Understanding Jeremiah 2:1-3

The only way to pursue a grounded understanding of a biblical passage is by reading it in Hebrew and thinking it through from the point of view of structure, themes, and diction. If attention is given to fine detail, what is now the consensus interpretation, more often than one might imagine, will seem to stand in need of correction.

Most widely used Bible translations are products of committees that adjudicate by bowing to consensus. They are products of a herd mentality.

Most modern commentators do not take the time to re-examine the text from the ground up. Few give older, traditional understandings of the text their due, or deign to notice that older construals clash, in whole or in part, with what is now the consensus interpretation.

But if one thinks a passage through in Hebrew at the level of diction, structure, and themes, in full pursuit of connections with potential co-texts, “new old” discoveries await.

Consider, for example, Jeremiah 2:1-3.

Read on its own – in Hebrew, not in translation, since all recent translations imply otherwise – it is indisputable that Jer 2:1-3 is an oracle of assurance. יהוה remembers in favor of a “you” feminine singular a past of mutual loyalty. That past, however remote, is still generative. Israel, it is affirmed, has been set apart, the first fruits of a divine harvest. A promise follows. Now and into the future, disaster will befall whosoever devours those first fruits. Messing with Israel is presented as tantamount to violating the sanctity of יהוה’s table, to partaking of what belongs to יהוה and no other.

In the Sabbath lectionary tradition of the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, Jer 2:1-3 is read as a foil of hope to the preceding Jer 1 which announces impending catastrophe. 2:1-3 gives grounds for expecting a post-catastrophe reinstatement, equivalent to the building and planting post-destruction to which 1:10 alludes.

The specific wording of Jer 2:1-3 which comports with “the oracle of protection” interpretation and the witness of Jewish tradition are ignored in run-of-the-mill exegesis and translation. The point of departure for the standard issue “oracle of judgment” interpretation is the immediate context.  Jer 1:13-16 and 2:4-37 speak of unremitting judgment. In that light, Jer 2:1-3 is read as purely retrospective, offering no hope for the present of the implied audience of the text.

Once upon a time, on this interpretation, Israel was holy to its deity, and enjoyed that deity’s protection. No longer.

In my view, Jer 2:1-3 is meant to assure a post-destruction community in Jerusalem or still in exile of precisely the opposite. It is meant as a direct counter to the hopelessness fueled by the reality evoked in Jer 50:7: “All who found them devoured them. Their adversaries asserted, ‘We shall not incur guilt because they have sinned against יהוה.’”

Jer 2:1-3 has a function similar to, in particular, Lev 26:39-45; Deut 30:1-10; Isaiah 2:1-4; 6:13; 40:1-2; Jer 31:23-25; and Ezek 16:59-63. Jer 2:1-3 shares structure, themes, diction, and a common horizon with said passages. That is, Jer 2:1-3 motivates and announces a reversal of the nation’s reversals. Israel is holy to its deity. Those who prey on Israel will receive their comeuppance.

Jer 2:1-3 presents itself as a self-contained unit. Read as such, with the oracle itself understood as poetry, it looks like this and is translatable as follows:

וַיְהִי דְבַר־יהוה אֵלַי לֵאמֹר׃

הָלֹךְ וְקָרָאתָ בְאָזְנֵי יְרוּשָׁלַםִ לֵאמֹר

כֹּה אָמַר יהוה

זָכַרְתִּי לָךְ חֶסֶד נְעוּרַיִךְ                   אַהֲבַת כְּלוּלֹתָיִךְ

        לֶכְתֵּךְ אַחֲרַי בַּמִּדְבָּר                      בְּאֶרֶץ לֹא זְרוּעָה׃

      קֹדֶשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל לַיהוה                      רֵאשִׁית תְּבוּאָתֹה^̇ 

        כָּל־אֹכְלָיו יֶאְשָׁמוּ                         רָעָה תָּבֹא אֲלֵיהֶם

נְאֻם־יהוה׃

The word of יהוה came to me, quote:

Go and repeat in the ears of Jerusalem the following:

This is what יהוה said:

I have remembered in your favor the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
your coming after me in the open,
in land not sown.

Israel is holy to יהוה,
the first-fruits of his harvest;
all who eat thereof will incur guilt,
misfortune will come to them.

A dictum of יהוה.

COMMENT

“I have remembered in your favor” – compare “I will remember in their favor” in Lev 26:45. “The devotion of your youth” – compare “respond as in the days of her youth” in Hos 2:17. “Holy” - compare “holy seed” in Isa 6:13. The generational transfer of divine favor from one generation which merited it to others that don’t, is deeply rooted in biblical literature and finds classical expression in the Ten Words, Exod 20:5. It is also an empirical reality of enormous proportions apart from the metaphysical frame in which one interprets the fundamental datum.

The notion that Israel was holy to the Lord, as opposed to, is holy to the Lord, cannot be found in the above text. It must be superimposed on it. The notion that Israel’s enemies used to encounter disaster if they devoured Israel but risk nothing now, is also without basis. In the selfsame book of Jeremiah, for Babylon, too, what comes around goes around. The notion that the yiqtols in Jer 2:3 are iterative past constructions or simple preterites lacks a text-immanent foundation. Jer 2:3 contains a statement - to be precise, a verbless clause - followed by a promise - a statement marked by the use of yiqtol(s). The sequence is well-known from oracles of assurance. Compare “You are my servant whom I have chosen ... your contenders will become as naught and perish” in Isa 41:9-11.

The only translation I’ve found so far that understands Jer 2:1-3 as if it recorded an oracle of assurance and translates the yiqtols accordingly is Douay-Rheims 1899. The only commentator I’ve found so far that does the same is Michael Fishbane, in the Haftarot volume of the Jewish Publication Society Bible Commentary series (pp. 256-257). 

 

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

It is an interesting coincidence to me that we tonight in a Bible study were discussing the tension that a human feels when the issue of election arises.

Our study was Genesis 28:10-17. There is some irony in 'the devotion of your youth'. What does this refer to? (In your translation you avoided the word desert - any particular reason?) It seems to me that God's choice of Israel had and has severe consequences for them and further that the promise of God's faithfulness to them as a people is 'mandatory' and a sure sign to all who have believed from all nations. At the same time - hermeneutically - I see and feel the application of such a promise (as Jer 2:1-2) to anyone who is 'in' the work of the Anointed Jesus. I would struggle to explain why I see in this way - but somehow the particular history of Israel in the faithfulness of יהוה has to also find application in my own life - the zeal/devotion - even misplaced - of my youth, but more importantly the seal of the Spirit.

Yet I could not deny this to historical Israel - either then or now. I cannot see that the Anointing - the joy and love - that is revealed in the poetry is different from the correction and joy that one who is 'in Christ' (to use the more familiar phrase) is supposed to 'know'. ...For they will all know me, says יהוה from the greatest to the least.

It's not hard for me to jump immediately to Isaiah 11:9 or Habakkuk 2:14 - yet the image that grasped me in Israel today from our recent trip is of a pomegranate in razor wire. (Image here -

Let us pray for this complex city.

[David Reimer]

Hi John - fascinating (and challenging) reflections. Curiously enough, I did some thinking about this same text a long time ago, but still have the notes to hand. (Pack-rat that I am...)

My interest in Jer 2:3 was in connection with the light it shed on Jer 50:6-7. I see in my notes that Jer 2:3 had been connected by Michael Fishbane to Lev 22:14-16 as an example of "aggadic exegesis" (Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 300-304 [see p. 301]), and independently (it seems) before that by Jacob Milgrom (Cult and Conscience, 70-71).

I think that trajectory finds a further development in Jer 50:6-7 (unnoticed by either of those great exegetes). If in 2:3 the burden of guilt is on those who "devour" Israel (thus desecrating something holy -- just as you have it), in 50:7 it is the flock itself that is responsible, as they are now guilty -- so its enemies claim. But since this is a corollary of 50:6, the enemies seem to have got this right at this point.

The connections and contrasts between the two Jeremiah texts (2:3; 50:7) lend further weight to the reading you're advocating here, it seems to me.

Additionally, my sense tallies with yours: this intersection of texts (with its accompanying interpretation) won't be found in the vast majority of commentators.

Thanks for the stimulus!

[David Reimer]

When I said: "in 50:7 it is the flock itself that is responsible, as they are now guilty", actually, there is more to it than that. :)

Jer 50:6 indicts the "shepherds" as those responsible for the lost flock. Hope remains for the flock itself, if it/they can rouse themselves (like Théoden!) to find their way to true pasture. The claims of their enemies are not to be trusted.

So perhaps, then, the parallels between 2:3 and 50:6-7 are stronger than their contrasts.

(Note to self: Stream-of-consciousness commenting probably not recommended.... ;)

[JohnFH]

Hi Bob,

Election is a multi-colored dreamcoat as it were. Ask Joseph, or ask Calvin, if election is an unadulterated good. Calvin resisted his election to Geneva and the most Joseph could say, through tears, was that others meant harm but God meant it for good.

I replaced the usual gloss of midbar with "the open" because I think desert or wilderness are denotative glosses, whereas I wanted to provide a connotative translation. In the background, there is a subtle allusion to shepherd-sheep it seems to me (see David Reimer's comments on this thread).

Hi David,

I'm glad you caught this. I thought of you as I wrote this post, since I think of you as a Jeremiah specialist. "I wonder if David caught this before me," I mused. (I am embarrassed to say that I have yet to look at your published work on Jeremiah.) Now I know that you did.

Along with a few other things on this blog, I would write this up properly for a purely academic demographic if I had the time. But I don't, so here's hoping that you will find the time to do it.

[Steve Douglas]

A couple years ago, I heard a talk on "the potter and the clay" passage in ch. 18 by Walter Moberly. That passage would seem to unify the message of hope in 2.3 with the seemingly conflicting assessment by Israel's enemies in 50.7. God the Potter has seen it fit to work with "recalcitrant material", material that has been ruined such that, "If there is hope for the future, it is hope only on the far side of judgment; Judah must pass through the valley of deep darkness and cannot go around it." Ch. 18, then, can be seen as something of a waypoint between chs. 2 and 50, affirming both God's promised care for Israel in ch. 2 and their enemies' essentially correct assessment that Israel deserved their treatment at the hands of their enemies, mediating and explaining how Israel's promises will be fulfilled even through judgment. Now that I think of it, though, I suspect this observation is probably found throughout the book!

[JohnFH]

I think you're right, Steve. The message of hope in 2:3 makes sense on the far side of the sequence adumbrated already in Jer 1:10. First comes the work of uprooting - the "alien" work of God according to Isa 28. Then comes the work of re-planting.

However, I would also note that Eicha-Lamentations are part of Holy Scripture. In that book, Zion admits her guilt but also complains that the punishment she received is unbearable. Hope on the far side of unbearable punishment is, nonetheless, the omega point of Jer 31-33, Isa 34-35, 40-66, and on and on.

[Greg Smith]

I thought this statement of yours was priceless. It made me want to laugh and cry.

"Most widely used Bible translations are products of committees that adjudicate by bowing to consensus. They are products of a herd mentality."

I realize this is off your topic but what would be a better model for translation committees to use than consensus?

[JohnFH]

Don't get me going, Greg.

I have some ideas about a better approach but will hold off for the moment. Someday I will put up some considered reflections.

[David Ker]

"The only way to pursue a grounded understanding of a biblical passage is by reading it in Hebrew and thinking it through from the point of view of structure, themes, and diction."

I'm hoping you'll do this for Psalm 16.

[JohnFH]

I've been trying to find time for that, but haven't yet.

Psalm 16 as it stands contains some incomprehensible segments. Once in a while that is the case, even in scripture, which I find comforting somehow.

The holy ones are almost certainly, nonetheless, divine beings that are nothing compared to YHWH, beings whose worship the psalmist rejects.

I hope that helps you get started.

[David Ker]

It is comforting if we have a certain approach to the truth of the text. The Sunday School boy in me still wants to believe that there is an answer.

[David E. S. Stein]

Re: «The only translation I’ve found so far that understands Jer 2:1-3 as if it recorded an oracle of assurance ... is Douay-Rheims 1899. The only commentator I’ve found so far that does the same is Michael Fishbane....»

FYI, from The Haftarah Commentary (NY: UAHC Press, 1996), here is the translation by Chaim Stern:

I remember the devotion
of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed Me in the wilderness
in a land not sown.
[For] Israel is holy to the Eternal,
the first fruit of God's harvest.
All who eat of it shall bear their guilt;
ill shall befall them!
—says the Eternal One.

And in the same book, the comment by W. Gunther Plaut on "shall bear their guilt" reads:

«Israel is "the first fruit of humanity" [Philo], and is compared to the first harvest of the farmer who may not consume all of it but must set aside a portion for God's Temple. Thus a nation that would try to "consume" Israel and destroy it utterly would trespass on God's privilege. Though God may summon such a nation to punish Israel, the agent of divine judgment will itself be punished if it will attempt to annihilate God's people.»

[JohnFH]

Hi David,

Thanks for the references. What I'm wondering at this point is when and where the past tense interpretation took hold. It shows up in Luther and in the KJV, but I doubt that Luther was innovating.