{"id":71482,"date":"2020-03-10T12:09:35","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T10:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=71482"},"modified":"2020-03-10T14:01:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T12:01:10","slug":"the-split-calves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-split-calves\/","title":{"rendered":"The Split Calves"},"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":[],"acf":{"old_id":"71482","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":57331,"related_cahpter":"434","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"A new reading of the violated covenant\u00a0\r\n\r\n","content":"

At the end of chapter 34, God castigates the people for reneging on King Zedekiah\u2019s proclamation that the inhabitants of Jerusalem free their slaves. God promised a punishment in kind- just as the people did not release their slaves, they will become slaves to Babylonia. The prophet proclaims in verse 18: “I will make the men who violated My covenant, who did not fulfill the terms of the covenant which they made before Me, [like] the calf which they cut in two so as to pass between the halves.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This image conjures up the memory of Abraham in Genesis walking through a line of split animals in his covenant with God. Yet we see no such ceremony in Jeremiah or in the book of Kings. There also is only one animal in this ceremony as opposed to the five for Abraham. Finally only the calf appears here. Why the calf? The calf reminds us of three famous calves in history: The Golden Calf of the desert, and Jeroboam’s two calves. The Golden Calf was solitary, however, and never split. The Northern Tribes lived “in between” Jeroboam’s calves, but why would God hearken back to this troubled time? In verse 19, God refers to the “The officers of Judah and Jerusalem, the officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the halves of the calf.”\u00a0 Who are all of these anonymous people? Who is left in Judah and “all the land” when all that remains are the inhabitants of Jerusalem?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that the two calves are actually both the Golden Calf <\/span>and <\/span><\/i>Jeroboam’s calves. The ceremonial splitting is God’s saving the people at two previous threats of destruction. After the sin of the Golden Calf, Moses prayed, God relented, and a new covenant was struck. This new covenant began with the building of the tabernacle, and culminated with Solomon’s building of the Temple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Solomon’s death, the kingdom split in two and the epoch of destruction began with the erection of Jeroboam’s calves. It was in between the Golden Calf and Jeroboam’s calves that Israel was at the pinnacle of nationhood. It was in between these two calves that the people solidified their covenant with God. But it was after they passed through these two calves that the downward trend began. It was then that the leaders of Judah, the priests, and the people of land began to forget that covenant with God. This is why Jeremiah refers to the anonymous group of leaders and people of the land. It was the failure of all these individuals- both the leadership and the people – to heed the covenant made with God in the Golden Age between the two calves. Instead of the pinnacle of nationhood with the building of the Temple, these people will now see the destruction of that very same ultimate symbol of the covenant with God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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