Haftorah Reading for Tzav is Jeremiah 7:21-8:3, 9:22-23
By Irv Jacobs, M.D.
LA JOLLA, California — These selected passages were chosen by the rabbis out of a continuous rant by Jeremiah against the Judean kingdom c. 600 BCE. He was fully aware of the lost Northern Kingdom about 120 years before by Assyria. He now saw a similar fate for corrupt Judea at the hands of the now prevailing empire of Babylon.
The chosen text arbitrarily skips, going from Chapter 8:3 to 9:22. Such is the license taken by the rabbis. It is largely prose, but with a fair amount of poetry.
I have chosen the translation and commentaries from the “Prophets,” the opus volume by Emeritus Professor Robert Alter of the University of California Berkeley. [1]
Here are excerpts:
Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat meat. For I did not speak to your fathers nor did I charge them, when I brought them out from the land of Egypt, about matters of burnt offering and sacrifice. With this word did I charge them saying, Heed my voice and I will be your God and you shall be a people for Me and go in all the way that I charged you, so that it be well with you. But day after day they did not heed (numerous prophets that I sent) and they did not bend their ear, and they went by their own counsels, in the willfulness of their evil heart, and they went backward and not forward…ever since Egypt to this day…they stiffened their necks, did more evil than their fathers…
And you shall speak to them…but they won’t listen…the nation that would not heed the LORD nor accept reproof. Faithfulness is gone…
Shear your locks and fling them away, [2]
and raise a lament on the bare heights,
for the LORD has rejected and abandoned
the stock that called forth His fury.
For the sons of Judah have done evil…placed foul things in the house (Temple)..built the high places of Topheth. [3] There they filled the places with carcasses, to be food for fowl and beasts of the earth.
And I will put an end in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem to the voice of gladness…and joy…of brides, for a ruin the land shall become. [4]
At that time, said the LORD, they shall take out from graves the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its nobles and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets…And they shall spread them before the sun…and moon…and before the heavens. They shall not be gathered…nor buried. Manure on the face of the soil they shall be. And death shall be preferable to life…for those from this evil clan, said the LORD of Armies. [5]
Here the rabbis artificially skip ahead a whole chapter plus, to find “their” mandatory upbeat ending — in poetry!
Thus said the LORD,
Let the wise man not boast of his wisdom,
nor the warrior boast of his might.
Let the rich man not boast of his riches.
But in this may he who boasts boast:
understanding and knowing Me,
for I am the LORD doing kindness,
justice and righteousness in the land,
for in these I delight, said the LORD.
These passages selected by the rabbis, clearly not from a continuum of Jeremiah’s writings, are meant primarily to be a polemic of castigation for all the Judeans.
[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Prophets Vol. 2, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2019, pp. 884-93
[2] You are irreverent, so abandon your religious custom of maintained sidelocks of hair.
[3] where they made child sacrifices. Heretofore the place is called “Valley of the Killing.”
[4] This is a play on the tradition of Jerusalem as the happy site of brides and bridegrooms—now with corpses piled high, and the entire land turned into desolation—
[5] A curse on you!–with scant few survivors!
Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis. He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.