Unlike the previous Book of Isaiah, Jeremiah's prophetic nature fits closely with old school Jewish faith, and in fact seems to be a repackaging of it. Just imagine it as the Bible of biblical times, only really unpopular among actual Jews. God is unsurprisingly a lot more interactive here than he's been in a while.
Jeremiah 2: "Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest. All who ate of it became guilty; evil came upon them, says the Lord." Certainly interesting, and perhaps a new perspective on Eden, or perhaps what the faithful originally believed. Or it could be a metaphor concerning anyone who messed with the faith. Which would amount to the same.
Maybe I misread this, but Jeremiah 7 references the "queen of heaven." One way or another, you know I'll just drop in Mary from the New Testament, whom Catholics later dubbed with the same title.
I think the importance of the Exodus era was vastly ramped up in the Babylonian exile era, and this might be a good place to see that develop.
Wailing women appear. They are also prominent in Jesus's Way of the Cross.
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" Perhaps a verse all those crummy assholes who used the Bible to justify American slavery could have used to memorize.
Book of Jeremiah does seem to have some classic apocalyptic imagery in it. New Testament figures were obsessive Bible nerds. You can see it all the time in the constant parallels, which is something the Old Testament itself began, but its Christian successor mastered. Anyway, just as Revelation later introduces the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Jeremiah has the four destroyers, which are pestilence, the sword (war), famine, and captivity (death?), and rephrased slightly a split-second later as sword (again), dog, birds, and beasts (generally). Things like that keep this book interesting.
I'm not sure if 'unpopular among actual Jews' is a reference to the continuously apostate people as described in many of the books of the major prophets, of if you meant the jewish population of the time and how receptive they were to the book's divinity. I know Ezekiel suffered greatly from the latter problem. Describing sacrifices as holy that contradicted the rules laid out in the torah. But it was eventually accepted as holy due mainly to the work of a single scholar, if I recall correctly.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes me wonder if you've ever read the Interpreter's Bible, circa 1970(ish), as it some of the most insightful commentary I've ever come across. It's a 12 volume set, but it's my goto source for all things biblical. I highly recommend it if you can find a set. I stumbled across mine in a used bookstore and got it for almost nothing. I'm as proud of that as anything else I own.
Anyway, carry on.
It is a protestant bible though, so you'd be missing a few things.
In the sense that he was imprisoned by the Jewish authorities for preaching doom-and-gloom. In this sense, the comment was meant to indicate Jewish authorities. For all intents and purposes, they're usually who any reference to "the Jews" means. Although even that level of distinction is not always maintained within the Bible. It's strongly implied that Jews in general were ignoring their orthodox obligations, serving other gods. It would certainly seem wrong to punish innocent folk. God did have Abraham go through a laundry list of the innocent in terms of numbers. But really, if the authorities had it against Jeremiah, the little people were hardly in a position to do anything against it. (As I keep saying, sounds a lot like Jesus.) It amounts to the same.
DeleteI may have to look up that set. Although it wouldn't anytime soon. I have a set of commentaries for the New Testament. It'd be more likely to read those first (as I already have them). I picked up a companion to Tobit about a decade ago, because Tobit is a favorite.