Читать книгу Jeremiah 26-52 - Carolyn Sharp - Страница 33

The past is problematic and … cannot be reduced to one tidy version. To phrase it differently, the empire is not a straightforward story of success, as the apologists want to portray it, but a complicated ensemble of atrocity and generosity.

—R. S. Sugirtharajah²⁷

Jeremiah 26 provides a literarily sophisticated, strong opening to the political material that dominates the second half of Jeremiah. Building on Jer 7, this narrative works to expose many in Judah’s leadership as corrupt, unrepentant, antagonistic to the prophetic word, and bent on executing Yhwh’s messenger, Jeremiah. This chapter asserts a truth that has been lived in countless communities under militarized threat: fierce divisions fracture the solidarity and unity of groups facing death or deportation at the hands of an enemy. Here, the conflicts are interpreted in theological and halakic terms: obedience to Israel’s covenant with Yhwh could theoretically still save Judah, but the priests and (false) prophets remain recalcitrant. Thus a marker is laid down in this narrative: deliverance for Jerusalem will be foreclosed. In this liminal moment, the adversaries and allies of Jeremiah struggle. In the late exilic and postexilic eras, scribes already knew the catastrophic outcome of the struggle. They reflect on the lines of antagonism and alliance limned here, crafting this dramatic narrative as a way to remember those conflicts and lift up, albeit in a muted way, the survival of Jeremiah due to the heroic intervention of Ahikam son of Shaphan. Postexilic scribes knew that countless Judeans had been butchered and survivors had been forced into poverty in a decimated Judah or exiled to captivity in Babylonia—all living with dimensions of loss and trauma almost too terrible to express. Jeremiah 26 makes visible the high anxiety and conflict that roiled the community, and it shows the truth of R. S. Sugirtharajah’s observation that life under imperial pressures becomes marked by moments of “atrocity and generosity,”²⁸ these unfolding both within the subjugated community and in interactions between the empire and those whom it threatens. Yet the prophetic word endures: Jer 26 honors Micah and Jeremiah as authentic prophets and cites the powerful example of Uriah son of Shemaiah as one martyred in the service of Yhwh’s word. The name of this Uriah, otherwise unknown, is inscribed in Jer 26 for all future generations.

­Reception in the ­early ­church The early Christian interpreter Jerome (c. 347–420) is interested in the conditional aspect of the covenant articulated in Jeremiah’s preaching, viz., that Israel—and later believers—might repent and thereby avoid the destruction that looms. On 26:4–6, Jerome comments, “It has been put into our power either to do things or not to do them—provided, however, that we ascribe to God’s grace whatever good work that we intend, strive after, or accomplish; for it is God, as the apostle says, who has granted us both to will and to work.”²⁹ Jerome is impressed by the strength of Jeremiah’s character, commending the prophet for prudence, equity, humility, and persistence in the face of potentially lethal antagonism. Jerome takes v. 14 as a signal of humility, exhorting his audience, “if the difficulties of our circumstances ever require of us humility, let us take on this humility in such a way that we do not abandon truth and perseverance.”³⁰

­Reception in ­Reformation ­times The rescue of Jeremiah by Ahikam (v. 24) spurs the French-born leader of the Swiss Reformation, John Calvin (1509–1564), to emphasize God’s control over the lives of all the faithful. Reflecting on the threat to the prophet and the way in which his antagonists are prevented from doing him harm, Calvin writes, “We are by no means so exposed to the will of the wicked that they can do what they please with us; for God restrains them by a hidden bridle, and rules their hands and their hearts.”³¹

­Through a ­queer ­lens Those reading in alliance with queer and gender-expansive persons may choose to approach narrative scenes in Jeremiah as portraying challenges and possibilities relevant for queer life in community. The trajectory of such a reading in Jeremiah will often be grim, although not always. We can lift up the extraordinary creativity of Jeremiah’s scribal partnership with Baruch (see esp. Jer 36), which has yielded scrolls that point to the holy and strive to make sense of violence, death, and life in exile. We can lift up the courage and compassion of the eunuch Ebed-melech, who draws Jeremiah out of a dark and confined space that would have meant a lingering and painful death (38:7–13). Queer readers may find other notes of hope and textures of resistance where I cannot see them. But the narrative arc of Jer 1–52 cannot easily be taken to trace movement from initial conflict to growing resilience to triumphant resolution. Even less can it gesture toward broader transformation of practices and discourses historically built on the suppression of sexual and gender difference. Much of what I know to do here is to name the struggle by means of parallels I choose to construct. I hope queer and queer-allied readers will see this confronting of brutal and agonistic realities as an emancipatory praxis, as witnessing to some dimensions of the experiences of (some) sexually minoritized and gender-nonconforming persons wherever the book of Jeremiah has been read.

Painted as an icon of queer experience, Jeremiah makes visible some of the distorting regulatory effects and repressions of cis-heteronormative patriarchy. When he comes to clarity about his vocation—his identity as a child of God, created with unique gifts and guided toward a holy path (1:4–10)—Jeremiah realizes he will face antagonism from his kinship group and the wider society (1:8), an experience well known to many queer persons. Jeremiah is persecuted relentlessly (11:18–23; 12:1–6; 15:10–21; 17:14–18; 18:18–23). Told by the authoritative voice of his religious tradition that he must remain unmarried and have no children (16:2), he is assaulted by a high-ranking religious official and publicly shamed in the stocks (20:1–3), yielding Jeremiah’s candid characterization of that representative of religion as “Terror-all-around,” something that will be recognizable to many gay, lesbian, gender-nonconforming, and trans persons. Here in Jer 26, the prophet speaks words of truth and is thronged by a mob bent on his harm. Countless are the ways in which queer persons have been thronged, literally and figuratively, by malevolent interlocutors throughout history. The savagery of some of those attacks beggars description; the losses to our families, our communities, and our history have been incalculable. Not every queer or trans person under threat has an Ahikam, a powerful ally, to ensure their survival. But Jeremiah does survive, and so queer and queer-allied readers can lay bold claim to the possibility of survival.

Considering examples of courageous activism in our contemporary cultural contexts, we may understand better the risks taken by Ahikam son of Shaphan and other allies of Jeremiah. As the story is narrated in Jer 26, the entire clerical and political establishment had turned against the prophet. Popular opinion, too (“all the people”), was volatile and easily manipulated against Jeremiah. The risks of dissent would certainly have continued through the exilic period. Even in the Persian period, peace would have been fragile and conflict could well have turned dangerous. Postexilic Judeans may have been wary of making clear where their alliances had lain during the time when bitter disputes had raged about how to respond to the Babylonians. Experiences of trauma and fear caused by violent suppression of dissent can bear consequences for many generations, leaving traces in the lives of survivors and unstable fault-lines running through entire communities. It is important to acknowledge this truth.