Week 33 - Jeremiah 50-52, Revelation 4 (Aug 13 - Aug 19)

Notes

JEREMIAH 50, The coming fall of Babylon

The “Cyrus Cylinder” is a 6th century persian record that accounts the conquest of Babylon by Persia. It is currently housed in the British Museum

The last nation prophesied about/against in this section is Babylon - the very same nation that will attack and destroy Jerusalem in chapter 52.

Jeremiah's predicted fall of Babylon did not actually occur until 539, when Cyrus the Persian king captured the city. Herodotus records that the Persians diverted the waters of the Euphrates and thus entered Babylon by means of one of its many water channels. Even then the city was not destroyed or looted, since Cyrus was assisted in its capture by disaffected priests of the chief god Marduk and other Babylonian citizens who had become dissatisfied with Nabonidus's rule. (The Cyrus Cylinder (pictured) preserves the Persian version of these events; see comments on Is 45:1; 48:14.)

Since Jeremiah makes no direct mention of Cyrus in his oracle, it may be assumed that this material was written and edited prior to the actual fall of Babylon. He had certainly called for the destruction of the Babylonians and the return of the exiles on other occasions (see Jer 27:7; 29:10). It is therefore appropriate that in this current set of oracles against the nations that Babylon's demise be targeted as the greatest achievement of Yahweh and the greatest good for the people of Judah.

-IVP Bible Background Commentary

Jeremiah 52: The Destruction of Jerusalem

For parallel accounts of this story read 2nd Kings 25 and 2nd Chronicles 36.

JEREMIAH 52:31-33: HOPE FOR THE KINGDOM OF DAVID

31 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah and freed him from prison. 32 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. 33 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table.

Jeremiah records the end of the Davidic kingship in chapter 39 when Gedaliah is made ruler, and then, just two chapters later, records the end of Israelite self-rule, when Gedaliah is assassinated.  God had promised David that his kingdom would never end.  That promise was conditioned on faithfulness, and now Judah's unfaithfulness has led to its demise.  However, God is faithful to his promise, the Davidic kingship will one day be restored.  Despite all the gloom in the book of Jeremiah, the book ends with a message of hope for the line of David.  In exile, the grandson of Josiah, Jehoiachin, is released from prison and given a seat of honor.  this late and brief conclusion to the book shows the reader that God is remaining faithful to his promise, even through the punishment he has brought upon his people. 

Revelation 4: A window into heaven

There is a key passage at the beginning of chapter 4 that brings us into a new section of the book of Revelation:

Revelation 4:1 After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

It is crucially important to have a grounded sense of what the words “after this” mean. They come on the heels of Jesus’ message to the seven Churches in which Jesus is critiquing/encouraging their past obedience and faithfulness. Too many readers of Revelation leap from the 1st century in chapters 1-3, to some fanciful imagination of the 21st or 22nd century when reading Revelation 4-22 because of these words. But God’s revelation to John is still written to those first-century Churches. Yes, what follows is after, but not in the sense that it is untethered from their (these 7 churches in Asia Minor) context and reality.

Here NT Wright helps us keep our head as we enter this “heavenly” dimension of Revelation

What do you think of when you read about “a door in heaven"? For many years I imagined that John looked up to the sky and saw, far away, tiny but bright like a distant star, an open door, through which he was then invited to enter into the heavenly world. I now think of it quite differently.

'Heaven' and 'earth, as I have often said, are not, in biblical theology, separated by a great gulf, as they are in much popular imagination. 'Heaven, God's sphere of reality, is right here, close beside us, intersecting with our ordinary reality. It is not so much like a door opening high up in the sky, far away. It is more like a door opening right in front of us where before we could only see this room, this field, this street. Suddenly, there is an opening leading into a different world - and an invitation to 'come up' and see what's going on. (Joel: think of the wardrobe/chifferobe in the Narnia stories)

This is not, as some people have supposed, anything to do with God's people being snatched away to heaven to avoid awful events that are about to take place on earth. It is about a prophet being taken into God's throne room so that he can see behind the scenes and understand both what is going to take place and how it all fits together and makes sense. These two wonderful chapters, Revelation 4 and 5, do not stand alone. At one level, they introduce the whole sequence of prophecies that will take us through the rest of the book. At another level, they introduce more particularly the first of the sequences of prophecies, the 'seven seals' which must be broken open if the 'scroll' of God's purposes (5.1) is to be unrolled.

It may help us to keep our balance in the rich mixture of imagery in the following chapters if we see the book like this, structured around its sequences of 'sevens. We have already had the seven letters to the churches. Now we are to be introduced to the seven seals, which are opened between 6.1 and 8.1. The seventh introduces a further sequence, the seven trumpets, which are blown one by one from 8.6 to 11.15. Then, at the center of the book, we find visions that unveil the ultimate source of evil and its chief agents: the Dragon, the Beast from the Sea, and the Beast from the Land - and also a vision of those who have somehow defeated these monsters (chapters 12-15). This then leads into the final sequence of seven: the seven bowls of God's wrath, the final plagues which, like the plagues of Egypt (15.1), will be the means of judging the great tyrannical power and rescuing God's people from its claws. These bowls of wrath are poured out in chapter 16, but their effect is described more fully in chapters 17 and 18, leading to the celebration of victory over the two Beasts in chapter 19. That only leaves the old Dragon himself, and the last twists of his fate are described in chapter 20. This then clears the stage for the final unveiling of God's eventual plan: the New Jerusalem in which heaven and earth are joined fully and for ever.

What we are witnessing in chapters 4 and 5, then, is not the fnal stage in God's purposes. This is not a vision of the ultimate heaven; seen as the final resting place of God's people. It is, rather, the admission of John into heaven as it is at the moment. The scene in the heavenly throne room is the present reality; the vision John is given while he is there is a multiple vision of what must take place after these things - not 'the end of the world as such, but those terrible events which were going to engulf the world and cause all the suffering for God's people about which the seven churches have just been so thoroughly warned.

John is summoned into the throne room because, like some of the ancient Israelite prophets, he is privileged to stand in God's council chamber and hear what is going on in order then to report it to his people back on earth. Like Micaiah ben Imlah in 1 Kings 22, he sees God himself sitting on his throne, with his hosts around him, and is privy to their discussions and plans. But this scene reminds us, too, of Ezekiel 1, where the prophet is given a vision of God's throne chariot, carried to and fro on whirling, fiery wheels. The rainbow (verse 3) reminds us of that but also takes us back to the story of Noah in Genesis 9, where the great bow in the sky was God's visible promise of mercy, never again to destroy the earth with a flood. A 'rainbow looking like an emerald' is a challenge to the imagination - not the only such challenge in these chapters, as we shall see! - but the effect is a rich and dense combination of mercy, awe, and beauty.

NT Wright, Revelation for Everyone (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) P. 42-44