Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922 Part 6

The questions of foreknowledge and predestination, with which Jeremiah engaged himself not a little, I leave for a future lecture.(119) Here we may consider the range of his mission.

This was very wide-not for Judah only, but _a prophet to the nations had I set thee_. The objection has been taken, that it is too wide to be original, and the alternative inferences drawn: either that it is the impression of his earliest consciousness as a prophet but formed by Jeremiah only after years of experience revealed all that had been involved in his call; or that it is not Jeremiah's own but the notion formed of him by a later exaggerating generation. It is true that Jeremiah did not dictate the first words of the Lord to him till some twenty-three years after he heard them, when it was possible and natural for him to expand them in terms of his intervening experience. And we must remember the summary bent of the Hebrew mind-how natural it was to that mind to describe processes as if they were acts of a day, done by a fiat as in the story of the Creation; or to state a system of law and custom, which took centuries to develop, as though it were the edict of a single lawgiver and all spoken at once, when the development entered on a new and higher stage, as we see in the case of Deuteronomy and its attribution to Moses.

Yet the forebodings at least of a task so vast as that of _prophet to the nations_ were anything but impossible to the moment of Jeremiah's call; for the time surged, as we have seen, with the movements of the nations and their omens for his own people. Indeed it would have been strange if the soul of any prophet, conscious of a charge from the Almighty, had not the instinct, that as the meaning of this charge was gradually unfolded to him, it would reveal, and require from him the utterance of, Divine purposes throughout a world so full even to the uninspired eye of the possibilities both of the ruin of old states and of the rise of new ones-a world so close about his own people, and so fraught with fate for them, that in speaking of _them_ he could not fail to speak of the _whole of it_ also. If at that time a Jew had at all the conviction that he was called to be a prophet, it must have been with a sense of the same responsibilities, to which the older prophets had felt themselves bound: men who knew themselves to be ministers of the Lord of Hosts, Lord of the Powers of the Universe, who had dealt not with Israel only but with Moab and Ammon and Aram, with Tyre and the Philistines and Egypt, and who had spoken of a.s.syria herself as His staff and the rod of His judgment.

Jeremiah's three contemporaries, ?ephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk, all deal with the foreign powers of their day-why should he in such an age not have been conscious from the first that his call from the Lord of Hosts involved a mission as wide as theirs? I am sure that if we had lived with this prophet through his pregnant times, as we have lived through these last ten years and have been compelled to think constantly not of our own nation alone-concentrated as we had to be on our duties to her-but of _all_ the nations of the world as equally involved in the vast spiritual interests at stake, we should have no difficulty in understanding how possible and natural it was for Jeremiah to hear his mission _to the nations_ clearly indicated in the very moment of his call.

And in fact Jeremiah's acknowledged Oracles-some of them among his earliest-travel far beyond Judah and show not merely a knowledge of, and vivid interest in, the qualities and fortunes of other peoples, but a wise judgment of their policies and therefore of what should be Judah's prudent att.i.tude and duty towards them. For long before his call she had been intriguing with Egypt and a.s.syria.(120) Just then or immediately later the Scythians, after threatening the Medes, were sweeping over Western Asia as far as the frontier of Egypt, and in his Scythian songs Jeremiah(121) shows an intimate knowledge of their habits. In his Parable of the Potter (for which unfortunately there is no date) he declares G.o.d's power to mould or re-mould _any_ nation.(122) And Baruch, writing of Jeremiah's earlier ministry, says that he spoke _concerning all nations_.(123)

No wonder that Jeremiah shrank from such a task: _Ah, Lord G.o.d, I know not to speak, I am too young._(124) His excuse is interesting. Had he not developed his gift for verse? Or, conscious of its rustic simplicity, did he fear to take the prophet's thunder on lips, that had hitherto moved only to the music of his country-side? In the light of his later experience the second alternative is not impossible. When much practice must have made him confident of his art as a singer, he tells us how burning he felt the Word of the Lord to be. But whatever was the motive of his reluctance it was overcome. As he afterwards said:-

Ah, Lord, Thou didst beguile me, And beguiled I let myself be; Thou wast too strong for me And hast prevailed.(125)

The following shows how this came about:-

And the Lord said unto me, Say not I am too young, for to all to which I send thee thou shalt go, and all I command thee thou shalt speak,

Be not afraid before them For with thee am I to deliver,

Rede of the Lord. And the Lord put forth His hand and caused it to touch my mouth, and the Lord said to me, Lo, I have set My Word in thy mouth,

See I appoint thee this day Over the nations and kingdoms, To pull up and tear down and destroy,(126) To build and to plant.

To this also objection has been taken as still more incredible in the spiritual experience of so youthful a rustic. It has been deemed the exaggeration of a later age, and described as the "gigantic figure" of a "plenipotentiary to the nations," utterly inconsistent with the modest singer of the genuine oracles of Jeremiah, "a hero only in suffering, not in a.s.sault."(127) Such an objection rather strains the meaning of the pa.s.sage. According to this Jeremiah is to be the carrier of the Word of the Lord. That Word, rather than the man himself, is the power _to pull up and tear down and destroy, to build and to plant_(128)-that Word which no Hebrew prophet received without an instinct of its world-wide range and its powers of both destruction and creation.

Two visions follow. To appreciate the first we must remember the natural anxiety of the prophets when charged with p.r.o.nouncements so weighty and definite. The Word, the ethical purpose of G.o.d for Israel was clear, but how was it to be fulfilled? No strength appeared in the nation itself. The party, or parties, loyal to the Lord had been in power a dozen years and effected little in Jerusalem and nothing beyond. The people were not stirred and seemed hopeless. Living in a village where little changed through the years, but men followed the habits of their fathers, Jeremiah felt everything dead. Winter was on and the world asleep.

Then the Word of the Lord came to me saying, What art thou seeing, Jeremiah; and I said, I am seeing the branch of an almond tree.

And the Lord said to me, Well hast thou seen, for I am awake over My Word to perform it.

The Hebrew for almond tree is _shakedh_, which also means _awakeness_ or _watchfulness_,(129) and the Lord was _awake_ or was _watchful_-_shokedh_-the difference only of a vowel. In that first token of spring which a Palestine winter affords, the Prophet received the sacrament of his call and of the a.s.surance that G.o.d was awake! That the sacrament took this form was natural. That of Isaiah of Jerusalem was the vision of a Throne and an Altar. That of Ezekiel, the exile, shone in the stormy skies of his captivity. This to the prophet of Anathoth burst with the first blossom on his wintry fields. The sense of unity in which he and his people conceived the natural and spiritual worlds came to his help; neither in the one world nor in the other did G.o.d slumber. G.o.d was watching.

The Second Vision needs no comment after our survey of the political conditions of the time. The North held the forces for the fulfilling of the Word. The Vision is followed by a charge to the Prophet himself.

And the word of the Lord came to me the second time, What art thou seeing? And I said, A caldron boiling and its face is from (?) the North.(130) And the Lord said unto me:-

Out of the North shall evil boil forth(131) On all that dwell in the land; For behold, I am calling All the realms(132) of the North.

They shall come and each set his throne In the openings of the gates of Jerusalem, On all of her walls round about, And every township of Judah.

And My judgments by them(133) shall I utter On the evil of those who have left Me, Who have burned to other G.o.ds And bowed to the works of their hands.

But thou shalt gird up thy loins, Stand up and speak(134) all I charge thee.

Be not dismayed before them, Lest to their face I dismay thee.

See I have thee set this day A fenced city and walls of bronze To the kings and princes of Judah, Her priests and the folk of the land; They shall fight but master thee never, For with thee am I to deliver- Rede of the Lord.(135)

Jeremiah was silenced and went forth to his ministry-the Word upon his lips and the Lord by his side.

Two further observations are natural.

_First_, note the contrast between the two Visions-the blossoming twig and the boiling caldron brewing tempests from the North. Unrelated as these seem, they symbolise together Jeremiah's prophesying throughout. For in fact this was all blossom and storm, beauty and terror, tender yearning and thunders of doom-up to the very end. Or to state the same more deeply: while the caldron of the North never ceased boiling out over his world-consuming the peoples, his own among them, and finally sweeping him into exile and night-he never, for himself or for Israel, lost the clear note of his first Vision, that all was watched and controlled. There is his value to ourselves. Jeremiah was no prophet of hope, but he was the prophet of that without which hope is impossible-faith in Control-that be the times dark and confused as they may, and the world's movements ruthless, ruinous and inevitable, G.o.d yet watches and rules all to the fulfilment of His Will-though how we see not, nor can any prophet tell us.

_Second_, note how the story leaves the issue, not with one will only, but with two-G.o.d's and the Man's, whom G.o.d has called. His family has been discounted, his people and their authorities, political and religious, are to be against him. _He_ is to stand up and speak, _He_ is not to let himself be dismayed before them, lest G.o.d make him dismayed. Under G.o.d, then, the Individual becomes everything. Here, at the start of his ministry, Jeremiah has pressed upon him, the separateness, the awful responsibility, the power, of the Single Soul. We shall see how the significance of this developed not for himself only, but for the whole religion of Israel.

Lecture IV.

THE PROPHET IN THE REIGN OF JOSIAH. 627-26-608 B.C.

This period of the Prophet's career may be taken in three divisions:-

_First_, His Earliest Oracles, which reflect the lavish distribution of the high-places in Judah and Benjamin, and may therefore be dated before the suppression of these by King Josiah, in obedience to the Law-Book discovered in the Temple in 621-20 B.C.

_Second_, His Oracles on the Scythians, whose invasions also preceded that year; with additions.

_Third_, Oracles which imply that the enforcement of the Law-Book had already begun, and reveal Jeremiah's att.i.tude to it and to the course of the reforms which it inspired.

We must keep in mind that the Prophet did not dictate his early Oracles till the year 604-03, and that he added to them on the Second Roll _many like words_.(136) We shall thus be prepared for the appearance among them of references to the changed conditions of this later date, when the Scythians had long come and gone, the a.s.syrian Empire had collapsed, its rival Egypt had been defeated at the Battle of Carchemish, and Nebuchadrezzar and his Chaldeans were masters of Western Asia.

1. His Earliest Oracles. (II. 2-IV. 4.)

These bear few marks of the later date at which they were dictated by Jeremiah-in fact only a probable reference to Egypt's invasion of Palestine in 608, Ch. II. 16, and part, if not all, of Ch. III. 6-18. The general theme is a historical retrospect-Israel's early loyalty to her G.o.d, and her subsequent declension to the worship of other G.o.ds, figured as adultery; along with a profession of penitence by the people, to which G.o.d responds by a stern call to a deeper repentance and thorough reform; failing this, her doom, though vaguely described as yet, is inevitable.

The nation is addressed as a whole at first in the second person singular feminine, but soon also in the plural, and the plural prevails towards the end. The nation answers as a whole, sometimes as _I_ but sometimes also as _We_.

Before expounding the truths conveyed by these early Oracles it is well to translate them in full, for though not originally uttered at the same time, they run now in a continuous stream of verse-save for one of those "portages" of prose which I have described.(137) There is no reason for denying the whole of this pa.s.sage to Jeremiah, whether because it is in prose or because it treats of Northern Israel as well as Judah.(138) But on parts of it the colours are distinctly of a period later than that of the Prophet. All the rest of the Oracles may be taken to be from himself.

Duhm after much hesitation has come to doubt the genuineness of Ch. II.

5-13, but his suspicions of deuteronomic influence seem groundless, and even if they were sound they would be insufficient for denying the verses to Jeremiah.(139)

II. 1, 2, And he said, Thus sayeth the Lord:(140)

I remember the troth of thy youth, Thy love as a bride, Thy following Me through the desert, The land unsown.

Holy to the Lord was Israel, 3 First-fruit of His income; All that would eat it stood guilty, Evil came on them.

Rede of the Lord- Hear the Lord's Word, House of Jacob, 4 All clans of Israel's race!