Reading for July 7th

 Read Jeremiah 10.1-16. In 10.1-16: Hymn of praise. These verses contain a hymn that expresses loyalty to the one true God and makes fun of the other gods as worthless idols. The hymn, which seems to follow 9.22, serves as a model of repentance and reconciliation for the exiles surviving the nation's collapse. The poem is similar in subject and worship style to the repentance of the children from the broken family (3.22-25). In verses 2-5: The people should neither become like the nations around them nor adopt their idolatrous customs. In verse 6: Israel's God is the true king of the nations. In verses 8-11: By contrast, the gods of the nations are stupid, human creations. In verses 12-16: Only the God of Israel is the Creator whose wisdom made the world. Israel is God's special inheritance. In this hymn, creation's harmony is reestablished. Comments or Questions..

Reading for July 6th

 Read Jeremiah 9.17-25. In verse 17: Mourning women: In ancient Israel, official mourning women are called to funerals to lead the community in weeping. In verse 21: Here they are summoned to weep over the destruction of the nation, for death has come up into our windows. The funeral to which the people are invited is their own. In verses 23-26: A prose comment, which seems to continue from 9.12-16 rather than from the weeping poem, announces that God acts in justice for those who know me. Comments or Questions..

Reading for July 5th

 Read Jeremiah 9.4-16. In verses 4-8: Accusations against the people include their unfaithfulness to each other as they lie, slander, and deceive. In punishment God will refine them like silver. In verse 9: But God expresses hesitancy with a question also asked earlier (5.9, 29):  How can punishment be avoided? In verses 10-11: The command to weep indicates that the destruction of the earth and of the city of Jerusalem cannot be turned away. The poem implies the end of the world for the inhabitants of Judah. Invasion by the foe from the north will end normal life. In verses 12-16: These prose verses interpret further the tragedy about to happen but which for the audience of the book has already occurred. In verses 13-14: The people did not keep God's law nor listen to God's voice. Instead, they worshiped the Baals. Comments or Questions..

Reading for July 4th

 Read Jeremiah 8.18-9.3. In 8.18-9.26: Weeping. God, the earth, and official mourning women weep to signify the certainty of the nation's destruction. The poetry of weeping also suggests that God joins with the people and the earth in expressing vulnerability, pain, and grief over the invasion that will destroy life in the land. In 8.18-9.3: There is disagreement among scholars about the identity of the principal speaker in this poem, but it is probably God. In verse 21: The God who suffered in the story of the broken family (2.1-3.25) is in pain and dismay again over the hurt of my poor people. The Hebrew text reads "daughter of my people," to suggest that God is still lamenting over the broken family relationship. In 9.1: The divine speaker then expresses a wish: O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people! Divine tears, unlike divine anger, create a brief solidarity and empathy with the people. If the audience is Israel during the Exile, divine tears suggest that God has not rejected them forever but suffers with them. In verse 2: The speaker's mood changes quickly. God desires to escape from the midst of the sinners, an unfaithful people. Comments or Questions.

Reading for July 3rd

 Read Jeremiah 8.4-17. In 8.4-17: Why the attack will come. God speaks to Jeremiah in continued perplexity about the people's failure to repent. In verses 6-7: They behave like wild animals. In verses 8-9: Their punishment will be captivity. The aftermath of military attack shows wives and fields captured by others. In verses 10-12: The refrain of accusation from 6.13-15 is repeated here to explain why the invasion must occur. Everyone is deluded and everyone sins. In verses 14-15 : The people speak in confusion and blame God for failing them. Their voice may reflect the feelings of the book's audience in exile, even though their speech is here set before the recounting of the tragedy. In verses 16-17: God replies by calling attention to the sound of the approaching battle,. Comments or Questions..

Reading forJuly 2nd

 Read Jeremiah 8.1-3. In the horrifying conclusion to the sermon, the kings, who are not only the leaders but also symbolize the nation itself, will die and their corpses will be dishonored. The sermon seeks to bring about obedience and true worship. The people must listen to the voice of God though the prophet. If the book's audience lives in exile, then the sermon makes clear that only true worship will bring about renewed life in the land. Comments or Questions.. 

Reading for July 1st

 Read Jeremiah 7.21-34. In verse 29: A poetic verse urges the people to lament, for God has rejected their worship. In verses 30-32: People offer their children in sacrifice on Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom. In verses 33-34: For these crimes the nation will be destroyed. Their corpses will be littered about, normal life in the land will cease, and the land will become a waste. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 30th

 Read 7.8-20. In 7.8-8.3: The sermon mpves in a downward spiral of offenses. In 7.9: The people commit crimes and worship Baal, a storm deity, not the God of Israel. In verses 12-15: For these offenses, Jerusalem will become like Shiloh, a shrine in the northern kingdom that was destroyed by the Philistines. The Jerusalem Temple will meet the same fate if the people of Judah do not repent. In verses 16-17: Yet the sins of Judah are so great that God prohibits Jeremiah from interceding on behalf of the people. In verses 18-19: Entire families worship the astral deity called the queen of heaven. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 29th

The Temple sermon.

Chs. 7-8: This long prose sermon presented by Jeremiah at the Temple in Jerusalem appears to interrupt the poetry of chs. 1-10. The poetry contains multiple images and voices that intrude upon each other and, in chs. 4-6, focus on the cosmic battle. The prose sermon, by contrast, contains only the voice of Jeremiah as the divine spokesperson. The sermon's subject is the hypocrisy and arrogance of the people's worship. Rather than completely changing the subject from the poetry, the Temple sermon focuses attention on one more aspect of the people's sinfulness. The people themselves, not God, should be blamed for the destruction of the nation. Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem, fell to Babylon in the sixth century BCE because their worship was false. The sermon must have been immensely shocking for its original audience. Since the time of David, the king and the Temple had been closely bound  together in the people's thinking. When David came to the throne, God promised that David's son would build the Temple and that David and his throne would be established forever (1 Sam 7.1-7). A century earlier than Jeremiah, the prophet Isaiah had interpreted the promise to David as unconditional assurance of Jerusalem's safety (Isa 36-37). By the time of Jeremiah,the people of judah seemed to think they were safe no matter what they did.

 Read Jeremiah 7.1-7. Standing at the gates of the Temple, Jeremiah tells the people that they must change their ways to dwell in this place (7.3, 7, 10,11). The "place" probably refers to the Temple, the land, and the city. To live there, they must stop their false reliance on the place itself. Instead, they must act justly toward one another. They claim God's protection in the Temple even though, by oppressing weak members of their society, they act as if they are not God's people. The threat to the nation stems notably from the invading foe but also from their own behavior Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 28th

 Read Jeremiah 6.22-30. The attacking army continues to advance against you, O daughter Zion (v. 23). In verse 26: As the symbol of the city there is nothing for her to do but to lament her fate. In verse 27: God speaks to Jeremiah to tell him his role is like one who tests the authenticity of silver. In verse 30: Judah is rejected silver. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 27th

 Read Jeremiah 6.13-21. In verses 13-15: A refrain that will reappear in 8.10-13 charges the entire community with guilt--from the people to the leaders. everyone is greedy and leaders lie; therefore God is justified in punishing them. In verses 16-21: God assembles the nations and the earth itself as witnesses against them in the covenant lawsuit. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 26th

Read Jeremiah 5.30-6.12. In 6.1-30: daughter Zion is attacked.  This chapter gathers images of the cosmic battle into a collection of poems from a chorus of speakers. The mythic nature of the battle increases when the text identifies daughter Zion as the object of the attack. A ferocious military nation wages war against Jerusalem, portrayed as a weaken wanton woman, defenseless in the face of her foe. In verse 1: A voice urges the children of Benjamin, one of the tribes of Judah, to flee the city for evil looms out of the north. In verses 4-7: The poem quotes the enemies' shouts as they prepare for attack. They believe they are acting under divine orders against a wicked city. In verses 10-12: Jeremiah laments the people's stubbornness. They are not even capable of hearing the prophet's warning. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 25th

 Read Jeremiah 5.20-29. God's reluctance to punish is overcome because neither Jacob, the northern kingdom that fell to Assyria in 721 BCE, nor Judah, the southern kingdom that falls to Babylon in 587, sees, hears, or fears the Creator. Unlike the sea and the rains that stay in place and come at the proper times, the people know no boundaries in their wickedness. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 24th

 Read Jeremiah 5.7-19. In verses 7-11: A question that will be repeated (5.29) addresses an unnamed female. She is probably daughter Zion and God's unfaithful wife (2.1-3.5). God asks if there is a way to pardon her, but she and her children have been adulterous. There is not way to avoid punishment. In verses 12-18: Further accusations of infidelity introduce another announcement of the approaching invader, a mighty nation, superhuman in it capacities. However, a prose comment promises not to completely destroy the nation. If the book's audience is the people in exile, v. 18 speaks to them directly. They are the remnant who remain after the invasion. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 23rd

 Read Jeremiah 5.1-6. In 5.1-31: God's reluctance to send the attackers. These loosely connected poems show that God does not wish to destroy the nation. Instead, the people are at fault because they will not act justly or repent. God is neither arbitrary nor whimsical in orchestrating the attack on the nation. In verses 1-6: God will not destroy the nation if Jeremiah can find one righteous person. Though he runs up and down the streets of Jerusalem to the rich and the poor, Jeremiah's search is unsuccessful. God promises invasion by wild animals, which symbolize the invading army. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 22nd

 Read Jeremiah 4.23- 31. In verses 23-28: Creation destroyed. The  speaker describes a terrifying vision of destruction that reverses the world's creation in the first chapter of Genesis. This picture of the earth as a divested landscape, waste and void, implies the cosmic battle somehow overturns the world. The impact of the historical invasion of Judah by Babylon meant the end of their national world, the collapse of daily life in their land. The poem describes the symbolic effects of that invasion. Judah's world has come to an end. In verses 29-31: The battle draws near as suggested by the noise of the attack and the flight of the inhabitants. this poem portrays the city of Jerusalem as a woman called daughter Zion.. She is probably God's first wife in 2.1-3.25. Portraying the city as a woman indicates how impossible defense against the advancing army is for her and creates pity in the reader. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 21st

 The approaching enemy.

In chs. 4-6: No narrative unifies these poems, but the approaching foe looms over the chapters and gives them menacing drama. The voices of God, Jeremiah, a narrator, the people, daughter Zion, and the foe from the north--all speak and argue about God's role in the coming invasion. The battle poems use great art in portraying war. Scenes of approaching armies appeal to the senses and give the superhuman enemy from the north shape in the imagination. With few details of sight and sound, the poems place readers in the thick of the battle.

Read Jeremiah 4.5-22. The sound of the trumpet and the sight of the standard or flag of the army evoke the battle. In verses 6-7: References to the mythic foe add to the unearthly terror coming upon the nation. The enemy is a lion, magnified into a destroyer of nations. Since God is the one bringing the foe, supernatural forces are arrayed against the nation. In verses 19-22: Although God brings the enemy, God also witnesses the battle with uncontrollable anguish . Comments or Questions.

Reading for June 20th

 THE COSMIC BATTLE

In Chs. 4-10: Chapter 4 turns away from the story of the broken family to give prominence to announcements of imminent invasion by the "foe from the "north." The material in this section is largely poetic, but some prose passages as well (4.1-8.3). Although individual passages probably came from many different times, they are collected here around the theme of cosmic destruction at the hands of the mythic "foe" from the north.

Read 4.1-4. In 4.1-4: Repent. This poem reaches back to the broken marriage by repeating the invitation to "return," and it extends forward in the book by promising God's wrathful judgement against those who do not repent. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 19th

 Read Jeremiah 3.19-24. Though still nostalgic for his wife (2.19-20), the husband/father again invites the children to "return" and promises to heal them. In verses 22-24: The children then begin to speak, addressing the father directly and repenting of their infidelity and idolatry. The family is partially restored. the account of the broken family symbolically retells the entire course of Judah's history up to the Exile. It is likely that the children symbolize the exiles who were invited to return and promised a renewed future in allegiance to their father. The story of this broken family explains the Exile symbolically. The historical destruction of Judah and Jerusalem was not God's fault but was punishment for idolatry and betrayal. That betrayal by all the people appears the more intimate and wrong because it is like betrayal by a spouse. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 18th

 Read Jeremiah 3.6-18. In verses 6-10: Jeremiah replaces the husband as speaker and reports that the husband had previously had another wife, Israel who also betrayed him and whom he had also divorced. In the story of the family, both the northern and southern kingdoms have betrayed God and been cast off. Since the northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria in 721 BCE, this story explains that historical tragedy in the symbolic terms of betrayal in marriage. In verses 11-18: The divine husband sends Jeremiah to the first wife and invite her to return. The text reports no response from her. Then the invitation to return is addressed to the children (v. 14). Their father promises them restoration and reunification of the whole people in Jerusalem (vv. 15-18). Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 17th

 Read Jeremiah 3.1-5. The relationship between God and his wife, symbolizing all the people of Israel and Judah, is over. The family is broken and there appears to be no future. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 16th

 Read Jeremiah 2.4-37. In these poems, the divine speaker alternates in addressing male Israel (2.4-16; 2.26-32) and female Judah, portrayed as God's wife (2.17-25; 2.33-3.5). The effect of this switch from male to female is to accuse both figures of infidelity and of going after other gods or lovers. Male Israel changes its gods (2.11), forsakes God, the fountain of living water (2.13), digs its own sources of water (2.13) and worships idols (2.27-28). Wife Judah also betrays God, but in more intimate ways. Though she is God's wife, she played the whore (2.20), went after other lovers (2.23-25, 33; 3.1), and would not return to her husband (3.1). Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 15th

 The broken family

In Chs. 2-3: A story of a broken family underlies and unifies the poetry and prose of this section. The account of this family functions as a summary of the whole book in symbolic form. God appears as husband and father, betrayed, brokenhearted and in search of reconciliation with his unfaithful wife and children.

Read 2.1-2: God speaks and addresses his wife, remembering how good it was during their honeymoon. Then God addresses male Israel in similar terms. Israel was holy to the Lord. Both female and male were set apart and protected. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 14th

 Read Jeremiah 1.11-19. Jeremiah's gains substance from two visions written in prose. In verses 11-13: Jeremiah sees a branch of an almond tree, a "shaqed" in Hebrew. In a play on words, God replies, I am watching ("shoqed") over my word to perform it. What God says through Jeremiah will happen. Next Jeremiah sees a boiling pot, tilted away from the north. The boiling pot is a symbol of destruction, overflowing and burning. The north may refer to a historic enemy, but more likely the threat from the north refers to a mythic enemy, coming like a superhuman monster. Only in 20.4 will the foe from the north be identified as Baylon. In verses 14-18: The tilting pot will spill out an army of invaders who will stream upon the land. God is calling the kingdoms of the north to invade Jerusalem. Jeremiah himself should have courage throughout the terror, for God will be with him. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 13th

 Read Jeremiah 1.1-10. Chs. 1-10: Cosmic destruction. Ch. 1: Jeremiah's call. In verses 1-3: The introductory verse tells who Jeremiah was and when he prophesied. He was from a family of priests from the town outside Jerusalem, Anaoth. His call came during the time of King Josiah and extended until the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587 BCE, a 40-year period that symbolically links him with Moses' 40 years of leadership in the wilderness. Jeremiah is presented as a prophet like Moses, as promised in Deut 18.18. In verses 4-10: In a poetic conversation between God and Jeremiah, Jeremiah receives his mission. His call before birth indicates that his prophecy was not his own invention but given to him by God. His resistance on the grounds that he is only a boy and so cannot speak properly also indicates that God has sent him; he has not chosen this task for himself. God tells him not to be afraid, promises to be with him, and touches his mouth. This gesture symbolizes the divine origin of the words Jeremiah speaks and the words recorded in this book. The book claims that Jeremiah's words are from God. In verse 10: Jeremiah is a prophet to the nations and will tear down and build up. This short poem gives Jeremiah and his book authority in the face of opposition. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 12th

 Read Philippians 4.21-23. In 4.21-23: Closing. Mutual greetings (compare 1 Cor 16.19-21; 1 Thess 5.26-27) and a blessing (compare Philemon). In verse 22: The emperor's household, the slaves of the emperor in Rome or the colonies. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 11th

Read Philippians 4.8-20.  In 4.8-20: A call for consistency in all situations. A brief, poetic passage commends right thinking and right action (vv. 8-9) and notes the proper attitude toward changing circumstances (vv. 10-20). In verses 8-9: The whatever statements indicate a series of attitudes for living that can help the community face any difficulty. In verse 10: Revived your concern, the Philippians maintained concern for Paul even when they could not express it. In verses 10-13: Paul's attitude resembles Cynic and Stoic discussions of his time, but he does not see the source of endurance in himself. Paul challenges the Philippians to learn the value of "humiliation," shunned by conventional society but reinforced elsewhere in the letter (2.3, 8; 3.21). In verses 15-19: The community never lacked concern for him (v. 10), even though he neither needed nor sought it. Their reward is from God. In verse 16: Paul never accepted gifts from a church while he was with them (see 1 Cor 9; 1Thess 2.9; 2 Cor 8.1-5). In verse 18: On sacrifice see 2.17. Comments or Questions...

Reading for June 10th

 Read Philippians 4.2-7. In 4.2-7: Exhortations to overcome disunity and opposition. In verse 2: Be of the same mind: The point of disagreement is unknown, but a number of the letter's key expressions (same mind, struggled side by side, work of the gospel) come together here. Book of life, see Ex 32.32; Ps 69.28; Dan 12.1. In verses 4-7: Brief exhortations to develop the right attitude; guard, a military term, describes God's peace. Comments or Questions..

Reading for June 9th

 Read Philippians 3.1b-4.1. In 3.1b-4.1: The example of Paul. A transition (v. 1) and warning (v. 2) lead into Paul's renunciation of his advantages to counter any tendencies to arrogance (vv. 3-11). He commends perfection but notes, a play on words, how perfect people (relatively speaking) know they have not reached perfection (vv. 12-16). Finally, while enemies of the cross have an earthly orientation, Paul commends a heavenly citizenship in which the believers await the glorification in the future (3.17-4.1). In verse 1: To write the same things, probably about disunity; Paul positions the words he writes about his own life as a safeguard for the community's problems. In verse 2: Beware, repeated three times, or "watchout for," warns about a possibility, not what already exists. Verses 2 and 18-19 likely refer to practices of the community, rather than actual opponents, that breed disunity. Dogs in ancient writing were examples of shameless greed. In verse 3: Circumcision, metaphorically, God's people. In verse 7: Regard echoes 2.3, which commends church-members to "regard other better than themselves," and 2.6 which asserts that Jesus did not "equality with God as something exploited." In verse 10: Becoming like ("symmorphizomenos") Jesus, a link to 2.7, in which Jesus took on the "form" ("morphen") of a slave. In verses 13-14: The image is of running a race. In verse 17: Imitation, see 1 Cor.16; 11.1; 1 Thess 1.6. In verse 20: Citizenship, not political but heavenly. See Gal 4.26. Comments or Questions.. 

Reading for June 8th

 Read Philippians 2.9-3.1a. In 2.19-3.1a: Timothy and Epaphroditus: examples of unselfishness. Timothy (2.19-24) and Epaphroditus (2.25-20), examples of unselfishness concerned with the whole church. In verse 22: Timothy, see Acts 16.1-3; 1 Cor 16.10-11; 1 Thess 3.1-6> In verse 25: Epaphroditus, see 4.18; Col 1.7; Philem 23. In verses 29-30: Honor such people, Paul continues to redefine honor: Honor those who risk their lives for Christ (2.30). In 1a: Finally, a transition (aslo at 4.8). Comments or Questions..