Bible Verses That Freak Me Out # 26 – "Lord, you tricked me!" - Jeremiah 20:7

The Prophet Jeremiah by Rembrandt

Nobody volunteers to be a prophet. I heard this recently from a Lutheran pastor, and thought about Moses, Isaiah, and of course, Jonah, all of whom went to various lengths to get out of the job.

It’s not hard to see why. Telling people what they don’t want to hear is always difficult, and the prophets got to tell people in some unique ways that often involved their own suffering, and traditionally, martyrdom.

Take Jeremiah for an example. The northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed about 100 years before Jeremiah got the call to announce the impending doom of Judah. He served as a prophet for about 40 years – his entire life, in other words.

And he got some specific instructions concerning how his life would differ from those around him. He would not get married or have children. He would not attend weddings or funerals. (Jeremiah 16 :1-13) The first was essentially a death sentence for an Israelite – at this point most future hope was centered on children. The second meant Jeremiah was absent from the most important social events of his culture. The reason: there was no point in getting married, having kids, celebrating other people’s weddings, or even mourning the dead, because soon Judah would be destroyed. “You won’t get to enjoy your marriage,” Jeremiah’s absence said, “and soon there will be so many dead it will be impossible to mourn them all.”

Yikes. Kind of a downer.

Jeremiah is fairly unique in that we get to see at least some of his reaction to his vocation, in passages like these:

“Why has my pain been perpetual and my wound incurable? Will You indeed be to me like a deceptive stream, with water that is unreliable?” – Jeremiah 15:18

“O Lord, you deceived me and I was deceived; you have overcome me and prevailed!” – Jeremiah 20:7

Are we uncomfortable yet? Does this seem a little too honest? Do we not like the idea of discontented prophets? Do we not like our own feelings of distrusting or disbelieving God when we feel like He’s pulled the rug out from under us? Do we not like the way God doesn’t seem to line up with His reputation for being a God of love and justice?
What do we do then?

Jeremiah 20:9 is instructive – “But if I say, ‘I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,’ then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.”

Two things:
1) Jeremiah apparently tried to quit
2) It didn’t take

When you feel like your bone marrow is on fire if you aren’t doing your job, that’s a pretty good indication that you have strong feelings about it. And however much Jeremiah hated his job – he had to do it.

And it’s a good thing he did. In his lifetime Babylon took anybody who was anybody – king, princes, priests, craftsmen – and they went in exile to Babylon. Ten years later the Babylonians came back and burned Jerusalem and Solomon's temple to the ground.

In an ancient worldview, there would normally be only one way to interpret this. If two countries fought, it wasn’t just the armies fighting, it was their gods. If Egypt beat Assyria in battle, it meant Egypt’s gods were stronger. Simple.

So when Babylon conquers Yahweh’s country, and burns down His temple, the most natural interpretation for Babylonians and Jews would have been that Babylon’s gods beat Yahweh, and possibly that Yahweh was dead. The Jews in exile could literally look out their windows in Babylon and see the temples of the gods who beat their God.

Except…there was this prophet named Jeremiah. He had told them over and over that this would happen, and that it was in reality Yahweh’s plan. Jeremiah also said Yahweh would return them from exile (something that never happened to anybody before). And maybe, just maybe, Jeremiah was right. After all, hadn’t Yahweh done it before, thousands of years ago, with another unwilling prophet who came to a foreign country and said “Let my people go?” God seemed to have this pattern of re-creating His people from seemingly impossible circumstances. Slavery. Idolatry. Exile.

So, thanks Jeremiah. You had a rough go of it. But through you God did something that doesn’t happen except when a person gets a message from beyond the confines of this world, when there is a fire in their bones that has no natural explanation – through you God gave His people hope.

Around the Office: Two Good Things in One

Everyone likes to have things around them at work that fill them with a sense of happiness or well-being. Whether you work at home, an office, a cubicle, the driver’s seat of your vehicle, or a off-shore oil rig, chances are you have stuff in your work space that makes you happy.

Here’s one of mine:


That’s right. It’s a combination of two of my favorite things: puppets and John the Baptist. Look at him. Doesn’t he make you just want to repent and be baptized? I made John here several years ago during an “art therapy” session with a college student. I am especially proud of his tissue paper dreadlocks.

Here’s a close-up of his hands:


Looks like John is about to do lunch! Mmmmm. Locusts and wild honey! Nutritious and delicious. J.the B. is also sporting his 100% camel-hair tunic. All the rage among desert-dwelling prophets. Wrinkle-free!

Bible Verses That Freak Me Out #16 - The Children of the Prophets

“So I approached the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. Then the LORD said to me, “Name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. (Swift is the Booty, Speedy is the Prey)” – Isaiah 8:3

“So he went and took Gomer…and she conceived and bore him a son. And the LORD said to him, “Name him Jezreel, for yet a little while and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel” …And she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the LORD said to him, “Name her Lo-Ruhamah (She Has Not Obtained Compassion), for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel.”…When she has weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-Ammi (Not My People), for you are not my people and I am not your God.” – Hosea 1:3-9

Old Testament prophets are awesome. In the little-explored backwaters of the Old Testament they lurk, giving theological gems to those patient enough to wade through oracles on Tyre and Sidon, dedicated enough to put them in context, and persistent enough to hang with them. Preaching to everyone, castigating the rich, excoriating the powerful, condemning the corrupt, comforting the afflicted, soap-box orating to the nation, offending kings, praising the poor, and talking back to God. And occasionally they do some REALLY CRAZY things God told them to do – all to get the message across. I love Old Testament prophets.

One of the really crazy things that God told Isaiah and Hosea (who were contemporaries, somewhere between 800 and 700 B.C.) to do was give their kids weird names.

Isaiah (who’s wife is also a prophet, by the way) names his second child Maher-shalal-hash-baz, or Swift is the Booty, Speedy is the Prey. His first child is Immanuel (see 7:14 – yes, yes, I know that verse is about Christmas, but it’s also about the fall of the Arameans – read the whole chapter, it’s all there). Immanuel - not so bad. A little unusual, but the message is encouraging. But Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Man, that’s awesome. Imagine the banner at Isaiah’s house after Mrs. Isaiah delivers - “Welcome Maher-shalal-hash-baz!” You’d need two walls for that thing. It’s a great name though, in Hebrew and English. Unless of course you’re poor little Maher-shalal-hash-baz. At Hebrew school little Ahaz and Joab just zip through learning to spell their names, and the poor little guy is stuck somewhere between “shalal” and “hash” while everyone else goes out to recess.

But if Maher is hard up, poor Hosea’s kids have it worse. Weird as they are, at least Isaiah’s kids’ names signify good news – the defeat of Israel’s enemies. And both of their parents are prophets, so anytime they ask, “Mom, why my name is different?” Mrs. Isaiah has it covered.

Hosea though, he’s got a son whose name is supposed to threaten vengeance on the king of Israel, a daughter whose name means “No Compassion,” and another son whose name means God has rejected His people.

And their mom is a former prostitute who struggles with adultery.

Did Gomer object to naming her children such things? Did Hosea answer her objections with, "For Yahweh's sake, your name is Gomer!!"? No scholarly consensus can be reached on such questions.

And what did poor little Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah, and Lo-Ammi do in Hebrew School when the teacher is going down the list of names? Did little Joash and Jonadab stare quizzically and giggle at “Not My People?” Did he have to explain what his name meant every time he met someone, or was it like when you meet an adult named Rainbow or Moonflower and they say, “My parents were hippies,” and everyone goes “Oh! That explains it!” When people raised their eyebrows at the name “No Compassion,” did she just have to roll her eyes, sigh loudly, and say “My dad’s a prophet,” and everyone said, “Oh! Say no more!”? The Bible is full of such mysteries.

One thing that is not mysterious is that Hosea’s message - and the names of he and Gomer's children - doesn’t end with judgment. In chapter 2, the first half of the oracle is a withering condemnation of Israel’s idolatry, pictured as God divorcing his brazenly adulterous wife, exposing her shame and banishing her to the desert. And the second half?

“Therefore behold, I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness, and speak upon her heart…It will come about in that day, declares the LORD, that you will call Me Husband, and will no longer call Me Master.” – Hosea 2:14, 16

God, the One betrayed, meets his adulterous wife in the desert and woos her back into his arms, offering her protection from every harmful thing, and promising a better relationship than before.

"I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD." - Hosea 2:19-20

And the names of Hosea’s children are redeemed – “And it will come about in that day that I will respond, declares the LORD, I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth, and the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine, and to the oil, and they will respond to God Sowing (the literal meaning of Jezreel). And I will sow her for Myself in the land. I will also have compassion on Her Who Had Not Obtained Compassion, and I will say to those who were Not My People – “You are My people!” and they will say “You are my God!” – Hosea 2:21-23

Jezreel, the valley of bloodshed, becomes the place where God plants his garden – a place of Compassion, a place where those who had been rejected now live in unity with God as His People.

Both Peter and Paul quote Hosea 9:23 (1 Peter 2:10, Romans 9:25), as a prophecy about God calling all people to be His people. Immanuel, God Sows, She Who Has Obtained Compassion, and My People. Thank God for the children of the prophets.