Jeremiah 38 - Jeremiah counsels
surrender again. The princes want him dead because he
disheartens the soldiers and people of the city with his words. The king, Zedekiah, seems to give them
leave to do what they want. So they put
him in a cistern that is in the Court of the Guard, a cistern filled with mud. A man named Ebed-melech, a Cushite
(Ethiopian), pleads with the king to let him take Jeremiah out and he
does. The king seems very easy to
manipulate. Zedekiah then sends for Jeremiah again. Jeremiah fears the king will kill him if he speaks God’s
word, but the king reassures him.
So Jeremiah urges surrender again and assures him, the king, that he will live. Zedekiah
says he fears the men of Judah who have gone over to the Chaldeans; he fears
they will mistreat him if he surrenders.
Jeremiah assures him he will be all right. The king seems afraid
of everyone at this point.
Jeremiah says he will not disclose to anyone the nature of their
conversation.
Jeremiah 39 -
Jerusalem is captured (fourth month of eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign--July
of 587 BC). Zedekiah flees but is caught on the plains of Jericho. King of Babylon has Zedekiah's sons
slaughtered and Zedekiah’s eyes put out [Shakespeare must have read a little Jeremiah]. The king is then placed in
chains. The walls of the city are
destroyed and the people deported.
The poor are left behind and given farms and vineyards (39:10). Jeremiah
is treated well, given over to the care of Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, son of
Shaphan.
Romans 6 – Paul warns them
that just because Christ’s grace is always more abundant (or abounding) than
the sin it overcomes; this is no reason to be indifferent about sin. Some sarcastic critics were perhaps
saying they should sin even more to increase the flow of grace to them. But
those who have “died to sin” should no longer live in it. Baptism into Christ is baptism into his
death—the thing that should be visible in us is his resurrection or newness of
life (6:2). “Consequently, you too must think
of yourselves as [being] dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus” (6:11).
Sin is equated with “desire” here.
Being out from under the law does not mean being free to sin; it means
being free from sin. This freedom
from sin “leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life” (6:22).
There
is some little tension in Paul between the realized
eschatology he expresses here and the deferred
eschatology he talks about elsewhere.
Romans 7 – Paul discusses the
freedom from the law that comes with the death we enter into in Christ. The idea seems to be that the law only
has jurisdiction over those who are living in the fall, to give them knowledge
of the sin they are in; but when one enters into the resurrected, restored life
given in Christ, the law no longer holds sway. “[N]ow we are released from the
law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the
spirit and not under the obsolete letter” (7:6). The law is what shows
people that they are sinful. He also seems to be saying that the law itself
gave us new ideas or occasions to enter sin, as if by pointing out sin to
sinful men, it lured them into sin even more—is this right? Sin became “sinful beyond measure” (7:13--unendurably
sinful?) under the law. “For I do not do the good I want, but I do
the evil I do not want. Now if
[I] do what I do not want, it is no long I who do it, but sin that dwells in
me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at
hand. For I take delight in the
law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle that
was with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in
my members. Miserable on that I
am!” (7:20-24)
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