Chapter 20 JEREMIAH AND LAMENTATIONS
Jeremiah was given the job to tell Jerusalem there was now no going back. Judah had not heeded the warnings, so they would be exiled. If they co-operated with Babylon however, they could save Jerusalem and the temple from destruction. But they did not, instead they called Jeremiah a political traitor, and attempted to align with Egypt in a war against Babylon. Because of this, Babylon reneged on its deal to keep a puppet king in Jerusalem and raised it to the ground.
Figure 65: Potter’s wheels
I am reluctant to start this preamble with “When I was a lad” but in the olden days, Christians loved to get together to discuss the deeper questions of life like, ‘Are we predestined or do we have free will’? It seems to me that you have to join a science club or psychologists federation to talk about these things today, which is a great pity because they won’t let God join in. Jeremiah and God discuss this subject head on in chapters eighteen and nineteen when God told Jeremiah to go down to the potters shop and buy a vase.
Now you will remember that Jerusalem is on top of a series of hills and one of the valleys called the valley of Hinnom, was where all the potters shops were. In the very olden days Hinnom valley was where the Israelis fought the Philistines. But in Jeremiah’s day, at one end of this valley housed the municipal rubbish tip. You will know that when you compress rubbish it heats up to give spontaneous fires and for that reason it later became known as Gehenna. Jesus used this valley to illustrate Hell. The fires were useful, because at the other end of the valley was the local clay quarry. This included Potters field which was where the Potters set up their shops.
One corner of the potter’s field housed a spent quarry into which they threw all hardened pots that had cracked while being fired. You will have heard of this place also because it was where Judas fell headlong and died after betraying Jesus. Jeremiah watched the potter while he made the vase for him. When it was almost complete, it did not turn out quite right. So the potter squashed it, threw it back on the wheel and formed a chamber pot out of it. Then God started the conversation with a question.
“Why was that clay not made into a beautiful vessel”?
“Was it the Potter’s fault or the clay’s fault”?
“Who decided what the end result would be”?
Jeremiah answered, “The fault lay with the clay because it had become contaminate and would not flow in the potters hands”. To which God said,
“Even at this late stage if my people repent they can be made beautiful by my grace. If they change their ways and co-operate, I will change my mind and make a beautiful vase”.
After this, they went on to discuss the clay227. You can’t break soft clay, you can tear it, squeeze it or shape it. The potter’s wheel alone reveals a variation of colour, grain, brittleness or playability. Clay cannot mould itself, it needs a potter. But it can make things difficult for the potter. The potter will make something if he possibly can. He will only discard it altogether if it becomes work hardened.
Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, and amend your ways”
“But they said, We will follow our own plans, and continue in our stubbornness’’.228
Once again, we must stop off to see how the promised sceptre line is going. It looks to be in trouble again. While the surrounding nations were rejoicing at the demise of the nation, the sceptre line was being protected by the very king that brought them down. Jehoiachin the king was released from prison by his captors, given a royal cloths allowance and authorized to dine at the king of Babylon’s table for the rest of his life. The promised sceptre line is safe and secure. The line goes on.
Evil-merodach king of Babylon, freed Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison gave him a regular allowance according to his daily needs, as long as he lived and every day of his life he dined at the king’s table.229
Jeremiah lived at the beginning of the seventh-century-BC. Babylon has grown rapidly and is about to take Judah. Jeremiah saw seven kings come and go, towards the end, kings were killing each other to get the throne within months. Born in the reign of Manasseh, (the same year as Josiah the good king who restored the scriptures to the temple), he was around at the time Manasseh had Isaiah sawn in half. Jeremiah also witnessed how all the other kings had mistreated prophets.
Like John the Baptist, his parents were told he would be a Prophet. Born at Anata in the West Bank, he started his ministry while still a spotty, introverted youth. No wonder he was marked out as being a sober and nervous young man, he knew that he was genetically a descendent of Eli the priest, so he knew he would not see old age. (You will remember Eli was told none of his descendants would see old age because of his sin). Jeremiah’s name was itself prophetic. The name means “God has raised”. In the Hebrew, as today in English, raise was used either to ‘raise up from’ or to ‘raise down to’. The people called him the weeping prophet, but God called him ‘Iron Man’
As for you, get ready! Stand up and tell them everything that I’ve commanded you.... For I am making an iron pillar, and a bronze wall against the whole land 230
Although Jeremiah died in his mid fifties, he preached for more than thirty-five-years and his book is written over that time. His prophecy about Babylon coming to raise Jerusalem to the ground was fulfilled before he finished the book. For that reason people have tried to find contradictions. For example in his early years he was angry with Babylon. But in his later years he told the people to settle down under them. For that he was called a political turncoat and his own people captured him and took him to Egypt. The people had formed a theology that they were God’s People, Jerusalem and the temple was most beloved in their lives so God would not destroy what was precious to Him. Jeremiah’s first message was to tell Jerusalem its is too late. They would be exiled regardless now, only if they repent God would save Jerusalem and the temple. The other prophets and priests preached they would be safe and protected, but Jeremiah was not prepared to preach what they wanted to hear but what they needed to hear.
Jeremiah’s introversions didn’t stop him preaching, he was also an actor and a poet. Like Isaiah, he did a lot of street theatre. When God said, “Tell the people I know they are hiding their sins where they think they cannot be seen, but I can see them because they are wearing them”. He acted it out in the dirty lining parable. He buried his underwear under a stone then dug it up again. When God said tell the people, “I will use Babylon to teach the people and train them into line”, he went around wearing a cattle yoke. When God said, “Babylon trusts education rather than my wisdom, so she will sink and rise no more”, he took some books tied a stone around them and threw them into the Euphrates.
When everyone in the city was selling their houses and land because of the immanent invasion, He made a show of going to the estate agent to buy, prophesying the occupation would end and God would return the land with interest.
Jeremiah did preach, but when the king told him to stop he simply switched to writing to demonstrate God could not be silenced. When the king took his writings and burned them God raised up a good friend named Baruch who just kept writing them out again. Baruch was one of those wonderful back room guys. Jeremiah told him “Don’t seek great things for yourself just keep serving others”. Without Baruch we would not have this scripture today.
When you read through the prophets one after the other we can become very bored because they all seem to prophesy against the same things. But that is because God has set out clearly what He expects of mankind and mankind has set its face to defy God. Remember our list in Genesis when we started this series? Immorality, idolatry injustice, apathy, divorce, bigamy, murder, war and syncretism have not changed or diminished, so why should the prophecy change. Like others, Jeremiah emphasised the same message: “You are corrupted by power, syncretism, idolatry, morality and false security”.
You are evil. You will not face up to your sin or heed my warnings. Therefore, you will be judged and punished. If you repent during your punishment you will be restored if you do not you will be destroyed forever. If those that punish you overstep the mark, they also will be punished.
Jeremiah pointed the finger directly to where the blame lay. This prevented the culprits hiding behind the blame culture of “every one else but me”. He singled out two groups in particular, Spiritual leaders (including false prophets), and political rulers. Later he turned to other individuals. Jeremiah was unlike other prophets in his emphasis on spiritual living. Other prophets seem to emphasise a changed behaviour but Jeremiah recognised behaviour does not change the heart, the heart changes behaviour. His theme is; law needs to give way to another covenant, one written on the heart. Its no good living a good life or keeping the rituals if your heart is not in it. The priests were teaching religious observance as a substitute for godliness. Jeremiah is telling them the new covenant does not include a temple, so there will be no rituals. This upsets the religious priesthood to think the future would have assemblies for praying praising and reading and studying the scriptures but no temple for ceremony. Paul recognised this and teaches Jeremiah’s principles; he built gentile churches on them.
But Jeremiah is also specific. He saw The Old-Covenant with Moses has not worked, and they would need a New-Covenant. It was Jeremiah who said the exile would be for seventy-years so many should die in exile and not return just as some had died in the wilderness. Just like the Israelites in the desert, the next generation had to agree the covenant for themselves.
‘Look, days are coming,’declares the Lord, ‘when I’ll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. They broke my covenant, although I was a husband to them,". "I’ll put my Law within them and will write it on their hearts. I’ll be their God, and they will be my people. They’ll all know me from the least to the greatest of them," , I’ll forgive their iniquity, and I’ll remember their sin no more.’ 231
This is what the Lord says: "If it were possible to measure heaven above, or if the foundations of earth could be searched out, then I might reject the descendants of Israel because of everything they have done. Be sure, The day is coming, when the city of the Lord will be rebuilt from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.232
This shy retiring youth faithfully prophesied and was vindicated by seeing his prophecies come true. But it came with a price. He was rejected by own family who tried to kill him for bringing shame on them. He was rejected by priests who preferred to tow the line in a three-line political whip. He was rejected by other prophets who insisted they were right and he was wrong. He was rejected by the king as political traitor. Finally, his people took him to Egypt die alone.
The poetic nature of Jeremiah comes out in the book of Lamentations. The first word in the Hebrew scrolls was “Howl”. In the Greek version it became “Tears”. In the book of Jeremiah233 the prophet asked:
“What will you do at the end of all this”? An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?
In the book of Lamentations, the prophet answered himself 234
Our young men must grind grain with a millstone; our youths stumble under the weight of wood. Our elders have ceased ruling at the gate; our young men have abandoned their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased, and our dancing has turned into dirges. The crown has fallen from our head—woe to us, because we have sinned! This is why our hearts faint, and why our eyes grow dim because Mount Zion is desolate; foxes roam around it235.
There are five Laments. The first four are written as acrostics, the fifth not strictly so. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet so each chapter has a multiple of twenty-two verses. In Hebrew thought (as in English) cities and ships take the feminine. The Greeks thought it masculine to be Stoic and resist tears (as do the British), while Hebrews thought and still think it is manly to weep.
Now we can look at the layout of the book.
Chapter-one has twenty-two verses about “she”, the city of Jerusalem. Each line deals with one aspect of the catastrophe of Jerusalem.
Chapter-two has twenty-two-verses about ‘He’, God. It faces the fact all this could have been avoided if they had listened to Him.
Chapter-three has sixty-six-verses, (three lines with the same letter), with the pronoun ‘I’ referring to the prophet himself and how the nation could still tap into God’s mercy in their present circumstances.
Chapter-four has twenty-two-verses on the pronoun ‘they’ - the nations will punish us then be punished themselves.
Chapter-five has twenty-two-verses on the pronoun- ‘we’ – We will have mercy restored at the end of this punishment.
The ninth of Avive (July) five-eight-six-BC, was the day the nation died and Jerusalem was destroyed. It was the day the people learned it’s not OK to do your own thing. The Priests ruled by their own authority, Prophets followed and adjusted their message to suit applauding people. Now, the thing they had said could never happen, had happened. After the return and Nehemiah had