Jeremiah 20:4-6 – Manipulation Metastasized
4 For thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes shall see it. I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon and slay them with the sword. 5 Moreover I will deliver all the wealth of this city, all its produce, and all its precious things; all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will give into the hand of their enemies, who will plunder them, seize them, and carry them to Babylon. 6 And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house, shall go into captivity. You shall go to Babylon, and there you shall die, and be buried there, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied lies.’ ”
A contemporary observed of Robert Taft in Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s A Life in the 20th Century of Sen. Taft's, “Donald Duck resistance to new ideas“: “He has the best mind in Washington, until he makes it up.”
Our feathered, flustered friend's reaction to that which he does not anticipate and initiate is useful because the same heart beats in us. Jeremiah 20:4-6 shows the consequences of prioritizing pride over potential penitence aren't funny.
Having taken up the tool of intimidation to silence Jeremiah, we have seen that Pashhur, as Marcus Aurelius puts it perceptively in Meditations, dies his own soul in the transaction. He so becomes the anger he employs that God through Jeremiah renames him accordingly in Jeremiah 20:3. Anger's impact, sadly, doesn't stop. He will be so consumed with personifying coercion that he becomes a terror to his friends. The meaning of his relationships will dissolve in the acid of ambition he thinks holy. Thus, he will lose the subtle, early-stage corrective of which Proverbs speaks, those potential wounds of a friend which are to be treasured over the kisses of an enemy.
As Christ will point out the continuity to Peter that those who live by the sword die by the sword, Pashhur who has learned to live by force will be met with force in turn. To one in so accustomed to meek submission within the rarefied confines of the Temple, the vulgarities of battle will be a shock indeed. To a religious culture expecting protection from the fact that the Temple was among them, God presents holiness and wrath greater than the Temple. He will meet force with force in order to overcome pride and the will.
That the Temple will be looted could be left implied, but we need to hear it. For, we who would not think of relying on an imposing religious edifice are as quick as Pashhur to rely on treasurer likely Temple's. It is our adaptable substitute for holiness, our buffer that keeps us from complete reliance on the Lord. We need to hear, as Christ's disciples did, that not one stone will be left upon another, that as the very gold in which we trust was Rome's object in such complete destruction, so God targets the idolatrous hopes we place in intermediate objects, wrenching them from our hands by violence when necessary.
Even the stable environment which gives Pashhur and his heirs a false sense of stable control is subject to change. We can be uprooted like the fig tree, forced to dig deeper roots in order to be fruitful. We can be put in situations where, like evil Manasseh in exile, we more readily see our dependence because the pretenses which gave it a thin covering are removed. The relationships which prop us up in place when all is well are but temporary, even our next breath not guaranteed.
Despite all these ramifications, as Walter Lippmann puts it in Public Opinion, "Moral judgment is so much more common than constructive thought." God will send Jeremiahs into our lives with corrective set up in our sense of self-righteousness, question our reverence for routine and we are quicker with slaps and stocks than sober silence. Perhaps beforehand we know that our righteousness rests upon Christ, if we regularly confess that and rejoice in it, Jeremiah, or Nathan, or the Word itself directly presenting a message of needed repentance and change will not topple our sense of well-being and trigger our outrage.
Perhaps in that state we will see with Paul that a father corrects those he loves and receive instruction, if not gladly at first, then at least with consideration. Growing like the psalmist in Psalm 119 from such stringent discipleship, we will then testify to its impact. We will, person by person, be used to create a culture in which humility and growth are closer to the norm.
A contemporary observed of Robert Taft in Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s A Life in the 20th Century of Sen. Taft's, “Donald Duck resistance to new ideas“: “He has the best mind in Washington, until he makes it up.”
Our feathered, flustered friend's reaction to that which he does not anticipate and initiate is useful because the same heart beats in us. Jeremiah 20:4-6 shows the consequences of prioritizing pride over potential penitence aren't funny.
Having taken up the tool of intimidation to silence Jeremiah, we have seen that Pashhur, as Marcus Aurelius puts it perceptively in Meditations, dies his own soul in the transaction. He so becomes the anger he employs that God through Jeremiah renames him accordingly in Jeremiah 20:3. Anger's impact, sadly, doesn't stop. He will be so consumed with personifying coercion that he becomes a terror to his friends. The meaning of his relationships will dissolve in the acid of ambition he thinks holy. Thus, he will lose the subtle, early-stage corrective of which Proverbs speaks, those potential wounds of a friend which are to be treasured over the kisses of an enemy.
As Christ will point out the continuity to Peter that those who live by the sword die by the sword, Pashhur who has learned to live by force will be met with force in turn. To one in so accustomed to meek submission within the rarefied confines of the Temple, the vulgarities of battle will be a shock indeed. To a religious culture expecting protection from the fact that the Temple was among them, God presents holiness and wrath greater than the Temple. He will meet force with force in order to overcome pride and the will.
That the Temple will be looted could be left implied, but we need to hear it. For, we who would not think of relying on an imposing religious edifice are as quick as Pashhur to rely on treasurer likely Temple's. It is our adaptable substitute for holiness, our buffer that keeps us from complete reliance on the Lord. We need to hear, as Christ's disciples did, that not one stone will be left upon another, that as the very gold in which we trust was Rome's object in such complete destruction, so God targets the idolatrous hopes we place in intermediate objects, wrenching them from our hands by violence when necessary.
Even the stable environment which gives Pashhur and his heirs a false sense of stable control is subject to change. We can be uprooted like the fig tree, forced to dig deeper roots in order to be fruitful. We can be put in situations where, like evil Manasseh in exile, we more readily see our dependence because the pretenses which gave it a thin covering are removed. The relationships which prop us up in place when all is well are but temporary, even our next breath not guaranteed.
Despite all these ramifications, as Walter Lippmann puts it in Public Opinion, "Moral judgment is so much more common than constructive thought." God will send Jeremiahs into our lives with corrective set up in our sense of self-righteousness, question our reverence for routine and we are quicker with slaps and stocks than sober silence. Perhaps beforehand we know that our righteousness rests upon Christ, if we regularly confess that and rejoice in it, Jeremiah, or Nathan, or the Word itself directly presenting a message of needed repentance and change will not topple our sense of well-being and trigger our outrage.
Perhaps in that state we will see with Paul that a father corrects those he loves and receive instruction, if not gladly at first, then at least with consideration. Growing like the psalmist in Psalm 119 from such stringent discipleship, we will then testify to its impact. We will, person by person, be used to create a culture in which humility and growth are closer to the norm.
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