Jeremiah's dream of perfect leader and united community
Jeremiah 23:5-8 - Monday, December 18, 2023
Of all the prophets of Israel, Jeremiah is the most tragic one. A priest from the town of Anathoh near Jerusalem, a sharp critique of Judah's government policies and the people's way of life, who for most of his ministry (around 40 years) preached the message of doom that nobody liked to hear and few believed it was true. He was memorised in the English language with the noun "jeremiad" which is defined as "a long, mournful complaint or lamentation" or "a list of woes" (Online Oxford Dictionary).
Our passage about "a righteous shoot" representing a biblical dream for a true leader over God's people belongs to a longer portion that begins with "woes" against the leadership of Judah during Jeremiah's time (Jer 23:1-8). It begins this way: "Woe, negligent shepherds, who scatter the sheep of My flock, said the Lord" (Jer 23:1). This statement is still rather mild compared with Isaiah's insulting phrase "rulers of Sodom" (Is 1:10). Behind, such woes and phrases there is a long experience of failed leadership in Israel. Most of the kings of Israel were evaluated by biblical authors as "doing what was evil in the eyes of the Lord" (see 2 Kings 8:27; 13:2) and even David whom they present as "a man after [God's] own heart" (see 1 Sam 13:14) had his dark side and at the end of his life was evaluated as "a man of war who shed much blood" unfit to build a temple for the Lord (see 1 Chron 28:3).
Like Isaiah (see Is 11:1-5), Jeremiah dreamed of a leader who would be able to govern God's people. His dream included not only peace and security in the Promised Land but also a unification of the nation that split into two kingdoms when the northern tribes rebelled against the heavy taxation system imposed upon all by Solomon. Such a dream only the Lord could fulfil given the fact that by that time, the northern Kingdom of Israel did not exist, ten tribes of Israel were lost, and the southern Kingdom of Judah was about to be destroyed by the Babylonians. Jeremiah envisioned a new Exodus of greater proportions than the one from Egypt that would bring all Israelites from all the lands to which they were banished by the Lord (see Jer 23:8).
Jermiah's dream was never fulfilled but it has never died either. Like the one of Isaiah (see Is 11:1-5), it was given a messianic meaning and projected into an unspecified period. From a Christian perspective, the promise of God of raising "a righteous shoot to David" (Jer 23:5) is fulfilled in Jesus Christ but in a way that neither Isaiah nor Jeremiah would ever imagined. Although from the tribe of Judah and descended from David, Jesus never sat on the throne of David in Jerusalem and never governed the nation of Israel. And yet, the New Testament refers to him as "the King of kings and the Lord of lords" (Rev 19:16), "the ruler of kings on earth" (Rev 1:5), and possessing "all authority in heaven and on earth" (Matt 28:18). But the way Jesus lived and the way He now rules the world is vastly different from the way worldly leaders live and rule.
The dream of unifying all the tribes of Israel and bringing them back to their land also took on a different dimension. It is not anymore about unifying the tribes of Israel alone but about the unification of all the people of the world in the community of universal (catholicos in Greek) gathering (ekklesia) that worships God and lives by the commandment of love. In this community all is welcome and all life matters. And the "glue" that keeps that diverse community of every tribe, nation, and language united is the Spirit given to each of us by the Risen Christ.