An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 157: The Queen of Heaven is Very Disappointed. Plus: Frakkin’ Babylonians (Jeremiah 41-45)

Jeremiah 41-45
The Queen of Heaven is Very Disappointed. Plus: Frakkin’ Babylonians.

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 41
 “Then arose Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and the ten men that were with him, and smote Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan with the sword, and slew him, whom the king of Babylon had made governor over the land.”

Ooh, betrayal and iniquity, who’d have thought? Gedaliah, the Babylonian-appointed overlord, is murdered by Ishmael, son of Nethaniah (not to be confused with the much earlier Ishmael who was brother of … Jacob?) Gedaliah then hangs around the city of Mizpah and kills a bunch of supplicants who have come to the city, before heading off with the rest to the Ammonites, presumably to sell them into slavery.

He is stopped by one Johanon who drives him off and rescues his “remnant”; they all go to live in a place called Chimham near Bethlehem, on their way to try to escape the wrath of Babylon by heading into Egypt, although arguably it was Ishmael who deserves the blame seeing as he killed the local viceroy.

Jeremiah 42
“The LORD hath said concerning you, O ye remnant of Judah; Go ye not into Egypt: know certainly that I have admonished you this day.”

Evidently Jeremiah was amongst this rag-tag fleet that Johanon is leading, because Johanon seeks him out for some divine guidance. After ten days, Jeremiah passes on the message from God – that if the remnant stay where they are God will look after them and protect them from the wrath of Babylon, but if they continue to flee to Egypt they will be destroyed. I think I can guess which option they choose.

Not much more to say on this, although it’s nice to get some chapters where events are happening again.

Jeremiah 43
“Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud men, saying unto Jeremiah, Thou speakest falsely: the LORD our God hath not sent thee to say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there”

No, of course they don’t listen to Jeremiah. Azariah claims that Jeremiah is working for the Babylonians and wants to deliver them back to Nabuchadnezzar, and so they remnant head off to Egypt, to a place called Tahpanhes – which I can’t see without thinking that it should be pronounced Tapañes as if it were Spanish.

God gives Jeremiah another one of his little metaphor tasks – putting some stone tablets in a brick kiln to demonstrate that Nabuchadnezzar will raise his throne on the place of the kiln, and Egpyt  and all her temples will be burnt. I wonder which Egyptian god is meant by “Bethshemesh”? I may have to look that up. (I did, it appears to be the name of a city, not a god).

Jeremiah 44
“Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?”

God and Jeremiah are back to their old themes – despite moving to Egypt as refugees the remnant are still worshipping other gods, notably the “Queen of Heaven” as she is namechecked frequently in this chapter. And for that, they are destined to be destroyed by famine, sword and plague – “they shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach!” All those things.

Some un-named spokespeople give a fairly reasonable response to Jeremiah – they did what he asked before and stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven, and the Babylonians came and destroyed them anyway, so from their point of view it was the Queen of Heaven who was offended and withdrew her protection. Which seems to me that they have a point, it implies that there was a return to Yahweh orthodoxy, but it did the people no good anyway (although, you could argue that it did do this “remnant” some good as they are still alive and relatively free compared to all the other Israelites).

Nevertheless, says Jeremiah, the Babylonians will conquer Pharaoh Hophra as they did Zedekiah.

Jeremiah 45
“Thou didst say, Woe is me now! for the LORD hath added grief to my sorrow; I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.”

Whut? A very short chapter, but suddenly we jump back in time to the reign of Jehoiakim, where Jeremiah is dictating some thoughts to Baruch. There’s only a few lines, reminiscent of some of the psalms, where Jeremiah is bemoaning how his prophecies have to be so miserable. And even on a personal level things don’t look great - “And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not: for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the LORD: but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest.” It’s a really thankless task, being a prophet, isn’t it?

This could be one of those random compilation errors that never got fixed because: holy, or perhaps Jeremiah’s thoughts on how his own life is destined to be rubbish are going to be relevant to what comes next, in which case this is remarkably literary for the time. But we won’t know until the next batch of chapters.

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