Faith

Image above – The Assyrian King Sennacherib on his throne at Nineveh  (British Museum)

No consolation for this nation – Friday, 18th week in ordinary time – Nahum 1:15;2:2;3:1-3. 6-7

The text of today really pops out of nowhere and today’s first reading of the Eucharistic liturgy covers the entire book of the prophet Nahum; all three chapters! Perhaps this book would have liturgically fitted in better if it was placed after the book of Isaiah and Micah and before the prophet Jeremiah.

Israel, in the northern kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians in the year 723 BC. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, located near Mosul in modern day Iraq. The RSV Bible tells us that Nahum begins to prophecy this ‘burden’ against Assyria in the year 713 BC. It’s been just ten years since Israel has fallen to a cruel nation and the wounds are still raw, the memories of pain are still alive. However other scholars think a bit differently and while we don’t know exactly when Nahum gave this prophecy there are a couple of clues in the oracle. Nahum mentions the destruction of the Egyptian city No Amon (Thebes) in Nahum 3:8 and Thebes fell to the Assyrians in 663 B.C., so Nahum must have been written after that. Nineveh was destroyed 50 years after No Amon (612 B.C.). Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon with the assistance of the Medes attacked and destroyed Nineveh.

Nahum is the only prophetic work to be called a ‘book’(Nahum1:1). It is described as a ‘burden’ (Hebrew – massa) or an oracle. An oracle, by its very nature, indicated that it was directed against a foreign nation. The fact that this is an oracle makes it clear that Nahum was directing this prophecy against a hated enemy, namely Assyria (referred to by its capital, Nineveh). Make no mistake, the words are shrill and vitriolic. The prophet Nahum has been ‘criticized’ for his unmitigated glee over the fall of the enemy. The destruction of Nineveh finally did take place in 612 BC. The oracle has several images that compare Nineveh negatively; the nation is called a pool, den of lions, prostitute, yielding fig trees and a swarm of locust.

Nahum’s singular focus on the impending judgment of Nineveh, offers a continuation of the story that began in Jonah. God had sent Jonah to Nineveh to preach repentance and hope to the Assyrian people, a message they heard and adopted—at least for a time. Years later, during the time of Nahum, the Assyrians had returned to their bullish ways, conquering the northern kingdom of Israel and lording their power over Judah in the south (2 Kings 17:1–6; 18:13–19:37). Jonah failed to realize what Nahum reminded the people of Judah: God’s justice is always right and always sure. Should He choose to grant mercy for a time, that good gift will not compromise the Lord’s ultimate sense of justice for all in the end.

And so, God executed vengeance against Nineveh while he comforted his people. Nahum, whose very name means ‘consolation’ proclaims the impossibility of the consolation of Nineveh. This destruction of Nineveh will bring joy to God’s people who were taken into exile by Assyria and who suffered at the hands of Nineveh. The fall of Nineveh is the wrath of God and an act of divine justice in favour of God’s people. Assyria, who had plundered the nations and torn them like prey for its voracious appetite, will now herself be plundered and become the prey of another nation.

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Faith

Thursday, 18th week in ordinary time – Jeremiah 31:31-34

It was hard for a dispirited people to see the light at the end of the tunnel, especially when the tunnel of exile would last seventy years. So, words of consolation and assurance are important. Jesus, knowing that he was to die and rise again assured his disciples that he would send the Holy Spirit, another advocate to help them. These were words of assurance and comfort.

We are in the ‘book of consolation’, chapters 30 and 31 of the prophet Jeremiah. In today’s text the words of assurance and consolation are once again reiterated; “the days are SURELY coming says the Lord.” Yet this coming is not just a relief from the pain of being separated from land and temple (the pillars of Judaism) but by the forming of a ‘new covenant.’ Unlike a contract, a covenant is permanent. It was not God who broke the covenant with Israel, it was the choices that a nation made against their God that brought their destruction

Now God wants to make a ‘new covenant’ unlike the one made with the ancestors of the Israelites. What will be so new in this covenant?

Knowing the repeated failure of his people. God eventually promised a brand-new covenant. When God gave the Torah to Moses it was the people who said to Moses, you go to Yahweh and whatever he tells us we will do. This came from a good heart, a noble heart but God knew of their inability to keep the law completely and so he said “oh that my people had such a heart within them.”

So, in Jeremiah 31, the time has come for God to announce a brand-new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31). It is now God who makes the covenant for he says, “I will make a covenant”. He does not say ‘we will’ make a covenant. This was not a bilateral covenant but a unilateral covenant. God says, ‘I am going to do the heavy lifting, I will get the job done, I will set the terms of the covenant; all that Israel has to do is to trust.’

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Again and again and again – Wednesday, 18th week in ordinary time – Jeremiah 31:1-7

We continue with the study of the ‘Book of Consolation’ found in chapters 30 and 31 of the prophet Jeremiah. ‘The book is so called because God’s mercy and faithfulness (31:3) is presented with God’s great ability to comfort and to open the hearts of the afflicted’ ( Pope Francis).

The text of today is an exilic text. After years of warnings from Jeremiah and several other prophets, disaster finally befalls Judah: the city of Jerusalem is sacked, the temple destroyed, the king and his court deported or dead. The deportees who survived the journey to Babylonia were faced with a strange new life in a foreign country, their movements and actions were subject to a foreign power, whose orders were conveyed through authorities speaking a foreign language.

The exile was a devastating experience for the people of Israel. Their faith had wavered because they found themselves  in a strange land; without the Temple, without worship and after seeing their homeland destroyed, it was difficult continue to believe in the goodness of the Lord.

For the Jews, the loss of the two pillars of Judaism, the temple and their land was tantamount to a loss of national identity. They were de facto ‘persona non grata’ The Lord, who promised David a continuous kingship in his lineage, had now deserted them. With this, all hope for Israel seemed dead. Jeremiah, who was the prophet of the doom until now, comes with a message from God. He addresses the Israelites who have been deported to Babylon with the ‘promise of the new covenant’. He foretells their return to the homeland. This return is a sign of the infinite love of God, the Father who never abandons his children, but who takes care of them and saves them.

The text opens with God reiterating what he said in 30:22; ‘They shall be HIS people and he shall be THEIR God. But he will not just be God of some families who were faithful and who survived the exile but God to all of Israel. (31:2) Much consolation is found for the sinner in these words. God’s mercy (hessed) or as the text of today puts it, HIS faithfulness, does not distinguish between saint and sinner. His love is for all who wish to receive it.

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Faith

When division leads to multiplication – Tuesday, 18th week in ordinary time – Jeremiah 30:1-2,12-15,18-22

This section is dated, “in the tenth year of King Zedekiah”, who, you remember, was the last of the kings of Judah. The captivity of Judah by Babylon took place in the eleventh year of his reign, so things are very close to the end. The city has been under siege for over a year, and already sharp famine has set in. There is no bread in the city at all, and it looks to be only a matter of weeks before the city must capitulate to the siege of the Babylonian forces. There is no relief in sight, no one on the horizon to help them. The nation is facing perhaps the darkest hour in all its history.

For twenty-three years, Jeremiah had prophesied the coming destruction of Jerusalem (from God’s case against Judah in chapter 2 through chapter 28). His tone, thus far, has been largely one of judgment. Then in chapters 30-33 which is also called the ‘Book of Consolation’, the prophet looked forward to the restoration of God’s kingdom. While the situation, humanly speaking, could not have been darker, God commands Jeremiah to speak out concerning the future while also addressing the present.

We see the bright light of God’s intended future blessing for His covenant nation; the combined and restored northern and southern kingdoms. The promises of God are both surprising and magnificent. Surprising in light of the manifold iniquities of God’s people and magnificent in their breadth and scope of peace and prosperity.

God spoke to the Jewish people honestly about their sinful condition, and that among men there was no one to plead their cause. In the history of the people of Judah, her people often trusted in and gave themselves to foreign nations hoping they would protect them, relying for help against Babylon. The reality was that Judah was abandoned in her hour of need.

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Don’t mess with God – Monday, 18th week in ordinary time – Jeremiah 28:1-17

King Zedekiah was the last of the kings of Judah before king and country were taken into exile in 586 BC. Today’s narrative is part of a larger section that spans chapters 27 and 28. It is set in the fourth year of King Zedekiah. In chapter 27, Yahweh asks Jeremiah to wear a wooden ox yoke to send a visual message to his people. This was to be an Instagram moment that would get no ‘likes’ for the people were told to submit to the yoke of the Babylonians

At this time, Jerusalem was hosting an international conference (27:3). Representatives from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon were all present. Apparently they were trying to decide what to do about the Babylonian problem (27:1-3). The prophet’s message from Yahweh to them was clear: Don’t rebel! (27:5-11). He delivered the same message to King Zedekiah to submit to, and serve the king of Babylon (27:12-15).

Whereas previously the role of the prophets was to call upon Israel’s kings to resist allegiances to foreign kings or powers (e.g., Hosea 5:13; 8:9-11), according to Jeremiah it would now be false prophets would who say such words (27:14-15). These prophets keep saying “Don’t worry! Everything’s going to be fine (Jeremiah 23:17)! But in doing this they have drummed up their own “prosperity preaching”. Their words are smooth, sweet, comforting. “But my word,” says the prophet, speaking in the name of the LORD, “is like fire, like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces!” (Jeremiah 23:29)

One of the ‘prosperity preachers’ was a prophet called Hananiah who claimed that God had broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. He claimed that in two years God would bring back to Jerusalem the vessels of the house of the Lord along with King Jeconiah and the exiles. It was in 605 BC that The Babylonians had first attacked Jerusalem and taken the temple vessels and the king and several citizens of Jerusalem as ‘captives’. This was done in order to prevent any insurgency or rebellion by the people of Judah. It was in this exile that Daniel and his companions were carried away.

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