This is the core of the matter, and even those prophecies in Jeremiah that appear
to be backward glances at the events are best understood as voicing the doctrine of
submission to empires. Huffmon is exceptional in his understanding of the prophet’s
devotion to his people, notwithstanding his incessant diatribes. It has been an egregious
misunderstanding of the classical Hebrew prophets to regard their internationalism
as coming at the expense of their loyalty to their own people; not to the kings of
Israel and Judah, of course, but to the kinship of the nation. Huffmon continues:
“God’s people were now making their way in a new international order and needed
a unifying theology not linked to political independence, a theology... that helped
to bring together all that was left of Israel” (Huffmon 1999 : 268 , with deletion).
Now, Huffmon associates the doctrine of political dependency specifically with
Jeremiah, suggesting that it was a product of his own age, informed by Josiah’s cultic
reforms, unsuccessful as they may have been. As we have argued this ideology has a
history, and is best understood as an application of First Isaiah’s doctrine of a century
earlier, coming in response to the Assyrian crisis. If anything, Jeremiah sharpened
First Isaiah’s doctrine, so that Assyria, (or “the king of Assyria”), the rod of Yahweh’s
rage, has now become “Nebuchadnezzar, my servant” (Hebrew: ‘abdî) in Jeremiah
( 25 : 9 ; 27 : 6 ; 43 : 10 ).
Jeremiah 27 : Nebuchadnezzar II as Yahweh’s servantThe clearest exposition of the doctrine of submission to Babylonia as part of Yahweh’s
plan for the whole earth is to be found in Jeremiah 27 , perhaps the most ideologically
enlightening of the Zedekiah prophecies. It is likely that Jeremiah 25 represents a
reworking of chapter 27 , in which we find the prophecy of seventy years that explicitly
predicts the downfall of Babylonia, and which morphs into a prophecy of Judean
restoration. Both prophecies refer to the king of Babylonia as “my servant,” as does
Jer 43 : 10 , in a communication to the prophet Jeremiah predicting a Babylonian
conquest of Egypt. Without entering into the historical setting of that prophecy, it
is important ideologically because the scope of the doctrine that the king of Babylonia
is Yahweh’s agent is broadened to include Egypt.
The message of Jeremiah 27 is that there is still time to save the people of Judah
and Jerusalem, even after the catastrophes that had occurred during the reigns of
Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, if only Zedekiah, king of Judah, “brings his neck under
the yoke of the king of Babylonia” ( Jer 27 : 8 , 11 , and following). Wearing a yoke
and reins to dramatize the oracle, the prophet has this to say to Zedekiah:
I have made the earth, and humans and beasts on the earth, with my great
strength and with my outstretched arm, and I have granted it to whom is upright
in my sight. And now, I have placed all of these lands into the power of
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylonia, my servant, and the beasts of the field, as
well, have I granted to him, to serve him. All the nations will serve him until
the time of his land will come for him, too, and then large nations and great
kings will render him subservient (in turn). It shall occur, that the nation or the
kingdom that will not serve him, namely, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylonia,
and will not place his neck under the yoke of the king of Babylonia – I will visit— The view from Jerusalem —