Jeremiah, I hardly knew ye.....
I have to agree with Lorna, Jeremiah is a drag. It has all become a blur.I have at least one more day to slog through before I finally get to Lamentations. (Why does Lamentations, of all things, seem uplifting after the whiney-pants Jeremiah? No wonder the King keeps wanting to kill him... he never has anything nice to say.)
Plus, the whole premise is so weird... God is going to send you into slavery and then deliver you. If you try to escape slavery, you are doomed to die by various unpleasant means. Rinse, repeat, like 50 times in case you didn't get it the first 49.
But. But, there IS a revolution brewing in Jeremiah that is worth pointing out. It states, quite clearly, that the old way of punishing the children for the sins of the father will be gone. Now, we pay for our own sins and our children are free of our guilt. That is a shift worth slogging through 52 chapters for.
Jer 31:29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.
Jer 31:30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.
Another couple of days.
Let the Lamenting begin!
posted by Rachel Nguyen @ 9:21 AM
3 Comments:
My thoughts on Jeremiah exactly. So repetitive, and frustrating - God will punish, punish, punish you. But don't worry, God will forgive you and bring you back. Only, this will be after 70 years and you'll mostly be dead by then, but be happy anyway. :)
But yes, I agree that you've hit on the key as well. I remember in undergrad Old Testament 101 that the professor pulled out that verse as the most important of the Old Testament.
You can really see the progression towards Jesus' ministry when you read the Hebrew scriptures straight through, can't you? First, there are good vs. bad people. Then, Solomon and David say that, no, we are all sinners in some way. Then this piece in Jeremiah where we begin to see that we pay for our own mistakes. It really does start to take shape.
So yeah, I could probably have gotten the gist of Jeremiah's prophecies in the first 7 or 8 versions of it... but this bit about the grapes is pretty revolutionary!
loved this Rachel.
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