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The prophet Jeremiah had seen the inside of a jail cell more than a few times, which wasn’t surprising given his habit of telling everyone in public spaces that the leadership of his country was sinning so much, and so brazenly, that pretty soon God was going to get sick of trying to help them and just turn everything into a heap of rubble and start over again. Jeremiah had been called by God, after all, to proclaim that YHWH, the God of Israel, was going to “uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant,” and this word was a refrain “to nations and kingdoms” throughout Jeremiah’s ministry – including his own (Jeremiah 1:10; 2:9-10; 31:28). Those six verbs that constitute his call: the first four, uproot, tear, destroy, overthrow, all about taking the rotting building down to the brass tacks. Yes, when a system is rotten to the core, God uproots and tears down, destroys and overthrows… but there are two more verbs in Jeremiah’s call: as Jeremiah testifies, God also builds and plants. Four verbs of destruction, and two verbs of reconstruction. People said it back then to Jeremiah’s face, but they say it still: why is the Old Testament God so angry?
Jeremiah tried to explain it a million different ways, sometimes with clear and measured words, sometimes with wild poetry and unhinged actions like smashing pots and burying his underwear. Sometimes he was angry with God for being angry, and other times he realized that God’s anger and wrath is justified––n fact, sometimes it’s justice itself. You can read the words of Jeremiah and other prophets like Amos, Micah, and Isaiah who emphasize that God’s destruction of Jerusalem was devastating for many, especially those who were safe and comfortable. But that same anger was liberating for many of the poor who were oppressed by it. Micah claims that the leaders of Jerusalem plotted and stole land even from widows (Micah 2) and that they metaphorically butchered and ate their own people (Micah 3), and even Isaiah agreed sometimes, though he always loved Jerusalem (see Isaiah 5:1-13).
Ultimately, they all agree: God doesn’t get angry easily. God’s anger is only directed at those who build systems of oppression. If God really sees all people as made in the divine image, a blessing just by the sheer fact that they’re alive, then systems of denigration and violence are piercing to God’s soul. With the Exodus, for example, Pharaoh’s system of oppression eventually sparked God’s anger, and eventually––after many attempts to convince Pharaoh to change––finally God uprooted and tore down the administration that had enslaved and exploited the Hebrews and many other people. And at the time of the split between the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah (around 922 BCE), and in the fall of the Northern kingdom of Israel (about 722 BCE), and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile (around 587 BCE)… I think Jeremiah would say that it’s all a similar story. These events of destruction are depicted as the result of continued, unchecked and systematic oppression of people.
In a sermon given in public, standing in front of the temple, Jeremiah told all the people of Jerusalem: your city will fall because you did not “change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly,” and that you “oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow” (Jeremiah 7:5-6). According to Jeremiah, the royal system of Jerusalem had became a carbon copy of Pharaoh — full of oppression against the vulnerable, which is contradictory to the very reason for Israel’s existence. And so Jeremiah reminded all the people what God did to systems like Egypt who refused to repent and reform: they were uprooted and torn down, destroyed and overthrown. Bad news for some, and good news for many others.
But, he said, that’s not the only option: “If you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly do justice with one another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the orphan, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not give in to idolatry to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever” (7:5–7). There were a lot of people in Jerusalem, apparently, who believed that, just because God promised to love them a long time ago, they could do whatever they want and God would always support them, almost like the covenant was a “get out of jail free” card (7:8–10). Some people listened. But others called the cops on him––he was, after all, cursing the king right in front of the royal chapel, the one built by the king’s great-great-granddad, otherwise known as the temple. Speaking out against king and temple was a capital offense: it was a threat to national security.
