March 29: Law in their Minds

This week I will focus on the Hebrew Scripture reading of the lectionary, Jeremiah 31:31-34.
Jeremiah was born in Anathoth, a city just north of Jerusalem, and probably descended from the Shiloh priesthood. His career is dated from approximately 625 to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. It spanned about forty years between the reigns of Josiah to Zedekiah, the last kings of Judah, who Jeremiah tried to influencing urging appeasement with Babylon rather than rebellion.

The events described in the book of Jeremiah, much of which was dictated to his assistant Baruch, are corroborated by nonbiblical sources. During this time period, the Babylonian Empire was rising in power and threatening Judah. Jeremiah was active during the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE. He would have seen refugees from the countryside pouring into Jerusalem as their towns were swallowed up by the Babylonians, and desperate famine from lack of food from the siege. Zedekiah, who has been described as not the strongest of kings, mounted a revolt against Babylon, expecting help from Egypt which never came.

Zedekiah’s revolt led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar, described in 2 Kings 25. This was one of the most pivotal traumas for the people of Israel and for the Jewish faith. The Babylonians used ramps to scale Jerusalem’s walls, destroyed the First Temple, and captured the royal family. Zedekiah was forced to witness the death of his sons, thus the extinguishing of the Davidic line, then blinded and taken prisoner. According to the book of Kings, a small number of residents were left to be plowmen and work in vineyards, but the majority of citizens were taken to Babylon in captivity. A major reason why the destruction of the Temple represented not just a political but a religious crisis was that so much of religious life revolved around worship at the Temple. An analogy would be if worship in America was centered around a single church building, and that building was destroyed. The Babylonian exile is still commemorated today in songs that take their chorus from Psalm 137, by artists including Sinead O’Connor and Sweet Honey in the Rock. An example can be found on the Web here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGKgCAKnzYo.

"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down,
yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung out harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors asked us for songs of joy;
they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How can we sing the songs of the LORD
in a foreign land?”

One of my Jewish friends, hearing these lyrics set to a perky, reggae melody, asked me, “How can the song be so upbeat? Don’t they know the song is about something terrible?”

The historical events during Jeremiah’s career are significant for understanding the context in which the lectionary passage was written. Jeremiah understands himself as someone called to articulate God’s messages to Israel. Like Moses, Jeremiah at first hesitates and feels himself inadequate to the task. Yet God will put words in his mouth: “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.” (1:7) Abraham Heschel identifies two main themes in tension the book of Jeremiah: God’s wrath at human cruelty, and God’s grief that humans must suffer from their own failures.

Unlike the book of Job, where suffering is not caused by human failure but occurs arbitrarily, the book of Jeremiah presents an interpretation of suffering as a consequence of sin. In the earlier chapters, God rails at social injustice committed by the people he has chosen: “They bend their tongues like bows . . . they have taught their tongues to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent. Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit! They refuse to know me, says the LORD.” (9:3-6) Jeremiah describes physical privation as resulting from lack of righteousness: “. . . the cry of Jerusalem goes up. Her nobles send their servants for water, they return with their vessels empty. They are ashamed and dismayed and cover their heads, because the ground is cracked” (14:2-3). God describes the faithlessness of Israel using the metaphor of a broken marriage:

I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown. . .
What wrong did your ancestors find in me,
that they went far from me,
and went after worthless things,
and became worthless themselves? (2:2-4)

Thus the passage from this week’s lectionary is a pivotal point in the entire book. The passage expresses confidence in a future time of renewal and restoration. In the midst of suffering, God affirms that the relationship with Israel will endure. The broken marriage metaphor from Jeremiah 2 is transformed into assurance of a new marriage covenant. There is a parallel in this passage with the book of the prophet Hosea. Hosea describes his marriage with a prostitute as a metaphor for God’s redeeming love for Israel. Although the prostitute Gomer leaves Hosea, he finds her and takes her back. Similarly, Jeremiah 31 describes God looking ahead toward a future time when the relationship with Israel will be restored. Another metaphor for this time involves God writing the law on the peoples’ hearts. This image is similar to an image from Song of Solomon, 8:6:

“Place me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
passion as fierce as the grave.”

It is not clear from this passage whether Israel’s forgiveness results from people’s repentance, or God’s unearned love:

31 "The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.

32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,"
declares the LORD.

33 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."

--Elizabeth Fels

Sources:
Blenkinsopp, Joseph. A History of Prophecy in Israel. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1983.

Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Heschel, Abraham. The Prophets. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.