In the international crisis that he knew in his time, the prophet Jeremiah faced a decision which rings true for everyone in our own day: Should I stay or should I go?

The Babylonians surrounded Judah, then took the city, then deported one set of leaders, then set up a new monarchic government, then withdrew, then came back, then besieged the city, then burned it down, then completed the deportation of the elite classes, and finally settled a puppet governor. The crisis overwhelmed every institution of society—and the world. Jeremiah decided, more than once, on the question of whether to stay or go, and his decision-making process is nuanced, surprising, and challenging.

I think this Jeremianic experience is one important testing ground, if not the key locus of experimentation, for just how relevant the son of Anatoth’s prophetic career and the biblical writings about him are for us today. Sure, there is a lot more in the Book of Jeremiah that reads for spiritual profit in the abuse crisis. Off the top of my head:

• In English, a “Jeremiad” is an anguished lamentation—and as expected, the prophetic book abounds in these. The spiritual benefit at the present time should be clear.
• Throughout the book, but especially in the opening chapters, there is massive thematic tension between fortified cities and broken walls, including how the person who stands against evil and corruption is like a besieged city with the populous outside—an image-scape every survivor and whistle-blower feels in their bones.
• “Terror all around” is a leitmotiv, and God knows the survivor of abuse in the Church feels this, as people and structures in one’s environment just don’t understand the evil that is propagating.
• Another leitmotiv is “shalom, shalom, when no shalom,” i.e., people who speak “shalom,” which means “all is well” or “peace [to you],” when this is neither the factual state of affairs nor a state of affairs promoted by their actual behaviour. Personally, when I hear someone in the abuse crisis tells me how it’s obvious how much institutions care, my response is to say, “Shalom, shalom, when no shalom.” It means what it means.
• Jeremiah identifies himself as seized, compelled, and tricked by God, as if he has suffered moral injury in addition to the vast amounts of trauma common to his people.
• There is a whole chapter about people who do what they can when all the presuppositions of their promises and commitments collapse.
• Another chapter tells of how the king is read the scroll of Jeremiah’s testimonies, and he just sits there impassively, then burns off a few columns at a time, erasing the entire record—another scene that resonates with personal experience of a cover-up culture.

I could go on. And I intend to. Reading Jeremiah in the Abuse Crisis—something I have done off and on for years, but more insistently recently, after completing my study of Marcel Văn—deserves to be a (likely intermittent) blog series all its own.

But I would like to start with a question that preoccupies the entire group of narrative chapters in the back half of the book, which begins and ends with an account of the writing of Jeremiah’s words and encompasses the entire fall of Jerusalem (Jer 36–45) and relies on detailed familiarity with the oracles, not just against Judah, but against the nations (Jer 46–51). Jeremiah asks and is asked, more than once: Should I stay or should I go? This crisis that looms, that envelops everything, then overpowers and besieges and destroys and leaves in ruins—as it transpires, should I stay or should I go?

Perhaps nothing shows the spiritual relevance and grit of Jeremiah more than this narrative sequence. But I’ve never seen anyone tackle it well. Few commentators and biblical scholars are interested in the “historical” chapters of the book, compared to the prophecies, lamentations, judgments, struggles with God, and brief chapters of consolation. To be sure, all these set up the narrative chapters. They are necessary background. If we don’t understand the gravity and universality of the crisis, the “history” doesn’t make sense. If we don’t see the extent of his trauma and moral injury, Jeremiah just seems weak. If there is no hope, the telling of the story seems to have no point.

But there is something essential in the back half of Jeremiah that is missed if we don’t read the historical narrative as a vital piece of the puzzle, which comes at the climax of the book and is only followed by, and further fleshed out by, the dénouement which consists of the oracles against the non-Judaic nations.

Over a series of many chapters, Jeremiah asks and is asked: Should I stay or should I go?

It’s the same question every moral being caught up in the abuse crisis asks. And Jeremiah, for all his faults, is no fundamentalist, no clericalist, and no friend of the people in power. So maybe his own crossroads is worth placing ourselves at.

The decision is demanded

I’d like to begin my reflection with the moment of decision. This happens in chapter 40. The NRSV renders the kairos-time thus:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord after Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard [of the Babylonians] had let him go from Ramah, when he took him bound in fetters along with all the captives of Jerusalem and Judah who were being exiled to Babylon.

The captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, “The Lord your God threatened this place with this disaster [as you said], and now the Lord has brought it about and has done as he said, because all of you sinned against the Lord and did not obey his voice. Therefore this thing has come upon you. Now look, I have just released you today from the fetters on your hands. If you wish to come with me to Babylon, come, and I will take good care of you, but if you do not wish to come with me to Babylon, you need not come. See, the whole land is before you; go wherever you think it good and right to go. If you remain, then return to Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon appointed governor of the towns of Judah, and stay with him among the people, or go wherever you think it right to go.”

So the captain of the guard gave him an allowance of food and a present and let him go. Then Jeremiah went to Gedaliah son of Ahikam at Mizpah and stayed with him among the people who were left in the land. (Jer 40:1–6 NRSV)

The revised NJPS (2023), meanwhile, is a bit different:

The word that came to Jeremiah from GOD, after Nebuzaradan, the chief of the guards [of the Babylonians], set him free at Ramah, to which he had taken him, chained in fetters, among those from Jerusalem and Judah who were being exiled to Babylon.

The chief of the guards took charge of Jeremiah, and he said to him, “The ETERNAL your God threatened this place with this disaster [as you said]; and now GOD has brought it about, by acting on the threat—because you sinned against GOD and did not pay heed. That is why this has happened to you. Now, I release you this day from the fetters that were on your hands. If you would like to go with me to Babylon, come, and I will look after you. And if you don’t want to come with me to Babylon, you need not. See, the whole land is before you: go wherever seems good and right to you.”—But [Jeremiah] still did not turn back.—“Or go to Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has put in charge of the towns of Judah, and stay with him among the people, or go wherever you want to go.”

The chief of the guards gave him an allowance of food, and dismissed him. So Jeremiah came to Gedaliah son of Ahikam at Mizpah, and stayed with him among the people who were left in the land. (Jer 40:1–6 NJPS)

The interjection in italics is marked by the translators as having Hebrew the meaning of which is uncertain. But it’s an important point. Evidently, Jeremiah doesn’t like his initial options. He holds out until the final one is offered: Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan. Then he seizes this. Why?

Jeremiah’s options

Since he identifies Jeremiah as an agent of truth as the Babylonians would like to believe it to be, Nebuzaradan puts several options before the prophet:

1. Go to Babylon and be taken care of by the agents of the crisis themselves.
2. Remain in the land and move about freely.
3. Go to the client governor of the Babylonians, Gedaliah, and then go about freely.
4. Go to Gedaliah; stay with him and the small cohort gathered to him.

Jeremiah seemingly hesitates before these options (or at least the first three). It’s as if he doesn’t like what he’s presented with. Commentators have usually tackled this by pointing out that it’s surprising that Jeremiah doesn’t go to Babylon, because (they say) in an earlier chapter of the book, Jeremiah had prophesied that “good figs” go to Babylon, while “bad figs” remain in Jerusalem. I suppose that’s a conundrum worthy of note. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t explain why Jeremiah chooses his fourth option, not the second or third.

Still, it is worth tackling this first exegetical difficulty and getting into Jeremiah’s head, with his legion of commentators, about good figs and bad figs.

Good figs and bad figs

One of the most memorable vision-prophecies in the Book of Jeremiah goes like this:

The Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the Lord. This was after King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, together with the officials of Judah, the artisans, and the smiths, and had brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs—the good figs very good and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.” (Jer 24:1–3 NRSV)

And the explanation given in the text itself is pretty simple on the surface:

Then the word of the Lord came to me: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans [= Babylonians]… But thus says the Lord: Like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt. (Jer 24: 4–5, 8 NRSV)

So, in short, after the first time that Jerusalem ends up in Babylonian hands (but before the big siege that ends in a complete deportation of the ruling class and the installation of a governor rather than a king), Jeremiah sees good and bad figs. God then tells Jeremiah that “the exiles from Judah” who have already left are good figs. Others are bad figs: “King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt.”

The simplistic way to read this is to say that it is right to let the crisis take you away, and it is wrong to pigheadedly stay in the land. Give in. Let the times and the seasons, when they are clear enough in an overwhelming crisis, be the dominant and decisive factor.

If that were true, Jeremiah himself would be a “bad fig,” not a good one, for having stayed in the land after the first deportation—and doubly so for having decided to stay with the installed governor, Gedaliah.

Is Jeremiah a hypocrite?

I don’t think the simplistic reading is right. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that not everyone should abandon the land. The act of being carried off by the agents of the crisis is arguably only correct for the people who had power, authority, and agency to bring about or prevent the crisis in the first place.

And that is in fact what happens. When Gedaliah is installed, “the poorest in the land” remain behind (Jer 40:7). They’re not exiled. They don’t (yet) leave. Now, unless we—and God and Jeremiah—are prepared to say that all poor people, all the little ones, all the anawim, are “bad figs” with the likes of the überkorrupt King Zedekiah, we are faced with an interpretative decision. Apparently, painting someone with the language of good and bad figs requires us to first know if the person is a fig, which could be good or bad, in the first place.

Perhaps only the ruling classes are figs. After all, the vision only references temple and monarchic institutions. If only that which is attached to the temple and the monarchy are intended, then the poor people are no figs (good or bad). The vision doesn’t apply to them. Staying behind doesn’t make them rotten.

And it can be the same with Jeremiah. He is not part of the ruling classes. His family comes from Anatoth in nearby Benjamin and is not strictly speaking Judean. The fact that his family is priestly does not indicate differently, because he is not from the Jerusalem priesthood, but rather an excluded group of outsiders. He has no sway over the actions and policies that led to the crisis and national disaster. If he remains, then this doesn’t make him a “bad fig”—because, like “the poorest in the land,” he isn’t a fig to begin with.

Thus, it is perfectly resolvable that Jeremiah does not opt for (voluntary) deportation. He has nothing to prove about being a “good fig.” Never was he a fig to begin with, and the existential need, in response to one’s communal failings, doesn’t push him to accept being carried away by the crisis. The capitulation proper to power overcome by a crisis and disaster is substantially different from the stubborn persistence required of the lowly.

Accordingly, Jeremiah rejects the first option that Nebuzaradan lays before him. He holds out for something more appropriate to his experience and state in life. But why not become a free agent? Why the draw to Gedaliah?

Who is Gedaliah?

Gedaliah is clearly a figure that Jeremiah trusts and/or feels attached to. We could try to understand why from various angles. A psychological attempt, for example, would need to consider Jeremiah’s traumatic injuries, his relationships with authority figures who both protect and reject him, and a consciousness of his prophecy-destined past that stretches back to infancy. And that would probably be a profitable reading. But in addition to such a tantalizing suggestion, I’d propose that we first look at the rational, historical details as we know them. There’s something important there, too.

Gedaliah himself doesn’t appear until chapter 39, where it is said that the Babylonians “committed [Jeremiah] to the care of Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan, that he might be at liberty in a house” (Jer 39:14 NJPS). Following this account, we get the longer, more nuanced version in which the imprisoned-and-to-be-released prophet is presented with four options and makes a decision for himself.

Since there is no run-up in the Book of Jeremiah about Gedaliah’s identity, character, or values, does that mean Jeremiah’s decision is completely blind?

Emphatically, no.

Gedaliah is son of Ahikam, who is son of Shaphan, and while that may mean little or nothing to us in a largely individualistic culture, in the ancient Mediterranean world it would have meant a lot to Jeremiah son of Hilkiah of Anatoth. There is enough information in the Book of Jeremiah and 2 Kings (repeated in 2 Chronicles) to establish the spiritual and moral pedigree of this family. And the only choice that an attentive reader of the Bible has is to be aware that everything we know was probably known to Jeremiah, or at least the compilers of the prophetic book or the Hebrew theological corpus, and we are supposed to assess Jeremiah’s decision in this light.

But you, the average Catholic today, has never heard of Ahikam and Shaphan, you say? Well, if you go to weekday Mass or read the lectionary, that is not true. You encountered them just last week. So maybe it’s not a matter of the knowledge being unavailable so much as we ourselves being biased against paying it its due attention.

Let’s run through relatively quickly.

In the Book of Kings, just as everything is nearing a head and the kings are running out because the Babylonians are about to enter on the scene and usher in the national disaster, someone finds a scroll. At the time, the king is Josiah. Apparently he was a good guy (2 Kgs 22:2). Two incidents that matter happen in his reign.

First, the high priest at the time, Hilkiah (not Jeremiah’s father), receives Shaphan the scribe (Gedaliah’s grandfather), who tells the high priest to administer funds appropriately and for the benefit of the labourers (2 Kgs 22:3–8).

Then, Hilkiah tells Shaphan that a scroll of Teaching (Hebrew: Torah) has been found in the temple area, and a new adventure begins (2 Kgs 22:8–20). The scroll, whether found or created, seems to be some version of Deuteronomy, according to scholars and as pretty much anyone might guess from the characters’ reactions in the story. Shaphan doesn’t hide the news. He takes it to the king. The good king Josiah listens to the words of the scroll, laments, and launches an investigation into its veracity. Jeremiah’s Deuteronomic credentials are pretty high, so this would have been a big deal to him. Curiously, Josiah doesn’t have Jeremiah consulted, even though he was around at the time, but a prophetic woman named Huldah. Anyway, two people on the investigative team are important: Shaphan and his son Ahikam.

So far, Gedaliah’s family line is looking pretty good. But it gets even better.

Josiah’s son Jehoiakim takes the throne, and it’s a disaster. Jeremiah prophesies. He’s arrested (this happens more than once). On this occasion, the officials threaten him with the death penalty for prophesying destruction. Jeremiah says that’s what prophets prophesy—destruction. And so does somebody else named Uriah. For his part, faced with persecution, Uriah flees to Egypt. The king sends somebody named Achbor to go get him. Uriah is killed. But Jeremiah remains in the land and isn’t killed. He’s protected—by none other than Ahikam son of Shaphan (Jer 26).

This family is really winning now.

But there’s still more.

When Jehoiakim remains in power, Jeremiah goes into hiding (Jer 36:5). His scribe Baruch writes down his words (v. 4). So now Baruch goes to the temple area, where Jeremiah had previously been arrested for his prophesying, to speak some hard words to those who will listen (v. 8). The exact spot that he finds for his sermonizing is “the chamber of Gemariah son of Shaphan the scribe, in the upper court, near the new gateway of the House of the LORD” (v. 10 NJPS). In other words, the owner of the venue Baruch gets to deliver Jeremiah’s prophecy is a son of Shaphan or, looked at another way, Gedaliah’s uncle.

But it isn’t Gemariah himself who hears Baruch’s preaching. That’s his son Micaiah (Gedaliah’s cousin). This latter promptly goes to the scribes in the king’s palace (vv. 11–12). We might worry that young Micaiah is a snitch—but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He finds his father (Gemariah, Gedaliah’s uncle) and others (including Elnathan, whose father Achbor had Uriah brought back from Egypt for his death), and everyone in this bunch seems impressed with Baruch. I guess Micaiah was, too.

This incident goes down again in Jeremiah’s favour as far as Gedaliah’s family is concerned (and vice versa). Baruch reads the prophet’s words. All the officials, including Gemariah, out of concern tell Baruch that he should go into hiding. They don’t lay a finger on him. Once Baruch is safely away, then they confront the king with the contents of Jeremiah and Baruch’s scroll. The king listens impassively and has it burnt a few columns at a time. The scribes, including Gedaliah’s uncle, vigorously object (vv. 12–25).

Jeremiah sticks with Gedaliah for good reason(s)

So, by now, we have a sense of Gedaliah’s family pedigree. His grandfather compelled justice in economic matters in the temple. His father and grandfather helped rediscover and verify the genuineness of something like the Book of Deuteronomy. His father literally saved Jeremiah’s life. His uncle and cousin believed in Baruch, and his uncle confronted the corrupt king with the truth, protected Baruch, and protested the destruction of Jeremiah’s prophecies. When he is introduced, we don’t know Gedaliah himself, but his family sure sounds like the good guys—in fact, just about the only good guys, since related families (like that of Elnathan and Uriah) are patchier in their adherence to God’s Teaching and the prophet.

If Jeremiah rightly rejects going into captivity in Babylon for himself, who was not part of the elite and the powerful, his ensuing choice, then, is between staying in the land as a free agent, visiting Gedaliah then becoming a free local agent, or close and continued attachment to Gedaliah. And we can see why, at a purely rational level, he would opt for the latter.

The Babylonian crisis has overwhelmed everything. Gedaliah has been set in place by the forces of the crisis to administer the land in line with what the crisis has required everyone to accept. And Gedaliah himself comes from good stock that shows its fruits in the promulgation of the Teaching, and of prophecy, and in the protection of people like Jeremiah and Baruch who speak truth to power. Of course Jeremiah attaches himself to Gedaliah. This is obviously better than becoming a free agent in a land that has just lost its traditional power structures and institutional supports.

We may not value collectivistic families the way Jeremiah and his contemporaries do, and we might judge the individual’s fruits by their own actions (after all, Jer 31:30 suggests the future overturning of the proverb, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”). But when a crisis overwhelms everything, and we have to accept the new state of affairs, for it is a lesson from God about what we have done wrong as a community, how we have failed and corrupted all the social links that upheld the moral tragedy until the social disaster became the only possible way things could play out—when we find ourselves in Jeremiah’s shoes, it might be the right thing to attach ourselves to those who in their own individual selves are like Gedaliah’s extended family. Maybe that’s the only condition under which to remain in the land. Maybe, like Jeremiah, we wait, we hold out, for that option to present itself, for nothing else is right or good enough. If something or someone doesn’t pass the “Gedaliah test,” the Jeremianic answer is “still no.”

Gedaliah is assassinated—and Jeremiah is caught in the same scheme of decisions again

Understanding the “Gedaliah test” is all well and good. Unfortunately, though, Jeremiah doesn’t just make his decision and get to live with it. Gedaliah is very soon assassinated.

The sad truth is, a guy named Johanan son of Kareah could see this coming. He warned Gedaliah. He even offered to eliminate the threat before the threat eliminated the governor. Gedaliah refused to believe that the writing was on the wall (Jer 40:13–16).

So, at the instigation of the king of neighbouring Ammon, along comes “Ishmael son of Nethaniah son of Elishama, of the royal family, one of the chief officers of the king,” with ten men (Jer 41:1). It seems that Ishmael, notably a bad fig if ever there were one, has somehow avoided or escaped Babylonian captivity. He is none too pleased with the new government arrangement in favour of the forces of the crisis and acts the opportunist.

Ishmael and his accomplices kill Gedaliah, all the Babylonian forces working for him, and some men who are coming to Jerusalem to offer non-priestly offerings at the derelict temple site (vv. 2–7). Other would-be worshippers escape death by showing some supplies to the assassins (v. 8), but it then happens that the people who had been under Gedaliah’s protection and in his local network become captives of Ishmael, including, presumably, Jeremiah (v. 10).

Johanan, at this point, gets wind that time has proved him right—but that Gedaliah is no longer around to gloat to. He launches an expedition to rescue the captives (vv. 11–12). But when they see Johanan and his cohort on the horizon, they become emboldened to turn against Ishmael and join the incoming cavalry (vv. 13–14). Ishmael escapes to Ammon, which had sent him on his nefarious mission in the first place (v. 15).

At this point, Jeremiah has seen his trusted Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan removed from the face of the earth, been captured himself, then rescued—but by a man whose proposed solution to the problem was to murder the would-be perpetrator before any felony was committed. Johanan is clearly not a stable guy. He can see what’s up. But he is incredibly concerned with power politics.

Johanan decides that that’s enough. The Babylonians are going to be enraged now. Gedaliah has been murdered on Judean soil. Time to hightail it out of there! Everyone flees to Egypt (vv. 16–18). Of course, they have no intention of going to Ammon, which had used the crisis as an opportunity to try to seize power and territory and sent Ishmael in the first place. So they head in the exact opposite direction, to Egypt.

Jeremiah of course objects. In fact, in one version of the story, Johanan and the people ask Jeremiah’s opinion about escaping to Egypt (Jer 42). Jeremiah prays for guidance. Remarkably, it takes ten days before he gets any answer. I would have thought the situation obvious. But Jeremiah and/or God did not. After ten days, Jeremiah (again) tells everyone to remain in the land. Don’t flee. God wants us to simply be in Judah. It will be all right. Try your best here. Don’t go to Egypt. The crisis will overtake you there anyway.

Nobody listens to him. They go to Egypt and adopt its practices. In the remaining chapters (Jer 43–44), the prophet harangues their malpractice in their new land.

Ammon and Egypt—and others

We don’t have to guess at the salient features of Ammon and Egypt for a deeper reading of the Book of Jeremiah. Both are spelled out at length in the so-called “oracles against the nations.”

Ammon (Jer 49:1–6) is characterized as a warlike and power-driven land that dispossesses Israel (v. 1, 2). Territory that should belong to Israel has been occupied by the Ammonites for a long time. They sit right there, in the midst of Israel, and now they want more of it. The point is that Ammon is like an impostor and interloper that takes what is God’s people’s, and the latter can’t inhabit their own land freely. Culturally, the Ammonites “glory in strength” (v. 4). Perhaps the most striking characterization of this strength-worship from a literary point of view is the confusion of “Milcom” (the name of an Ammonite deity) and “Malcam” (a Hebrew word for a monarch) in the textual transmission (vv. 1, 3). Power and worship are as if melded. This makes Ammon both similar to and different from Egypt.

Egypt (Jer 46) is depicted as a rival great power to Babylon (which Ammon certainly is not). The Egyptians have no stake on Israel’s land, but they are a clearly distinguished, separate geopolitical force. Egyptian society is not only separate from Israel. It is separate from Babylon—apparently. Its people fervently believes that it will be immune to the crisis. The country itself rises like the floods of the Nile (vv. 7–9)—it’s a force of nature. But what it will find out is that the crisis is yet more inevitable. Egypt, too, will fall victim to the crisis. This highly evolved, well-polished, well-oiled society of priests and their complex pantheon of gods will end up in the hands of Babylon (vv. 25–26).

The political machinations of the warmongering society that squats on the land of Judah and apes its appearance start off a new crisis. Governance in line with the demands of the crisis is interfered with. Nay, it’s destroyed. It’s abolished. There is a concerted effort to put an end to it. And the attempts succeed.

This sends a shiver of panic through those who remain in the land: If we keep stifling the demands of the crisis, won’t the agents of the crisis come for us here in the land with greater fury than we have already seen?

So, the political plots of the usurpers who fake the externals of Israel push people—sadly, all the people as far as the authors of Jeremiah are concerned—to run the other way. They turn themselves over to a smoother, less ostentatiously warlike society which has no pretensions of rooting itself on Judah’s land. This behemoth of a social force appeals to them because it sees itself as above the crisis and immune to its advancing tide. It itself is a tide. It is its own force of nature. True—but not true enough. The opposite power, too, will fall into the hands of the agents of the crisis, and it will have to turn itself over to governance in accordance with the demands of the crisis as well.

Of course, the whole world will. And “the world” in Jeremiah is certainly not treated as a monolithic “other.” It has numerous component parts, the spiritual physiognomy of each is addressed by the crisis.

The crisis grabs everything. There is all the territory annexed and colonized by Egypt (Philistia: Jer 47). There are the Moabites of separate religion, over whom God sheds abundant tears (Jer 48). There is Edom, seat of wisdom and learning (Jer 49:7–22). Curiously, Damascus, which fell in ages past and is but a memory, is also overtaken by the forces of the crisis and trembles with shame (vv. 23–27). The wandering peoples of the desert at Kedar, who live in tents and not cities and who had sometimes been enlisted by the Babylonians to attack other kingdoms, will become victims of the crisis (vv. 28–33). Even the rarely mentioned kingdom located at the end of the earth, besieged from “the four quarters of heaven” and spewing its refugees to every nation, will be engulfed (Elam: vv. 34–39); the intended universality of this final oracle is palpable. Everyone and everything will be conquered by the crisis itself.

You can’t seek refuge in the aggressive people who have squatted on the land and mimicked its truth, nor in the great power of the world that thinks itself above it all, nor in its colonies, nor in other religious nations over whom God will weep, nor in any memory of an unashamed past, nor in the domains or structures of education and wisdom, nor in the unaffiliated wanderers, nor in any corner of the earth. The crisis will consume everything.

(Note in passing that, for Jeremiah, the fact that the crisis envelops every institution and power does not excuse the Judean authorities, abusers, and ruling class for their part in bringing it on Judah. He already gave us his verdict on this in the “Gedaliah test.” It was sharp and forceful. He’s not going to waffle, nor say other nations are worse. The import of the universality of the crisis does not affect the culpability of the perpetrators or how much we should speak of it, but only what God’s poor people must do in turn. The crisis seemingly hits Israel first and hardest, but the answer is to learn first and to remain, not abandoning ship, for everything else too will be sinking.)

Of course, when the crisis itself runs its course and everything has been forced into a new paradigm that accepts the changes, finally Babylon itself will be destroyed (Jer 50–51, although in historical fact the handover to Persia may have been essentially peaceful). And when that transpires, all the local agents of the crisis will fall with it. In Babylon a sword will be raised against its officials and sages (50:35; cf. Egypt, Edom), its diviners (v. 36; cf. Moab), its warriors (vv. 36–37; cf. Ammon), motley and foreign troops in its midst or employ (v. 37; cf. Kedar), and its held treasures (v.37; cf. Damascus). The city falls by destructive wind from all sides (51:1–2; cf. Elam). And a poetic description of its capture and destruction is copied verbatim from one written earlier of Judah (cf. Jer 6:22–23; 50:41–43). Quite simply, in a spiritual taxonomy, the same forces that are overcome and locally corrupted in the crisis will themselves fall when it yields to the next stage of history.

But for now, the crisis remains. It takes ground. It advances. Everywhere. Leaving the Lord’s people’s land won’t change that.

Not everyone sees things as Jeremiah does. Johanan and the whole people make the mistake, in the wake of the assassination carried out by usurper Ishmael (and the Ammonites), to run in fear to the rival force of nature that is the Nile. Jeremiah, against his will, is carried away with them, protesting all the way.

Jeremiah’s two solutions

Jeremiah was confronted more than once with the question: Should I stay or should I go? He advised two things. There’s a bifurcation. His view depends on his audience.

He said one thing to those in charge—those whose actions, inactions, abuses, and policies of blindness brought about the crisis in the first place. To them, Jeremiah said: Be taken by the crisis. Go into exile. You have done enough. Let the crisis and its demands consume you.

He said another thing to the remainder of the people—himself, the poor, those panicked and terrified and traumatized by the epic disaster that had uprooted everything. To them, Jeremiah said: Remain. Just remain. Discern the background and motivations of everyone with power (“the Gedaliah test”). But when you find voices that truly meet the demands of the crisis, stick around in some capacity. They are for your benefit—doubly so if the crisis itself has put them in a place of authority. As to whether to stay or go more generally, well, don’t go to the kingdom to our cartographic northeast, which has squatted on our land in mimicry of the real deal; and certainly don’t plot with them to stall or remove the new governance. On the other hand, don’t go to the opposite kingdom, clearly separate but hubristic in the extreme; whatever they think there, the crisis will overtake them, too, and it will not go well with you if you abandon the land for that. Remain. Just remain. However you can and with whatever necessary distance and however much scrutiny is called for, remain. That’s the only thing ever demanded, and it is open to a wide variety of interpretations. God will be with you.

Continued relevance

It should be obvious that the Babylonian crisis belongs to ancient history. But at the same time, I would hope that the relevance for our own day is not lost on the reader. The general socio-political forces that Jeremiah identifies cut across our hearts, in greater or lesser proportions depending on our individual history and allegiances, in the abuse crisis. Each one of us has more or less of every position and geopolitical power within. I’m not interested in spelling out the parallels in any more detail. I won’t pursue a heavy-handed allegory. What matters is a mining of the spiritual depths contained in a book of the Bible.

I have a lot of questions myself. Are the socio-political forces of every worldwide crisis so easily read into Jeremiah’s narratives? Or is it just the abuse crisis that seems to have so many of the internal and external players in common with the Babylonian crisis? How universalizable is Jeremiah’s experience of a crisis? Is it just how God can speak to us in the first decades of the present century, or are the schematic representations of Jeremiah more globally valid in human history? I have no idea.

But I do know that the social and psychological forces and the personal decisions at play in Jeremiah enter into an incredibly fruitful dialogue with the present moment. This is the crisis that I know. It’s the one that has overtaken me. And Jeremiah stands out for its/his complex but clear-sighted schematization of what this crisis entails.

What I would invite you to do is to pick up the Book of Jeremiah and read it. Don’t treat this as an academic exercise. Value book knowledge, for sure. But recognize that as just one dimension. Don’t throw your own experiences underground. Keep them close to the surface. Feel with Jeremiah all the trauma, the social violence, the betrayal, the despair, the deception, the lamentation. Work through the earlier chapters of pain and prophecy. Find some light in the middle. Launch into the historical narratives that reach a crescendo. Cap it all off with careful understanding of the key geopolitical players and their salient features. Maybe it will all be more contemporary than you imagined. There is a lot of wisdom in this book.

Jeremiah is, by word and verse count, the longest book in the entire Bible. So what I’m suggesting is no small task. But it’s well worth it. In the future, I’ll be coming back to reading Jeremiah in the abuse crisis, for there are, as I have already announced, many more facets to explore.

Image in header: Prophet Jeremiah, Church of Panagia Krena, Byzantine Museum of Chios, Chios, Greece, late 14th c.