Blue Cord

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 21 (series reading)

This reading is the final reading in the six week series on Jeremiah.  The first two verses sets the date of this oracle in 587 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar (here called Nebuchadrezzar) is besieging Jerusalem. This is the second siege of Jerusalem.  When it is over, Jerusalem and its temple will lie in ruins and a good portion of the people of Judah will find themselves carried off to Babylon.

In the reading, Jeremiah is basically under house arrest at the order of the king due to previous prophecies. While he is there, his cousin Hanamel comes to him and offers to sell him a piece of property in their ancestral town of Anathoth.  Hanamel apparently has to sell the property, and according to the Torah it must be sold to someone in the family (Lev. 25:25). Jeremiah purchases the property for sixteen shekels of silver.

From an economic standpoint, this is a bad move.  When a foreign army is besieging your city, it is not a good time to be investing in real estate.  The entire area is about to belong to Babylon, and they are not particularly interested in who owned individual lots prior to their arrival.

But Jeremiah’s purchase of the field in Anathoth is an act of hope.  Jeremiah has prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, but he also knows that this is not the end of Israel.  God will bring the people back to the land again.  Jeremiah may never make use of the field, but his children and grand-children will.  Jeremiah not only believes that God will return the people, but is willing to bet money on it.

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 19 (series reading)

I wanted to start the commentary on this week’s lectionary reading by apologizing for last week’s post on the Revised Common Lectionary. My brain was apparently on vacation, and I posted on the reading for Year A. Currently, we are in Year C, so that post won’t be useful for preachers until September 2008.

This week, I am back in the correct year. The OT reading for this current Sunday is Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28, which is fourth reading in a six week series on Jeremiah. The lectionary reading here is divided, with vv.13-21 left out. I don’t like it when lectionary committees split up the readings like this. It breaks the canonical shape of the passage. Apparently they think the additional nine verses are either unimportant or too long for a congregation to endure.

The larger block of material to which this reading belongs is 4:5-31, an oracle in which Jeremiah prophesies the coming of Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem. Vv.11-12 announce that the coming destruction is not about cleansing the people from their sins. The time is past for that. The sin of Jerusalem is too severe. The punishment will be more severe as well.

The passage picks up again in v.22, which lays out the indictment against the people of Israel:

They are skilled at doing evil, but do not know how to do good.

The word skilled is a form of the word hokhmah, the word usually translated as wisdom. Wisdom, after all, is skill at living. Here, it is said that the people are skilled at doing evil, but do not even know how to do good.

This is followed by a description of the destruction in vv.23-28. The almost apocalyptic imagery in vv.23-26 pictures the earth a laid waste before the anger of the Lord. Yet even in the midst of the destruction, there is a small note of hope. God promises not to make a full end to the people (v.27b). What is a small glimmer of hope here in Jeremiah’s prophecies prior to 587 BCE will turn into a major theme of his message afterwards.

I am a bit behind the curve on this one, but it doesn’t bother me much because my interests outside the OT are more Egyptological than Assyriological. Nevertheless, for those readers who have not heard about this, I wanted to offer a brief post on the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet that has been making waves in the biblioblogosphere.  The news is reported in the London Times.

The story, in a rather simplified form, boils down to this. Michael Jursa, a researcher at the British Museum, has recently translated a Babylonian tablet from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the king who attacked Jerusalem in 597 and 587 BCE and deported the people of Judah to Babylon. The tablet is a receipt for a donation to the temple, presumably so Nabu-sharrusu-ukin could claim the deduction on his taxes.  (If you think filing taxes is hard now, just think of what it must have been like to fill out a 1040 form in clay.)  The tablet reads as follows:

(Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.¹

The excitement comes from the fact that Jursa identifies Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, with Nebo-sarsekim, the chief eunuch in Jeremiah 39:3.  In that verse, Nebo-sarsekim is one of the officials at the head of Nebuchadnezzars army when it besieges Jerusalem.  The name appears in the form Nebo-sarsekim in the NIV but not the NRSV.  For the reason for this and a discussion of why the NIV is probably correct in this case, I direct you to Chris Heard’s excellent post.

It would be easy to over-state the implications of this, as it is always exciting to find a biblical figure mentioned in a non-biblical text from the same time period.  There are reasons to be cautious about this identification, and Chris Heard deals with those in the post mentioned above. 

But even if the identification of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin with Nebo-sarsekim is correct, it does not add much to our knowledge of the period.  All it suggests is that whoever wrote this section of Jeremiah knew the names of the Babylonian officials who attacked Jerusalem. The historical accuracy of names like this in document concerning the fall of Jerusalem is not surprising.  Those sections in Jeremiah and 2 Kings were written very close to the events they narrate.  While they certainly give their own interpretation of the events, the accuracy of their knowledge of names and places has not often been questioned.  It is when these documents are writing about events centuries before that most historians begin to wonder about their accuracy.

1. The translation presented here is taken from the London Telegraph.  Presumably the translation is that of Jursa, the researcher who made the initial reading. [back]

As I mentioned in the previous post, I preached today on 2 Kings 5.  Because I had not decided on which element I would focus for the sermon when I made the original post, I thought I would follow up here.

I choose to focus on the fact that in this passage God continually speaks through people far down the social ladder.  Elisha’s message is not delivered by Elisha, but by his servant.  When Naaman balks at following Elisha’s instructions, it is Naaman’s servant who points out that Naaman would have done something difficult if Elisha had asked, so he shouldn’t hesitate to do something easy.  And the most powerless figure, the Israelite slave girl, is the one who has the solution to Naaman’s problem in the first place.

This last figure is particularly interesting.  She has three strikes against her as far as people in the ancient Near East were concerned.  She is a woman, she iss a foreigner, and she iss a slave.  Yet she is the one through whom God speaks to Naaman initially.  Without her, we would have had no story to put in 2 Kings 5.

One additional element caught my eye in the passage.  This is the notice in v.1 that Yahweh had given Syria military victories.  I found that to me a remarkable comment for two reasons.  From the historical side, it represents a break from the standard Iron Age understanding that Yahweh was limited to Israel.  And from the theological side, this had to be a bit of a jab at Israel, since a large number of Syria’s victories had come against Israel.  The idea that Yahweh is fighting against Israel is very muted here, but it is certainly present.  It will come out later in full force, especially in the prophetic ministry of Jeremiah.

A few days ago, someone forwarded the following message to me with the picture to the right attached:

Cara Winship sent this out it is called: God’s hands.

I took this picture on Hwy 30, traveling to London City, KY. It has given me strength in the times of trouble. I feel I should share it with the rest of the world. I hope it is an inspiration to you. It just goes to show what we already know…. We have a God and he’s watching over us.

I e-mailed this picture to News Chanel [sic] 36. I was contacted by Meteorologist John James. He said that this picture of the sky is
showing up, in all states, around the world. He wanted to know where I was from and where I took it. He saw a similar picture taken in Texas He said this is amazing to him!

The picture is obviously faked, of course. It would be quite easy to do in Photoshop or GIMP. In fact, someone on the Urban Legends Reference Pages claims to have done it. And although hoaxes such as this usually don’t contain references to actual people’s names, the fact that there is no London City, KY, should be a clue as well.¹ But I didn’t want to focus on the picture or the hoax. Instead, I want to focus on the interpretation.

If one of us were to see such a vision in the clouds, we would be inclined to interpret it the way the forwarded e-mail does. Here are God’s hands reaching out to help us or comfort us.

But why should we immediately interpret it that way? Other interpretations are possible. Perhaps it is a sign that God is angry with us and is reaching down to punish us. The hands are here to crush us. It could be that the hands are holding a bowl of God’s wrath as in Revelation 16. When such a bowl is poured it, it certainly will not bring comfort.

I am not offering these interpretations because I am a pessimist. Instead, I am trying to follow the pattern set forth in the Bible. When prophets saw signs, they were just as likely — and perhaps more likely — to be signs of punishment than signs of promise. Think of Amos 7:7-9, where God showed Amos a plumb line. Amos could have looked at it an piously interpreted it as God’s building tool that indicated God was going to build something wonderful for Israel. Instead, it was a sign of judgment. Israel was found to be off-plumb, and therefore God was going to make Israel desolate.

Or take Jeremiah 1:13-19. When Jeremiah saw a boiling pot tipping over from the north, he could have interpreted it as a sign that God was providing food for his people. Surely a cooking pot has something to do with food! But God told him that the pot was a sign that God was going to bring an enemy against Judah from the north.

Certainly, there are signs of promise as well. I don’t mean to imply that those are not found in the Bible. But it seems to me that before we go interpreting something as a sign from God, we better take into account the fact that signs are just as likely to be negative. If we take everything as a sign of God’s love and comfort, all we are doing is stroking our spiritual egos.

1. There is a London, KY, but no London City. Highway 30 does run near London, and Lexington, KY, does have a Channel 36, although I could not find a John James on staff. This particular incarnation of this hoax appears to be tailored to a particular region. [back]