An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 150: How many times do you need to be told: don’t burn your children! (Jeremiah 6-10)

Jeremiah 6-10
How many times do you need to be told: don’t burn your children!

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Jeremiah 6

“O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Bethhaccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction.”

It occurred to me this morning that I should try to bear in mind that the term “prophet” in the biblical sense seems to mean someone who speaks with God’s voice, not specifically someone who predicts the future, although they will often do that (presumably because if God exists outside time He can see the future as easily as the past). That said, Jeremiah here again predicts a terrible foe coming from the north to lay waste to Jerusalem and her lands, and claims that this is because of the wickedness of the people – mainly due to their apostacy. But it did also occur to me that anyone with a reasonable grasp of current affairs would probably be aware of the rising military might and conquests of Babylon, and be pretty sure that at some point the Babylonians would turn their attention to Israel and Judah. That the inevitable invasion is because of God’s anger is a matter of interpretation, reminiscent of those who claimed that AIDS was a divine curse on homosexuals back in the 80s. I’m surprised, now, thinking on it, that nobody has tried to claim that the actions of ISIS and similar groups aren’t a result of divine retribution for the likes of gay marriage, women bishops, consumerised Christmas, Justin Bieber or whatever; it would be roughly equivalent to what Jeremiah is saying here. Maybe somebody has;  I tend not to pay attention to that kind of rhetoric.

Jeremiah 7

“The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.”

Jeremiah (or rather, God through Jeremiah) expands on the iniquities of the people. He states that if the people are willing to amend their ways, shedding no blood, keeping the temple sacred and dealing justly, God will save Israel from the invaders. However, within the space of the chapter, God has decided that He’s not going to do this, that the people are too far gone. The main issue seems to be the worship of other gods, and considering this includes child sacrifice (“And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart”) I can’t really blame Jeremiah for being angry, much as I may liken him to a modern crank occasionally.

What I do wonder, however, is why the people seem so given to backsliding from proper Yahweh worship, as laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I may not agree with all the sentiments therein, but the duties are largely not that onerous (most of them the province of the Levites in what kind of sacrifice to burn). That there would be lingering folk beliefs in nature spirits/gods I can well believe. How many people have a Christmas tree? That’s got nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with pagan nature worship, but I would guess that the majority of people who have a Christmas tree have one because it’s a nice tradition, not because they are performing any fertility rites. It seems odd to me that child sacrifice should be part of the worship, though, but I think I’m looking at this with too modern an eye. In a time when food scarcity is an issue, getting rid of a surplus child or two is probably less of an emotional wrench; the story of Hansel and Gretel reflects this in fairly recent Europe. If the gods and nature spirits can be appeased and maybe grant the survivors more food, then all the better. So does this mean that we are looking at a time of particular scarcity when Baal worship and child sacrifice becomes more prominent? Intriguing.

Jeremiah 8

“At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves:”

This is more of the same kind of warning, a mix of focus on the back-sliding of the people and on the oncoming punishment. This is a bit more metaphorical this time, with biting serpents and cockatrices rather than armies; also “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” – that’s “Winter is Coming”, is it not? There are also what seem to be interjections from Jeremiah himself which expose his own feelings on the prophecies “When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me”. He is driven by God to stand at the temple gates and preach to people who are plainly not listening to him, but also has to live with this knowledge of a terrible future heading his way, it adds an interesting human slant to the fire and brimstone.

Jeremiah 9

“Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”

There’s a lot of weeping and wailing in this chapter. In the above verse this is possibly God, or maybe Jeremiah, weeping for the people. Later on women are called upon to “take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters”, not to mention “Yet hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation”. The focus on women is an interesting one, as Jerusalem is referred throughout Jeremiah so far as the “daughter of the people”, I think the idea is to evoke more pathos by focussing on the helpless victims of war and destruction rather than the warrior menfolk. More death and apocalypse here, with bodies piled high, and the wisdom, might and riches of wise, mighty or rich men respectively failing to save them from destruction. It’s all very depressing stuff.

A note, too, that Jeremiah makes frequent mention to circumcision, or lack thereof, but also in a metaphorical sense; “circumcised in heart”. It’s an interesting distinction. Outward or physical displays of faith, from circumcision to a monk’s tonsure, or wearing a yarmulke or a hijab or carrying a kirpan are as much, if not more, reminders to the wearer that they belong to that faith and have made a choice to follows the tenets of that faith, as they are to demonstrate to outsiders that this person has chosen a certain faith. Jeremiah is describing when those symbols become treated as a sign to others that you are somehow better than them just because you portray the physical attributes of your religion. But if not backed up by actually following the rules of your religion, this is mere hypocrisy. Jeremiah is saying that merely being circumcised does not make a person a good Israelite if they do not follow the laws of Yahweh as set down by Moses – if you worship Baal you are no different to an uncircumcised Egyptian, or whatever.

Jeremiah 10

“For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered.”

More on the foolishness of idol worship as compared to worship of Yahweh, and it’s the kind of argument that we’ve seen before; that idols are merely statues of base materials and have no power in themselves, they can’t move or speak. As I think I’ve mentioned before this is something of a (wilful?) misunderstanding of how idols work – most worshippers would not think of them as actually being the god; at best a temporary place for the god to manifest, but in this they are no different from the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. Very simple folk might think that the statue or sacred tree is the be all and end all of their god, priests would not, I think. It’s easy to see how this can become quite a thorny theological issue for worshippers – how much statuary is too much? The bouts of iconoclasm in the Orthodox church, or the difference between the unadorned churches of the more austere forms of Protestantism against the statues of Mary and Intercessor saints in Catholic churches speaks volumes to the degree to which these concepts have been interpreted over the centuries.

I also think we get some more editorial interjection from Jeremiah, in the verses such as “O LORD, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing” that he includes at the end. God would not, after all, be asking Himself for mercy.