What will it take to reconcile the rift between the northern and the southern kingdoms of Israel?
How can any nation divided over bitter ideologies attempt to reunite and find common ground?
This question that is keeping many of us up at night in 2023 was already keeping kings and prophets up in the 7th century BCE.
Jeremiah joins King Josiah’s complex campaign to try and reunite the north and south with a radical proposition that challenges regional loyalties and religious norms.
In some ways he’s reminding us that in order to achieve unity we sometimes have to sacrifice core values and precious symbols.
Even the most precious of all.
One of King Josiah’s political aims was to reconcile with the last remains of the northern kingdom of Israel, scattered in the north and in the far reaches of the Assyrian empire.
The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire a century earlier, and Josiah wants to bring the remaining Israelites of the lost ten tribes who were not exiled - to Jerusalem. There’s both a practical-political angle to this approach as well as a religious aspect. Josiah wants to fight the people’s persisting priorities of worshiping the local goddess and gods by creating a united religious reform that will sweep the entire land free of foreign influences. He also uses the opportunity as Assyria begins to weaken to try and forge a stronger nation that will defy the next empire to knock on Jerusalem’s gates.
The campaign to entice the north back to Judah won’t work because he’s up against so much bad blood and sour sentiments between the grudge carrying people of both kingdoms, but his attempt is echoed in this chapter, referenced by Jeremiah, who’s got the king’s back on this.
Jeremiah reminds his listeners and readers that the reason Israel was destroyed was because it lost its ways and traded YHWH for the local deities. Judah, he warns, is following in the same wrong ways.
But in the future, if this reunification campaign works out, both the remnants of Israel who will join Judah, and the Judeans, will work together, and reconstruct their long forgotten bonds, faith and shared vision. Jeremiah describes this future union and Jerusalem’s role as a the city of reconciliation and peace:
“Return wayward children!.. In those days that are coming, the House of Judah shall go with the House of Israel; they shall come together from the land of the north to the land I gave your ancestors as a possession.”
To assure his northern listeners that this is a future worthy of their unique values and concerns he adds a few intriguing proposition:
וְנָתַתִּ֥י לָכֶ֛ם רֹעִ֖ים כְּלִבִּ֑י וְרָע֥וּ אֶתְכֶ֖ם דֵּעָ֥ה וְהַשְׂכֵּֽיל׃
וְהָיָ֡ה כִּ֣י תִרְבּוּ֩ וּפְרִיתֶ֨ם בָּאָ֜רֶץ בַּיָּמִ֤ים הָהֵ֙מָּה֙ נְאֻם־יְהֹוָ֔ה לֹא־יֹ֣אמְרוּ ע֗וֹד אֲרוֹן֙ בְּרִית־יְהֹוָ֔ה וְלֹ֥א יַעֲלֶ֖ה עַל־לֵ֑ב וְלֹ֤א יִזְכְּרוּ־בוֹ֙ וְלֹ֣א יִפְקֹ֔דוּ וְלֹ֥א יֵעָשֶׂ֖ה עֽוֹד׃
And I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will pasture you with knowledge and skill.
And when you increase and are fertile in the land, in those days—declares YHWH —people shall no longer speak of the Ark of the Covenant of YHWH, nor shall it come to mind. They shall not mention it, or miss it, or make another.
Jeremiah 3:14-16
Rabbi Benny Lau’s Jeremiah: The Fate of a Prophet, helps us again to better understand why this verse is such a big deal:
“Jeremiah's first prophecy leads him straight to the territories of the former northern kingdom, Samaria and the Galilee.
Jeremiah wishes to outline the process of return to Jerusalem for the remnants of the Israelite kingdom. What can make the people of Ephraim accept the tidings that they are to come back to Jerusalem?
Young Jeremiah must repackage and market an old, unwanted product. He expects the Ephraimites to reject his invitation for three reasons: As descendants of Rachel, who believe that Joseph was Jacob's chosen son, they are unwilling to embrace the Davidic dynasty that favors Judah, Leah’s son; they do not view Jerusalem as the ultimate capital — Mount Ephraim, and within it, Bethel, is nearer and dearer to them; and the Temple is no holier to them than the places of worship that have served their ancestors for over three hundred years.
Jeremiah must overcome these prejudices, so he emphasizes new "selling points." Jeremiah announces to the children of Ephraim that the Jerusalem to which they will return is not the same one abandoned by Jeroboam centuries before. Jeremiah is careful to strike the House of David from his vocabulary, for the Ephraimites are obviously uninterested in that product. He promises that their return to Zion will be guided by faithful shepherds who will lead the people wisely. In his heart, Jeremiah certainly means Josiah, but to his audience, he remains deliberately vague.
Jeremiah saves the real surprise for last: he tells the people remaining in the north that when they return to a reunited Kingdom of Israel, the Ark of the Covenant will no longer be so important.
Ever since Solomon had built the Temple, the Ark had resided in the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple. But before David came to rule in Jerusalem, the Ark of the Covenant was in Shiloh - in the North. But after a war with the Philistines, the Ark was never returned to the territory of the northern tribes (see I Sam. 5-6).
The Ark became a symbol of the power and glory of the House of David — and of the weakness and inadequacy of the early Israelite kingdom. Jeremiah acts on his awareness of the Israelites' sensitivity. The northerners are loath to trust a Judean prophet, so Jeremiah uses five different phrases negating the centrality of the Ark: "people will no longer mention the Ark of the Lord's covenant or yearn for it; it will be neither remembered nor recalled, and another shall not be made."
Jeremiah, enticing the northerners back to Jerusalem, "liberates" them from any Temple-object fetishism and inspires them to rise from idolatry to the worship of God.”
The attempt to bring the north back and to reconcile will fail, but Jeremiah will return to this aspirational motif through the book.
As for the ark - this sacred fetish - while it’s a radical notion to assume that he’s willing for it to not be the most important piece of holy temple furniture of the future - it may actually be a confession of what was already the inconvenient truth. The ark is no longer there and it no longer matters. Like other idols and fetish objects of pagan past - it’s just a memory.
There is at least one reference in other places in the Bible to the possibility that the ark has already been taken from the temple, hidden by King Josiah's grandfather, King Menashe, as part of his religious reform, a generation prior. And either way, whoever remains in the north does not seem interested in reconciling with Jerusalem. That ship has sailed.
What’s left for the prophet of Jerusalem is to try and talk some sense to a those nearer to him and to try and prevent the same fate that destroyed the northern kingdom from doing the same to its sister in the south.
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