Walter Brueggemann - Delivered out of Empire: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus, Part One

Delivered out of Empire

Pivotal Moments in the Old Testament

Brent A. Strawn, Series Editor

Delivered out of Empire

Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus,
Part One

Walter Brueggemann

Discussion questions by Julie Mullins

2021 Walter Brueggemann

Series foreword 2021 Westminster John Knox Press

First edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. Scripture quotations not from the New Revised Standard Version are those of the author.

Excerpts from Good Christians All, Rejoice and Sing, Words: Cyril A. Alington, 1958, Ren. 1986 Hymns Ancient & Modern, Ltd. (Admin. Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Book design by Sharon Adams

Cover design by Nita Ybarra

Cover art: Exodus, 1999 (oil on canvas) / Richard Mcbee / Bridgeman Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN-13: 978-0-664-26538-0

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For

Christiana Adair Brueggemann

James August Brueggemann

Emilia Mary Brueggemann

Anabelle Lila Brueggemann

Peter William Brueggemann

For my grandchildren I have two hopes: that each may live into the faithful emancipation attested in this biblical text, and that each may find a vocation of emancipation for others who have not yet been delivered from bondage.

Contents

N ot long after arriving in Atlanta for my first tenure-track job, still very green in my field and profession, I somehow found the courage to invite Walter Brueggemann, who taught a few miles away at Columbia Theological Seminary, to lecture in my Introduction to Old Testament course. To my great delight he accepted, despite the fact that the class met at eight oclock in the morning and Atlanta traffic is legendary. (Those who know Walter better than I did at that time know what I discovered only later: that such generosity is standard operating procedure for him.) I either offered, or perhaps he suggested, that the topic of his guest lecture should be Jeremiah. And so it was that a few weeks after the invitation was extended and received, my students and I were treated to eighty minutes of brilliant insight into Jeremiah from one of the masters of that biblical book, not to mention the larger Book to which Jeremiah belongs.

Even now, almost twenty years later, I remember a number of things about that lectureclear testimony to the quality of the content and the one who gave it. In all honesty, I must admit that several of the things I remember have made their way into my own subsequent lectures on Jeremiah. In this way, Walters presence could still (and still can!) be felt in my later classes, despite the fact that I couldnt ask him to guest lecture every year. One moment from that initial lecture stands out with special clarity: Walters exposition of a specific text from Jeremiah. I suspect I knew this particular text before, maybe even read about it in something Walter had written, but as I recall things now it was that early morning lecture at Emory University in 2002 that drilled it into my long-term memory bank. The text in question was Jeremiah 30:1217:

For thus says the L ORD :

Your hurt is incurable,

your wound is grievous.

There is no one to uphold your cause,

no medicine for your wound,

no healing for you.

All your lovers have forgotten you;

they care nothing for you;

for I have dealt you the blow of an enemy,

the punishment of a merciless foe,

because your guilt is great,

because your sins are so numerous.

Why do you cry out over your hurt?

Your pain is incurable.

Because your guilt is great,

because your sins are so numerous,

I have done these things to you.

Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured,

and all your foes, every one of them, shall go into captivity;

those who plunder you shall be plundered,

and all who prey on you I will make a prey.

For I will restore health to you,

and your wounds I will heal,

says the L ORD ,

because they have called you an outcast:

It is Zion; no one cares for her!

The passage is striking for a number of reasons, but what Walter highlighted was the remarkable shiftor better, pivotthat takes place in the space between verses 15 and 16. Prior to this point, Gods speech to Israel emphasizes the incurable nature of its wound: no healing for you (v. 13)! Israels wound is, on the one hand,

the blow of an enemy,

the punishment of a merciless foe. (v. 14)

On the other hand, the blow is also and more fundamentally Gods own doing:

for I have dealt you the blow (v. 14),

I have done these things to you. (v. 15)

Like the original audience, contemporary readers are left no time to ponder this double-agency since immediately after the second ascription of this wound to the Lords hand, the text pivots both suddenly and drastically. From verse 16 on, we read that those whom the Lord used to punish Israel will now themselves be punished; we also learn that what had before been a terminal illness turns out to be treatable after all (v. 17a). The reason for this dramatic shift is given only in verse 17b: God will cure the incurable wound because God will not stand by while Israels enemies call it an outcast, claiming that no one cares for Zion.

Now in truth, what God says to Israel/Zion in verse 13 sounds very much like no one cares for you, but as Walter memorably put it in his lecture, while it is one thing to talk about your own mother, it is another thing altogether when someone else talks about your mother! God, it would seem, claims privilege to say certain things about Zion that others are simply not allowed to say. If and when they ever do utter such sentiments, God is mobilized to defend and to heal. Zion, it turns out, is no outcast, after all; there is, after all, One who still cares for her.

The space between verses 15 and 16 is a pivot, explained most fully in verse 17. This, then, is a turning point that changes everything in this passagea passage that can be seen, more broadly and in turn, as a pivotal moment in the larger book of Jeremiah, coming, as it does, early in a section that shifts decidedly toward consolation and restoration.

And Jeremiah 30:1217 is not alone in the Old Testament. Another remarkable pivot takes place in the space between the two lines of Psalm 22:21:

Save me from the mouth of the lion!

From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.

In the first line, there is an urgent plea for immediate help: Save!; in the second, testimony to past deliverance: You