Jeremiah - episode 3

You shall not take a wife in this place

In the present post we review some of the symbolic actions performed by Jeremiah in his ministry. They convey the Lord’s Word through the use of objects, dramatizations, the prophet’s body and life. Their function is to breach the hardened heart of the recipients. «Thus says the LORD to me, “Go, and buy yourself a linen belt, and put it on your waist, and do not put it in water.” So I bought a belt according to the word of the LORD, and put it on my waist. The word of the LORD came to me the second time, saying, “Take the belt that you have bought, which is on your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me. It happened after many days, that the LORD said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take the belt from there, which I commanded you to hide there.” Then I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and took the belt from the place where I had hidden it; and behold, the belt was marred, it was profitable for nothing. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Thus says the LORD, ‘In this way I will mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their heart, and are gone after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this belt, which is profitable for nothing. For as the belt clings to the waist of a man, so have I caused to cling to me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah,’ says the LORD; ‘that they might be my people, my name, my praise, and my glory. But they would not listen» (Jer 13,1-11).



Like the linen belt (linen was used for the priests’ clothes) Judah had to be a holy nation to the Lord, but over time they increasingly corrupted going after other gods. The Hebrew verb translated with “to cling” points out in a strong way the faithfulness the Lord expected. In fact, it is the same of Gen 2,24 where the Bible says: «Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with [will cling to] his wife, and they will be one flesh». The repetition of the possessive «my» in the last verse confirms the Lord’s strong desire.
Chapter 16 narrates a symbolic action that involves directly Jeremiah’s life itself. «The word of the LORD came also to me, saying, “You shall not take a wife, neither shall you have sons or daughters, in this place. For thus says the LORD concerning the sons and concerning the daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them, and concerning their fathers who became their father in this land: They shall die grievous deaths: they shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of the ground; and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth. For thus says the LORD, ‘Do not enter into the house of mourning, neither go to lament, neither bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the LORD, even loving kindness and tender mercies. Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them; neither shall men break bread for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead; neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother. You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and to drink. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will cause to cease out of this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. It shall happen, when you shall show this people all these words, and they shall tell you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?’ Then you shall tell them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, says the LORD, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshiped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law; and you have done evil more than your fathers; for, behold, you walk every one after the stubbornness of his evil heart, so that you do not listen to me: therefore I will cast you forth out of this land into the land that you have not known, neither you nor your fathers; and there you shall serve other gods day and night; for I will show you no favor.’» (Jer 16,1-13). Jeremiah’s body and life become Word to the unfaithful people. At the time it was unthinkable not to marry: there is no word in biblical Hebrew to mean “celibacy”. The children were considered as a sign of God’s blessing and as a future on earth (life after death is not themed in much of the Old Testament). Jeremiah’s life is crying that the Covenant, the marital relationship between the Lord and the people, no longer exists, it is broken. If the people persist in their infidelity, there will be no peace in the future. Jeremiah’s absence to the major social events (funerals, banquets) symbolises the Lord’s absence: He retired from the people, or better, was abandoned by them.
In the next post we will read a few excerpts of Jeremiah’s “Confessions”, where the prophet reflects on his difficult ministry, and we will begin to tell of his persecution by the ruling class of Judah.