Jeremiah;- The troubles of the prophet (ch11)

In the second half of ch11, and the first half of ch12, Jeremiah has brought together four passages covering the experience of popular hostility against his work.

Ch11 vv21-23

I’ll begin with this passage, in which the Lord reacts to the men of Anathoth, Jeremiah’s home town, where the trouble started.
They seek Jeremiah’s life. They are forbidding him to prophesy, or they will put him to death.
The Lord says he himself will punish the men of Anathoth, eliminating them all through sword and famine.

Ch11 vv18-20

This passage is apparently describing the same situation as the passage just mentioned.
V18; As a prophet, receiving knowledge from the Lord, Jeremiah knows all about and can proclaim the sins of “them”; “Thou didst show me their evil deeds.”
V19 In retaliation they devised schemes against him to kill him.
V20 But Jeremiah puts his trust in the Lord of hosts, who knows the hearts and minds of men and judges righteously. “To thee have I committed my cause.” He confidently expects to see the Lord’s vengeance on them.

That seems fairly straightforward, but the imagery found in v19 comes in the kind of language which sets loud bells ringing in the Christian mind.
“I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.”
And in Isaiah ch53 v7 there is one who “opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter.”
“They” went on to say; “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.”
And in Isaiah ch53 v8 someone was “cut off from the land of the living”, and buried alongside the wicked. And in a previous chapter, that person has already said;
“For the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know I shall not be put to shame” (Isaiah ch50 v7).

Ever since the Middle Ages, Christians and Jews have disputed the identity of the subject of Isaiah ch53. Is this the experience of Christ, prophesied in advance? Or is it the personified historical experience of the nation of Judah?
I’ve argued elsewhere that we understand God’s mind best if we take him as deliberately and seriously intending us to see BOTH ways of interpreting that chapter (which is one way of resolving the argument).

And what about Jeremiah ch11 vv18-20? In the present context, it is about the state of mind of the prophet. But the passage has clearly been brought into this context, and as an isolated prophecy it could easily take either or both of the interpretations proposed for Isaiah ch53. Again, it is probably best left in ambiguity, so that we can benefit from the full range of possible meaning. If the tree is the prophet, or the Christ, then the fruit may be his followers. If the tree is the nation, then the fruits may be the inhabitants.

Ch12 vv1-4

This complaint about “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” could have been taken straight out of the book of Job. But of course Jeremiah has been prophesying against the wicked in Judah, and that’s where the hostility comes from.
V2 continues the Job-like complaint. “Thou plantest them and they take root.” They are near to God in their mouths, and far from him in their hearts.
V3; “But thou, O Lord, knowest me.” That is, God knows Jeremiah as a prophet of righteousness and will back him up. Jeremiah urges his God to “pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.” This would be a fate they deserve, in contrast with the “gentle lamb ked to the slaughter” of the previous chapter.
V4 Because of the wickedness of the inhabitants, the land itself is “mourning”. That is, the grass is withering, and the beasts and birds are vanishing for lack of food. Similarly it was said in ch5 vv23-24 that their iniquities had turned away the rains.
An illustration of their wickedness is that men were saying “he will not see our latter end”. I think they are talking about Jeremiah. They say he is not a true prophet, he does not genuinely foresee their future.

Ch12 vv5-6

This is the Lord’s response to these complaints from Jeremiah.
The gist of v5 is “You think this is bad? It’s going to get much worse!”
V6 explains why; everybody (in Anathoth, presumably) hates him, even his immediate family. Therefore they will deal treacherously with him. They may sound friendly when they speak to him, but they are not to be trusted.

I return to v5 to look at the metaphors in more detail;

“If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?”
That one’s obvious enough. The struggle is even harder because the competition gets faster.

“If in a safe land you fall down, how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?” (RSV)
There is a translation puzzle here. The more literal translation in the AV contrasts “a land of peace” with “the swelling of the Jordan”.
The RSV rendering seems to be based on the assumption that the “swelling” refers to the richly-growing vegetation of the Jordan valley, and the land outside the valley is “safe” for running purposes, because your feet are not going to get entangled in plant life.

But the footnotes of the NIV offer “the flooding of the Jordan” as an alternative translation. The river would flood in the season when snow had been melting in the higher ground.
To my mind, ever since I first saw the AV rendering, the flooding of the Jordan would be a dangerous time because lions and other animals would be driven out of their haunts close to the river and start wandering the rest of the land. In other seasons, the land would be a safe” land, where there was less chance of getting eaten because the lions had not been disturbed from their homes.
The merit of this interpretation is that it’s not just a simple duplication of the “racing” metaphor.

The hostility to Jeremiah will get worse as he moves on to Jerusalem, where the crowds are larger and the priestly establishment is on the spot. Also as the land is getting more obviously close to the crisis of judgement.

👍....,👌..'

Wow. You are in tune with the holy Spirit. I was just directed, and started reading Jerimiah two night's ago. I think Lamentations next. God Bless. WoW!

a reply to: visitedbythem
Thank you. If you look back through the last few months, you will see that I've been covering about half a chapter week on week.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I can't wait to hear you speak in pure Koine Greek.

a reply to: ChesterJohn
Since the book in question is Jeremiah, you should be waiting for me to speak in Hebrew.

On the back window of my truck. Can you read this?

a reply to: visitedbythem
Oh yes. But you know we're not permitted to speak that word.

a reply to: DISRAELI

You can't speak it either. As a matter of FACT neither the Old Hebrew of Jeremiah and the Koine Greek has been spoken in over 1800 years, the old Hebrew even longer.

So I am waiting for you to speak in either tongue and prove that is is spoken properly as in the day.

You can't and you wont. You can't and you don't.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: visitedbythem
Oh yes. But you know we're not permitted to speak that word.

JEHOVAH JEHOVAH JEHOVAH!!!!

WHO SAYS WE CAN'T?

Please provide chapter and verse where it is said you or I cannot speak the word LORD/JEHOVAH.

a reply to: ChesterJohn
Where is the necessity to do either? This is a pointless quibble for the sake of quibbling, which is what you do when you can't find any genuine errors. You are becoming a troll. You are becoming Gnosisisfaith.

a reply to: DISRAELI Same ol MO

See you make a point you cannot support with the Bible and when asked to support it you resort to personal attack. That is not the ways of a saved man or a honest man.

There is no verse to support that. Only the Jews were told not to use the Lords name in vain in Exodus-Numbers.

I can speak the name of Jehovah all day long and would not suffer for it one bit now or later.