Episode 513 Hope Against Hope (Jeremiah 33:1-18)

This week BibleWorm enters the Christian season of Advent with a reading from Jeremiah 33. The text given to us by the Narrative Lectionary is Jeremiah 33:14–18, a lovely text about a righteous king from the house of David who will restore Jerusalem. But the hope offered by that short text seems naïve in the context of the rest of Jeremiah 33, which takes place against the backdrop of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, with Jeremiah in prison, anticipating the destruction of the city yet to come. In that context, the passage speaks a word of hope, but one muted by the pain and suffering that must yet be endured for an unjust world to be dismantled and for a righteous one to take its place. We struggle with this text, to be honest, and for the first time ever one of us has added a postscript to the podcast after mulling over it for a day or two. Welcome to advent y’all. This text is painful, but it is also beautiful.