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 DOI: 10.1177/0020964313517533

2014 68: 184InterpretationKerry H. Wynn

6−Jeremiah 31:1  

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Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

2014, Vol. 68(2) 184 –186© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/0020964313517533int.sagepub.com

Between Text and Sermon Jeremiah 31:1–6

Kerry H. WynnSoutheast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MissouriEmail: kwynn@semo.edu

Jeremiah 30–31 forms a distinct literary body within the book of Jeremiah known as the “Book of

Consolation.” These two chapters are bracketed by God’s command to Jeremiah to “write in a book

all the words that I have spoken to you” (Jer 30:2) and the return to the narrative account of

Jeremiah’s actions in Jeremiah 32. Jeremiah provides no particular date for the writing of the Book

of Consolation, while the surrounding events are set in the reign of Zedekiah. Jeremiah 30:3 sum-

marizes the theme of the book Jeremiah is to write when God says, “I will restore the fortunes of

my people” and “I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take

possession of it.” God’s people who are to be restored are defined as both “Israel and Judah.”

Pamela Scalise writes:

The Book of Consolation stands as a refuge amid the storm of divine wrath that blows through

the rest of the book of Jeremiah. Yet these two chapters are thoroughly integrated with the

message and ministry of the book in its canonical form. The content of the Book of Consolation

repeatedly deals with the relationship between present suffering, further danger, and future

salvation. . . . (Gerald L. Keown, Pamela J. Scalise, and Thomas G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26–52,

Word Biblical Commentary, Word, 1995, 83)

Jeremiah 31:1–6, the Old Testament reading for Easter Sunday (Year A), is part of this Book of

Consolation.

At one level, the poetic imagery in Jer 31:2–4 reflects the salvation history of Israel, recalling

the exodus, the crossing of the sea, and the wilderness wandering. Pharaoh came after Israel with

the sword, cornering the people at the Red Sea. God parted the waters so that those who crossed

over “survived the sword” and then “found grace in the wilderness.” The Egyptian army in turn

drowned within the sea, which led Miriam and the women with her to take up “tambourines and go

forth in the dance of the merrymakers” (cf. Exod 15:20). Even the imagery of virgin Israel recalls

Jeremiah’s assertion that God remembered Israel’s “love as a bride” and how Israel “followed me

in the wilderness, in a land not sown” (Jer 2:2) before becoming “the faithless one, Israel” who

“played the whore” (Jer 3:6). Now, God declares a reversal that could only be achieved by the

power of the redeeming creator: “I shall build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel.”

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Between Text and Sermon 185

But having “survived the sword” is not Jeremiah’s usual way of referring to the exodus.

Typically, he speaks of God bringing Israel “out of the land of Egypt” (Jer 11:4; cf. Jer 7:22, 25;

11:7; 31:32, etc.). “Sword,” on the other hand, is central to the tripartite judgment of death “by the

sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (Jer 21:9), which appears 16 times in Jeremiah, far outnum-

bering the use of the phrase by any other prophet. Jeremiah pronounces this judgment most often

on Jerusalem (Jer 29:7, etc.), but also on those who abandon Judah for Egypt (Jer 42:17, 22; 44:13),

and, indeed, all nations that come under God’s judgment (Jer 27:8). Certainly this would be the

image Jeremiah would use to describe what Assyria had done to Israel.

While Jeremiah can describe the wilderness wandering as “in the wilderness (midba r), in a land

of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through,

where no one lives” (Jer 2:6), he also uses midba r (“wilderness” or “desert”) to describe the dev-

astation following military conquest. “For thus says the Lord concerning the house of the king of

Judah,” declares Jeremiah, “I swear that I will make you a desert (midba r), an uninhabited city”

(Jer 22:6). Of Babylon he declares “she shall be the last of the nations, a wilderness (midba r), dry

land, and a desert” (Jer 50:12). When the enemy came, they “made my pleasant portion a desolate

wilderness (midba r)” (Jer 12:10; see also Jer 4:26; 9:10; 17:6). The “wilderness” in Jer 31:2

reflects this kind of devastation, which is only reversed in Jer 31:6. Jeremiah asserts that those

“who stay in the city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but those who go out

and surrender to the Chaldeans who are besieging you shall live and shall have their lives as a prize

of war” (Jer 21:9). Ezekiel contends that “The sword is outside, pestilence and famine are inside;

those in the field die by the sword; those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them” (Ezek

7:15). Whether those in Israel had “survived the sword” through surrender or flight into the wilder-

ness where they found “grace” and preservation, the image of Israel’s post-war devastation at the

time of Jeremiah is clear.

The image of Israel’s punishment is typologically overlaid with the image of the exodus. By the

merger of these two paradigmatic images Jeremiah brings past promise and present punishment

together to create future hope. Although images of the exodus journey are used, this oracle addresses

the remnant resident in the land of Israel. The following verses in Jer 31:7–9 address the return of

those who are in exile. Jeremiah asserts that the exodus paradigm will be replaced by the image of

the exilic return (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8). What the renewal of the land in the first oracle shares with

the return from the exile in the second is divine reversal. While the resident “planters shall plant”

in wilderness in Jer 31:5, the “great company” that returns will have “among them the blind and the

lame, those with children and those in labor together” (31:8). None will be left behind and those

most marginalized and vulnerable will have full status “among them” as equal members of the

community. The use of the name Ephraim for the northern kingdom links the two oracles with their

respective reversals. Ephraim will once again be fortified with sentinels. Jacob’s reversal in cross-

ing his hands while blessing the sons of Joseph (Gen 48:13–15) will now be fulfilled as God

declares “I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jer 31:9).

The final reversal consists of the juxtaposition of Samaria in Jer 31:5 with Zion in the following

verse. Samaria had no significance for Israel prior to the establishment of the divided kingdom. It

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186 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 68(2)

is first mentioned as a region during the reign of Jereboam I (1 Kgs 13:32) and only came into

prominence when Omri made it his new capital (1 Kgs 16:24). Jeremiah’s image of restored Israel

is not a return to an idyllic time before the divided monarchy, but incorporates the intervening real-

ity of the northern tradition and history into this future hope. Yet, he does not see restored Samaria

as a capital city but as once again a region where “you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of

Samaria” (Jer 31:5). This restoration of formally nationalistic names and sites for Israel takes a

startling turn in Jer 31:6 as the entire northern kingdom turns once again to Zion, the city of David,

as the sentinels cry out “Come, let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.”

Israel as an independent state fell under the sword of Assyria in 722 b.c.e., long before Jeremiah

came on the scene. He had never known Israel as anything other than a backwater in the

Mesopotamian or Egyptian empires. How Jeremiah viewed the religious and political reform under

Josiah as the king attempted to reincorporate the region of Israel under the Davidic throne and

centralize the worship at the Jerusalem temple after 622 b.c.e. is unclear (2 Kgs 22:1–23:28).

While Jeremiah had great respect for Josiah (Jer 22:15–16), it was during Josiah’s reign that

Jeremiah condemned Israel as “the faithless one” who “played the whore” and who could best be

described as “less guilty than false Judah” (Jer 3:6–11). However Jeremiah felt about the Josianic

reform, Jer 31:1–6 seems to look back on Josiah’s dream as one might look back on Camelot. Were

this prophecy fulfilled, Josiah’s dream of Israel and Judah united with worship centralized in

Jerusalem would be realized.

The post-exilic age, however, found the rift between Jerusalem and Samaria greater than ever

before. Then suddenly Easter came, imposing a third layer of imagery on Jeremiah’s consolation.

With the resurrection of Christ, the mountains of Samaria and the sentinels of Ephraim cry out

“Come, let us go up to Zion,” to the risen Christ, “to the Lord our God.” Indeed, as Peter comes to

realize, “in every nation anyone who fears him” (Acts 10:35) may now join in this turning. For in

Christ the Lord has “appeared from far away” revealing that he has truly “loved with an everlasting

love” Judah, Israel, and all people. Thus, we, too, can “go forth in the dance of the merrymakers”

this Eastertide.

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