Jeremiad - Wikipedia

Jesus’ language as referring to the end of the world per se,152 we may regard these warnings as threatening the end of the present nation of Israel, if they do not repent. In the sad, noble, and utterly Jewish tradition of Elijah, Jeremiah and John the Baptist, Jesus announced the coming judgment of Israel’s covenant god on his people, a judgment c

The story of judgment and vindication which Jesus told is very much like the story told by the prophet Jeremiah, invoking the categories of cosmic disaster in order to invest the coming socio-political disaster with its full theological significance.11 The ‘normal’ way of reading these passages within the Christian tradition has been to see them as

The Bible is replete with the scathing indictments of those who wept over oppression. Recall Jeremiah: “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor” (Jeremiah 22:13); and Amos, decrying those who “trample on the heads of the poor as on the

The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poems that grieve the loss of Jerusalem that’s been destroyed. But the Book of Psalms, at least one third of the Book of Psalms, are songs or prayers of sadness and loss and grief and upset, so that very much of the Old Testament experience of faith is having stuff taken away from us. What’s so interestin

If Jesus’ public persona was that of an oracular prophet, then such warnings as these, or most of them, would be perfectly natural, and indeed might be expected. Part of the prophetic vocation and role was to announce to Israel that she was pursuing a path that led to ruin. It would be surprising if Jesus were seen as a prophet if he had said nothi

Jesus, in other words, appears to be deliberately evoking the whole context in Jeremiah. The cursing of the fig tree is part of his sorrowful Jeremianic demonstration that Israel, and the Temple, are under judgment.

The controversy-stories are highly likely to be historical at the core; but their meaning is not the one traditionally assigned to them. They were about eschatology and politics, not religion or morality. Eschatology: Israel’s hope was being realized, but it was happening in Jesus’ way, and at his initiative. Politics: the kingdom Jesus was announc