Hamilton, Mark W.

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LeavenVolume 15Issue 4 Jeremiah Article 91-1-2007Alternative Visions: Reflections on JeremiahMark W. Hamiltonmhamilton@acu.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leavenPart of the Biblical Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, and the Religious Thought,Theology and Philosophy of Religion CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Religion at Pepperdine Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Leaven byan authorized administrator of Pepperdine Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Kevin.Miller3@pepperdine.edu.Recommended CitationHamilton, Mark W. (2007) "Alternative Visions: Reflections on Jeremiah," Leaven: Vol. 15: Iss. 4, Article 9.Available at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol15/iss4/9Alternative Visions:Reflections on JeremiahMARK w. HAMILTON"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be;and it if were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."!Besides being the longest book of the Bible, Jeremiah has the distinction of being among the mostconfusing. Its interweaving of stories and oracles, its steadfast refusal to follow chronological orderor an easily discernible thematic outline, and even the existence of two ancient versions of the book(the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint}- all these signal the perplexity awaiting the book's reader.Yet behind the glorious muddle of the book lies a comprehensive vision of alternative possibilities opento the people of God. In his violent protests against the elites' abuse of power, his dismay at the nation'sidolatry, and his discomfort with YHWH's call, Jeremiah looks behind appearances to discern a differentand more hopeful reality. Such a vision distinguishes him from the cynics who have often masqueraded asprophets, in his time and ours. And it allows him to defy Tweedledee's too hasty demarcation between whatis and what ain't. Such a vision underlies the entire book. To get at it, let us consider two exemplary texts: apoem of doom (chapter 2) and one of hope (chapter 31). We will then reflect on how the two converge on arecognizable view of reality that could inform our own.BEHIND DOOM, WORDS OF HOPE (JEREMIAH 2)Part of a larger series of early oracles of Jeremiah (chapters 1-4) that open the larger complex oftencalled the Book of Doom (chapters 1-25), Jeremiah 2 consists often separate but related units (vv. 1-3,4-9,10-13, 14-19,20-22, 23-25a, 25b-28, 29-30, 31-32, 33-37).2 The editor of the book has stitched theseunits together into a consistent picture of Israel's reckless repudiation ofYHWH's providential care.To create this intricate network of metaphors, first Jeremiah and then the transmitters of his oracles intheir oral/aural and written versions must draw on all sorts of social and natural images. Consider some of them:Verse numbersProphetic preachingWooing and marriageFamily relationsDesert topographyAgricultural fertilityRules of honor and shameThe priesthood12, 32, 33467781. Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], Through the Looking Glass, chap. 4 (in The Best of Lewis Carroll [Edison, NJ: Castle,n.d.], 207).2. Jack Lundbom divides vv. 25b-27ab from 27c-28, see Jeremiah J ·20 (AB 21A; New York: Doubleday, !999), 4-8, 286. Given theclose thematic relationships among these verses, such a division seems unnecessary.__l~ _1Hamilton: Alternative Visions: Reflections on JeremiahPublished by Pepperdine Digital Commons, 2007205 LEAVEN Fourth Quarter 2007The assembly of the handicappedFamily imagesFertilityRescue of JacobWeeping/cessation of weepingThe righteous pasture/holy mountainCovenant-makingRemember and forgettingBuilding/builders81,9,20,23,3212, 14, 23, 271115, 162331-323438By piling up the images, the prophetic book creates a moving portrayal of a saved people.Consider the example of verses 15 and 16-22, the second unit being a response to the first. In verse 15:A voice in Ramah: howling is heard, bitter weeping.Rachel weeps over her sons, refusing to be comforted for her sons,for they are not.The poet focuses on a single family'S loss of all its males as a symbol for the nation's devastation. Noordinary person, this widow; Rachel is the ancestress of the tribe of Benjamin. Apparently this is an olderoracle that Jeremiah reuses, or if not, he at least focuses on a location-north of Judah-that speaks ofthe earlier devastations of the land. In doing so, he demonstrates a profound interest in the sufferings andpotential redemption of the entire nation, not just Judah.Verses 16-22 reverse the image of mourning, while still focusing on the individual who typifies thewhole. Thus the responding oracle opens,Stop your voice from weeping and your eyes from a tear.For there is pay for your exertions-an oracIe ofYHWH-and they will return from the foe's land.Yes, there will be hope for your future-an oracIe ofYHWH-and your sons will return to their territory (31.1 (r.17).The second person pronouns are feminine singular, for the poet allows the northern widow still to personifythe mourning nation. Her rightful mourning can stop because the impossible has occurred: the dead nationhas risen from its tomb. The return of deportees at the end of the sixth century marks a new beginning.The text continues with a report from YHWH in verses 18-19. Here God quotes Ephraim's statementsof self-discovery, "You disciplined me, and I was disciplined, like an untaught calf; return me and I shallreturn." In the imagined world of the text, terrible suffering leads to repentance. Again, divine grace extendsto the old northern kingdom, since restoration of any part of the people necessitates restoration of the whole.Jeremiah's hope for a righteous remnant depends on locating persons from all parts of the chosen people.The miracle of such a transformation suggests the close of this section in verse 22: "How long will youturn this way and that, distractible daughter? For YHWH has created something new on earth, a femalesurrounding a male." By using the Hebrew word bara' ("to create"), the operative verb of Genesis 1, thetext connects the impending deliverance ("return to these cities of yours"; v. 21) of Israel to the originalcreation of the world.f Marvels do not cease because the creator does not stop working.8. See Jeremiah4.26-26; 10.12-13; Holladay,Jeremiah 2,195. Comparethe connectionbetweencreationand return fromexile inIsaiah 40-55.2Leaven, Vol. 15 [2007], Iss. 4, Art. 9http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol15/iss4/9JEREMIAH LEAVEN 206At this point, then, we should ask what vision of human flourishing Jeremiah 31 assumes. In additional to allthe elements of Jeremiah 2, the following items come to the fore.l.Old traditions (e.g., creation, exodus) find new realizations in contemporary events. The past isnever past, but is merely a template for the present.2.Israel flourishes when in its own land. Geography has symbolic resonance. Space matters becausepersons associate with it the stories and practices of justice and peace (or their opposites).3.Repentance is possible even in extreme situations. Mechanisms for correcting behavior must exist.4.God shows mercy. Since worship is a gift from God related to the proper relationship between Godand humankind, worship can be a leverage point for social justice. God acts repeatedly to createthe conditions necessary for worship.5.The words of the prophet can serve to reform hearers.To summarize, then, our short survey of two chapters, we have seen that although one oracle can speakof doom and the other of hope, based on close analyses of differing historical realities, both reflect anunderlying vision of what ought to be. The book of Jeremiah assumes that Israel will flourish when it attendsto its true nature by remembering its core stories (rightly understood), exercising justice, and worshipingYHWH alone.WHERE WE Go FROM HEREIf the book of Jeremiah constructs from such disparate material a comprehensive vision of humanflourishing, we as faithful readers must ask what it implies for our own behavior today. Granted thatJeremiah was an oral poet, not an economist, a preacher, not a politician, we can ask what sorts oforientations his words might foster in us.One could answer this in several ways. For example, it would be legitimate to think through theimplications of his words for the contemporary global economy. Jeremiah and his disciples would haveagreed with Amartya Sen that society should make the flourishing of human life possible by insuringresponsible political structures, economic opportunities, social opportunities, practices of transparency vis-a-vis power structures, and protective security.? Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any plausible accounting of ajust society that ignores these elements. Yet the Bible adds another dimension when it calls us to conceive ofhuman flourishing in religious terms. A Christian view avoids secularism, but acknowledges that economicand political behaviors have moral and spiritual dimensions.To be sure, difficulties confront a pursuit such as Jeremiah's. One difficulty arises from the fact that acomprehensive vision of human flourishing needs both practices that provide stability and those that allowchange. Another is that, for religious people, the defining work of prayer and sacrifice necessary to sustainthe pursuit of peace and justice does not always occur in churches.Thus we must consider a more immediate context-the church. We should put our own house in order.In Churches of Christ, to take our immediate context, too often our fear of mainline Protestantism's over-emphasis (as we see it) on the social gospel has allowed us to pursue an antisocial gospel that threatensour ability to carry a vision of humankind made whole. Many factors indicate this: our expenditures onbuildings, our falling contributions to missions, our rising salaries for some ministers (though by no meansall), the growing gap between the incomes of the churched and the unchurched, and the increasing affluenceof elderships, to name a few. One less obvious, but still telling, indicator comes from the Association ofTheological Schools, whose tests of seminary graduates of many denominations for their social awarenessplace students from Churches of Christ near the bottom. Our churches often live captive to reactionary9. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), 10, 34-53.3Hamilton: Alternative Visions: Reflections on JeremiahPublished by Pepperdine Digital Commons, 2007207 LEAVEN Fourth Quarter 2007political and economic forces. We can point to villains who have brought us to this place, but the challengeis to find ways forward.Here, I think, Jeremiah helps us. Not only does the prophet's book call for rigorous self-examination,but it envisions alternative behaviors that can help sustain the pursuit of justice. We can make new choices.As Kent Van Til put it in an article about American Christianity's excessive attachment to the untrammeledmarket, our failure to tackle poverty "is not a technical one .... The problem is, in fact, a moral one: we havesimply not chosen to distribute goods in such a way that the basic needs of all human beings are met." I 0Although he refers primarily to economic goods, the same thing applies to social goods such as status,knowledge, health, and so on. Such goods are not well distributed in our churches. Yet they could be.Jeremiah teaches us that, as people who see in the Bible the world as God wishes it to be, we canrecover our prophetic role as dreamers of dreams and seers of visions whose behaviors begin to bring aboutthe vision of reality that Jeremiah and others, most notably Jesus himself, articulated. If we are bold andhonest, loving the downtrodden as ourselves, we can be the people who know God, from the least to thegreatest. May it be so.MARK HAMILTON IS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF OLD TESTAMENT AT THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY ATABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY IN ABILENE, TEXAS.10. Kent A. Van Til, "Just Deserts: Beyond the Free Market," Christian Century 124/6 (March 20, 2007): 20-23. See also his book,Less Than Two Dollars a Day: A Christian View of World Poverty and the Free Market (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).4Leaven, Vol. 15 [2007], Iss. 4, Art. 9http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol15/iss4/9

Alternative Visions: Reflections on Jeremiah

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Alternative Visions: Reflections on Jeremiah

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