Sticks and Stones and Gender Confusion - Jeremiah Journey

 

In reading Jeremiah this morning, I came across a verse that I had never really focused on before, nor heard anyone else expand on. In Jeremiah 2, God is expressing His anger with Israel for her idolatry, and compares her to an adulteress wife who has basically been with every man in town, but runs back to her husband when she needs something. This chapter is full of examples of the sins that Israel had committed, which are running rampant today, but this one verse jumped out at me because of the commentary section, and I had to research to see if that commentary was accurate. Turns out, it is.

In Jeremiah 2: 25, God tells Israel that they had been, "saying to a tree, 'you are my father,' and to a stone, 'you gave birth to me,' for they have turned their back to Me and not their face." At first glance, it seemed as though God were speaking of some pagan nature worship type of issue, although it wasn't quite clear to me just what He meant. Like many verses, you have to go back to the language and customs of the time to understand the meaning. See, the pagans worshipped a pagan goddess named Asherah, and a pagan god named Ba'al. 

Asherah was depicted in idols as a tree or wooden pole, which came to be known as the Asherim pole in their worship, so for their culture in that time, the tree represented a feminine entity. Stone pillars were often used as the idols of worship for the god Ba'al, and therefore in their culture, stones were a masculine entity. 

When God told Israel that they had been calling trees their fathers and claiming stones birthed them, He was literally saying that they were calling women their fathers and that they were claiming that men gave birth. He made it clear that this gender confusion and twisting of roles was in violation of His plan for humanity and nature, and that by doing this the people had literally turned their backs on God. The warning wasn't one of hate, it was one of love, showing the bride, Israel, that if she continued in her adultery, when hard times came, she wouldn't have a husband to call on to save her. 

Sounds a lot like today.