Jeremiah 10-15

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

Jeremiah 10 - No mention of any women.

11:15 - "What right has my beloved in my house, when she has done vile deeds? Can vows and sacrificial flesh avert your doom? Can you then exult?"
11:22 - "...therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: I am going to punish them; the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine."

12:8-9 - "My heritage has become to me like a lion in the forest; she has lifted up her voice against me - therefore I hate her. Is the hyena greedy for my heritage at my command? Are the birds of prey all around her? Go, assemble all the wild animals; bring them to devour her."

13:18 - "Say to the king and the queen mother: 'Take a lowly seat, for your beautiful crown has come down from your head.'"
13:21-22 - "What will you say when they set as head over you those whom you have trained to be your allies? Will not pangs take hold of you, like those of a woman in labor? And if you say in your heart, 'Why have these things come upon me?' it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up, and you are violated."
13:26-27 - "I myself will lift up your skirts over your face, and your shame will be seen. I have seen your abominations, your adulteries and neighings, your shameless prostitutions on the hills of the countryside. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will it be before you are made clean?"

14:2-3 - "Judah mourns and her gates languish; they lie in gloom on the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem goes up. Her nobles send their servants for water; they come to the cisterns, they find no water, they return with their vessels empty."
14:5 - "Even the doe in the field forsakes her newborn fawn because there is no grass."
14:16-17 - "And the people to whom they prophesy shall be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword. There shall be no one to bury them - themselves, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their wickedness upon them. You shall say to them this word; Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter - my people - is struck down with a crushing blow, with a very grievous wound."

15:8-9 - "Their widows became more numerous then the sand of the seas; I have brought against the mothers of youths a destroyer at noonday; I have made anguish and terror fall upon her suddenly. She who bore seven has languished; she has swooned away; her sun went down while it was yet day; she has been shamed and disgraced. And the rest of them I will give to the sword before their enemies, says the Lord."
15:10 - Jeremiah Complains Again and is Reassured

"Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me."

My Comments

Well, we're moved in and settled and it's back to blogging. And what a mess I have started back with!

It's been a while since I've even bothered reading the Bible (go figure I don't pick it up for light reading) and I forgot how much abuse female Jerusalem (or the feminized realization of God's people) gets. She is a vile woman cast out of her master's house. She is a loud and proud lion, whose voice her master HATES to hear, and she is a greedy hyena who is best set upon by wild animals which will consume her (not the first woman punished in this way). She is raped as punishment for her indiscretions, her skits lifted up so that she may be violated by her enemies and her shame shown to all. Jersualem is sullied by her adulteries, her prostitutions, her abominations and her master wonders if she shall ever be clean again. She is dried up and laid open for all those who wish to enter (more rape imagery?) She is compared to a fawn that is left by her mother because there is little grass to eat (if you take it the way I did, Jerusalem/Israel is basically God's abortion, which I admit may be stretching it but that's the basic concept there).

And yet the author has the nerve in 14:17 to say, "Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter - my people - is struck down with a crushing blow, with a very grievous wound."

Oh, Israel, look what you have made God do. You were his virgin daughter and it so pains God for him to punish you with rape and wholesale slaughter. But, you know, you made him do it. A man cannot tolerate a vile woman in his house or a woman who would raise her voice to proclaim her own individual thoughts/complaints or a woman who has been so dirtied by her sexual indiscretions. Nevermind that God hasn't been the most attentive husband/father to you which may have led you to seek other support in your times of need. Nevermind God has constantly repaid your devotion and loyalty with 40 year long exiles into the desert or pestilence or mass executions enacted by waring tribes. No, it's the virginal daughter's fault and God will cry himself to sleep at night after condemning her to rape after rape and slaughter after slaughter.

It's really what any loving husband/father would do.

AND YET!

Jeremiah complains again and is reassured?

So I guess a man can complain over and over and over again and he will get reassurance and not condemnation and punishment? Heaven forbid a woman be a lion and lift up her voice against her master. But if one of God's chosen MEN happens to sit around most of the day gritching and whining he'll get a nice pat on the back and some reassurance that evil lady Israel, who is of such concern to Jeremiah, will get her comeuppance.

Wednesday: More Jeremiah