Interpreting Disaster and Culpability in the Book of Jeremiah

Abstract

The book of Jeremiah contains many passages condemning the people of Judah for their sins, including acts of injustice. The book also makes clear that God is punishing Judah through the coming Babylonian invasion. A theological problem that confronts the reader is that the violent actions of the Babylonian army do not correspond to the ideals of justice that are described elsewhere in the book. One solution to this problem is to find the theological significance of Jeremiah in the guidance it offers to those who have experienced any kind of communal or personal disaster, without reference to human culpability for sin. Without denying the legitimacy of this approach, this essay proposes a theological reading of Jeremiah that recognizes the gap between perfect divine justice and the horrific calamity that Babylon inflicted on Judah, and yet seeks to incorporate Jeremiah’s rhetoric of human culpability into a coherent theological framework that speaks to matters of justice and injustice. It is suggested that the book of Jeremiah interpreted the Babylonian invasion typologically as a symbol of divine justice, but as with other forms of typology, the historical type and the spiritual reality did not perfectly correspond.