got rolling. They were rolling quite a bit before his birth day.
The other thing is that the Lord told Jeremiah: you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don’t be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and take care of you. Since I was reading 2 Chronicles a couple of weeks ago I remember what happened to Jeremiah. He didn’t exactly have a fun-filled & carefree life with no opposition antagonism ill-treatment disrespect and like that. So when I see the Lord saying this thing about I-will- be-with-you-and-take-care-of-you I won’t be translating that as meaning a week in Hawaii.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 1:5 & 7-8 (NLT)