Walking Through Jeremiah
Jeremiah 3 - Look on Up
March 16, 2023
We have made it to chapter 3 of the prophet’s book. It’s going to be a while. Hopefully, you can take in some of the sights as we pass them by. There’s a lot to take in. Did you know that Jeremiah contains about 33,000 words? That makes it the longest book of the Bible. (Jeffrey Kranz at overviewbible.com has some intriguing factoids if you’re of a mind. Their YouTube channel is also pretty excellent.) We will not explain each of those 33,000 words. But you have to grant that it’s a target-rich environment for interesting words whose understanding has significant implications for understanding G-d’s story. Taking our time will bear fruit.
We have done verse 1. If you’re reading along through the prophet, it would be tempting to hurry quickly through the poem that opens chapter 3. But if you hurry, you will miss some sights. What gems lay in plain sight in verse 2?
“Look up to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been ravished? By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers, sat like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness.”
The first verb phrase needs some explaining, if only to give you an insight into how Hebrew expresses itself. Sometimes, our English translations get the sense correct, but lose some of the poetic beauty that is there.
“Look up” is actually a pretty good rendering of a common Hebrew idiomatic expression… <hitting the brakes hard> You DO know what an idiom is, right? Familiar English idioms are “raining cats and dogs” or “beat around the bush”. Here’s the dictionary definition: “A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements.”
The Hebrew phrase that begins verse two is “lift up your eyes”. In the Hebrew Bible, there is a lot of lifting of eyes, not to mention lifting of voices.
The Hebrew verb behind “to lift” is one of our favorite Hebrew puns, though doubtless an unintentional one. The verb is NASA (נָשָׂא). It means “lift, carry, or take”. The pun comes from thinking about America’s space program, NASA, which “carries and lifts” rockets into space. Okay, not really a great pun. But we wager that you will not forget the verb. 
NASA is used 653 times in the Text. But it does not only mean “to lift”. Like many Hebrew words, it works really hard to convey other concepts beside the literal “to lift”. Here are some of them.
In Genesis 18, when Abraham is negotiating with the Angel of the LORD, NASA is behind “spare” in verses 24 (also in verse 26): “What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not SPARE the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?”
In many places, NASA is used for “forgive” or “pardon”, as in Exodus 23:21, where the Text says, “Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not FORGIVE your rebellion, since my Name is in him.” Here is Micah 7:18, where NASA is used for “pardon”, but a different Hebrew expression for “forgive”: “Who is a God like you, who PARDONS sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.” Numbers 14:18-19 reads, “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and FORGIVING sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. In accordance with your great love, FORGIVE the sin of these people, just as you have PARDONED them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
It's probably not too difficult to imagine how a verb that means primarily “to carry” came to also be used for the idea of forgiveness.
When we forgive someone, we lift the burden of the debt they owe us for whatever harm they have done. G-d forgives us by lifting our burden and carrying it away. There are other Hebrew words for “pardon” and “forgive” (e.g., SALACH (סָלַח)). But there is something about the imagery of our Lord lifting away or burden.
NASA. Not just for space.
Next, we look at eyes.
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