Bible In One Year Day 224 (Jeremiah 1, Ezekiel 27, Proverbs 14:5-8)

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Day 224 The Weeping Prophet 

Agape Bible Study 
Jeremiah 1 

INTRODUCTION

The Prophet Jeremiah lived about a century after the Prophet Isaiah. The words of God spoken to the people through Isaiah brought the covenant people of Judah and their king to repentance, saving them from God's judgment in the form of the Assyrians who had conquered the unrepentant Northern Kingdom of Israel. However, God did not send Jeremiah to call the people to repentance but instead to announce that the time for repentance had passed and the judgment that had been delayed had now come in the form of the Babylonians. Therefore, as conquests of the nation of the Assyrians had been the background of Isaiah's prophetic ministry, the background of Jeremiah's prophetic ministry was the nation of Babylon.

The first lines of the Book of Jeremiah identify Jeremiah, the member of a priestly family from the city of Anathoth, as the book's inspired writer. His story is told for the most part as a personal account and contains the legacy of his prophetic ministry in his prophetic "words," in Hebrew dibre (the same Hebrew word begins and ends the book in Jer 1:1; 51:64), and in his prophetic acts. The book begins with Jeremiah's prophetic call in the town of Anathoth, in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, in the thirteenth year of Davidic King Josiah of Judah in c. 627 BC. His story concludes in Egypt where Jeremiah and other refugees from Judah were seeking asylum sometime after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians that took place in the summer of 587/6 BC.

The Book of Jeremiah is the longest of the prophetic books of the Major Prophets with 21,835 words compared to Isaiah's 16,932 words and Ezekiel's 18,730 words. 

The major theme of the Book of Jeremiah is Jeremiah's role as God's agent in calling Yahweh's judgment upon the remaining covenant people of the Southern Kingdom of Judah "the Northern Kingdom of Israel having been defeated by the Assyrians and taken away into exile in 722 BC. The focus of Jeremiah's mission is as God's prosecuting attorney, calling a covenant lawsuit (in Hebrew a riv) against the people of Judea who have abandoned the covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai and which has resulted in their subsequent deterioration into a sinful, apostasy people.

Jeremiah's name in Hebrew is Yirmeyahu and means "Yahweh will arise." His name prefigures his mission which is the rise of Yahweh in judgment against His apostate people of Judah and their wicked Gentile neighbors. 

Jeremiah, as depicted by Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Chapter 1: Prophecies Against Judah and Jerusalem in the Reign of King Josiah

Jeremiah 1:1-3 ~ Title

These verses, probably written by Jeremiah's servant-scribe and disciple, Baruch son of Neriah, give the title of the work, the pedigree of Jeremiah's priestly family, and define the historical extent of Jeremiah's prophetic ministry. 

Jeremiah had a happy childhood growing up in the priestly town of Anathoth. His upbringing must have been much like that of the prophet Samuel in the household of the high priest Eli at the Sanctuary at Shiloh not far from Anathoth four centuries earlier. According to Jeremiah's own words, he had a loving father who was happy on the day of his birth (Jer 20:15). He writes that his childhood was filled with joy "he had a loving family, and since they were landowners, they were probably well-to-do (Jer 32:9).

His childhood was also must have been happy because the reign of King Josiah was a time of religious renewal for the Southern Kingdom of Judah. 

Jeremiah must also have had a close association with the Jerusalem Temple. If his father was an ordinary chief priest, he would have served in the Temple liturgy on all feast days and during his clan's assigned cycle of service. 

Jeremiah's close association with the Temple and Temple liturgy may be reflected in Jeremiah's psalms. Jerusalem was the center of the nation's musical tradition built around the rich collection of the Temple Psalms. The singing of psalms was part of daily Temple worship, and Jeremiah is the only prophetic writer to include his own psalms in his prophetic work. I

In the early years of his adult ministry, Jeremiah will write "My joy is gone" (Jer 8:18). His mission in calling down God's judgment against his people, prophesizing the destruction of his nation and his beloved Temple, as well as his people's seventy years of exile in a foreign land broke his heart and earned him the title "the weeping prophet." However, Jeremiah is also known as "the prophet of hope" because of the oracles he received from Yahweh promising the preservation of a faithful remnant of Judah and their eventual return to the "Promise Land" after the seventy years of repentance in exile. The word "oracle" comes from the Latin verb ōrāre "to speak" and properly refers to the utterance of a prediction; in Greek it is khrēsmoi (χρησμοί).

Jeremiah 1:4-6 ~ Yahweh's Divine Call and Jeremiah's Protest

Notice that verses 4-19 fall into what is called a chiastic pattern:

• A-1 Articulation of the divine call (verses 4-10)
  • B-1 Vision of the call (verses 11-12)
  • B-2 Vision of the commissioning (verses 13-14)
• A-2 Articulation of the commissioning (verses 15-19)

Jeremiah 1:7-10 ~ Yahweh's Reply and Jeremiah's Mission defined

Jeremiah's objection is more understandable than Moses' objection because Jeremiah was only a child who had not even begun his priestly training. Moses was eighty years old when he received his divine call to ministry. However, in verses 7-8 God did not accept Jeremiah's hesitation in taking up his divinely appointed mission, just as God did not accept Moses' attempt to decline his mission.

Jeremiah 1:11-19 ~ Jeremiah's Commissioning Oracles and the Reasons for God's Judgment

11 The word of Yahweh came to me, asking, "Jeremiah, what do you see?" I answered, "I see a branch of the Watchful Tree."
This is the first of ten object lessons God will give His prophet (see the chart earlier in this lesson or handout 3.

In the first oracle, God asks Jeremiah to tell Him what he sees. Standing in his village, Jeremiah sees a branch of the "Watchful Tree." In verse 11, "Watchful," sheqed, is the Hebrew name for the almond tree. It was the first tree to open its blossoms in February as though it was "watching" and ready to announce the coming of the spring.In the Hebrew there is a play on the words "Watchful," the Hebrew name for the almond tree, and God's assurance "I am watching." God, like the almond tree that watches for the spring, has been "watching" over the word He has placed in Jeremiah's mouth, ready to send Jeremiah on his mission at the right time. This oracle, like the second, probably took place at Jeremiah's village of Anathoth where there are still groves of almond trees today.

Agape Bible Study 
Ezekiel 27 

Ezekiel 27:1-9 ~ Second Lament Over Tyre

This part of the lament compares the city to a magnificent trading vessel, built with precious goods from the different ports on the Mediterranean with whom Tyre traded:

• Cyprus wood from Senir for the planking.
• Cedar from the Lebanon mountains to build a mast and decking.
• Oaks from Bashan for the oars.
• Ivory from the Kittim isles.
• Embroidered linen for sails and a flag from Egypt.
• Costly purple and scarlet textiles from the Elishah islands.
• Manpower for her oars from Sidon and Arvad.
• Experts in shipbuilding from Gebal to maintain her structure.

Verses 8-9 claim that people from the sister city of Sidon and Arvad were her oarsmen and the elders guided the ship of state that was Tyre along with craftsmen from Gebal who made sure Tyre was sea-worthy.

Seir or Hermon was the mountain that terminates the Anti-Lebanon Range in the south. According to Deuteronomy 3:9, its Phoenician name was Sirion and its Amorite name Seir. At one time, it was the northern boundary of Amorite kingdom (Dt 3:8; 4:48).

Lebanon means "white" and probably refers to the snows that cover the upper slopes of the Lebanon Mountains most of the year. The chain of mountains extends north and south along the Syrian coast through the modern country of Lebanon.

Bashan means "fertile plain," and refers to a region of the Upper Transjordan, east of the Sea of Galilee that extended from the foot of Mt. Hermon (Mt. Seir) on the north to the Yarmuk River on the south.

Ezekiel 27:9b-24 ~ The Second Lament Continued: Tyre's Trading Partners

Tyre's influence was international; men and nations from the islands and city-states across the Mediterranean and the city-states and nations of Africa, Asia Minor, Europe, and Mesopotamia made alliances or trade agreements with her. Locate these different cities and peoples on a map of the ancient world:

• Men from Persia (Southeastern Asia/Persian Gulf, modern Iran), Lud and Put (northwest Africa) sent mercenaries to serve in the army.
• The sons of Arvad manned her walls with their warriors, while the Gammadians manned her towers. Arvad was a Phoenician port north of Tyre. The Gammadians, according to the Jewish Targum of Jonathan, were from Cappadocia, a region in Central Anatolia (Asia Minor/modern Turkey).
• Tarshish (Iberian Peninsula or Carthage in North Africa according to the Jewish Targum of Jonathan) traded with Tyre because of her abundant resources and exchanged merchandise for silver, iron, tin, and lead.
• Javan, Tubal, and Meshech traded merchandise, slaves, and bronze artefacts. Javan refers to Greek contacts, possibly Ionia, an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Jewish 1^st-century AD historian Flavius Josephus identified Tubal and Meshech with the Cappadocians. Other traditions identify them with other Caucasus people as well as Armenians.
• Beth-Togarmah traded horses, chargers, mules. They are probably the Cimmerians, an ancient Indo-European people living north of the Caucasus and the Sea of Azov as early as 1300 BC until they were driven southward into Anatolia during the 8th century BC.
• The people of Dedan from the Arabian Desert paid for goods in ivory tusks and ebony.
• Edom, south of the Dead Sea, traded for manufactured goods, exchanging garnets, purple, embroideries, fine linen, coral, and rubies.
• Judah and Israel traded with them, bringing grain from Minnith, pannag, honey, oil, and balm. Minnith was a region in the Transjordan. Pannag is an unknown word.
• The city of Damascus, Syria traded for quantities of manufactured goods and other goods of all kinds, in exchange for wine from Helbon (perhaps the city of Aleppo, Syria) and wool from Zahar (as a place-name it is unknown. Zahar may instead mean a kind of wool, like unbleached wool).
• Dan, Javan, and Uzal supplied wrought iron, cassia (a tree or shrub), and reeds in exchange for goods. Dan probably refers to northern Israel. Javan refers to the Ionian cities along the coast of Asia Minor or Greece proper, and Uzal the people in Western Asia at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
• Dedan, a tribal people of the Arabian Desert, traded in saddle-cloths.
• Arabia and all the sheikhs of Kedar were customers. The Kedarenians were a tribe of the Arabian Desert.
• The merchants of Sheba and Raamah traded with the finest spices, precious stones and gold for merchandise. Sheba was a south Arabian kingdom, probably Yemen. Raamah, a small nation of traders near Sheba.
• Haran, Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur and Chilmad traded textiles including embroidered and purple cloaks, multi-colored materials and strong plaited cords. Haran is a city on the upper Euphrates River, Canneh and Eden are probably towns on the middle Euphrates, Sheba is probably modern-day Yemen, Asshur was the first capital city of the old Assyrian Empire located on the Tigris River, and Chimad is an unknown town. Many of the place-names are found among the descendants of Noah in the Table of Nations in Genesis Chapter 10.

Ezekiel 27:25-36 ~ Tyre's Judgment

Tyre's judgment was to lose her status as the greatest commercial port on the Mediterranean. The thirteen years the army of the Babylonians besieged Tyre destroyed her wealth in trade, and severely diminished the wealth of her trading partners. The trading partners, who helped to make Tyre wealthy and for whom she brought great wealth in trade-goods, mourned her fate as well as their significant losses in revenue. Although Tyre survived the Babylonian siege, she never regained the wealth and influence she had previously known as the premier trading center of the Mediterranean. In the absence of Tyre's fleet of trading vessels visiting ports on the Mediterranean and caravans carrying away the goods unloaded at her port, other port cities took her place. When she resumed her trading and shipping activities, she no longer had a monopoly in trade on the Mediterranean.

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A Daily Defense 

DAY 224 Mary’s Savior

CHALLENGE: “Mary says, ‘My spirit rejoices in God my Savior’ (Luke 1:47). This means that she was a sinner and couldn’t have been immaculately conceived.”

DEFENSE :God can save a person in multiple ways, and Mary was saved by God in more than one sense.

Salvation from the eternal consequences of sin only comes into focus with the ministry of Jesus. Prior to this, the Bible is overwhelmingly concerned with salvation from temporal calamities (war, disease, famine, death, and so on). We may refer to this as temporal salvation.

This seems to be what Mary has in mind. She says she rejoices in God her Savior, “for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden—for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me.” God has thus saved her from a low estate and given her an exalted one to be remembered and honored forever.

This is reinforced as Mary then lists multiple kinds of temporal salvation (“He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. He has helped his servant Israel” Luke 1:51–54). It is also suggested by the parallel canticle in which Zechariah proclaims the praise of God as temporal Savior (Luke 1:68–75).

There is also a sense in which God saves Mary from sin: He saved her from ever contracting it. Theologians sometimes compare the way God rescued Mary from sin to stopping a person from falling into a pit as opposed to pulling him out of a pit. Both can be described as saving a person from a pit, but which would you prefer?

Being saved from ever committing sin is a more excellent form of salvation than rescuing a person from sin after he has fallen into it. Thus Mary was redeemed, in view of what Christ would do on the cross, in a way that prevented her from falling into sin, and so the Catechism refers to her as “the most excellent fruit of redemption” (CCC 508). 

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist