Jeremiah

Jeremiah

I. Orienting Data

We look at prophets who reflect, in part, the time period that we are dealing with and the Babylonian pressure and the difficulties that the Babylonians bring about. The first of these is Jeremiah. Jeremiah starts his ministry in 627 BC, five years before the great revival that Josiah brought about. It is not stated for us in 2 Kings, lots of things are not stated. For example, it is not stated that the reason Jehoiachin was probably so favored in exile by Evil Merodach, the Babylonian king, would be the influence of Daniel, that is the most likely reason—Daniels’ tremendous influence among the Babylonian royalty. Why else would this guy be so favored? But that is not stated because it is not so much that Daniel had to do it, it is God who makes it happen; who He uses is a secondary issue. It is the fact that He made it happen. Likewise, God brought about the revival of Josiah. He used Jeremiah and numbers of other prophets to accomplish it, but He is the author of the revival. The role of Jeremiah is wonderful to observe and interesting and challenging to see. Here is an overview that relates to it.

A. Long Career as a Prophet

Here is a prophet who prophesies from 627 to 585 BC; that is a long coverage; it is forty-two years. That is a long career. He is spanning the time from the Assyrian domination, because the Assyrians were totally strong in 627 when he starts to 585 when the Babylonians have destroyed Judah, captured it all, wrecked Jerusalem, brought the temple down to bedrock and so on. He even ends up preaching to the exiles as they are heading down to Egypt.

At the end of his career, Jeremiah was witness to a stupid thing that a number of Judeans tried to do; they assassinated the Babylonian governor. The Babylonians had appointed a guy name Gedaliah, and he was the governor of Judah because they made Judah just a district in their empire. A number of Jews thought, “Well, we will assassinate this guy and that will bring about a popular uprising and we will throw off the Babylonian yoke,” and so on. It was a crazy idea. It failed completely, not the assassination but the uprising. Then they were all terrified and they knew that the Babylonian troops would be coming very soon and they decided to head for Egypt. Hundreds and hundreds of people in large groups headed down for Egypt. Jeremiah went after them basically saying, “Look, get your lives right with the Lord, keep His law, and keep His covenant. In the Lord there’s hope for the future.” They basically said, “No, we think we’ll try idolatry once again.”

So the poor guy, at the end of his life, after all the faithfulness of his preaching, was once again rejected, even after all his words came true, predicting the exile, predicting the Babylonian victory, predicting the kinds of things that he taught. We see him fade out, from the point of view of our knowledge; we do not know how much longer he may have lived in Egypt, but we see the fade out of his ministry, as we know anything about it, as he is heading down into Egypt with these crowds of people trying to get them to worship the true and living God. They just keep saying, “Why should we?”

B. Emphases

1. Prophet to the Nations

Jeremiah as a “prophet to the nations”--this is a very big theme now. The great empires are changing. Now is the Assyrian Empire. During his calling, not many years later, still during the time he is actively preaching and teaching, the Babylonians will take over. He predicts, in three different places, that the Babylonians will eventually come to their end, that there will be a seventy year period of Babylonian domination and then that will be over and then the Persians will come. He does not predict by name the Persians, but he predicts the fact that the Babylonian Empire will be swallowed up in yet another, so we have this idea of many substantial, vast changes and all of these just swallowing up little Judah.

So God calls Jeremiah to be a prophet to the nations. We have this call in Jeremiah 1:4-5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah says, in a typical, formal protest, he is not unwilling to be a prophet but it is the usual, formal protest in which you say you do not have the ability. “I don’t know how to speak; I am only a child.” Of course, he speaks this so, of course, he knows how to speak because how can you say, "I don’t know how to speak; I am only a child," if you do not know how to speak? It is classic proof of the fact that it is a formal protest; it is a statement of unworthiness, do you really want me and then comes the reassurance. “But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the Lord. Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth.” So that is the experience he had, presumably an angel actually did it, but that is how he words it. “Now I have put my words in your mouth. I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot, tear down, destroy, overthrow, build and plant.”

Then come various prophecies. In other words, Jeremiah understood from this calling that he would be talking, on behalf of the Lord, explaining, predicting, and describing the vast, rapid changes among nations. Nations come, nations go, empires come, empires go, that is going to be the subject material that you will preach about a great deal, and so it was. An awful lot of Jeremiah is about the vast, dramatic, political developments of his day and how God is behind them.

2. God Causes the Babylonian Invasion

One of his themes—God is causing the Babylonian invasion. He sent the Babylonians; it is His purpose; do not fight the Babylonians. As you can imagine, this is not well-received in Judah. “What do you mean, don’t fight? They’re our enemy. They’re terrible to us; they’re cruel. They turned out to be as bad or worse than the Assyrians. Why wouldn’t we fight them, why would we just give in?” But he says, “No, you are supposed to give in because they are God’s agents of punishment for you, a covenant people who have not kept the covenant.” So Jeremiah is constantly in trouble for treason. He is hated by the government; he is considered to be an underminer of the people’s confidence. He was a skillful prophet, an eloquent prophet, and when people listened to him all the fight went out of them. So naturally, there is a lot of government persecution of this prophet and one reads about that in the stories about Jeremiah.

Also, he did reassure the people that, while this had to happen, it would not last forever. You are not going to just endlessly be under Babylonian domination; you are not going to endlessly have to live without hope, with no expectation of a good future, but rather, there will be positive times ahead. In chapter 29, which I encourage you to turn to, he writes a long letter to people who are in exile. Some of these people were there in the exile of 598 and, in all likelihood, that is the main set of recipients, but it may also have been that there were some others there for whatever reason. Anyway, it is mainly for people exiled in 598 along with Jehoiachin. I will skip down to verse 5, “Build houses, settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you will profit.” Then in verse 8, “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them.”

What were these prophets and deceivers prophesying? We have plenty if evidence, from the text of Jeremiah, what they were doing. They were saying this will be a short exile. It was everywhere. You can see it also reflected in the Book of Ezekiel and other places. The word was, “Thus says the Lord, thus says Yahweh, the Lord, 'You won’t be in exile long; I’ll bring you back to Judah, I’ll throw off the yoke of the Babylonians'.” That is what was being preached in Judah, “These Babylonians will be out of here soon, don’t worry,” all kinds of positive predictions. These people were claiming that they were speaking in the name of the Lord. They were claiming that God had given them these revelations and they were just repeating them to the crowd. People loved to hear that. “Well, if Yahweh says so, that is good.”

Then you have poor Jeremiah saying, “Thus says the Lord, these other guys are not speaking for me.” It is a very difficult situation to be in. He says this in verse 10, “This is what the Lord says: ‘When the seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come back to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you; I will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I had banished you and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.’” It is going to happen. There is a great future. There is a wonderful hope ahead. But, it is going to be seventy years from now, a lifetime.

Imagine being fifty years old and hearing this and saying, “It is not going to be during my lifetime.” Imagine being anything but a little kid and having any expectation that maybe you would see that wonderful, glorious return back from oppressive Babylonian captivity again to the Promised Land. What he is saying is, “Hey, be encouraged, God has a wonderful plan, but for you who have just gone into exile with Jehoiachin, it will be your grandchildren. You guys settle down, stay there, because you’re in for the long haul. These Babylonians are not going away any time soon.” That is part of the message that he preached and that they had to understand.

C. Sub-themes

1. Blessing / Curse / Blessing Pattern

He is hitting the fact that there will be a curse; it is substantial; they are entering upon it, and they cannot assume that it will just be over in a matter of a few years. Not so. It is going to be a lifetime of terrible, oppressive disaster. The awful exile will last a “lifetime of seventy years”. I would like to be sure just to say something that I will also hit again next week and that is, people eventually took his seventy-year promise seriously. Eventually, they took it very seriously. If you count seventy years down from 586 you get 516 BC. 516 BC became a huge target date for the people of Judah, especially with regard to the completion of the second temple. We will talk more about how that worked and how the countdown is reflected in Scripture and so on.

They eventually said, “You know, Jeremiah said seventy years. All his words were true,” this was a group able to see that at the end of the exile period. The immediate group did not see it, not in 586, but as some decades went by it sunk in more and more. People said, “If he said seventy years, he meant seventy years. He didn’t say sixty-eight, he didn’t say seventy-four, he said seventy." They took very, very seriously the fact that they had to get their act in order by the end of year 70 or they might just be missing out on God’s favor. We will look further at how that translates itself into some of the statements made in Scripture and some of the actions of the postexilic community, how seriously that seventy-year period came about. Blessing / curse / blessing, and people want the restoration blessing to come in. It is a very serious thing to be told, “The curse is coming now and what you don’t want to do is to just say oh well, that’s fine, I’ll just wait for the blessing.” No, you get serious about trying to please God so that the blessing might come back because he does, after all, say, “You will seek me and find me when,” and it can also be translated if in verse 13, you can translate it if or when, “or if you seek me with all your heart.” In other words, there is a condition here. This is not just, you do nothing and I will do everything. This is, you show me repentance and I will take care of the rest. Really the very same kind of message we have in the Christian Gospel when we say to people, “You don’t have to do everything; you don’t have to be something; you just have to be sorry for your sins and ask God to come into your life and He will do it.” He does not leave you there and say, “That’s that, you’ve done enough.” No, immediately He expects progress. That certainly is true. He does not expect it before conversion, only after.

2. The Relationship of Prophets and Disciples

Let’s draw your attention to this: Jeremiah is our most detailed source for knowledge about the relationship of prophets and disciples. This is because, in places like Jeremiah 36, but that is just one place, you can really see how Jeremiah interacts with his most prominent disciple, most prominent student and assistant, Baruch. But, I certainly want to put this in context for you and note that we see this in Elijah and Elisha, the relationship between them. And then Elisha and his many disciples, he is a really prominent discipler. John the Baptist and his disciples--I do not know if you know this detail, but if you carefully look at all the Gospels, all four, they make it quite clear that Jesus took His first disciples from John. John had trained them, taught them what to expect, and recruited them and so on. When John said, “There is the Lamb of God,” and pointed to Christ and said, “I have got to decrease and He will increase,” part of what he is doing is telling his disciples, “There is the guy that I prepared you for, it is time to move on to him.” So Jesus’ first disciples were originally John’s disciples.

With regard to Jeremiah and Baruch you see something a little bit special, that is, focus on one particular disciple. It individualizes the picture. In the other cases you do not see it as easily. The only other real parallel is that of Elijah and Elisha, which is useful to see, but it is nice to see that what you have with Jeremiah is a disciple who is not necessarily, himself, a prophet. Baruch may have become a prophet later. There are some traditions that say he did, but they are only traditions. There is even pseudepigraphic literature, that is, literature purporting to be written by Baruch, later toward New Testament times. That is not canonical, that is not Scripture; that is a type of literature that claims to be from somebody. Baruch may or may not have actually come about to be a prophet but he is more of what we would call a lay disciple. And so, you honestly see Jeremiah functioning something like a pastor to Baruch. This is very interesting to see that and to operate with it and watch how it happens.

One of the fascinating things is to see Jeremiah dictating his prophecies to Baruch. One of the things we always wonder about is—how do the prophetical books get preserved? When Amos preached what he preached, how come we have those words? Who wrote them down? Did Amos write them down? Possibly. Did somebody else write them down? Possibly. Was somebody listening and copied them down as he said it, sort of taking shorthand real quick? More likely the prophets memorized these speeches because they thought of themselves as God’s messengers, to memorize His word and deliver it, and may well have preached it many times. The assumption that any prophet would have said what he said only once and never repeat it seems unlikely. They probably were repeating it periodically to various crowds, maybe throughout a day, or week, or month, saying the same kind of thing.

At any rate, there is a story in Jeremiah about how King Jehoiachin is disgusted with what Jeremiah preaches and all the doom and gloom that Jeremiah gives forth and all of what the king regards as treasonous material. In verse 36 we read about Jeremiah receiving the word of the Lord to write down the prophecies that he had previously preached. It says in Jeremiah 36:2, “Take a scroll, write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. Perhaps, when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, each of them will turn from his wicked way; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.” The idea is, you have been preaching all these years; put it together in a book, assemble all those sermons, and that can be distributed; people can read it; they can hear it, and the whole impact will teach them what I have been saying through you and they will get it. New people, who were too young then to have heard you or were not in town, they can benefit from this as well. That is exactly what happens. Jeremiah called Baruch and dictated the words to Baruch. Baruch was his disciple scribe for what he wanted to do. Jeremiah was, essentially, in what we call house arrest, so he could not go into the temple, so he had Baruch go into the temple and read the prophecies. Chances are that is what happened lots of times. Many, many of these instances may have been repeated; this is the one that we know about. It may have been routine that you would go hear the reading of what a given prophet had preached. That is part of the way Scripture gets built up and preserved.

This scroll exists and people hear about it, verse 16, “We must report all these words to the king. Did Jeremiah dictate all this?” Baruch says, verse 18, “‘Yes, I wrote them in ink on the scroll.' ‘Well,’ the officials say, ‘you and Jeremiah go hide, don’t let anyone know where you are.’” They take the scroll and they bring it into the king in the courtyard and they tell the king. All this happens. Then the king is sitting in a room with a fire in front of him, in a fire pot, the equivalent of a stove in those days, and this guy Jehudi reads from the scroll. Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns the king cut them off with a scribes knife and threw them into the fire pot until the entire scroll was burned. That is not a smart thing to do if the true and living God is the true and living God. Not smart at all to burn His word. But the king shows his contempt for Jeremiah and it says, verse 24, “The king and all his attendants who heard these words showed no fear and didn’t tear their clothes.” Some of them urged him not to burn it; he just burned it anyway. Verse 27, “After the king had burned the scroll, the Lord said to Jeremiah, ‘Take another scroll, write on it all the words that were on the first scroll and tell Jehoiachin,” this king who did this, “you burned the scroll and therefore all these punishments will happen to you and your family,’” so the king is taken care of.

Then, in verse 32, especially interesting, “Jeremiah took another scroll, gave it to Baruch, Jeremiah dictated. Baruch wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiachin, king of Judah, had burned in the fire and many similar words were added to them.” Most interesting. So Jeremiah did repeat everything he had ever preached. He had it memorized; it was clear in his mind. He had probably preached it so often, it would be like an actor who played Hamlet and would know his lines. A year later you do not say, “Gee was it 2B or was it 3B or not 3B.” No, you know what it says. He has it memorized and therefore to that he adds more. Not because he makes it up but because God gives him further revelations. This may be a glimpse into the way that a disciple was involved in the actual written production of Scripture. A lot of people have said, barring other evidence which we do not have a lot of, it makes sense to assume that most of the prophetical books are probably the written productions of disciples of prophets. They do not make up anything but they are preserving. They write it down as it is dictated to them and preserve it. That is a reasonable possibility. That is one of the sub-themes of the book. Back to the main themes in terms of overview.

F. Corrupt National Leadership and its Consequences

That is really big in the Book of Jeremiah. That is a theme that is clear. If the government will not lead righteously, the people will pretty naturally follow the misleading of the government and, therefore, they will be in trouble.

G. Overview

It is a simple breakdown of the book into four sections, really two big sections plus an appendix or two.

1. Prophecies against Judah and Jerusalem--in the first half roughly, these are mostly poems.

2. Then, the more biographical material--Baruch could be the author of some of this biographical material. It is hard to know but it would make perfect sense in light of his significant role in preserving material. It is not that the material in 26-45 is all biography. I do not mean it is just stories about Jeremiah. If you have read through, you know that is not what it is. Whatever material is there tends to be mixed in with stories about him. There is much more of a gathering of that type of thing, things about Jeremiah and things that fit into that context of telling the story in the third person.

3. Then, his many foreign nations oracles are collected together because he is a prophet to the nations and his foreign nations oracles are a very big part of what he preached.

4. Finally, the historical conclusion that simply reflects 2 Kings 24 because that was what he preached. What happened as described at the end of 2 Kings also is what happened as it is appropriate for the readers of Jeremiah to appreciate.

II. Prophets and Opposition

Many prophets have to suffer opposition and Jeremiah happens to be one of our very best sources for appreciating this. But you see it also in Malachi, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezekiel and Isaiah. It is not at all that there is not a lot of opposition. I just listed here the four groups that gave prophets grief. I would just like to say to you who are heading into ministry, do not think that you are not going to get plenty of grief. Any leader gets grief, any business, any organization, every politician is thrilled with a fifty-one percent approval rating. They know you live with opposition, you live with disapproval, you live with people hating your guts and as long as it is only forty-nine percent you are thrilled. Politicians understand that. Iit is not that we are to have the cold hearts of politicians or to think of ourselves only in that way; I do not mean that at all. But you do need to understand that it has always been this way. The majority of people rejected Jesus Himself and wanted Him dead. It came to a point that they were happy to have Him dead, demanded that He be killed. Surely we cannot say, “Yeah, but I’m a Christian, I’m going into ministry, I have the Holy Spirit and I’m going to have a wonderful time. It is going to be all positive.” No, please do not be that naive. That is not the way ministry works. Ministry is wonderful because God sustains you through it, not because all the people you deal with will accept every idea, every word, every proposal, every action. No, they will find things to complain about steadily. Get used to it now, it is coming. It does not mean it is not great joy. It is great satisfaction and great joy in any form of ministry or missions or whatever. But you just need not to be naive and say everybody has to like me because that is not going to happen. That is not the way it works.

A. From False Prophets

For these prophets, a lot of the problem was false prophets. They had direct competition, other people who looked good.

Paul has the problem with false prophets; they are going all over the place and coming into his churches. These are skillful people, they are winsome, they are handsome; they are good at what they accomplish and people just say, “They are so much more interesting than Paul. They are just so much better speakers. With Paul, I feel like Eutychus; I fall asleep real easy.” Jeremiah and all the other true prophets have this same problem. The other prophets were clever, they were effective, they used better visual aides, and they had better crowds. The prophets often had musicians with them and the prophets often sang. This is something that we have not talked a lot about but I could prove it to you if I wanted to spend thirty minutes or so. But trust me; there is plenty of evidence for this in Scripture. Jeremiah may not have had a very good voice. It is very possible that he was called but actually was not that skillful. For example, Martin Luther--Luther’s sermons are so powerful and he had such great effect, but they said of him, “His voice really wasn’t that strong and his articulation wasn’t that good.” He was your average monk. They are not known for being brilliant public speakers. He was not good at what he did. He was always overcoming the weaknesses that he had to deal with. Plenty of his opponents were far more skillful. He just had to rely on the Lord to help him because his own natural talents were not the greatest. Some of that may have been the case with Jeremiah.

In Jeremiah 28 there is a wonderful story of his dealing with the false prophet Hananiah and all the problems. He ends up predicting Hananiah’s death, which does come soon. Even then, people do not say, “Look, that guy predicted the death of Hananiah and therefore….” No, because Hananiah was saying what they wanted to hear. Jeremiah was saying what they did not want to hear. He was saying, “You’re in for seventy years of horrible hardship.” That is not what people want to hear. Your message can be true and if it is not attractive they will manage to declare it false.

B. From Government

We saw a little of that already and, looking at chapter 36, there was plenty of it and these three chapters are only representative where we have a lot of that constant grief from the government. In many parts of the world today, this is what pastors experience; the government is their biggest problem. A lot of churches are technically illegal and having great grief, so they understand this.

C. From Priests

Many of the prophets found that the priests had a vested interest in a system. Remember, the priests got a cut of every animal, every loaf of bread, every jar of wine and oil that came into the temple. It was in the vested interest of the priests to be well liked, to say those things that would bring people, to bless them, to encourage them. If a priest says, “Wait a minute! That is not a fit animal for sacrifice. Who are you to bring that in here,” that priest is not going to have the person say, “I’m terribly sorry, take the whole animal.” No, the person is saying, “I’m out of here.” They just would not worship. That leaves the priest hungry. That is no fun, to make yourself hungry by enforcing the law of God. You can see the priest had the terrible challenge of this. When Jeremiah comes along and preaches righteous and keeping the covenant, strict fidelity to it, they do not like him. He is part of the threat to their comfort, to their system that works, to the things that make them happy and so on. This is also a difficult challenge.

I try to relate these things to you as seminarians because, I do not know, maybe you will hear this lots but I have a hunch you will not hear much of this, you will not hear how many ways the Scripture itself is there to encourage you as pastors. It is there for everybody but also for you as pastors. Sometimes, with these prophets, it is particularly useful to see it. You may have the same kind of thing. You may find that other clergy in your community will be very comfortable with a certain way of operating and your preaching the Gospel may rub them the wrong way. I cannot imagine that many of you will not find that to be difficult. You will want to be their friend. You are not out to hurt them or be mean to them but they will not like it. It will not be a comfortable thing. You may also find that members of your own congregation will say, “Why can’t you be a little more like those people? Why do you have to stir things up so much? These alter calls are embarrassing, or whatever.” It is a very delicate matter and some of the sort of thing that Jeremiah got from “other clergy,” in this case, priests. Perfectly legitimate clergy, there is nothing illegal about them, but what they are doing is wrong. You may find that you will appreciate these passages as time goes by because they really will contain things analogous to what you will experience.

D. From People In General

He really was, sadly, unpopular because it was popular to practice idolatry; it was popular to think in terms of the Babylonians being gotten rid of; it was popular to have false hope and the kinds of things he preached and the kinds of things he demanded just were not well-received. It was a hard situation for him. Here is a guy with a forty-two year ministry, at least, and, almost all the time, his one sure ally is the Lord Himself. That is the way it ought to be. Make sure you are absolutely right with the Lord because you will need that encouragement. So often will come the discouragements of rejection. Some of these discouragements, by the way, in ministry, are just well intentioned. People are not trying to be mean to you but they will say things like, “Couldn’t you say less about the blood of Christ or the death of Christ; those are uncomfortable concepts for us.” I predict you will have people say things like that to you. It has been said so many times to me, I cannot imagine that they would not say it to you, too. I do not think of myself as constantly preaching about death and blood but to them I am. Other people will say to you things like, “You know, if we could get the service down to forty-five minutes, I think it would be far more effective.” They will and they are perfectly well intentioned. They would like more people to come in; it is not cruel and unkind. Their suggestion is that “We have a little more singing and a little less preaching. I think that would do a lot for our church.” Some of it says you are not as entertaining a preacher as they would like. It may be true; you may not be all that gifted and brilliant. It can hurt. It is hard to say to them, “No, you need more of me, not less of me.” So I encourage you, see Jeremiah; watch him operate. See what the answer for all the problems is--that you get yours kicks out of pleasing God. He is your audience. Everything else will go. Do you try to ignore people? No. Do you try to make them unhappy? No, of course not, but you are doomed to failure if you try to please everybody. But, if you try to please God, you are doomed to success; you are slated for success.

III. Prophetic Lament Form

In Jeremiah, as well as a number of other Prophets, we observe something we call the Prophetic Lament Form. This is a literary form. This is a style of doing something, and Jeremiah has a couple of dozen of these. Ezekiel has a whole bunch, many, many others have them and we call it the prophetic lament form. Remember the Psalms, where we had the lament psalms; this is not the same. That was a psalm you pray when you are in distress. This is a lament that may also be called a "funerary lament". This is a form that follows the style in the ancient world of lamenting the death of someone. This is the kind of thing you say and do and even sing, because they were singers who sang funerary laments. We know this form from its clearest, easiest to follow example in 2 Samuel, chapter 1, where David sings a lament over Saul and Jonathan. There are four elements you observe in these.

A. A Call to Mourning

Everybody ought to mourn. It is a terrible thing; come and let’s mourn together. The community mourns. That is what every funeral is. People gather and they are all there to thank God for the life of someone but, also, to mourn. This is not just a fun time; it is a time, properly, of solemnity and seriousness about what has happened.

B. Direct Address to the Dead

An element that we do not normally have in our culture is direct address to the dead. You will see David talking in his lament to Saul and to Jonathan. Saul you were this—Jonathan you were that.

C. Eulogy

Eulogy means "good words". You always talk about the great accomplishments of those who passed on before.

D. Loss to the Survivors

You also talk about the extent of the loss to the survivors, what a big impact the passing of this individual makes. That is one thing.

What you need to appreciate is this--Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and several other prophets that have lots of these, and many of the prophets have these—they do not only use these to lament Israel's spiritual demise. That is one way they use these laments. They, in affect say, I’m at the funeral of Israel and Israel you were a wonderful nation but you have really gone down the drain. That is one way they use it.

They, also, use it as a mocking or ironic funeral dirge, so sometimes it is called the “mocking dirge”. That is a term that you will find in the literature because dirge is an old English word for a funerary lament. They will say it to the Babylonians. They will pretend, as it were, that they are at the funeral of the Babylonians or the funeral of Babylon and talk about the destruction that will come. Here is one of Moab, I just flipped to it so I will just pick it out of the blue, chapter 48; Jeremiah does this about Moab. “Woe to Nebo for it will be ruined,” that is one of the places in Moab, “Kiriathaim will be disgraced and captured; the stronghold will be disgraced,” he is using woe language, the language of death. “Moab praised no more; in Heshbon men will plot her downfall…. You, too, madmen will be silenced….Moab will be broken…They go this way and that…” Then verse 6, direct address, “Run, flee for your lives; become like a bush in the desert. You trust in your deeds and riches, you, too, will be taken captive…” You go through and you can see descriptions that fit these categories so they can be given in an ironic or mocking fashion of Israel’s enemies, just as they are given in a truly tragic and sad and heartfelt fashion over Israel itself. Bear this in mind because, as you become more familiar with prophetic literature, you will see just dozens of these examples of the funerary lament.