I started Bible Notes a year and a half ago because I was an ordained deacon in the ACNA without a parish to serve in. I commented on the Sunday lectionary gospel texts as a personal discipline, and as a Bible study habit.
This year will see some big changes:
Tomorrow, I’ll be ordained a priest.
This month, I’ve started writing Bible curriculum for clients of Docent Group. They’re great. If your church has Bible curriculum needs—and you want me to write it!—consider them.
I’m also flying out next week to candidate for a full-time Bible-teaching position at a middle school in the greater Philadelphia area. Philadelphia because my fiancée has accepted a tenure track faculty position at Eastern University’s Templeton Honors College. (Another change: We’ll be married out there this October.) Getting the job means daily focused Bible reading.
Depending on our church situation, I’ll either stick with the ACNA lectionary or go back to the RCL.
I’m also feeling out the possibility of a remote PhD in biblical studies at one of a number of European schools. That has me sharpening my areas of focus and honing some conference papers. (I’ll be giving a paper on Hebrews 13:15 this November at SBL—let me know if I’ll see you there.)
I’m teaching Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek to some friends over Zoom. Let me know if you’d like lessons, too.
I’ve been invited to write book reviews for The Global Anglican, too. I may workshop some of those here.
So, in God’s providence, there are new occasions for reading the Bible on the horizon, and I intend to use this Substack as workshop for each of them.
Also, as I’m paying for a wedding and moving to an expensive part of the country, I’m thinking about ways to monetize this Substack. If you find this content valuable, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. I intend to start writing more pieces for paid subscribers, which would make a subscription actually worth something.
In the meantime, as I prepare to move, apply for secular work, and start to write a curriculum piece on Jeremiah 29:11, here are some thoughts about the passage.
Jeremiah 29:7, which reads “Seek the welfare of the city,” may as well have been written by Tim Keller, who made this the slogan of his ministry in New York City. It’s because of the success of his work that most of us who never get this far into reading Jeremiah know this line.
It helps to know
The words Jeremiah is responding to. They come at Jer. 28:2-4 from a liar named Hananiah. Speaking in Yahweh’s voice, Hananiah says, “I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon,” and we’ll all be home “within two years.” A gloss on Jeremiah’s response: “Nope, it’ll be a while” (vv. 4-7). “Don’t listen to Hananiah” (vv. 8-9). “Seventy years, not two” (v. 10).
The city? In Hebrew, it’s “the city” (ha’ir), yes. In the LXX, it’s “the land” (tēs gēs). I have no conspiracy theories. But it bears noting that the term, “the city,” that is so essential to the ESV and to urban evangelicalism, was not an important enough term for God’s people to keep it when they were Greeking their Scriptures.
Jeremiah 29:4-14
It said: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (vv. 4-7)
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord. (vv. 8-9)
For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (vv. 10-14)
What I noticed
In the line “seek the welfare of the city” (v. 7) the words “seek” and “welfare” stand out.
“Seek” (daraš) stands out because it comes back in v. 13: “You will seek (daraš) me and find me, when you seek (daraš) me with all your heart.”
In Jeremiah, “seek” (daraš) is a term that is elsewhere translated “care” elsewhere in Jeremiah. Here are two representative instances:
“All your lovers have forgotten you; they care (daraš) nothing for you.” (30:14)
“For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: ‘It is Zion, for whom no one cares (daraš)!’” (30:17)
This is sad, and it makes sense upon minor existential reflection. We know what it’s like to be uncared for, and Jeremiah uses the words ‘unsought after’ to describe the same phenomenon.
The place in the Torah where I feel the most resonance is early Deuteronomy. Moses talks about “the land that you are going over to possess,” and he calls it “a land (LXX: tēs gēs) that Yahweh your God cares (daraš) for” (11:12). After continuing with instructions about tearing down idols, he continues, “You shall seek (daraš) the place that Yahweh your God will choose… to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices… and there you shall eat before Yahweh your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake” (12:5-7). To clarify that this is not true of every place, he continues: “You shall not do [this] here today… for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that Yahweh your God is giving you” (12:8-9).
Jeremiah recalls, from Deuteronomy, the idea there is a land for which God cares (daraš), which should be sought (daraš), and where Israel should settle and live. And Babylon isn’t the wilderness—that is, a place of testing for one generation, forty years. No, it’s a whole “land”—that is, a place where Israel will live for two generations, seventy years. Homesickness, insurrection, or rootlessness make for bad piety.
Seeking connotes ownership. These uncared-for people are going to have to call this land their home, and care for it’s welfare.
Speaking of “welfare,” “welfare” is shalōm, elsewhere translated “peace.”
As in, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace (shalōm), peace (shalōm),’ when there is no peace (shalōm)” (Jer. 6:14; repeated at 8:11). Here are some more usages:
“We looked for peace (shalōm), but no good came; for a time of healing, but behold, terror” (8:15).
“If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe (shalōm) land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?” (12:5)
“Upon all the bare heights in the desert, destroyers have come… no flesh has peace (shalōm)” (12:12).
“Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will grieve for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare (shalōm)?” (15:5)
“Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Hananiah the prophet [regarding his optimistic prophecy], ‘Amen! May Yahweh do so… Yet hear now this word… As for the prophet who prophesies peace (shalōm), when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that Yahweh has truly sent the prophet” (28:5-9).
It’s helpful to see the term shalōm surrounded by other concepts like healing (true healing, unlike superficial healing, results in shalōm) and safety (a place with shalōm is a safe place that both has been healed and heals).
So what does it mean for Israel to “seek the welfare of the city/land”? Here’s my take today:
It means, first, to acknowledge a lot of wrong. There are those who say there is peace when there is not. There are many instances (attempts, programs, promises) at healing that are superficial and don’t actually achieve peace. This has to do with the fact that Israel is unsought for. By implication, to be a shepherd means to seek peace by seeking the peace of the exile in particular.
The next practical step is prayer. Own the land by settling it (build houses, plant gardens, marry) in so far as you have opportunity, but also by praying for it. I mean, come on, odds are that it won’t work, but, in light of seventy more years of exile, it’s the only play.
Own the land by praying for it, and don’t imagine that you’re on your way out. Don’t love the city. Don’t resent it. But seek its peace by seeking the peace of the unsought, at least through prayer. Pray and see what happens.
As usual, I think the rest of the meaning is on the surface.