{"id":70535,"date":"2020-02-22T16:06:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T14:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=70535"},"modified":"2023-10-16T12:46:51","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T09:46:51","slug":"the-age-of-agency-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-age-of-agency-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Age of Agency Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[376,395,840],"acf":{"old_id":"70535","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":67893,"related_cahpter":"421","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"\u201cI set before you the way of life and the way of death\u2026\u201d\r\n","content":"

With Nebuchadnezar approaching the city, the King sends emissaries to ask Jeremiah to intercede with God to miraculously save them. Jeremiah informs the King that this will not happen, and has a separate message for the people:<\/span><\/p>\n

I set before you the way of life and the way of death: Those who stay in the city will die\u2026Those who leave\u2026 will be captured by the Chaldeans (21:8).<\/span><\/p>\n

We have seen similar words before: \u201cI\u00a0set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity.\u201d (Deut 30:15).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no more explicit expression of the overriding moral imperative of the Tanach – the free agency of humankind – than these words. Here at the moment we are first introduced to Judah\u2019s destroyer, who will drive them into the wider world, we are reminded of Moses\u2019 words when the nation made their previous transition, from their desert cocoon into independence in their homeland.<\/span><\/p>\n

The text echoes these words with a bitter irony. There are two paths, and you must choose, but there is no longer a\u00a0 good choice since \u201cI have set my face against this city for evil and not for good.\u201d (21:10) This, implies the text, is because \u201cThey have headed down the ancient (i.e. pagan) pathways, going on the unprepared tracks\u201d (18:15). There is no way back since they chose neither the path of good <\/span>or<\/em> <\/span>evil, they rejected the entire paradigm that is the upshot of monotheism – that we have agency to choose. So emphatically did they reject their ability to choose good or evil, to impact the world with their actions, that they sacrificed their own children to Baal (19:5), thereby asserting that since they are as helpless in the world as leaves in the breeze they must appease the gods at all cost, even their own seed. This is the final straw, and in the next verse God lays out their doom, that now begins to unfold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The previous chapters end with Jeremiah\u2019s lament (20:7-18) regretting the day he was born. We can now see he recognized what his compatriots couldn’t: \u201cSince life is about agency, and I am helpless, is not my life pointless?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Until the last moment God left an opening for repentance. In chapter 18 Israel is compared to a malformed lump of clay on God\u2019s potter\u2019s wheel. God can recycle it into a new container, if the people will reform – but that reformation is beyond His control. We see perhaps the clearest scriptural exposition of the rabbinic principle that \u201call is in the hands of Heaven but the fear of Heaven.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, instead of reformation as a pristine vessel, they must be smashed (19:11).<\/span><\/p>\n

Judah has rejected the covenant, the final words and essential principle of which are echoed here, that monotheism both enables and demands a belief in personal agency in equal measure. It is this message, alien to ancient pagan ears, that went forth into the world from Jerusalem with Jeremiah and the exiles.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":70536,"id":70536,"title":"jer21-choice","filename":"jer21-choice.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/jer21-choice.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-age-of-agency-begins\/jer21-choice\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jer21-choice","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":70535,"date":"2020-02-22 14:06:13","modified":"2022-07-05 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