Babylon in Jeremiah 21 -- Part III

Jeremiah 21

11 And touching the house of the king of Judah,

say, Hear ye the word of the LORD;

12 O house of David, thus saith the LORD; Execute

judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is

spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my

fury go out like fire, and burn that none can

quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

13 Behold, I am against thee, O inhabitant of the

valley, and rock of the plain, saith the LORD;

which say, Who shall come down against us? or who

shall enter into our habitations?

14 But I will punish you according to the fruit

of your doings, saith the LORD: and I will kindle

a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour

all things round about it.


At the close of chapter 21, Jeremiah is not yet

finished announcing the verdict, rendered at the

request of king Zedekiah in verse two:


2 Inquire, I pray thee, of the LORD for us; for

Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon maketh war against

us; if so be that the LORD will deal with us

according to all his wondrous works, that he may

go up from us.

3 Then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say

to Zedekiah:


The last three verses are directly addressed to

the king in Jerusalem. The gist of the verdict

is that, as far as Zedekiah is concerned,

Jerusalem is history. Verse 12 says that what

Zedekiah has been doing is evil. Verse 13 is a

poetic description of Jerusalem, 'rock of the

plain'. And verse 14 says, you're going to get

what you have coming. Over and over in

scripture, there is used an agricultural metaphor

about sowing and reaping. It's a metaphor that

everyone, in that time, can easily understand.

The modern implication is that there is a 'law'

that governs social activity, that is just as

certain as the 'laws' that govern the physical

universe. Another way to look at it is that

there is an established order in the universe,

both the physical universe and the universe of

social activity. The closest that I've ever

gotten to a study of this 'law' is an

introductory course in Cultural Anthropology. In

a very general way, anthropology looks at the

behavior models that are practiced in all

geographical locations, by all ethnic groups. It

makes an interesting study. But I've never seen

an attempt on the part of academics to study the

parallels between the 'law' of scripture and the

success and failure of different social behavior

models. What I can see, at the level of

intuition, is that some social models seem to get

better results than others. King Zedekiah is

finding this out the hard way.


Of course, it stands out right away, that the

evolutionary model of history is at odds with the

idea of social 'laws'. They describe behavior in

terms of a fight for survival, as if it's just a

matter of genetic suitability, rather than a

matter of conformity to the 'laws' of social

order as they were defined at the time of

creation. This points to the contrast between

the kingdom of man and the kingdom of heaven.

Man creates mythological explanations that are

tailored to its own ends. As C.S. Lewis

describes it, they are looking for the Island. A

destination that doesn't exist, except in the

realm of myth. When in fact, all of creation is

designed according to an established order, an

order defined by the 'law' of G-d.


Just like Zedekiah, we wish to learn the hard

way. I write from experience.


Then there is the forest fire metaphor from verse

14. We can see how that works in the present

time. Things seem just fine, until there is a

combination of events that intiate an out of

control situation. But everything seemed normal

just a short while ago. Nobody notices the

gradual accumulation of fuel, because it takes a

long time. On private property, the situation

can be avoided by careful management. But on a

larger scale there isn't so much that can be

done, unless it is given a priority. Careless

management always has bigger fish to fry. So

fuel accumulates, year after year, and then a dry

spell turns all of that accumulated fuel into a

major fire hazard. At that point, it doesn't

take much for an out of control wildfire to

'devour all things round about it.'