{"id":10879,"date":"2008-01-12T13:29:57","date_gmt":"2008-01-12T18:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/01\/12\/10879.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:57:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:57:47","slug":"haftorah-bo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/01\/12\/haftorah-bo\/","title":{"rendered":"Haftorah Bo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Haftorah Bo, Jeremiah 46:13<\/a>-28
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The word that the LORD spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come [and] smite the land of Egypt. Declare ye in Egypt, and publish in Migdol, and publish in Noph and in Tahpanhes: say ye, Stand fast, and prepare thee; for the sword shall devour round about thee. Why are thy valiant [men] swept away? they stood not, because the LORD did drive them. He made many to fall, yea, one fell upon another: and they said, Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing sword. They did cry there, Pharaoh king of Egypt [is but] a noise; he hath passed the time appointed. [As] I live, saith the King, whose name [is] the LORD of hosts, Surely as Tabor [is] among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, [so] shall he come. O thou daughter dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity: for Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant. Egypt [is like] a very fair heifer, [but] destruction cometh; it cometh out of the north. Also her hired men [are] in the midst of her like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, [and] are fled away together: they did not stand, because the day of their calamity was come upon them, [and] the time of their visitation. The voice thereof shall go like a serpent; for they shall march with an army, and come against her with axes, as hewers of wood. They shall cut down her forest, saith the LORD, though it cannot be searched; because they are more than the grasshoppers, and [are] innumerable. The daughter of Egypt shall be confounded; she shall be delivered into the hand of the people of the north. The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saith; Behold, I will punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods, and their kings; even Pharaoh, and [all] them that trust in him: And I will deliver them into the hand of those that seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants: and afterward it shall be inhabited, as in the days of old, saith the LORD. But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make [him] afraid. Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the LORD: for I [am] with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.<\/blockquote>
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This is very similar to last week’s reading from Ezekiel<\/a>, except that at this point Jeremiah may be prophesying from within Egypt, which puts a different face on things. Yes, he’s pro-Babylonian from way back, but it’s different calling Nebuchadnezzar the scourge of the Lord when you are on his turf. Anyway, it’s not too surprising that the readings are similar, as the Torah portions for the last two weeks split the story of the Ten Plagues between them, and to some extent, rather than the Prophets explaining the Torah, we have here the Torah explaining the Prophets. The Babylonians are a plague, sent by the Lord, just like frogs and vermin and cattle disease, sent to take the Jews from Egypt (where they are fairly comfortable) and return them, not directly to the Promised Land, but to a forty years of wandering in the wilderness, or rather, seventy or so years residence in Babylon, where they are quite comfortable indeed.
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Jeremiah’s Pharoah is not Moses’ Pharoah, of course, but the point is supposed to hold. I’m not sure it does. One of the things I am always looking for, as a Diaspora Jew, is what the Scripture has to tell me about being a Diaspora Jew. Is being a Jew of the exile like being a Jew of the Diaspora? Is Jeremiah a model for a Diaspora Jew? Is Baruch? Is Mordechai? Is Joseph? Is Abraham?
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The Jeremiah model, it seems to me, is not tempting. I don’t just mean as a prophet, although I hope you all know, Gentle Reader, how little I am interested in that particular task. I mean that his model is very Temple-centered, very return-centered, very exilic. It’s not so heavily into the remnant theology that frightens me so badly, that’s true. And Jeremiah’s attitude toward secular authority is more nuanced than Ezekiel’s.
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I don’t think of myself as in exile. I think of myself as a Diaspora Jew. Dispersed, not exiled. It’s an important difference to me.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger is in rest and at east, and none shall make me afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18224,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10879\/revisions\/18224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}