Today's
Scripture Reading (April 8, 2020): Jeremiah 11
How do people who knew you as a child
react to you? Maybe especially, how do older people who were adults when you
were young respond to you after you became an adult? For me, it can sometimes
be frustrating. There have been some people at various places in my life who
seem to have refused to allow me to grow up. They continue to know me as the
teen or child that I was, regardless of what else I might have accomplished in
my life. In their minds, I seem to remain frozen in time. Maybe it is
comforting to remember that Jesus met with a similar hindrance. While he was honored
and sought after as a prophet and a rabbi throughout most of Judea, in
Nazareth, the place where he grew up, Jesus was without honor. In Nazareth, the
people of the town refused to see Jesus as the prophet he had become. At home,
he remained just the son of a carpenter, the son of a mother named Mary, and who
was the older brother of James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. And the people were
offended by the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 13:55-57).
The story of Jeremiah takes a sudden
dark turn here. Anathoth was Jeremiah's hometown. It was a priestly town which
existed just outside of the city of Jerusalem. And apparently, Jeremiah's hometown
was not only offended by his teaching; they were threatening to kill the
prophet.
Maybe a starting point for trying to
understand the motive behind the threat of the priests of Anathoth is to
remember that the bulk of Jeremiah's ministry took place during the reign of
King Josiah. Josiah was a good king, and one of the actions of Josiah was that
he removed the high places of worship. It was quite possible that those high
places, which were forbidden according to the Mosaic Law, provided the priests
with an alternate, and illegal, source of income from the people. In removing
these high places, the King had hurt the livelihood of the priests of Anathoth
and other priests scattered throughout Judah. Jeremiah was supportive of the
actions of the King, and therefore, he found himself at odds with the people of
his hometown.
But it is also possible that the
reaction of Anathoth went beyond just the infringement that removing the high
places had had on the income of the priests. By opposing the priests of his hometown,
the priests of Anathoth likely felt that Jeremiah had dishonored them. And that
dishonor required a response. Australian Old Testament Scholar John A. Thompson
makes this comment about Jeremiah's conflict with his hometown. "There
would have been some strong reasons why Jeremiah's fellow citizens took such
strong action against him, although such actions are not unknown even today in
the Middle East. Sometimes members of a family will set out to kill a kinsman
who has brought disgrace on the family."
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 12
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