Near the very beginning I talked about how in the Torah, the divine rewards and punishments are described in physical terms. If the Israelites follow God properly, they are rewarded with land fertility and military victories, and if they don't they are punished with famine and defeat. The punishments are spelled out graphically in two locations in the Torah, in what is commonly called the "curses." The first of the curses is in this week's parsha.
Blessing and Curse
The curse is preceded by a blessing, which will appear if the Israelites follow God "properly." It says (Lev. 26:3-4)
3 If ye walk in My statutes, and keep My commandments, and do them; 4 then I will give your rains in their season, and the land shall yield her produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit...And so on. The curse follows immediately (Lev 26:14 and following)
14 But if ye will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all these commandments; 15 and if ye shall reject My statutes, and if your soul abhor Mine ordinances, so that ye will not do all My commandments, but break My covenant; 16 I also will do this unto you: I will appoint terror over you, even consumption and fever, that shall make the eyes to fail, and the soul to languish; and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it...The curse continues for about 25 verses.
The blessing and curse make a testable hypothesis. If you can correlate times of plenty with proper Torah worship of God, and times of famine and distress with idolatrous behavior, then it might make sense to believe the divine statements here. A brief jaunt through Melachim (Kings) makes it clear that the correlation does not exist in any clear way. Strife and defeat appears even during the reigns of the most religious kings such as Hezkiyahu (Hezekiah) and Yoshiyahu (Josiah). Great military success occurs during the most wicked king Achav (Ahab) and the deplored king Menashe (Maneasseh) rules for a half century of peace.
Truthfully though, while it is a testable hypothesis in theory, prior to the development of proper scientific methodology it was unlikely that anyone would actually be able to properly test it. This is due to common human errors like confirmation bias and special pleading. One might expect that a deity, who clearly knows about these failings of human psychology, would make the punishment and rewards extra explicit. We wouldn't have the anomalies in the four kings mentioned above. This is clearly not the case, and in fact, the Tanach records one group who looked at the data of "divine punishment" and came to the opposite conclusion as what is laid out in the curse section of this week's parsha. This group will be the focus of the rest of the post.
Yirmiyahu 44
The 44th chapter of Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) is one of my favorite chapters in all of Tanach, although I expect it's not one known to most people. The chapter records conversations between Yirmiyahu and the Jewish communities in Egypt after the destruction of the first temple. The communities in question are listed in several cities. What's amazing about this correspondence is that we know a bit about one of the Egyptian Jewish communities from this era. In a previous week we saw the "Passover Papyrus" which was one of the documents from this community. From other temple inscriptions in the area we know that they Elephantine Jews worshiped syncretic forms of YHWH, including Anat-Yahu a melding of the warrior goddess Anat with the Israelite God YHWH. They also worshiped syncretic gods like Anat-Ba'al. This is in agreement with the section of Yirmiyahu that we will look at in this post. Therefore, it's probably the Elephantine Jews were similar to the ones that Yirmiyahu is criticizing here.
Let's start by looking at Yirmiyahu's accusation (Jer. 44:1-3)
1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews that dwelt in the land of Egypt, that dwelt at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros, saying: 2 'Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwelleth therein; 3 because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke Me, in that they went to offer, and to serve other gods, whom they knew not, neither they, nor ye, nor your fathers.After outlining the horrors visited upon Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), Yirmiyahu urges the Egyptian community to adopt a more monotheistic form of worship (Jer 44:7-8)
7 Therefore now thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your own souls, to cut off from you man and woman, infant and suckling, out of the midst of Judah, to leave you none remaining; 8 in that ye provoke Me with the works of your hands, offering unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye are gone to sojourn; that ye may be cut off, and that ye may be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?What's fascinating about this chapter is that Yirmiyahu records the response of the Egyptian Jews! And what they say is amazing (Jer. 44:15-18).
15 Then all the men who knew that their wives offered unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great assembly, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: 16 'As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee. 17 But we will certainly perform every word that is gone forth out of our mouth, to offer unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil. 18 But since we let off to offer to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.The Egyptian Jews say two things. First of all they reverse the common biblical narrative. They claim that their lives were good only when they worshiped other deities (here the queen of Heaven, perhaps Anat?) properly. And when the Israelites stopped worshiping the "queen of heaven" in Yerushalayim, well, that's when all the calamities occurred.
Furthermore, they use the same language that Yirmiyahu uses but against him. A common trope in Tanach is worshiping Gods that "your ancestors" didn't know. Yirmiyahu uses this in verse 3 above, "serve other gods, whom they knew not, neither they, nor ye, nor your fathers." The Egyptian community say that this is false, the proper worship of the queen of heaven is in fact old, "to offer unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers." They are saying that it's the monotheistic worship of Yirmiyahu that is a novelty!
Yirmiyahu doesn't like the answer and berates the people, blaming them for the destruction of Yerushalayim, even though they seem perfectly at peace in Egypt, and will be for some time to come historically. He ends with a prophecy against Egypt which does not, in fact, occur (Jer 44:30)
thus saith the LORD: Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.'Post-Justification
It is clear to me what's going on here. After the destruction of Yerushalayim, people were distraught and were wondering "how could this happen?" Based off the writing of some of the prophets, mostly Yirmiyahu and Yehezkel (Ezekiel), they established the narrative that the Judeans (and Israelites before them) were punished because they worshiped other gods. They were not solely devoted to YHWH. This later became enshrined as the proper narrative in the Torah itself, in the curse that we read in this week's parsha and the other one in Devarim (Deuteronomy). The only problem with the Torah's narrative is that we have evidence that other people around at the time didn't agree with this historical reconstruction. The Egyptian Jews report the exact opposite.
Neither is likely correct. Yerushalayim wasn't captured because it didn't sacrifice only to God, or because it didn't properly offer water libations to the queen of heaven. It was captured because the Judeans would not submit to Babylon. However, this answer is insufficient to a group of people who claimed that the God they worshiped was omnipotent. For them, the only explanation is that God himself was angry. That's why Yirmiyahu explains it like he does. And that's why the Egyptian Jews don't buy it.
This was used as a proof of Torah by Aish & other organizations. To paraphrase: "it's easy to claim rewards or punishments in the next world since it can never be confirmed. But a reward in THIS world, such as is seen in the Sh'ma, is proof of Torah's divinity since no human leader would stick their neck out and promise something they could not deliver".
ReplyDeleteIt's a similar argument made in regards to Sota (how could a human guarantee a death based on a miracle) or Shmitta (how could a human guarantee a 6th year of abundant crops.)
Of course, it's all BS. Partly for the reasons you state. And also because an "out" is always provided. For Sotah, there are SO many mitigating circumstances where the "miracle" wouldn't work (and indeed there are rabbinic commentators that claim that a priest could add poison!), such as the husband had an affair also, etc. Indeed there is no evidence that the Sotah ritual was ever carried out since there are so many conditions (at least according to later rabbinic interpretations) required to its use. Or Shmitta only works if the entire nation keeps it. There is no evidence that the so-called miracle of Shmitta worked at all, much less on any kind of regular basis.
I find it a bit humorous that Aish uses physical divine rewards as evidence today considering that this idea was already extremely problematic at the time that Iyov and Kohelet were penned.
DeleteI guess the argument is that only a divine person would actually promise something like this. In which case they are absolutely and completely wrong. It's easy to furnish multiple people who promised real tangible events, and didn't deliver. Doomsday predictors like Harold Camping and Pat Robertson are examples. Pretty much any cult leader or Ponzi scheme head will promise material success for its members and never deliver.
Luckily we have a way to objectively test a lot of these claims today. So I guess it's convenient for Aish that all these examples of testable divine influence are no long applicable for one reason or another.
Spot on, Kefira and zdub! The gemara in Megilla says that the 70 year exile corresponds to the 70 shmittas that the israelites didn't observe during their stay in the land of Israel. I'm no mathematician, but isn't that 490 years of not keeping shmittah?
DeleteActually the Hophra/Apries prophecy was 'fulfilled'. In the 570s BC, Apries campaigned againts the incursions of Greek mercenaries in Libya/Cyrenaica. Defeat there led to a mutiny led by his popular general Amasis. In 570 BC Amasis declared himself Pharaoh, forcing Apries to flee. He attempted a comeback with some Baylonian help a few years later (this is probably the context of Jeremiah's and Ezekiel's doom-laden prophecies against Egypt) but was captured and ultimately put to death by Amasis. THe Babylonian invasion seems to have not amounted to much, though.
ReplyDeleteIt's always possible to argue that a prophecy is "fulfilled" if you abstract it enough. The problem is that Jeremiah specifically is prophesying that Nebuchadnezzar's campaign against Egypt will be successful. It wasn't. The events you're talking about come after Nebuchadnezzar's death.
ReplyDeleteNah, NB died in 562 BC. As I said Ezekiel and Jeremiah's prophecies of a terrible Babylonian invasion of Egypt that would lay the country to waste were written in the context of this invasion. Obviously, nothing amounted to this and the apocalyptic expectations were a damp squib. What's interesting is that later generations of Jews retained their belief in Jeremiah and Ezekiel as true prophets, despite their many mistakes - (such as Ezekiel's oracle against Tyre)
DeleteAh you're right, I misremembered.
DeleteIt's interesting that the insolent Egyptian reply survived the texts thru the ages
ReplyDeleteYes! It's actually extremely interesting. I didn't write about it for brevity, but since you opened the door, I'm going to shove my way in.
DeleteThe first question is why did Yirmiyahu include it. I think this speaks a lot to his personality. If you group prophets into two groups, charlatans who don't believe what they're saying but are looking for fame/fortune/attention, and people who do believe what they're saying (whether it's from God or not), then I think Yirmiyahu definitely falls into the latter group. He is, IMO, the most honest prophet in all of Tanach. He clearly believes what he's saying, and he includes the Egyptians' response because they're about to get their comeuppance and he wants everyone to know why. (That they didn't get their comeuppance is a different problem.)
The second question is why the editors/redactors included it. We can speculate Yirmiyahu was preserved not as a single document but as fragments. We see this from the fact that there are tremendous differences in the chapter ordering (and some difference in the text) between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. Differences that are abnormal. So we know redactors were shuffling the text around. Why didn't they excise it? Some possibilities.
1) They considered all the text as divine and didn't want to leave any of it out. Who were they to decide something was good and something was bad.
2) The historical information was lost at this time. No one actually knew that Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Egypt failed. Therefore the storyline looks intact. The Egyptians sacrifice to the moon goddess, God kills them with the Babylonians just like he had Nebuchadnezzar destroy Jerusalem.