How to Read the Bible

18. “I Will Make This House like Shiloh”: Reading Jeremiah

18 “I Will Make This House like Shiloh” Reading Jeremiah Primary Reading: Jeremiah 1, 3, 15, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 31, 36, 52. Background The Book of Jeremiah opens with the longest superscription of any prophetic book: (1:1) The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. (2) The word of the LORD came to him in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign, (3) and throughout the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, when Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month. Translated into modern terms, it says that Jeremiah began to prophesy in 627 B.C.E. and finished around the time of the destruction of the Temple in 586—a period of more than forty years. (According to the Bible and other sources as well, this was an eventful time. King Josiah reformed religious practice in Judah. Babylon defeated Assyria and came into its own as a world power. Egypt briefly imposed vassal status on Judah—more than once. Babylon defeated Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish in 605. The Babylonians exiled Judah’s king, Jehoiachin, in 597. Finally, they returned to destroy Jerusalem and exile much of its populace in 586.) We also learn that Jeremiah was a priest and that he hailed from Anathoth, a town about three miles (five km.) north of Jerusalem. The book is filled with other biographical information—so much so that many scholars identify in the book a separate strand or source devoted to biog173 raphy.1 This is unique among prophetic books. As usual, we cannot be certain that any of this information is historically accurate.2 Yet we possess an unusually rich amount of background that gives us a head start in understanding the oracles attributed to this prophet. Reading Jeremiah after Isaiah From the superscription, we learn that Jeremiah prophesied almost a century after Isaiah, during a very different historical period. In particular, in Isaiah’s time, the Assyrians were the enemies whom Judah would overcome; for Jeremiah, the Babylonians were the enemies who would destroy the Jerusalem Temple. Thus it is not surprising that the Book of Jeremiah is quite different from those we have already seen. Compared to the Book of Isaiah, Jeremiah is much easier to read. It contains more prose, and its poetic sections are less complex. It has fewer unique (hapax) words. It also gives date formulas and other clues about where one oracle begins and another ends. For example, the phrase “The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD” appears ten times, always introducing an oracle. Organizing Principles Correlation of the date formulas shows that the Book of Jeremiah is not in chronological order. Like Isaiah, much of it is arranged associatively. For example , Jeremiah 20 and 21 are adjacent because they each concern a man named Pashhur (an Egyptian name), although two different Pashhurs are involved. Other passages are ordered by catchphrases. Some of the prophecies an editor has grouped topically; thus 23:9 contains a title—“Concerning the prophets”— and what follows concerns Jeremiah’s prophetic adversaries (whom we would call “false prophets,” though that term never appears in the Hebrew text).3 Similarly, a collection of prophecies against the Judean kings appears under the title “To the House of the king of Judah” (21:11). A set of oracles against other peoples follows the title “The word of the LORD to the prophet Jeremiah concerning the nations” (46:1). The books of earlier prophets—including Isaiah—do not display topical organization. An editor of the Book of Jeremiah appears to have experimented with new ways of assembling prophetic oracles into a book. 174 How to Read the Bible Content The content of Jeremiah’s book differs from that of Isaiah’s. Scholars attribute some of these differences to the distinct historical contexts noted earlier. We can also point to the impact of each figure’s own personality and style. Disparate editorial processes may account for still other differences in content. The biggest factor, however, is that the two books wish to convey different messages. A major theme of Isaiah is the inviolability of Jerusalem: “the LORD of Hosts [will] shield Jerusalem, shielding and saving...