DEATH THREAT ON THE PROPHET FOR HEEDING GOD’S COMMAND TO PREACH DOOM

DEATH THREAT ON THE PROPHET FOR HEEDING GOD’S COMMAND TO PREACH DOOM

By Fr. Felix (African Times Guest Writer)

The Book of Jeremiah now enters its second

phase, solemnly dated to the first year of King

Jehoiakim. Gone is the time for urging

repentance; it is time now for doom and

destruction.

The Temple will be like Shiloh. Shiloh had been

the first long-term sanctuary in the Holy Land,

latterly presided by Eli and the prophet Samuel.

It was seen as the dwelling-place of the Lord

until the Ark itself was taken into battle and

captured by the Philistines; it was then totally

destroyed, a grim precedent for Jerusalem.

Jeremiah’s own crisis is also approaching, the

decision whether ‘the priests and prophets’ of

the Temple are trustworthy or Jeremiah

himself. Initially the crowds side with Jeremiah

against the officials.

There follows (in the next passage) a sort of

trial scene. Jeremiah is acquitted, but

henceforth he is at loggerheads with elements

of the leadership, an opposition which will

break out again in force in chapter 36.

In fact some hold that the arrangement of the

Book is not at all chronological, but grouped by

subjects, the warnings being grouped in the first

part of the Book. In this case the present scene

might be Jeremiah’s first public proclamation in

the Temple, and the fierce denunciation of the

Temple.