Those conversant with the Tanakh (also known, when shuffled, as the Old Testament) might have expected that a pastor with the name of "Jeremiah" could prove to be something of a human fumarole, expelling harsh and unpalatable truths from the pulpit.
For the original Jeremiah--one of the three major "latter prophets" of Hebrew scripture--was an unrepentant hardcase so given to scalding screeds that his very name has entered the language as a synonym for "one who is pessimistic about the present and foresees a calamitous future." He has even become a second noun--"jeremiad," denoting "a prolonged lamentation or complaint," "a cautionary or angry harangue."
Below the fold are alternated passages from the Book of Jeremiah with those Fox-propagated clips of the sermons of Jeremiah Wright. After perusing the ceaselessly inflammatory words of Reverend Wright's namesake, I expect that all those who so piously urged Barack Obama to reject and denounce his pastor's words, to even leave his church, will similarly reject and denounce the words of the prophet Jeremiah, demand that their own pastors vow to forever abstain from quoting his words, and, indeed, swear to work to ensure that the Book of Jeremiah, in its entirety, be stripped from scripture.
The Book of Jeremiah has somewhat rudely been referenced as "the psychotic articulation of the prophetic message," in a work that also observes:
As for calm, sane, moderate versions of prophecy, in effect there are none. Sanity and calmness make their home not in Israel's prophetic tradition but in its wisdom tradition. Wisdom accepts; prophecy rejects; and it requires a kind of madness to reject the basic givens of an entire society, all the more to suggest that history should begin again with a new creation of the world. The madness in question is not, to be sure, simple madness but the controlled madness that modern society sometimes honors in great artists . . . The prophets "play" the old themes of Israelite history and theology in a crazed and driven new way.
In a piece in the November 30, 2007 issue of Time, Shelby Steele writes that "today
we blacks have two great masks that we wear for advantage in the American mainstream: bargaining and challenging."
Bargainers make a deal with white Americans that gives whites the benefit of the doubt: I will not rub America's history of racism in your face, if you will not hold my race against me. Especially in our era of political correctness, whites are inevitably grateful for this bargain that spares them the shame of America's racist past. They respond to bargainers with gratitude, warmth, and even affection. This "gratitude factor" can bring the black bargainer great popularity . . .
Challengers never give whites the benefit of the doubt. They assume whites are racist until they prove otherwise. And whites are never taken off the hook . . .
As Steele correctly notes, "Barack Obama is a plausible presidential candidate today because he is a natural born bargainer." Analogized to Hebrew scripture, he is of the wisdom tradition. He is the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Jeremiah Wright, however, is not a bargainer. He is a challenger. He is, as was his namesake, of the prophetic tradition. He is the Book of Jeremiah.
In Barack Obama's speech on race Tuesday, I expect he will, in part, explore how the world is perceived by black "challengers," and why. While not of that tradition, he will attempt to explain it. I hope.
For roughly 24 years in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E., Jeremiah wandered though Jeruslaem and the land of Judah, harshly warning various groupings of Jews that Yahweh was preparing to denounce, desert, and destroy them, as punishment for various perceived transgressions of his laws.
Close observers of the flooding of the airwaves with the "sermons" of Jeremiah Wright have noted that Barack Obama's Fox foes have mendaciously sought to smear Rev. Wright as a full-time, full-throated, screaming black Danger via "cherry-picking" about three minutes of outbursts from more than 30 years of sermons. With the Book of Jeremiah, however, there is no prospect of "cherry-picking." The thing is actually monotonous, in its unrelenting denunciations, and raining down of various forms of doom upon both the peoples of Judah, and of the kingdom of Babylon.
It is right and meet that Jeremiah's denunciations of Judah and of Babylon should, 27 centuries on, be read as spoken against America. This is because Christian colonizers of this continent have consistently had the effrontery to declaim that here they have founded "a New Jerusalem," a veritable "shining city on a hill," as the Puritan John Winthrop first ejaculated. Well over 300 years later, that utter freak Ronald Reagan was flogging the same flaccid monkey, aspirating:
"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life. What I imagined was a tall proud city built on the rocks, stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace . . . I believe that God put this land between two great oceans to be found by a special people from every corner of the world who had that extra love of freedom that prompted them to leave their homeland and come to this land to make it a brilliant light beam of freedom to the world."
Conversely, these same sorts of embarrassing ululaters routinely damn America as "the new Bablyon," whenever it fails to sufficiently proscribe various sorts of pleasure.
Many of the more inflammatory words in the Book of Jeremiah are said to come from the mouth of Yahweh himself. In the time of Jeremiah, Yahweh still frequently conversed with mere mortals here on earth. Such conversations with human beings did not in fact stop until Yahweh entered into his ill-advised bet with "the adversary" over the worthiness of Job.
(The last words spoken by Yahweh in the entirety of the Tanakh occur when, at the close of the Book of Job, and bellowing out of a whirlwind, Yahweh resorts to a sort of "low UID #" defense, hectoring Job that he has no business questioning the monstrous evils Yahweh brought down upon his blameless head, because Job wasn't around when Yahweh, like, created whales and stuff, so Job should just keep his yap shut, like a good noob. But Yahweh knows that, in truth, he lost the argument, the bet, and the moral high ground, and, ashamed, he never speaks again. He is seen only once more, in the Book of Daniel, as the remote and silent Ancient of Days, but never again does Yahweh speak. Christian readers of the Tanakh do not understand this, because when the church assembled the Old Testament it promoted the books of the prophets from out of the middle of the Tanakh, and inserted them at the end, in the interest of demonstrating that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophets . . . but I can see that this is another diary, intruding into this one, so we'll move on.)
Anyway. The point is that many of the most reject-and-denounce-worthy passages in Jeremiah should be attributed not to Jeremiah, but to Yahweh himself. But since America shows no signs of evolving, like the more advanced nations of Western Europe, into a post-Christian country, it would be entirely too much to expect that Americans are prepared to reject and denounce Yahweh himself. So I have not made any effort, in the selections from the Book of Jeremiah excerpted below, to specifically attribute them to either Jeremiah, or the long-silent Yahweh. Let them all be on the head of Jeremiah. It is easier that way.
And now, the two texts:
"Hillary is married to Bill. And Bill have been good to us. No, he ain't. Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was ridin' dirty."
[T]hou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed . . . [S]he is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot . . . And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.
"Ohhhh--I am so glad that I got a God who knows what it is to be a poor black man in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people."
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands . . . [a]nd I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath. And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence . . . I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the LORD[.]
"God damn America: that's in the bible, for killing innocent people."
He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the LORD. But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it . . . He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem . . . The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness . . . And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest . . . And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die.
"God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."
[E]very man should let his manservant, and every man his maidservant, being an Hebrew or an Hebrewess, go free; that none should serve himself of them, to wit, of a Jew his brother. Now when all the princes, and all the people, which had entered into the covenant, heard that every one should let his manservant, and every one his maidservant, go free, that none should serve themselves of them any more, then they obeyed, and let them go. But afterward they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids, whom they had let go free, to return, and brought them into subjection for servants and for handmaids. Therefore the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying . . . ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid, whom ye had set at liberty at their pleasure, to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for handmaids. Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth . . . I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life: and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth . . . and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without an inhabitant.
"God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
Make ye him drunken: for he magnified himself against the Lord: Moab shall also wallow in his vomit, and he also shall be in derision . . . And Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath magnified himself against the Lord . . . .
Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of mine heritage, because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass, and bellow as bulls; Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall be ashamed: behold, the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert . . . Shout against her round about: she hath given her hand: her foundations are fallen, her walls are thrown down: for it is the vengeance of the LORD: take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do unto her . . . I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD. The LORD hath opened his armoury, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation: for this is the work of the Lord GOD of hosts . . . And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up: and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all round about him . . . A sword is upon the liars; and they shall dote: a sword is upon her mighty men; and they shall be dismayed. A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall become as women: a sword is upon her treasures; and they shall be robbed. A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up: for it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols. Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever[.]
A very incomplete accounting of various other peoples damned, via Jeremiah, by Yahweh:
For I have sworn by myself, saith the LORD, that Bozrah shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes.
Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof.
And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it.
And upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them toward all those winds; and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come. For I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies, and before them that seek their life: and I will bring evil upon them even my fierce anger, saith the LORD; and I will send the sword after them, till I have consumed them[.]
They relish in the detail, do Jeremiah and Yahweh, of the destruction to be wrought:
Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms; And with thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider; and with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and his rider; With thee also will I break in pieces man and woman; and with thee will I break in pieces old and young; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid; I will also break in pieces with thee the shepherd and his flock; and with thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen; and with thee will I break in pieces captains and rulers . . . Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the LORD, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the LORD.
I think that's enough.
(See also the FP diary by Devilstower, which examines intemperate words uttered by Jesus of Nazereth, and this delightful diary by the Kossack maconblue, which envisions Saul of Tarsus subjected to the hot grill of Sean Hannity, for words attributed to "a fiery, anti-Roman Middle-Eastern preacher some radical Jews call Yeshua."
Next week: rejecting and denouncing Moses, purported author of the Book of Leviticus, which commands that those who wear garments of two different cloths shall be put to death . . . . )