Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Jeremia (Berufung, Familie, Grundstück): Heil und Strafe; omphalos: vom Volk -> Propheten (Sohn Gottes)

Kurzinhalt: crisis: forced the prophets to oppose the order of society and to find the order of their existence in the word spoken by Yahweh; The Chosen People had been replaced by the chosen man; The prophet is the Son of God

Textausschnitt: notabene: 75/13: The sonship of God, moving from the Pharaoh to Israel, and from the people to its Davidic king, has at last reached the Prophet.

71/13 Their faith in the time of crisis forced the prophets to oppose the order of society and to find the order of their existence in the word spoken by Yahweh. Suffering in solitude meant suffering, in communion with God, under the disorder of a community to which the prophet did not cease to belong. (465; Fs) (notabene; Trostbuch)
72/13 The participation in the conflict reached its extreme when Jeremiah enacted in his life the crisis of Israel. Both disaster and salvation, the dual symbolism held together by the existential appeal, were acted out by him at the command of Yahweh: (465f; Fs)

(1) Jeremiah remained without family because the divine word had come to him, saying: "You shall not take a wife, neither shall you have sons and daughters in this place" (16:2). For children and parents would die of starvation, unlamented and unburied (16:3-5); the voice of gladness and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, would be banished from this place "before your eyes, and in your days" (16:9). The disintegration of Israel's order had reached the point where the first of the toroth, the "Be fruitful, and multiply," was suspended; the people was to be destroyed physically, through breaking the chain of the toldoth. (466; Fs) (notabene; Trostbuch)
(2) And yet, life will continue "in this place." For the word came also to Jeremiah ordering him, as the next of kin, to buy a field at Anathoth from a relative (32:7-8). The prophet obeyed and ordered Baruch to place the deed of purchase, together with a copy, in an earthen jar, "so that they may last many days." "For thus says Yahweh of the hosts, the God of Israel: Yet again shall there be bought houses and fields and vineyards in this land" (32:15 ). (466; Fs)
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73/13 The oracles reveal a new structure in the field of historical forces. The prophet had to act out the fate of Israel in his own life, because the holy omphalos of history had contracted from the Chosen People into his personal existence. In the world-historic crisis, involving the goyim together with Judah, he had become the City of God above the doomed cities of the land, not to be overcome either by the "kingdoms of the north" or by the people and government of Judah. He was the sole representative of divine order; and whatever the inscrutable will of God might hold for the future, the meaning of the present was determined by the Word that was spoken from the divine-human omphalos in Jeremiah. The Chosen People had been replaced by the chosen man. (466f; Fs) (notabene)

75/13 The prophet is the Son of God. The child is formed by God in the mother's womb. Even before his formation he is "known" by God; and before his birth he is consecrated for the God's service as the prophet to the nations. The language is borrowed from the royal symbolism of the cosmological empires - it closely resembles an inscription of Assurbanipal, the ruler of Assur and overlord of Judah in the time of Jeremiah's youth. As the Assyrian ruler, the prophet is ordained for his service by the God from distant times before the time of the world; and the "distant times" of the Assyrian inscription now blend into the eternity of the divine will that had been revealed in the Message from Sinai. The will of God is not stultified after all by the recalcitrant people, but continues, with historical effectiveness, in the ordination of Jeremiah from eternity. The sonship of God, moving from the Pharaoh to Israel, and from the people to its Davidic king, has at last reached the Prophet. While this is by far not yet the Christian revelation that only God can be the Son of God - the mystery expressed in Trinitarian theology and the Christology - it is a long step toward the insight that the order from eternity is not incarnate in a people and its rulers in pragmatic history. The transfer of the royal symbolism to the institutional outcast Jeremiah is a decisive advance in the clarification of the Messianic problem that will occupy us presently; and the consequences make themselves felt, only a few decades later, in the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah. (467; Fs) (notabene)
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.. Now, when the prophets move ever more distinctly into the position of preservers and restorers of order, their self-understanding can be increased through Mosaic symbols, while the figure of Moses becomes more intelligible through the prophetic effort at self-understanding. In particular, the vicissitudes of the Ebed-Yahweh symbol will illuminate the process in which the meaning of authority emanating from God becomes clarified. The original Ebed-Yahweh is Moses (Josh. 1:1), and in his succession the symbol applies to Joshua ...

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(3) In the third oracle the divine authority is actually transferred to Jeremiah. Yahweh stretches forth his hand and, touching the prophet's mouth, he says (1:20): (469; Fs)