Hitchhiker’s Guide to Babylon (1)
“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.” Jeremiah 29:5-7 NASB
Build/live – How are we, the set-apart ones, supposed to live in a world that does not honor God’s instructions, operates in a desacralized world and does not wish to know the history of God’s people? How are we supposed to put Torah into practice in a world that ignores everything about it? How are we going to bring about restoration when the very civilization where we live is so opposed to the God of Israel? These questions were just as relevant for the Jews exiled in Babylon as they are for us today. And God provided a checklist of practical actions for His people to take when they were strangers in a strange land. The particulars of this list are crucial, and so is the order. If we examine what God told Israel in captivity, we may find that we are just as much exiles as they were and the course of action God wanted for them fits us too.
Start with construction. “Build houses.” Of course, this doesn’t mean “Become carpenters and masons and electricians and plumbers.” The point of the verb bana is not about skilled labor but rather about homes. Build houses in order to live in them. The second part of this commandment demonstrates that God wants us to settle in. Yashav, “to dwell, to remain,” is a necessary modifier of the verb. This is about permanence. God does not tell His people, “Stay in your tents. Be ready to flee at any moment. Don’t get too attached to your new location.” No, He tells them to do what is needed to become residents.
Imagine what this means for Israel’s exiles. First, it means that there is no point in pretending God is going to come to the rescue tomorrow. We are going to be here for quite awhile. Secondly, if you have just been uprooted from your ancestral homeland and you arrive in this new place, you probably didn’t bring lumber, nails, screws, hinges and tiles with you. You will have to acquire them where you are. How are you going to do that as an exiled slave? You’ll need resources. You’ll need to have capital to purchase materials or you’ll need to act in such a way that your masters will provide what you need. Either way, you’ll have to get along. No “fifth column” resistance movements. No hostile attitudes. No work strikes, sit-ins, or political protests. You need what your masters have and to get it you will have to stop treating them with contempt. They might be your oppressors, but at this moment they are your only source for fulfilling God’s command. In other words, you will have to seek peace with those who were your enemies.
Now you’re building, but notice that God’s instructions are more than a command to make monuments to your previous culture. You are to live in these. Why is this part of the commandment necessary? Because if I am going to live in what I build, I will have to make it a home, not just a house. Furthermore, the Hebrew word here is shevu (from yashav). It means “to dwell,” not to temporarily inhabit. It’s about sitting down, taking a place, even marrying. This is exactly the opposite of the refugee camp or the squatter community. This is about establishing ties to the locals, creating permanent residents, becoming integrated. I did not say assimilated (although that is always the danger). Building homes to live in requires neighborhoods and neighborhoods become part of a larger society. God tells His people, “I’m not taking you out of this place for a long time. Settle in. Make yourself homes. Become part of the society. You don’t have to take up the idolatrous practices of your masters, but you need to become cooperative citizens where you are, because where you are is where I put you.”
The convent is out. The abbey is no more. God wants us involved. How else will these foreign masters recognize the difference the true God makes in the lives of His people? If God puts you in the midst, be there!
Topical Index: build, bana, live, dwell, yashav, Jeremiah 29:5-7
The following words by Yeshua come to my mind: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one”
John 17:13-19
13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
I think I hear what you are saying here and I agree for the most part. But I don’t see myself as the exiled Jewish person in this story. I see myself as the Babylonian. I was born and raised in Babylon. I’m Babylonian to the core. I didn’t learn to read with Torah. I learned to read with “see spot run”. I didn’t know the book of Deuteronomy at age 7. I don’t know if at age 47! I’m so incredibly far behind its overwhelming. So what do you think YHVH’s instructions would be to the Babylonian like me? I feel like this was written to the Jew not to me. Does that make sense? What would you say to someone like me? What would He say to someone like me?
When Israel was sent to Babylon, they were essential Babylonian in their thinking. That’s why they had to experience the exile. You and I might be born Babylonian, but spiritually we are probably no different than the exiled Hebrews. In addition, we Gentiles who wish to follow the God of Israel are prepared to listen to His instructions rather than being forced to open our ears. So the instructions still apply. We don’t want to be extensions of Babylon. We want to be grafted in. That means doing what He says in order to have the same effect on the world around us.
Welcome!
There is an old saying: “be where you are”. Part of functioning is to relate to the locale in the present. Righteousness requires us to connect with everyone and everything around us correctly, no matter where that is.
In Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archepelago he details the highly organized communities that existed in the Gulag. These men created a complete network of support and civilized interaction. They had religious meetings and regular classes where each in turn taught on wide-ranging subjects. They had a system of communication where information was passed on at great risk. They would build all this activity around the regular beatings and torture and threat (or fulfillment) of death that everyone went through, picking up where they had left off like nothing had happened, after duly acknowledging and mourning the torture and the killing. When he got released, he said that he missed the high level of interaction so much that he was always glad when he got reinterred.
Many people, having experienced community at this level, have commented that they were not able to find anything equivalent in free society that came close, and that they missed prison or death camp, even with all the torture and the imminent threat of death. There really is something more important than just mere existence when it comes to what we need to live, and we often miss that distinction unless and until this more-important-than-existence part becomes threatened. So often we do not really miss the water unless and until the well runs dry. When your very tribal identity and existence is at risk, you become much more likely to turn to the vital functions of that communal structure and stop living careless, fractured lives.
To build and dwell wherever you are is a call to intentional living. Sometimes we aren’t even able to hear that call until we have been separated from what we have been substituting that command with by a more careless existence. There is nothing quite like a little whiff of danger to huddle the sheep, and, as people saved back into eternity, we need to also be acting on that call to intentional living right now. Eternity starts now, and in that eternity, life is to be fully lived no matter where you are.
I laughed when I read Martin Luther’s response when someone questioned him as to how he would act if he knew the Second Coming of Christ was imminent. He replied that if he knew that for a fact, the first thing he would do would be to go plant a tree. I am planting trees these days.
This weeks parsha starts with, “when you go out to battle with your enemies” ….and it ends with, “you shall blot out the remembrance of amalek from under the heavens, do not forget.” In numbers 24 we’re told that amalek was the first (rosh) of the nations, and while it may insinuate that it was the first nation formed, the term rosh has to do with influence or leadership so that amalek was the “role model” of how the nations choose to conduct themselves. To get an ideal of what that entails, read what occurred when Israel left Egypt. The people of amalek attacked the stragglers and the frail at the rear of the exodus, not because they were a threat, but simply to terrorize and destroy. One could say that they hated for the sake of hate and justified their actions according to that hate. (much of that is occurring in our world today) But……tucked in between these two bookends of battling and concerning the amalakites, we find laws concerning having just weights and measures, not muzzling the ox while it treads out the grain, treatment of aliens, orphans and widows and how to keep yourself clean and pure.
Babylon is the son (bni, the house builder) of amalek, and the command is not to destroy (blot out) amalek, but to blot out the remembrance of amalek. How is that accomplished? Read the commands, it says nothing about slicing and dicing, but it says much about justice and mercy and purity. I’m with The Teacher, fear God and keep His commandments, that’s how you blot out the remembrance of evil. There’s some place that it says, we fight not against flesh and blood, but against …….
It’s not just about how we live in Babylon, it’s also a matter of why we live that way.
YHWH bless you and keep you….