Reflections on Jeremiah 15:15-21

 The alternative Hebrew Bible text for September 3, 2017 is one of the so- called confessions of the prophet Jeremiah. I have long found these passages among the most disturbing and illuminating texts in the Bible. We who love the Hebrew prophets often remember them as towers of righteous strength, speaking truth to power, demanding in the face of tyrants justice for the poor, release to those captives of oppression. We think of Amos, that 8th century BCE titan, who faced down both the king and high priest of the northern kingdom of Israel with withering and unyielding words that brooked no argument, words uttered at the very risk of his life. We think of Hosea who in the face of traditional customs of marriage, took as wife a prostitute, Gomer, as a way of announcing that Israel had fallen so far away from YHWH as to become little better than outcasts and strangers to the ways of their God. We think of Isaiah and Micah, Ezekiel and Habakkuk, each one an upholder of God’s actions among people who have forgotten such actions.

And then there is Jeremiah. He is no less concerned with divine justice and righteousness than any of those already named, but what separates him from them are these stark glimpses into his personal life, his grieving emotions, his angry cries of pain and suffering. Instead of always focusing on his oracles against others, the author of Jeremiah insists on looking deeply into the very soul of the man, often telling us much more than we want to know about just what it means to be a prophet. And the portrait he offers is often searing, often wrenching. Why? Why exactly does this writer seem bent on telling us about the man Jeremiah rather than sticking to the prophet Jeremiah?

I admit I have no easy answer to my questions. Scholars have spoken a good deal about these uncomfortable facts, some claiming that the confessions are genuine historical records of the suffering of the man, others claiming that these passages are later post-exilic reflections by suffering exiles, creating a prophet in their own image, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. I do not know which of these may be true analyses of the writings, but at the last I am less interested in those sorts of historical questions than I am with the texts themselves. Whoever wrote them and for what reasons have a certain interest, but far less interest than their content given to us.

I am especially haunted by Jer.15:15.

YHWH, you know!
Remember me, and come to me!
Bring down vengeance for me on my pursuers! Do not carry me off in your anger!
Know that I bear insult because of you!

These lines are chock full of troubling ideas. On the one hand they are not unlike many Psalms of Lament to be found in the Psalter, where more than one poet calls for God to bring judgment against one enemy or another and to spare the psalmist from a similar fate. The difference here is that we know Jeremiah; we know of his continual call for his people to mend their ways, to come back to the ways of YHWH. And we know that he fancies himself as one of his people, those same erring people, for whom he would weep when they continue their wicked ways.

But not here! Now he calls for YHWH’s wrath against them; he overtly demands YHWH’s retribution against them, against those who “pursue” him. Here is no weeping Jeremiah; here instead is the furious and demanding prophet who wills destruction on those with whom he disagrees. At the same time, he warns YHWH that the divine wrath should spare him, precisely because he bears the insults of these miscreants because of YHWH’s own demands on him! This is your doing, YHWH, Jeremiah shouts, so any pain he undergoes is unfair and unworthy of YHWH’s chosen agent. I am your man, he claims, and as such I need to witness my enemies’ demise while I bask in divine favor.

And there I find myself too often in my life. I have studied and expounded the biblical text for nearly fifty years, and I treasure its wonders and long for those times when I can share its beauties and challenges with others. But at the same time, I chafe under the arguments of those with whom I strongly disagree, and can hardly bear their existence, often damning them in so many words for their “foolishness” and “confusions” about those texts I know to be true in the ways I say they are true. I have regularly and publicly consigned any number of my fellow Christians to an intellectual purgatory for their absurd and irrational approaches to the biblical materials. Discussions of human sexuality, religious belief and the government, the treatment of foreigners and immigrants, the treatment of women, the arrogant dominance of men, among many other issues, have led me to castigate, demonize, and belittle those who in my mind are far less enlightened than I am. “Bring down retribution/vengeance on them, God,” I cry, “because I am speaking for you, God, and you owe me your favor!”

In this particular confession, God in fact answers Jeremiah’s demands. “If you turn back, I will take you back,” God says to Jeremiah. “If you utter what is precious, and not what is trivial, you shall serve as my mouth” (Jer.15:19). In those words I stand fixed and accused. Is it in fact “precious” to demand vengeance on those who oppose me? Is it finally “trivial” so simply to divide those correct (them) from those who are right (me)? Can I serve as God’s mouth when I demand retribution?

God answers Jeremiah in this confession, but in the final confession of Jer.20, there is no reply from God at all. Has Jeremiah gone too far? In that terrible chapter Jeremiah swings back and forth between assaults against God (20:7), self-pity (20:7-10), demands for vengeance (20:11-13), deep depression due to his perceived evil life (20:14-18). “Why did I exit the womb to see toil and

sorrow and spend my days in shame?” And YHWH says nothing. I find YHWH’s silence here eloquent. Might it be that I am not worthy of being “God’s mouth” if I can do little more than denigrate those who do not agree, slander those who see things differently, reject any ideas not consonant with my own?

Here is my own confession: I know what I know and am always willing to share what I know with others. However, I find myself at times unable to listen carefully to those who have other ideas, other ways of construing matters I think I have settled long ago. Too quickly, I wallow in my own settled trough while refusing to hear others’ different notions gurgling in their troughs. God may be silent, because I am too certain, too fixed in my own way, too ready to call down divine thunderbolts on those who cannot see as I see. Too often, I am like one of the friends of Job, secure in my certainties about God, less concerned for the unending search for a complex truth.

Two words come to me: humility and curiosity. I could use a large measure of both, and I think Jeremiah could use some of each, too. Perhaps no one has the right to serve as God’s mouth until both words spring readily to their minds, informing and directing all the words that poor forth from their lips.