An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 153: Naughty Figs and the Wine of Fury. Plus: Know Your Mesopotamians (Jeremiah 21-25)

Jeremiah 21-25
Naughty Figs and the Wine of Fury. Plus: Know Your Mesopotamians.

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 21

“Enquire, I pray thee, of the LORD for us; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon maketh war against us; if so be that the LORD will deal with us according to all his wondrous works, that he may go up from us.”

Fast forward to the reign of Zedekiah, when Nabuchadrezzar (also known as Nabuchadnezzar) of Babylon is heading towards Jerusalem with an army. Messengers are sent to Jeremiah, asking for God’s help against the Babylonians. Jeremiah says no, and not only that but there will be famine and plague amongst the defenders of the city, and the only hope of survival is to surrender, where the best case scenario will be enslavement for generations to come. Probably not the answer that Zedekiah wanted to hear.

I can imagine how it goes:

Messengers: “Our King Zedekiah hopes that it so be that the LORD will deal with us according to all his wondrous works”

Jeremiah: “Saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.”

[Messengers return to Zedekiah]

Zedekiah: “What did he say?”

Messengers: “…it’s a maybe.”

Jeremiah 22

“The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness.”

This chapter seems a step back in time from the previous one, and is similar to preceding ones. Jeremiah is told by God to preach to the people that if they return to the covenant and put aside other gods, all will be well for them, but that destruction of various kinds (here spelled out in great detail) awaits them if they do not. Mention is made of the sons of King Josiah dying in captivity, which must put this before the time of Zedekiah.

The fates are nothing we haven’t seen before, although now seems a good time to address the various uses of Chaldean, Babylonian and Assyrian as terms for the conquerers. I’ve not put much effort into sorting them out before as they seem to be interchangeable to the biblical writers. If a massive army of charioteers is coming to sack your homeland and carry you off into slavery, you probably aren’t going to pay much notice to what they call themselves. However, it looks like Chaldea is a part of Babylon (roughly where the Iraqi Marsh Arabs live today), and then Assyria is a larger entity again that by this point has conquered Babylon. So the political entity that invades Israel and Judah would appear to be the Assyrian Empire, of which Babylon and Chaldea are part.

Jeremiah 23

“Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.”

Most of this chapter is involved with God’s complaints against false prophets, who have turned the people to worship of Baal, and also give false advice that Yahweh is perfectly happy with everyone and all will be fine. There’s an underlying theme here that God would rather have someone be told some hard truths than a soothing lie (at least as far as His displeasure, or not, is concerned), but you can easily see where the priests and prophets would prefer to mollify everyone as opposed to stand in the city gates and tell them that they are all doomed sinners, as Jeremiah essentially does. We’ve even seen that Jeremiah doesn’t actually enjoy doing this, but feels that it is his duty to do so.

The other point of interest in this chapter is some more vaguely messianic fore-telling – God promises to raise a “branch” from David and “In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”. A lot less to go on than in Isaiah, despite the best efforts of commentators to equate this with Jesus.

Jeremiah 24

“Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.”

This is a short little chapter, that occurs after Jeconiah, the son of King Jehoiakim, and the princes of Judah have been carried off by Nabuchadrezzar. God gives Jeremiah another of his little object lessons, showing him a basket of good figs and a basket of “naughty” figs. The point of this is that the good figs, that can be eaten, represent the good Israelites who will be saved and eventually bought back to Jerusalem. The evil figs (so very evil) represent … well, you can probably guess it. I love the over the top reaction to the “evil” figs, though. Or rather “the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil”. I vow to use such language next time I discover the milk has gone off. “Evil milk, so evil, it cannot be drunk, it is so very evil”.

Jeremiah 25

“Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.”

I have to say, this chapter covers nothing that we haven’t already seen. Again we leap in time, this time to the fourth regnal year of Jehoiakim, when Nabuchadrezzar has been on his throne just a year. Jeremiah prophesies more doom and gloom to the Israelites as punishment. The novel thing here is the use of another drinking metaphor, drinking the “wine of fury” so much that they vomit from it. Also of interest is how God not only vows to destroy his own people, but all the intermingled nationalities like the Edomites and Moabites, and also neighbouring nations like Egypt and Arabia.

Which I guess manages to cover the fact that evidently the Assyrians are on a goal to conquer everything and are not specifically targeting the Israelites as a tool of God’s will.