A lion has come out of his lair; a destroyer of nations has set out. He has left his place to lay waste your land. Your towns will lie in ruins without inhabitant. – Jeremiah 4:7

Today's Scripture Reading (March 29, 2020): Jeremiah 4

Growing up, the bogeyman who we were taught to fear was the Soviet Union or U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan began his time as President of the United States by referring to them as "the Evil Empire." I still remember well-meaning Bible teachers making a connection between biblical prophecies of the end times and the Soviet Union. There was no doubt that, in the minds of these experts, it was the U.S.S.R. that was in the mind of God when he caused his prophets to prophesy about what was coming in our future.

But by the end of Reagan's two terms as President, the Soviet Union was gone. The evil empire disappeared, and the fear of the Cultural West was reimagined into a dream of the possibility of making new friends out of the various pieces of the once-powerful Soviet Bloc. It wasn't that Russia was no longer dominant; they were a compelling nation, and for the past three decades have flirted with either being a world superpower or have existed just below that line. But, of course, the well-meaning biblical teachers had to find another bogeyman that could be found in the modern world but described in the pages of the Bible. Many saw the new bogeyman in the only remaining superpower; The United States of America.

All of this just reflects our dependence on the current social situations as we read the pages of the Bible. Often, our inferences are wrong, and we have to adjust, but it is not the Bible that is wrong, just the way that we have read it that has contained the error.

And, for those who like to think deeply about such things, it gives us a chance for us to become historical detectives as we try to find the historical roots of these prophecies. And that is very true with the writings of Jeremiah.

So, Jeremiah comments that a lion has come out of his lair. This lion was a destroyer of nations. During my childhood, that destroyer of nations coming from the north (verse 6) might have been identified as the Soviet Union. But the question that intrigues me is this; Did Jeremiah have anyone in particular in mind as he spoke these words?

There are two easy answers to that question. Jeremiah might have been referring to the Assyrians. They were north of Judah and a world power. The struggle I have with the Assyrian answer is that, by the time these words were written, they were a superpower in decline. It had been a hundred years since they had destroyed the Kingdom of Israel, and eighty years since they had laid siege to Jerusalem. Jeremiah seems to be referring to someone new who was just emerging out of their den, and the Assyrian Empire does not seem to fit that description.

The better answer might be the Babylonian Empire. The ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy seems to have come from them. But while the attack of the Babylonians came from the north, the heart of the Babylonian Empire existed in modern-day Iraq, which is east of Judah, and not north.

Maybe a more obscure solution to the question of what Jeremiah might have been thinking as he spoke this prophecy was the emerging Scythian Empire, which was ruling the steppe just north of the declining Assyrian Empire. They were a threat. Biblically, the Scythians are often overlooked by scholars because it did not seem that they ever played a significant role in the Middle East. But, for Jeremiah and the people who first heard or read his words, they feared the Scythians as much as the Soviet Union was feared in my childhood. Just because the fear was never realized, doesn't mean that Jeremiah was not looking at that northern empire as he spoke his words.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 5