Jeremiah, the Wooden Literalist

Many Christian interpreters of the Bible will readily call you anti-intellectual, obscurantist, and other nice epithets if you dare to believe the Bible really means what it says. You will be decried as a naive “wooden literalist.” Well, here’s a little something for you to meditate upon before you succumb to the hermeneutical sophisticates who look down their noses at you.

The Book of Jeremiah is a good place to go for those seeking to establish a plain-sense biblical hermeneutic. Perhaps the main burden of Jeremiah is his unenviable mission to tell the King and the nobles in Jerusalem that God has had it up to here with their false worship, idolatry, and injustice and that they must surrender to the Babylonians whom God has brought upon them to take them away.

I also spoke to Zedekiah king of Judah according to all these words, saying, “Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live! – Jeremiah 27:12.

That preaching in itself was meant literally and was taken literally.

Of course, saying such things provoked a backlash. One such backlash was from a man named Pashhur (Jer. 20). Pashhur beat and imprisoned the prophet, but God put a word in Jeremiah’s mouth for Pashhur:

You shall go to Babylon, and there you shall die, and be buried there, you and all your friends… – Jeremiah 20:6.

These words can mean nothing else but what they plainly state. Somewhere in the land which is modern Iraq lie the remains of this same persecutor of the saints. He and his friends were dragged to Babylon, they died there, and were buried there.

And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. – Jeremiah 25:11 cf. 29:12. .

These are examples of the literal interpretation that was required to be employed on the prophet’s words by those who heard them (and those who read them today).

Jeremiah Buys a Field

The great section which runs from Jeremiah 30 to 33 is often called “the book of consolation.” It’s main theme is that despite the looming captivity Yahweh will be faithful to His unconditional covenants with Israel; and in Jeremiah 33:20-25 He mentions or alludes to five of them! Of course, everyone knows the famous New covenant passage in Jeremiah 31:31-34 even if some interpreters forget the unyielding pledge of Jeremiah 31:35-37!

But sandwiched within this group of chapters is the story of Jeremiah being instructed by Yahweh to buy his cousin’s (Hanamel’s) field. With the armies of Nebuchadnezzar little more than a stone’s throw from the city walls this was not really the time to start thinking about real estate. At least it wasn’t unless one understood that God would bring the people back to the land. Here is the transaction:

“And Jeremiah said, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Behold, Hanamel the son of Shallum your uncle will come to you, saying, “Buy my field which is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is yours to buy it.” Then Hanamel my uncle’s son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the LORD, and said to me, ‘Please buy my field that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the redemption yours; buy it for yourself.’ Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD..” – Jeremiah 32:6-8

Not all of us have the privilege of hearing directly from God, and having Him tell us what we should do. The prophet Jeremiah was told that his cousin would come to him and say these words: “Buy my field which is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is yours to buy it.” When Hanamel showed up he said this:

‘Please buy my field that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the redemption yours; buy it for yourself.’

Apart from the addition of a “please” and an added detail about the Anathoth being in the country of Benjamin the supplication was precisely what God had told Jeremiah; it was exactly what he expected. It was “according to the word of the LORD.,” a phrase that deserves a full study in itself for its hermeneutical value.

The episode ends with Jeremiah exclaiming “Then I knew that this was the word of Yahweh.” And this made me ask, “how did he know it was God’s word”? The answer is not difficult of course. The prophet “knew” because what occurred bore a direct correspondence with the words Yahweh had spoken to him. In point of fact, the implication is that it was the only way he could have known it.

And so it is with us today. Amid the non-stop insistence upon shadows and types and “new Exodus” motifs, and expansions and transformations, the hard fact remains that the only way Jeremiah could know that God had spoken was to interpret Him literally, and to have the expectation to interpret God literally. He had learned this earlier when Yahweh had told him to take a sah and to put it around his waist. Jeremiah, being a naive literalist, did what he was told. And when God further told him to go all the way to the banks of the Euphrates and to bury the sash, the prophet took Him literally and actually did it (Jer. 13:1-11).

I could go on giving more examples from this great book, but instead I shall stop here and ask you a simple question:

Do You Hear the Prophet?

The lesson is to mimic the prophet and expect that when God says something is going to happen, expect it to happen literally. There is a direct correlation between what God says and what God does. Be a wooden-literalist. Glorify your God by taking Him at His word.