Lecture #9: Judah; Deuteronomic Reform, Jerimiah

Course: Old Testament

Lecture #9: Judah; Deuteronomic Reform, Jerimiah

• Those coming from the North after the fall to Assyria brought written and oral traditions and the understanding of Reform that lies behind the Deuteronomic editors’ ideas.
• The Jawist and Elohist accounts were probably combined shortly after the fall of Israel, certainly by around 700 BCE.
• D used J and E very extensively for his own history but it is a moot point as to whether they were combined before or after his history was written.
• Josiah came to the throne of Judah when he was 8 years old in the year 640 BCE.
• By 629 BCE it was evident that Assyria was weakening.
• As a result, Judah began asserting some independence, culturally and religiously.
• In 621 BCE, according to II Kings 22 (Read), a remarkable discovery was made while the priests were cleaning out the temple.
• This cleaning had to do with religious cult objects which the Assyrians had imposed, since they were weakening.
• This important find was what is believed to be the book of Deuteronomy.
• There is not much question as to when this was written, as it was sometime between the fall of the North in 721 BCE and this time (621 BCE).
• When the contents were read to Josiah, he tore his garments, oriental style, as a gesture of consternation and despair, and demanded it be authenticated.
• It was taken to Huldah, the prophetess who verified its authenticity.
• Her comments were sharp, saying that since the words of the book had been violated, YHWH would bring evil upon Jerusalem, making a "desolation and a curse."
• As a result, the king called the people together (similar to the renewal at Shechem) and read them the law and then they kept the Passover for the first time in who knows how long.
• This was followed by a great royal reform attempting to tear down the "high place shrines", and purify the worship

• This Josianic Reform made all priests and prophets part of the Royal choice and henceforth all others were not legitimate.
• It also centralized worship in Jerusalem and no other shrines, or their priests were legitimate.
• this put a lot of priests out of business
• even the shrine at Beth-el was destroyed.

• The basis of the reforms are found in chapters 12 thru 26 of the book of Deuteronomy.
• It is probable that the Deuteronomic Torah goes back to a northern covenant tradition which had been preserved and interpreted by Levite teachers in North Israel.
• Jerusalem is not explicitly identified as the central sanctuary even though Josiah so identified it for his own purposes. (See Deuteronomy 12:2-7, 10-11).
• Originally the Deuteronomic authors may have had Shechem in mind as the central location.
  
  
• The publication of this book under state sponsorship during Josiah's reign was the first serious step toward the creation of a canon of sacred literature that would be binding upon the whole people in matters of faith and conduct.
• The closest affinities to D's style are found in the northern Elohist tradition using Mt. Horeb, instead of Sinai, and referring to the natives of the promised land as Amorites rather than Canaanites.
• The Deuteronomic Torah does not pretend to lead Israel forward to new heights of religious development, but to recall the people to the original faith of the mosaic period.
• However, it does not lead a retreat to the past, but rather deals vigorously with the challenge of the present crisis, and with Israel's responsibilities and destiny in YHWH's purpose.

• The War theme runs throughout the Deuteronomic history (thru II Kings)
• All leaders are war leaders, whether prophet, priest or king. [I will give a little more detail here.]

• For the priest, it shows God's power. The priests would carry the ark into battle to show their God was stronger than the enemies, they also would use a divination technique with the Uram and Tummmim, something like dice they would throw to see what God wanted. (see I Sam 14:36)
• For the warrior hero he would fight to justify his power and prove his leadership.
• For the king, war is God's gift to his nation--the way God expands the kingdom, wealth, and national boundaries (David, Solomon, Omri)
• the Prophet, war is a test of obedience – war comes to test whether the leader (king or judge) will be obedient to God's word (Read I Sam 15:1-23)

• One of the ways to spot the D writer is the attitude toward war.
• The most striking thing about D is the humanitarian attitudes towards slaves, strangers and women.
• D is the champion of those who are legally weak or helpless because YHWH acts in this way, Israel must imitate his manner of dealing with people.
• This is the basis for the "humanitarianism" that i noticeable in the laws found in Deuteronomy 12-26.
• There is emphasis on love which is characteristic of the themes of Deuteronomy. In this regard, there is influence from Hosea.
• Israel is to love God with Heart, mind and will. The Shema (meaning "hear") is found in Deuteronomy 6 (Read) and the corollary, love of neighbor, are both to be practiced.
• Hosea spoke of YHWH's love for Israel but never Israel's love for YHWH, Deuteronomy actually looks back to the ancient suzerainty covenant, within which the "vassal" was commanded to love the sovereign who had performed deeds of benevolence.
• The governing purpose of Deuteronomy is to summon Israel to a renewal of the covenant with YHWH. Though this literature has behind it a long tradition of covenant renewal ritual, the immediate background is the cultural situation of the 7th century.

Weaknesses in the Deuteronomic reform

• For a while this reform made a deep impression on Judah as it sincerely attempted to take prophetic teachings seriously.
• inspired by a nationalistic spirit of rebellion against foreign rule, it could flourish only as long as the political situation that occasioned it.
• One of the great defects in D theology was that it oversimplified the ways of God in history.
• The Deuteronomic doctrine of divine justice makes things too neat: obey YHWH and all will go well; disobey him and hardship will come.
• This sounds suspiciously like the "success philosophy" which even today is the basis of much popular religion.
• The belief in divine reward (blessing) and divine punishment (judgment) was fundamental in Israel's faith from the first.
• However, in Deuteronomy, something new was added -the belief that obedience or disobedience could be measured by a code of rules set down in a book, the book of the Torah.
• In all fairness to D, the Hebrew scriptures do not make our artificial distinction between "material" and "spiritual" blessings.

Jeremiah

• There is evidence that Jerimiah Supported the Deuteronomic reform for a time, but he soon turned against it as he came to see that it did not result in & circumcision of the heart or breaking up of fallow ground, as Deuteronomy advocated (10:16), but yielded only a defiant nationalism and an external piety.
• Jeremiah prophesied from about 627 BCE (before the book of Deut. was found") till around 587 BCE, when he was in Egypt.
• Jeremiah said the reform was too little, too late and that Judah was going into exile.
• This was God’s decision, so get ready for it (Read: 4:31) he answers why society is being destroyed? Says Josiah’s new society is just false labor.
• He was imprisoned as a collaborator.
• Jerusalem fell in 598 BCE and there was a selective exile with the skilled workers, merchants and king sent to Babylon, with a puppet, Zedikiah, left on the throne.
• He was under terrific pressure to rebel and in 587 BCE he did and this time a more massive exile took place. This time the king's sons were killed in his presence and then he was blinded.
• the common people were left alone.
  
  
• Jeremiah and most others considered that the king taken into exile in 598 BCE was the rightful king.
• Jerimiah was present for these events, so we have his eyewitness as well as that of the D history in II Kings, which concludes with the fall of Jerusalem.
• Jeremiah advised the rest of the people to cooperate with Babylon that the exiles would return in 2 generations (Jer 25:8-14)
  
  
• In his famous Potter analogy (Read 18:1-12) he pointed out that there was a religious reason for the exile that it was not simply punishment, but that Israel was to be remolded.
• God was still in control in the fall of Jerusalem

• In 582 BCE there was a coup attempt by the Jawists which failed and as a result, Jeremiah was taken, with some of these involved, into exile in Egypt.
• There was already a substantial Jewish settlement in Egypt in the delta area at Elephantine; they had a temple built there.
• The last edition of Jeremiah's materials was after 560 and there are very complex textual problems with the book.
• There are two editions, 1 Greek and 1 Hebrew which may have a separate history going back to the exile.

Theology of Jeremiah

• The general populace was Jerimiah's audience, while for the 8th cent prophets it was the leaders.
• Also, the southern kingdom, unlike the north, had all kings in the line of David.
• The 8th cent. belief that one can know what God is doing has been undermined.
• Jeremiah felt we can't understand God; the point is, knowledge won't get one anywhere while the 8th cent. prophets thought it would.
  
  
• No amount of human intelligence will help one understand what is happening in the Macrocosm.
• Thus, the emphasis is on the microcosm, i.e.., the individual human.
• So, beginning with Jeremiah and followed by Ezekial and II Isaiah, the concern is with what is happening to the individual
• What is important is how I undergo these events in my relationship to God as there is total collapse of community
  
  
• Jeremiah 7:16-20 (Read) speaks of the insufficiency of prophecy--he says prophecy itself won't work as the 8th cent. prophets believed
• The prophet can't intercede for the people, can't change the people or their destiny--its already determined.
  
  
• Jeremiah 10:11-16 God's wisdom is transcendent, there is an unmeasurable gulf between God and Man's wisdom. (also, the theme of wisdom literature.)

• 17-18 therefore, God's judgment is equally incomprehensible.
• 19-21 the prophetic response then is suffering in response to God and for the people.
  
  

• Jeremiah 10:22-25 (Read) true prayer is then not to change what God is doing but appealing to God's concern acknowledging man's impudence and sin.
• The role of the prophet is to acknowledge the insufficiency of any religious form and intercede for the people.
  
  
• Jeremiah 31 (Look at)
• The concept of each individual suffering for his/her own sins so the laws of religiousness have shifted from the institution to the individual.
• Hosea used Jacob as a type of leadership in Israel with the idea that even one bad individual (in the earlier view) made the whole society bad.
• Jeremiah used Abraham because of his individual relationship to God.
  
  
• What is suffering?
• If the individual suffers then and it is personal, not institutional, what is its meaning?
• Jeremiah says to be human means to suffer, to undergo events that are not under our control.
• If you can't know God's ways, then the appropriate question is "What do I make out of my suffering?"
• Suffering is to sensitize us to others' sufferings, not to be a pretext for making others suffer.
• This is the only basis of real inter human relationships, not the political.
• suffering should lead us to confess before God and appeal -i.e., admit wrong but appeal for changing that which is wrong in the world around us.
• God is in control of macro-history and incomprehensible to human understanding.
• The point of one's relationship to God is appeal for macro-history.
• One can't understand the Bible unless one sees its concern for all the nations, i.e., macro-history.
• Freewill involves one's relationship to God--not in any other sphere – one can decide what his/her relationship to God is but politics are not in our control.

The New Covenant

• Jeremiah 31:31-34 (Read)– given the above theology he prophecies a new covenant:
• First: which, like the old, will rest upon the initiative and authority of God.
• Second: this covenant will not be like the Mosaic covenant which could be broken as the failure of the Deuteronomic reform had shown but will be a new kind of history.
• Third: the paradox would be that this new covenant would fulfill the original intention of the Sinai (Horeb) covenant.

• Since the meaning of the original covenant had been eclipsed by ritual, the new one would be written upon the heart, the inward center of being and will find expression in a personal response to God.
• Fourth: the new covenant would call into being a new community: YHWH's people, with verse 31 saying it will embrace "the house of Israel and the house of Judah"
• Individualism is far from Jeremiah's mind for he stresses this: covenant formula will be true personally for each member of the community from the least to the greatest.
• Because YHWH will bring about a change of human nature, by giving a new heart (will), there will be a permanent harmony between Israel's will and YHWH's will.
• Fifth: the new covenant will rest upon divine forgiveness. In the context of Jeremiah’s message, it is clear that pardon must be preceded by YHWH's "discipline" which shatters human pride and self-sufficiency and destroys the idols people put their trust in.
• Sixth: the first in the prophecy, has been put last for it pertains to the "last things", the consummation of the divine purpose in history.
• This coming of the new age cannot be dated but is a future for which Israel hopes.
• Jeremiah (chap 32) purchases a field in Judah symbolically to show that this prophecy would be realized on the land, to which the exile would return.
• This anticipation of the New Age assumed greater and greater significance in the years after the fall of Judah.