Jeremiah 9b. The Creator Weeps.

Jeremiah 9: 10-11. 

For the mountains, I will take up weeping and wailing    

and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness,

because they are laid waste so that no one passes through,   

and the lowing of cattle is not heard;

both the birds of the air and the animals   

have fled and are gone.

I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins,   

a lair of jackals,

and I will make the towns of Judah a desolation,   

without inhabitants.

 The NRSV does not begin like this, but I have looked at the Hebrew, read the commentaries (John Goldingay and Christopher J. H. Wright) and have accepted the way most translations and versions have translated the verse. Instead of a command to “take up weeping,” it is more like God is saying, “I take up weeping….” 

 A few versions insert ‘Jeremiah’ after the ‘I’, but that is not in the Hebrew. Like the question of voice in other places, it is ambiguous. Is it God or is it Jeremiah speaking? I have made it clear that I am leaning toward seeing this as a false dichotomy, or at least a paper-thin one. Jeremiah is becoming so attached to God that, if God is weeping, so is he, and if Jeremiah is weeping, then God is behind it all.

 In addition, as the ‘I’ continues to speak, and it is certainly God who speaks because Jeremiah will not lay waste to Jerusalem. 

 So, what does this mean? Shockingly, the Creator is weeping for his creation, both humans, and animals, and for the environment. All creation is suffering because of the bad behavior of humans. The Apostle Paul confirmed this view in Romans 8: 18-25.

 YHWH, the Creator and Covenant God of the people of Israel, which includes this remnant left in the doomed Kingdom of Judah, is weeping because his people have turned their back on him and they have broken the Covenant. In a last-ditch effort, God is meting out punishment in the hope that the few who remain will accept correction, and God is weeping while he does it. Do the people care, or have they drifted so far away that they do not even know how much God cares? 

9: 12-16.   Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the LORD spoken, so that they may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? And the LORD says: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accordance with it  but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Ba’als, as their ancestors taught them. Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am feeding this people with wormwood and giving them poisonous water to drink. I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have consumed them.”

 My grammar and spell checker wants me to replace ‘this people’ with ‘these people’, but I won’t do it. There is an individualistic dimension here, these people, each one. But the overriding concern is the group; ‘this people’, God says, whom I have called out to be a special people to carry on my mission. ‘This people’; “They would not listen, they're not listening still, perhaps they never will.”

  9: 17-21.  Thus says the LORD of hosts:

“Consider! Call for the mourning women to come;   

send for the skilled women to come;

let them quickly raise a dirge over us,   

so that our eyes may run down with tears   

and our eyelids flow with water.

For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion:   

‘How we are ruined!   

We are utterly shamed

because we have left the land,   

because they have cast down our dwellings’.”

“Hear, O women, the word of the LORD,   

and let your ears receive the word of his mouth;

teach to your daughters a dirge   

and each to her neighbor a lament.‘

Death has come up into our windows.   

it has entered our palaces

to cut off the children from the streets   

and the young men from the squares’.”

 God speaks, probably to Jeremiah, saying that it is time for the people to begin mourning because destruction is so near. Jeremiah passes the message along to the women who are the leaders in professional mourning at funerals. Jeremiah carries out his sad prophetic duty, warning the people about their ungodly ways, and then when it is too late, warning the people to prepare for death and destruction. 

 Where are we in this divine cycle? Are our pastors, priests, and bishops supposed to only give us good news? Remember God’s admonition to the preachers and prophets not to cry “Peace, peace” when there is no peace. God warned the preachers and prophets not to assure the people that they are safe when they think that God is in the temple or the church and so can do no harm. Jeremiah confirms that God is not a tame lion under our control. It is us who must wait on him and be obedient to his commands to love God and love others as ourselves; to deny ourselves daily and take up our cross in sacrificial service. Do we understand that? Or, has nothing changed since Jeremiah’s time?