A NEW EXODUS?

April 24th, 2008

Jeremiah 16:14-21

At the Passover season we remember the Exodus from Egypt recounted in the Book of Exodus. At the Passover Seder we remember the mighty acts of God through the account of the haggadah and the symbolism of the unleavened bread and the lamb slain as a sacrifice. Messianic Jews and Christians see a deeper meaning as it points to the Messiah, who is the Bread of Life and the Lamb of God.

The prophet Jeremiah was sent by God to prophesy to the people of Jerusalem and Judea. In his day, of the descendants of the children of Israel who had experienced the Exodus from Egypt only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained in the land given to their fathers, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The other ten tribes of Israel had been dispersed around the Assyrian Empire a century or so earlier.

Jeremiah proclaimed the message that something greater was going to happen that would overshadow the Exodus from Egypt. How are we to interpret this passage of Scripture?

Christian interpreters in past centuries have, generally speaking, spiritualized, allegorized or "Christianized" Old Testament prophecies, applying them to Christ and the Church. Thus the greater Second Exodus would be interpreted as the liberation from sin and death accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross. Thus the details of the prophecy become secondary and poetic rather than to be understood literally.

However, the geographical details are quite precise. Let us look more closely at some of these details.

The first exodus took place from the land of Egypt (eretz Mitzraim, v.14). The greater exodus would take place from "eretz Tzaphon (or Tzafon)" (v. 15), the Land of Tzaphon". We may compare the phrase "eretz Yisrael", the Land of Israel".

And this is where we enter into controversy over the meaning and location of Tzaphon.

First of all, we may state that the Hebrew word tzaphon means 'north'. And so it is translated in most English Bible versions - "the land of the north". However, the Hebrew does not actually say 'the land of the north', but rather '(the) land of North'. It seems to be a place-name rather than an unspecified region in the north or to the north of Israel (or should we say north of Judah at this period?)

For me, as a resident of Finland, it brings to mind the Finnish word 'Pohjola' or the Swedish word 'Norden", which mean 'the place of the north', but is translated according to the context as 'The North" or "The Nordic countries".

However, we need to apply our knowledge of biblical and ancient near-eastern geography as well as applying the hermeneutical principle of interpreting Scripture by Scripture.

In Psalm 48:2 Mount Zion and Jerusalem are described as the north:
"Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north (tzaphon), the city of the great King. (KJV)"

Zion can be described as both Mt. Zion (har Tzion) and the land of Zion (eretz Tzion)

In modern Israel "the north" means the northern part of the land of Israel:

"Ha-Tzafon" ... is a term used by Hebrew speaking people in Israel to call the northern parts of the country - the Galilee and the Golan Heights. (Transwiki: Tzafon)

Mt. Zaphon in Syria was the home of the Canaanite gods, like Mt. Olympos for the Greeks:

"Ancient Mt. Zaphon (Jebel al-Aqra [1,780 m.]), which is known in biblical literature (Isa 14:13; cp. Ps 48:2), rises majestically on the horizon as one looks to the north from Ugarit. This was the dwelling place of the entire Ugaritic pantheon ... and, most prominently, the storm god Baal." (William M. Schniedewind and Joel H. Hunt. A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture, and Literature. Cambridge University Press)

Jeremiah 14:16 also refers to mountainous country.

It seems to me that to the people of Judah in Jeremiah's time, the country of Tzaphon could mean regions to the north of Judah: the Galilee ("Galilee of the Gentiles" in Mt. 4:15), the mountains of Lebanon and specifically Mt. Zaphon in Syria.

More widely it could refer to the areas of the Assyrian Empire to which the ten so-called "lost tribes" of Israel had been deported. If so, the "second exodus" would mean the return of the Israelites to their ancestral homes in the area of the northern Kingdom of Israel.

Jeremiah is careful to distinguish between the House of Israel and the House of Judah. The New Covenant is made with the House of Israel and the House of Judah (not with the Church!) in Jer. 31:31. But at that point in history the House of Israel was in exile and only the House of Judah (the tribes of Judah and Benjamin) remained in the land.

Over recent decades it has become popular to interpret Jer. 16 prophetically and eschatologically as referring to an end-time event ushering in the Messianic Age, when the Jews would be ingathered from around the world and restored to the Land of Israel. I am not here saying that this passage should not be interpreted eschatologically, but rather I wish to urge some caution in its application to modern events.

According to the popular interpretation, the fishers and hunters of v. 16 are engaged in a battle for the fate of the Jews, specifically the Jews of the former Soviet Union, interpreted as 'the land of the north'. The fishers are the 'goodies' and the hunters are the 'baddies'. The 'fishers' are believing Christians and/or Messianic Jews sent by God to rescue Jews from persecution in Russia and other former Soviet republics and bring them to Israel before they can be chased out by the 'hunters', neo-Nazi and other anti-Semitic groups. Undoubtedly many of these modern 'fishers' are sincere and devoted men and women of God, while others are also undoubtedly self-appointed rather than God-sent.

I wonder whether this scenario is the result of superimposing images of the Holocaust onto the biblical prophecy. 'Hunters who hunt' does sound very threatening. We are presented with images of Russian Jews cowering in the "holes of the rocks" trying to escape the hunters.

Yet I wonder whether we need to or should place the fishers and hunters in different camps. The Hebrew words for both fisher and hunter follow the so-called professional pattern. Dayyag is a professional fisherman, tzayyad is a professional hunter. Both have the same purpose - to provide food for their families and people. Fishermen do not fish to release their catch, but for the fish to be cooked and eaten. Hunters (1), like Esau, provide meat for themselves and their families. The mountain gazelle (2), for instance, would be chased across the hills and mountains and teased out of its hiding-places in the rocks. It is possible that these figures are indeed intended to be symbolic of people helping in the process of restoring the tribes of Israel to their ancestral land, but on the other hand their natural task would be to provide such a large number of people with food.

In the efforts to promote and assist the so-called Exodus work (Interestingly, in Finland it is known as 'eastern work', not 'land of the north' work) it is vital to be able to identify who is Jewish and who is not. This can be done on the basis of Jewish names such as Kagan (Cohen) or Katz, or a knowledge, however slight, of Yiddish and/or Hebrew, Sabbath observance, circumcision or some knowledge of the Talmud. These things help to identify Ashkenazi Jews, but this is not the same as finding the lost tribes of Israel, who would not speak Yiddish or know the Talmud.

If I am right in raising the question concerning the identity of the children of Israel in Jeremiah 16, then the prophecy is not concerned with Russian Jews at all, that is, Jews understood as the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but rather with the ten tribes of Israel scattered around the ancient near-east, in modern Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, including the Palestinians.

I do not intend to enter here into the controversies concerning the British Israelites, the supposed link of the Danes with the tribe of Dan or the suggested connection between the Finns and the Israelites based partly on the similarity between the Finnish heraldic lion and depictions of the Lion of Judah.

What do you think? Let us consider these things together prayfully on the basis of God's holy Word.

Notes

(1) Hunters

In the Old Testament the Hebrew word tsayyad, "hunter" only occurs in Jeremiah 16:16. It is related to the word tsayid, "hunting", which in the Old Testament always refers to hunting for food, mainly game (see Gen. 10:9; 25:27-28; 27:3, 5, 7, 19, 25, 30-31, 33; Lev. 17:13; Josh. 9:5, 14; Neh. 13:15; Job 38:41; Ps. 132:15; Prov. 12:27).

Nimrod is called gibor tsayid, "a hero of hunting" (Gen. 10:9) and Esau is called yodea' tsayid, "a knower of hunting" (Gen. 25:27-28).

(2). The Mountain Gazelle

"The Mountain Gazelle (Gazella gazella) is a species of gazelle that is widely but unevenly distributed across the Arabian Peninsula. It inhabits mountains, foothills and coastal plains. Its range coincides closely with that of the acacia trees that grow in these areas.

In Israel there are three subspecies:

1. The Israeli gazelle

The Israeli gazella is the most common gazelle in Israel, residing largely in three areas. Its population decreased greatly throughout its natural range in the first part of the 21st century due to poaching and successful breeding of Iranian wolves, but increased thereafter in Israel due to conservation efforts.
The southern Golan Heights has the largest population of Israeli gazelles, estimated at between 1,500 to 3,000. It is estimated that at the turn of the 21st century, there were 5000 to 6000 Israeli gazelle in the area."

Source: Article 'Mountain Gazelle', Wikipedia

The gazelle is mentioned in the Bible in Song of Solomon 4:5 and 7:3.