Book of Jeremiah 36-52, Lamentations 1-5

Baruch shows up again and starts to do actual things.  Such as act very much like Aaron to Jeremiah's Moses.

Jeremiah utters, "What wrong have I done to you or your servants, or the people, that you have put me in prison?"  Then a little later, it's said of him, "Let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in the city, and the hands of all the people by speaking such words to them.  For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm."  Sounds a lot like Jesus foreshadowing to me.

Jeremiah is then thrown into the pit.  It's Ebedmelech the Ethiopian who gets him out.

The further Jesus analogy in this scenario is Nebuchadnezzar in the Pontius Pilate role.  In fact, the whole depiction of Pilate could very well have been drawn from Book of Jeremiah.  As historians are increasingly quick to note, the real Pilate would never even have thought twice about executing Jesus.

I have a correction to make about the earlier reference to "queen of heaven."  Now I'm interpreting to have always been an Egyptian reference, likely to Isis.  Egypt is prominent in Jeremiah.

In the litany of terrors against nations that helps comprise Book of Jeremiah (it seems obvious that several separate works were at some point combined), there's the suggestion that the conclusion of the Esau legacy is finally reached.  You'll remember that although Jacob's brother did actually get to enjoy prosperity through the generations his adventures disappear from the Bible soon after.

The variations of this book from earlier biblical record continue: the end of the Babylonian exile is far less mutual and more like rats fleeing a sinking ship, with Babylon meeting the same sorry fate as other nations in the litany of doom and woe.  I'd suggest that it seems obvious some or all of this was written well after the fact, even there's at least one line ("Thus far are the words of Jeremiah") that would try and suggest otherwise.  Most of the books of the Bible probably didn't exist in direct awareness of each other much less reflect a lot of direct record.  It's hard enough to authenticate such things in the New Testament.

Sodom and Gomorrah, however, are clearly part of the tradition everyone knows at least by name (some suggestions made here indicate varying reasons never actually given as to why they were so famously smited), as they are referenced several times in Book of Jeremiah.

I imagine one way or another that this is not a favorite book of Iraqis.  Although funny enough, and maybe I said this already, but Abraham's ziggurat is in Iraq.

It ends funny, though.  Jeremiah abruptly disappears (to say nothing of an earlier and random sequence involving a bloody warrior named Ishmael).  It rewinds back to the very start of the Babylonian saga, right after having apparently closed the book of Babylon itself.

Lamentations, traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah but clearly not by him, is a, well, poetic lament about the destruction of Jerusalem, and even a moment of religious doubt (which suggests people generally did believe what they were supposed to believe with or without Jeremiah), some lines of general woe concerning the exile era.

Book of Jeremiah 16-35

Narrative interruptions are a marked difference between Book of Isaiah and Book of Jeremiah, among other things.  They're far more common in Jeremiah, to the point where it begins to read like a third version of Kings/Chronicles (yay!).  Which also has the effect of my having less to talk about.

Although the one interesting part of that, as in the difference between Kings and Chronicles (where Jeremiah grows in prominence in the latter), is that our man becomes that much more central to the story.  It also means he gets in trouble for his prophecies of doom.  It's the difference between sitting there writing commentaries and being out on the street talking about how bad everyone is compared to what they should be like if they truly consider themselves God's people.  In other words, the main distinction (which I believe I'm reiterating) of this book is that it's the guy telling people who don't want to hear about what's going wrong versus preaching to the choir (which is what we imagine similar books to be).

Upper rooms are mentioned.  An upper room is central to the story of the Last Supper in the New Testament, you'll remember.  Clearly they're an institution of households for some time.

Micah is referenced as a precedent to the kind of work Jeremiah is doing.

Uriah is another.  He's murdered for his efforts.  Poor Uriah!

The false prophet Hananiah, who speaks of peace (again, that disparity between what religious people today think of peace and war and what religious people back then thought of the same things), is used to illustrate all the false prophets Jeremiah is meant to counterbalance.

Shenaiah is another false prophet.  These dueling prophets are almost like what the New Testament would have read like it it had included all the people who claimed to be the messiah at the same time as Jesus (as humorously depicted in Life of Brian)..

Hopefully, Jeremiah speaks of days to come where God will no longer be punishing his people, which Christians would describe as the era Jesus utters, breaking the old cycle, a suggestion already brought up previously in the Old Testament.

Baruch is mentioned.  Like Micah, he has his own book later on in the Bible.  Right after Lamentations, in fact, in my edition.

Book of Jeremiah 1-15

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.