First Reading · Jeremiah
Do not subtract a word
Where we are
This is the middle panel of a triptych the lectionary has spread across two weeks. The Saturday of the Sixteenth Week read Jeremiah 7 — the temple sermon itself, the threefold slogan and the bandits' cave. Today we get the same sermon from outside, with a date, a courtyard and an arrest. And the Saturday of the Seventeenth Week will read Jeremiah 26:11-16 and 24 — the trial, and the verdict.
What happens
"In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim... Stand in the court of the house of Yahweh and speak to the people of all the cities of Judah who come to worship in the house of Yahweh; whatever I command you, tell them, and omit nothing. Perhaps they will listen and turn back, each from his evil way, so that I may repent of the evil I have planned to inflict upon them... If you disobey me... I will treat this house like Shiloh, and make this the city which all the nations of the earth shall refer to when cursing another." Then: "When Jeremiah finished speaking all that Yahweh bade him speak, the priests and prophets laid hold of him, crying, 'You must be put to death! Why do you prophesy in the name of Yahweh: This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate and deserted?' And all the people gathered about Jeremiah in the house of Yahweh."
What to notice
The date is the whole political situation in four words. Be-reshit mamlekhut Yehoyaqim — in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, which puts this in 609 or 608 BC, immediately after Josiah was killed at Megiddo. Josiah's reform is over, the reformer is dead, and his son — installed by Pharaoh Neco — is on the throne. Everybody in that courtyard knows the wind has changed.
And the instruction contains an anticipation. Al-tigra davar — do not subtract a word. Gara is to diminish, to hold back; the phrase belongs to the Deuteronomic formula you shall not add to it and shall not take from it. Yahweh does not tell Jeremiah to be brave. He tells him not to edit, which implies he already knows what a man standing in that courtyard would be tempted to leave out.
The mission is launched on a maybe. Ulai yishme'u ve-yashuvu — perhaps they will listen and turn back. Ulai is the same word Amos used at the start of this month: perhaps Yahweh will have pity on the remnant of Joseph. Neither prophet is given the outcome in advance.
And then the sentence that supplies what yesterday's reading was cut before reaching. Ve-nichamti el-ha-ra'ah — and I will relent concerning the evil I planned. Nacham means to change one's mind, to be moved. Jeremiah 18:7-10 said exactly this — if that nation turns from its evil, I relent — and the lectionary stopped one verse short of it yesterday, leaving the potter's clay looking inert. Today the omitted doctrine turns up in the next chapter but one, as the stated reason for preaching at all. The two readings repair each other.
The threat has a precedent, and that is what makes it unbearable. Ve-natati et-ha-bayit ha-zeh ke-Shiloh — I will make this house like Shiloh. Shiloh was where the tabernacle and the ark stood for generations before Jerusalem; it was destroyed, probably by the Philistines, and Psalm 78 remembers that Yahweh abandoned the dwelling at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among men. Every person in that courtyard knew there had been a previous house of Yahweh and that you could walk to its ruins. The sermon is not saying imagine if. It is saying again.
And the second half of the threat inverts the founding promise: li-qlalah le-khol goyei ha-arets, a curse for all the nations of the earth. Abraham was told that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Jeremiah says the city will become the standard comparison people reach for when they want to curse somebody.
Then the arrest, and the verb is one this month has already met. Va-yitpesu oto ha-kohanim ve-ha-nevi'im — the priests and the prophets seized him. Tafas is to grasp, to lay hold of — and it is the participle Jeremiah 2:8 used for the professional jurists: tofsei ha-torah, the handlers of the law, who did not know me. The men who handle the text lay hands on the man.
And the charge quotes him accurately. They do not misrepresent the sermon; they repeat the Shiloh line and the desolation line, correctly, as the indictment. What is prosecuted is exactly what was preached.
The last clause of the reading is deliberately unresolved. Va-yiqqahel kol-ha-am el-Yirmeyahu — and all the people assembled to Jeremiah. Qahal is the verb behind an assembly; the Greek Bible renders the noun ekklēsia. Are they gathering as a mob or convening as a court? The lectionary stops here and leaves it hanging. Anyone who reads on to tomorrow's reading finds out: it is the people, and the princes, who acquit him — over the objection of the priests and prophets who arrested him.
Responsorial Psalm
Zeal for your house
Where we are
Psalm 69 is the Psalter's long prayer of the man sunk for the sake of his zeal, and the New Testament quotes it more than almost any other. Today's selection is the section about shame and family — a different part from the one read on the Saturday of the Seventeenth Week, which takes the mire and the thanksgiving.
The selected verses
Psalm 69:5. "Those outnumber the hairs of my head who hate me without cause. Too many for my strength are they who wrongfully are my enemies. Must I restore what I did not steal?"
Psalm 69:8-10. "For your sake I bear insult, and shame covers my face. I have become an outcast to my brothers, a stranger to my mother's sons, because zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me."
Psalm 69:14. "But I pray to you, Yahweh, for the time of your favour, O Theos! In your great kindness answer me with your constant help."
What to notice
Sone'ai chinnam — those who hate me for nothing. Chinnam is the adverb for gratis, without cause, without payment — the same word used of Job being destroyed for nothing. John's Gospel puts this exact phrase in Jesus's mouth in the upper room: they hated me without cause.
And the next clause is a legal complaint with a precise shape. Asher lo-gazalti az ashiv — what I did not steal, I must then restore. Restitution law required a thief to repay what he took, sometimes several times over. The psalmist is describing being made to pay damages on a charge he did not commit — which is what Jeremiah is standing in a courtyard facing.
The family verse is where the pairing bites. Muzar hayiti le-echai, ve-nokhri li-vnei immi — I have become estranged from my brothers, a foreigner to the sons of my mother. Nokhri is the legal term for an alien, someone outside the kinship system. Two days ago Jeremiah addressed his mother directly — woe to me, my mother, that you bore me — and today the psalm makes him a foreigner to her other children. The Gospel will supply a village that lists the brothers by name.
And then the line the Fourth Gospel quotes when Jesus clears the temple. Ki-qin'at beitkha akhalatni — for zeal for your house has eaten me. Akhal is simply to eat; John 2:17 has the disciples remember this verse as he drives out the traders. It is on the lectionary today because a man is being arrested in a temple courtyard for what he said about the temple — and because zeal for your house is precisely what the priests thought they were defending when they seized him. Both sides in Jeremiah 26 could quote this verse.
The last selected line is a request about timing: va-ani tefillati lekha Yahweh, et ratson — and I, my prayer is to you, Yahweh, at a time of favour. Not deliverance now, but at the acceptable moment — which is a considerable concession from a man with hands on him.
Gospel · Matthew
The full inventory
Where we are
The parable discourse has just ended with the formula when Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. He moves on to Nazareth, and this is what happens.
What happens
"He came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue. They were astonished and said, 'Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?' And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honour except in his native place and in his own house.' And he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith."
What to notice
The town asks a good question and asks it twice. Pothen toutō hē sophia hautē kai hai dynameis? — where did this one get this wisdom and these powers? — and then again after the family list, pothen oun toutō tauta panta?, so where did all this come from? The question brackets their evidence, and the evidence is a genealogy.
And the genealogy is complete, which is the argument. The father's trade — ho tou tektonos huios, the builder's son; tektōn is a general artisan in wood and stone rather than a cabinetmaker, and Mark calls Jesus the tektōn while Matthew makes him the tektōn's son, moving the trade back a generation. Then the mother by name, four brothers by name, and the sisters — ouchi pasai pros hēmas eisin?, are they not all here with us?, meaning married locally and still resident. Nobody is missing from the list. That is the whole force of it: we have the complete file, and there is nothing in it that accounts for what we just heard.
The verb for their reaction is the discourse's own vocabulary. Kai eskandalizonto en autō — and they were scandalised in him. Skandalon is the trip-hazard, the baited stick that springs a trap, and it is the noun the explanation of the weeds used three days ago for what the angels gather out of the kingdom. The village trips over him, and what they trip over is not a teaching but an origin.
The proverb Jesus quotes has an extra clause in Matthew. Mark has in his own country, among his relatives, and in his own house. Matthew keeps two: en tē patridi kai en tē oikia autou — in his home town and in his own household. The word for household is the one Matthew has been using for the oikodespotēs, the master of the house, in three parables this week.
And the last verse has been softened, deliberately. Mark 6:5 says ouk edynato ekei poiēsai oudemian dynamin — he could not do any deed of power there. Matthew writes ouk epoiēsen: he did not do. The change is small and consistent with everything else this evangelist does with Mark; Matthew will not write a sentence in which Jesus is unable. But he keeps the reason: dia tēn apistian autōn, because of their lack of trust — and he keeps the outcome, which is that in the one place where everybody knew him, almost nothing happened.
| Reading |
The people who knew him best |
| Jeremiah 26 |
The priests and prophets — his own professional class — seize him in the courtyard |
| Psalm 69 |
A stranger to my mother's sons, consumed by zeal for the house |
| Matthew 13:54-58 |
A village that can name the whole family and cannot account for the man |
Today the opposition is not from strangers, and in all three readings the people doing it are the ones with the best information.
Jeremiah is arrested by ha-kohanim ve-ha-nevi'im — the priests and the prophets, which is to say his own guild and the staff of the building he is standing in. They do not misquote him. The charge they lay is the sermon, accurately repeated: this house shall be like Shiloh. And the verb for the arrest is the one the book used, twenty-four chapters earlier, for the professional handlers of Torah who did not know me. The men whose whole competence is the text lay hold of the man delivering it.
And the strangest thing about the passage is the instruction that precedes it. Do not subtract a word. Yahweh does not promise Jeremiah safety and does not promise him success — the mission is issued on an ulai, a perhaps — but he does anticipate the temptation. The one thing forbidden in advance is editing, which tells you what a man in that courtyard, with that congregation, on that morning, would most naturally have done. And the reason given for the whole exercise is a verb the lectionary cut yesterday: nacham, I may relent. The potter's responsiveness, missing from Thursday's reading, turns up on Friday as the entire point of preaching.
Psalm 69 supplies the interior of it. Hated chinnam, for nothing; made to repay what he never took; and a foreigner to his own mother's sons. And the reason given is zeal for your house has eaten me — which is the bitterest line available on this particular day, because the men who seized Jeremiah in the temple courtyard would have said exactly the same thing about themselves. Both parties in the arrest are defending the house. Only one of them is being consumed by it.
Then Nazareth, where the same dynamic is domestic rather than institutional. The village produces a complete file — father's trade, mother's name, four brothers, all the sisters, all local — and the file explains nothing. They ask the right question twice, and both times they answer it with a family tree. What they cannot get past is that they have known him since he was small, and the Gospel's word for their reaction is skandalizō: they tripped over him, on ground they had walked all their lives.
And the two endings sit oddly together, which is the honest thing about them. Nazareth's is bleak: he did not do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief, and he leaves. Jeremiah's is left open on purpose — and all the people assembled to Jeremiah — and tomorrow's reading will disclose that this crowd becomes his acquittal. Same courtyard, same charge, and the outcome turns on which room he ends up in.
A Question to Sit With
Jeremiah's briefing did not
promise that it would work —
perhaps they will listen — and did not promise he would be safe. The one thing it insisted on was that he not take anything out. And when the
priests seized him, the sentence they quoted back as the charge was precisely the sentence a sensible man would have dropped. Where am I keeping the
substance of something true and quietly removing the clause that would cost me? And when the people who know me best cannot account for something in me and trip over it, will I be able to tell the difference between their
being wrong and my being wrong — given that Nazareth had every fact right and still missed him?