4 - THE CONTINUING INFLUENCE OF THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH

Summary

The Book of Jeremiah, in its complex, multivocal final form, attests to the reality, liveliness, and decisiveness of the incomparable God in relationship to the defining crisis of Old Testament faith. The book is, in effect, a piercing theological meditation on the abyss of Jerusalem. In that abyss, all traditional and institutional forms of faith were placed in jeopardy. Beyond the abyss, the future is given in new forms and shapes in inscrutable ways by the God who presides over the abyss. But the Book of Jeremiah is not only a reflection on displacement and restoration as lived, historical realities in an ancient city in the sixth century bce. It is instead vigorous testimony that the will, purpose, and action of the incomparable God of holiness and compassion constitute the decisive clue to the meaning of that crisis. The Book of Jeremiah attests that loss in the city is the will of Yhwh, who will not be mocked, and that renewal in the city is the will of Yhwh, who will not abandon either the world Yhwh has created and governed or the peculiar people Yhwh has rescued and commanded into existence. The Book of Jeremiah is thus quite context-specific.