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Jeremiah: Pain & Promise

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

Kathleen O’Connor is a professor of Old Testament Studies in the States and the author of commentaries on Jeremiah and Lamentations. This book, however, is described as an interpretation of Jeremiah rather than a commentary – interpreted through the lens of another academic discipline, Trauma and Disaster Studies.

I began, as many might, with caution, but quickly became enthralled by the insights this allowed her to bring to the biblical text. Her examples of trauma and disaster are American rather than British or European, but this is not ultimately intrusive.

The early chapters (1–3) are an exploration of how communities across time face and cope with traumatic interventions in their world and how disaster affects and shapes them. The heart of the book (chapters 4–11) groups the text of Jeremiah by theme. For instance, there are chapters on ‘War Poems’, ‘Confessions’ and ‘The Little Book of Consolation’.   ‘Jeremiah’ is described not as an individual, but as a prophetic persona, a complex literary figure for whom each painful event comes from his symbolic calling and symbolises the sufferings of Judah. Not all readers will find this plausible or helpful.

However, there are plenty of  nuggets to mine for the reader who seeks fresh insights from the Book of Jeremiah. For instance, the ‘laments’ of the text show how “grieving involves living in the present with knowledge of the self and the world as they are. It engages present reality, the only place from which communal rebuilding can begin” (p.68). She has fascinating things to say about the deliberate structure and style of the book: the chapters of hope (Jeremiah 31 and 32) come in the middle of the book, not providing a simple happy ending, but woven into the complex ebb and flow of life under pressure. The book’s apparent disorder and lack of linear sequence are seen as an essential mirror of the complexity and confusion of the times (the book ‘stops’ rather than ‘ends’), and yet the very fact of the initial call and summons of God to the prophet is testament to the hidden order of the world.

The book has extensive footnotes, helpfully gathered at the end of the main text, and a comprehensive bibliography of both Jeremiah and Trauma & Disaster Studies. It is beautifully written – in a clear, concise, compelling style that makes it a pleasure to read. It is expensive in hardback and realistically not something in which many will invest. However, an afternoon spent reading this in a theological library would be time well spent.