Against Babylon, Recasting Jeremiah’s Final Oracle

In his oracles against the nations Jeremiah climaxes the end of his book with a long devastating verdict against Babylon:

“The Hammer of the whole earth is cut down and broken… Behold, I am against you, O proud one, declares the Lord God of hosts, for your day has come, the time I will punish you…” (50:23,31).

After decades of tearful denunciations of the sins of Judah and its corrupt kings (Jeremiah’s own people), the prophet was probably quite eager to finally proclaim this oracle against Babylon at the end of his writings (50:1-51:64).  Babylon was cruel and vicious to be sure, but even more it was their mockery of Yahweh himself and the atrocities against Yahweh’s people that was Jeremiah’s primary indictment.  They slaughtered God’s covenanted people (51:35,49), and in an act of spectacular arrogance burned the temple of Yahweh to the ground (50:28, 51:11).

Fifty years later this oracle of judgment upon them becomes reality when the northern armies of Medes and Persians swept through the Levant and in 539 B.C. destroyed the invincible Babylon.  A hammer that destroys the Hammer. 

But more than the historical happenings, there are some big-picture typological connections that we cannot miss here.  In the New Testament, “Babylon” stands for the center of worldly power.  In the first century, Peter calls the city of Rome: “Babylon” (1 Pet 5:13).  It was the political center that stood against God, his kingdom, and his rulership.  And in the same way the book of Revelation identifies the ancient “Babylon” of Isaiah 21:9 as a foreshadowing of all centralized worldly power that opposes God throughout history up until the end (Rev 18).

This macro view makes us suspect that something beyond just ancient Babylon is in the background of Jeremiah’s words here.  And indeed there are two texts within Jeremiah’s oracle that point in this direction.  Jeremiah 50:5 refers to an everlasting covenant of restoration for the Jews that will come “in those days” –the days of Babylon’s destruction.  Then Jeremiah unpacks more specifically that those days of restoration will include a pardon and elimination of their sins (50:20).  These are very clear allusions to the “new covenant” a few chapters before (31:31-34); a covenant that is eternal –not like the mosaic covenant (31:31-33)– and a covenant where ultimate forgiveness of sin is at its core.  Making this connection expands the horizon of final fulfillment because we know Jesus himself says –along with the rest of the New Testament– that this “new covenant” of Jeremiah ultimately points forward 600 years to the new era Christ set in motion (Lk 22:20, Heb 8:8-12).  And so if this restoration in Jeremiah happens “in those days” of Babylon’s judgment, it suggests a Babylon that is more than just the ancient Semitic empire.  This is an oracle of judgment upon the centers of worldly power throughout history (e.g. Rome) and also upon the ultimate powers that oppose God at the end of history.

If you’re following this interpretation, it immediately begs certain questions that I’m more disposed to just ask, and not answer =)  …What is the Babylon of our day?  What are its “idols” (50:2, 51:47) which will see their own shame and destruction?  What is its pride (50:31) and its harlotries (Rev 18:3)?  How has this modern Babylon spurned and desecrated the temple/presence of God (50:28, 51:11)?  ...I’m so tempted to speculate an answer!  But I’d rather bait you into sharing your thoughts...

Cannibals and Convictions

Before John Paton set sail in 1848 for the New Hebrides islands his church elders were outspokenly critical.  One biography sketches the exchange he had with a certain Mr. Dickson who toward the end gave a booming outburst: “The Cannibals!  You will be eaten by cannibals!”  It was not an exaggerated fear.  Less than nineteen years before John Williams and James Harry had been killed and eaten on Erromanga –in the same chain of islands– within minutes of coming ashore.

Here is John Paton's deep conviction and colorful answer:

“Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.”

Strange Punishments

“Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshipped them... and you have done worse than your fathers…  Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor,” (Jeremiah 16:11-13).

God’s punishment is giving the Israelites what they’ve always wanted.  That is weird to say, but true.  If you Israelites want to serve other gods, than the consequences of that will be a full measure of service to these gods (and all that entails).  Giving the Israelites what their hearts truly desire turns out to actually be their punishment. 

There are other places in the scriptures where this principle holds true.  When the Israelites refused to enter the Promised Land, God gave them all the wilderness experience their hearts wanted (Num 13-14).  When Judah banked their hope on Assyria (instead of God) to rescue them from the Syro-Israelite alliance, God gave them all the ‘Assyria’ they wanted (Is 8:5-8).  When Paul describes God’s response to the sin-saturated world around him, he explains that God “gave them over” to their own depravity, and their own degrading passions, and their own depraved mind (Rom 1:24,26,28). 

What about the final punishment the bible mentions?  While there is active punishment in hell, no doubt, the bible also talks about hell as separation from God (2 Thess 1:9).  This is interesting because the state of mankind, according to the bible, is active rebellion against God.  We don’t care much for God or his ways.  We rule our own lives anyway.  It would be better if God just butted out of my life.  But if we knew all that God creates, sustains, and holds together, than being completely cut off from God is probably the scariest thing imaginable.  It is a branch being severed from a tree.  So if hell is separation from God, and rebellion is our MO, than hell is giving mankind exactly what we’ve always wanted –the full measure of it.

Fear or Something More (cont.)

I want to share a little window into my heart of when I decided to re-pursue Heidi on the other side of the world.  Yes, I said re-pursue.

Some of you know the story, but not what was happening behind the scenes.  After a year of dating (mostly long distance), Heidi decided to call off the relationship.  It wasn't easy for both of us.  We decided it would be best for healing purposes to close off contact for a good amount of time.  So we did.  We did not talk to each other for almost a year.  So what happened in that year?

From my end, there were lots of questions... What is she looking for?  What did we do wrong?  What did I do wrong?  I did not get specific answers to these questions during the break up.  I did not ask them verbally; but I certainly asked them internally to myself .  The only answer I had was she just knew her heart wasn't where it needed to be with the relationship.

I'm going to share a few things I'm not proud of.  But I don't think it is uncommon.  And my goal is that you might identify with my tendencies or even better not make the same mistakes I did.  There were moments that I felt secure and confident in my new direction and there were moments I wanted her back.  I was also angry.  Angry with the entire dating philosophy our culture imposes on us.  Angry that I was nit-picked and evaluated on a demeaning and inconsequential level.  American dating misses the forest for the trees, I found myself saying.  (I still believe that, by the way.)  Heidi is also 7 years older than I.  How could she be so meticulously exacting and choosy, especially at her age?  Since she deeply longs for marriage and a family, is she not afraid to be alone?  Is she not afraid these opportunities are passing her by?  Very soon she probably will be, I thought.  And I told myself (this is the part I'm not proud of), 'let's see what patience and perhaps a little fear might produce.'

Six months went by.  Nine months.  Just short of a year later, I received a difficult message from her.  Fear was indeed surrounding her.  But, of course, it brought no healing or resolution to her heart.  Just more questions.  She didn't want to let me go, but she was still afraid to move forward.  I thought fear was going to be the ace up my sleeve, but I was beginning to see fear was actually the disease.  And I was fueling it.  Through the lens of fear she saw my function and didn't see me.  All it produced was more confusion and more hesitation.  I began to see the only antidote to fear would have to be trust.  No matter how much I loved her, she needed Him more than me.  I told her this really isn't about me, its about releasing your old fears (fears that many of us struggle with).  It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to let go of, but I told her: When you give it to the Lord, you'll see it's really fear pulling you back to me, and not anything more.

It's fascinating that God gave me exactly what I wanted and even gave it through my own contrived methods, and I found myself in the end horribly dissatisfied.  I think God does this a lot.  Has he ever done that in your life?  For me, it was as if God was saying:  “Oh you want it that way?  Here you go.  Taste what that is like.”  I hated the taste.  I hated what it brought.

More months.  More questions.  How does God pursue us, Anthony?  How does God redeem us?  Romans 2:4 - “the kindness of God leads us to repentance.”  That's a strange idea... The kindness of God leads us to lots of things: like our love for Him, our appreciation of Him, our joy in Him... but repentance?  What makes a guilty criminal regret his actions?  The kindness of the judge or the punishment sentenced by the judge?  What makes a person regret his anger or his smoking habits?  Is it not more obvious to say: “fear leads us to repentance”?  Fear was supposed to make her regret pushing me away.  On some level it did, but true healing and redemption were still very far away. 

After two months answers began to form.  Pursue her Anthony the way I pursued you.  Unconditional kindness.  A freedom came over me, along with many tears.  I was overcome with emotion in the middle of the Costco parking lot =)  You were right all along, Lord.  It doesn't matter what she says, I will show this to her.  I will pursue her your way now.  In Sept 2012, I flew to India to tell her this.  To tell her I still loved her.  I felt free, no matter her answer, that I was showing her a pure love –a love that casts out fear. 

_____


Interesting post-script: A few months after we were engaged she unexpectedly said, “I need to tell you something Anthony.  I'm sorry for some of the ways I treated you last year...”  The healing and redemption through it all was unimaginably beautiful.

I was brought to choose between “fear or something more.”  And everything I thought only fear would bring, was only brought forward by “something more.”

The Queen of Heaven

“Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?  The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven…” (Jeremiah 7:17-18).

The Queen of Heaven

In ancient times national warfare was a battle of national gods.  The nation who subdued another nation in battle ostensibly had a stronger god than the other (e.g. 1 Kings 20:23).  This was the shocking meaning behind the power–plays of the exodus where a slave people destroyed and plundered a world superpower.  The primary meaning behind it is theological.  It means something about the god(s) of Egypt.  It means something about the God of Israel/Moses.  And centuries later during the time of Jeremiah the divine power-game behind national warfare still remained.  Keep this in the back of your mind as we look more specifically at this scripture.

A few decades before these scriptures were spoken through Jeremiah, the Assyrian empire wiped out Israel and nearly destroyed Judah.  Shortly thereafter another wave of imperial power was rising and its army set its course toward Judah.  They were Babylonians from the east.  Interestingly both of these two empires worshiped a fertility goddess named Astarte or as the Babylonians called her –Ishtar.  So guess who was responsible for their imperial success in battle?  That's right.  The great goddess of Babylon also known as “The Queen of Heaven.”

Quick excursus:  In modern philosophy a movement was undertaken to root all of philosophy in ‘reason.’  The cultural ethos was how “enlightened” western culture had become and the philosophy and values based on it was called the Enlightenment.  The cultural superiority of Europe’s technology and science with respect to the rest of the world was supposedly the obvious evidence of this superiority.  What was the Christian response to this movement?  On the whole, Christian scholarship and philosophy rerouted its beliefs to be based on the ultimate foundations of ‘reason/rationality.’  It no longer saw itself as “The Queen of the Sciences,” as it used to be.  But instead it was a derivative worldview that one should eventually come to when you first center your life around ‘reason/rationality.’  Do you see the move there?  It was subtle, but momentous.  Christianity became a useful appendage for something more central –more foundational.  It was not the first time the followers of God have capitulated to the reigning cultural ideas and pressures around them.  In Jeremiah’s day, the people of Judah were feeling the same pressures.

Why could the armies of Babylon march destructively through the Levant with little resistance?  The first answer to that question came relentlessly through the pleading lips of Jeremiah himself: “Babylon is the judgment of Yahweh on Yahweh’s own people and their sin.”  The second answer to that question came from reigning cultural ideas of the day: “Because Babylon’s god was a very strong god.”  In this calamity, the most significant response from the people of Judah would be how they chose to answer this question.  Would they just assume what everyone else assumed or would they be counter–cultural?  Were the cultural ideas around them more foundational than those old-school prophetic ideas?  The answer they chose is in the initial verse at the top.

The people of Judah offered sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, so that perhaps she might show them mercy.  Make no mistake, it is not like the people didn’t care about worshiping Yahweh.  They still did in their own way.  But Yahweh was decentered.  Something more foundational –something more culturally acceptable– took its place.  Sound familiar?  If you don’t see the absolute betrayal here, you will miss the heart of this scripture.  And furthermore, if you’re tempted to distance yourself from these seemingly silly choices the people of Judah made here… you probably haven’t looked close enough at your own capitulations to the cultural values you swim in.  Every generation since Christ (like the Enlightenment and on into today) has had those “followers of God” who don’t look very different than the rest of the culture around them.

Nathaniel and Human Nature, A Reflection

A few moments after my son Nathaniel's birth, I sat next to him in the intensive care unit alone.  The technological contraptions going in and around him weighed more than his meager four pounds.  Yet his eyes were wide open to a whole new world –a world which began with a brown and bearded man whispering nonsense to him behind tempered glass =)   I imagined his future and what it could possibly entail.  So many possibilities.  Some seemed hopeful, some seemed dreadful.

The British empiricist John Locke believes that humans beings start out as a tabula rasa, a blank slate.  Experience writes the language of all thought and concepts onto the mind.  It means that in this moment Nathaniel's mind is not just immature and undeveloped; it is literally blank and bare and thus has within it endless possibilities.  Gottfried Leibniz disagrees.  Instead of a blank slate, Leibniz says a better image is an unformed block of marble.  A raw block with its own crevices, cleavages, and veins.  And of course in order for an artist to sculpt and form the marble he has to creatively work with (and around) these veins and cleavages.  So for Leibniz, it means that in this moment Nathaniel’s mind is just beginning to be chiseled and shaped.  The possibilities are wide open, but they are not the same for every block of marble.  So it is with us, says Leibniz.  So then what is going to shape and chisel my son over his 60+ years?  What will his final shape ultimately turn out to be?  And if Leibniz is right, what cleavages and crevices are already a part of him now?

A Christian worldview says (similar to Leibniz) we are born with an innate nature –a rebellious one.  We not only have cracks and crevices that have pre-shaped us, but our cleavage is so deep that its contours actually tend toward self-destruction.  This was the dreadful part of my imaginings.  I felt an instantaneous desperation to pray for my son, like my father once felt for me.  No matter how much or how little I might chisel, his ultimate shape is outside my control.

If this is the world Nathaniel is born into, he will need more than many skilled hands to shape him.  He needs to be a “rock that is cut, but not by human hands.”  He needs cuts that reform the actual cleavages… not just go around them. 

This is my prayer for my son.

The Mindset of Prayer

“Nothing is more important to a life of prayer, than learning how to become a branch (John 15:4).”

         –Richard J. Foster