This second look at the complaint psalms continues to focus on Psalm 22. Part three will return to Jeremiah…

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This post starts to talk about Psalm 22, mentioning Job 10 on the way, we will examine these passages as a way into understanding “complaint psalms”. Complaints are the commonest type of psalm in the book of psalms. You might like to listen to my earlier post “Arguing with God: Jer 12:1-4” first, it sets the scene for this one, and should probably have been called “Complaint psalms: Part One”!

I hope the next post – in a few days – will follow up looking some more at Psalm 22.

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Jeremiah by Michaelangelo from the Sistine Chapel roof (Wikimedia)

Sorry this podcast is firstly out of order (it should have come before the last confession and then late (it should also have come a while back but I’ve been busy trying to get a paper on Isaiah finished

This fourth confession illustrates strongly both the dramatic narrative character of these “confessions” and that they are not to be taken as examples to follow, or as a mine from which we can quarry “texts”. For anyone who followed Jeremiah’s example would be rightly shunned, and any text torn screaming from this matrix would yield most unchristian applications!

No! Rather read this “confession” as a further episode in the continuing drama of Jeremiah and his Yahweh. As you read, allow yourself to be read, and you will listen with profit to the prophet

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Another of the most mysterious and difficult stories in the Bible, this time not difficult because the subject pains us, but difficult to understand. We Westerners are hung up on “understanding”, sometimes it is better to “stand under” (and learn from) than to understand This may be one of them! If we try to understand the story of Jacob’s fight we quickly get a headache, nothing quite works of provides all the answers. (See a fine website produced by Kirsten Abbott in one of my classes for more on this.) If, however, we stand under and learn from this story there is lots to learn!

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In What is the Bible (Part 1) I talked of the Bible as witness, and mentioned stories where Abraham and Amos haggle with God, and ended with a reference to arguing with God in the Bible. Here I’ll begin to explore Jeremiah’s side of the conversation from Jer 12:1-4 (we’ll get to God’s reply later!)

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