Wholly Buyable

Finally! Some action. Jeremiah reports from the front line of the siege as Judah's renegade king bolts for freedom. Reprisals follow, some especially grisly, but the drama doesn't end there. Where there is a ball to be dropped, Judah appears to have any number of clowns to drop it, even after the nation has fallen to Babylon. You can almost see Jeremiah clutching his head in despair, and...

In a ceasefire, Jeremiah heads off to claim the field he has recently bought - and is arrested on suspicion of deserting to the Babylonians. His love-hate relationship with Judah's reckless puppet king, Zedekiah continues, with home for the prophet now being a jail cell. Worse still, the book which he and his scribe Baruch have so painstakingly put together has fallen into enemy hands. Writte...

The last thing most people would do as an enemy invades their land is buy property. And given that no defeated nation ever gets its land back, this appears to be throwing money away. Or in other words, madness. Often when there is madness in the Bible, there is method. Better still, everyone learns a little bit about 6th century BC real estate deals. Written and produced by Chas Bayfield Music by...

No captured city in the Ancient Near East has ever been repopulated by its own people. This kind of thing simply does not happen, and so to promise it appears to be madness. Jeremiah is not only confident that God is planning to do this, he looks ahead to a time when his people will have a new king, a man who seems not a million miles away from Jesus Christ.  As far as Bible pages go, these are bi...

The last thing a prisoner in the ancient Near East is expected to do is buy land. Especially when that land is currently being trampled by enemy armies. Who might kill him. Jeremiah's book is all about theatre, especially if that theatre can provide a teachable moment. And so papyrus, ink, scales for weighing silver, sealing wax and witnesses are brought to the prophet's cell. 

An apocalyptic storm “from the ends of the earth” is coming, one that will see Near Eastern nations toppling like dominos. Everywhere, the corpses of God’s enemies will lie unburied and unmourned, littering the ground like dung.  Expect another lively episode from the Bible's most down-at-mouth prophet as Jeremiah continues to rage at a people who don't want to hear. Written and produced...

O land, land land! It's a pitiful lament from the prophet Jeremiah as he attempts to rescue the nation he loves. No one in power or authority appears to see the danger of worshipping pagan gods in a country which, the Bible tells its readers, was founded by God. Turning away from him is seen as an act of rebellion, and rebels must be punished. The question is, will Judah's kings listen?...

The human cost of being God's mesenger is spelled out in graphic detail in this episode. Jeremiah feels gerrymandered into being a prophet, and even wishes that the man who brought his father the supposedly joyful news of his birth had been murdered. Despite this, he continues haranguing Judah's great and good, even taking them on a field trip to a rubbish tip. Speaking out against Judah...

What a mess. Judah's people are being assured by their prophets - holy men who should know better - that all will be well. Business as usual will win the day, they say, even if that business is worshipping pagan deities rather than capital G God. Jeremiah warns these bogus seers that they will die in the disasters which they have promised their people will never happen. Unsurprisingly, he is...

The warnings to Judah's people continue. Rogue shepherds will trample its vineyards, turning pleasant pasture into parched and desolate wasteland because there is no one left to care about it or take care for it. These shepherds are Babylon's armies which arrive decades after Jeremiah is writing. There is still time to turn the ship around, but no one appears to be listening. If they are...

The slow tour through the Bible's longest book (by word count) continues. Standing at the entrance to Jerusalem's temple, Jeremiah accuses the nation's Jews of simply paying lip service to worshipping God. These people are so convinced that their Jewishness alone will rescue them that they are happy hedging their bets by worshipping lots of other gods. God however, is a fan of exclu...

There's no telling some people. Judah's Jews assume that they have a free pass when it comes to enjoying the good life. Simply because of an accident of birth and their ethnicity, they feel that God will turn a blind eye to the fact that they have wholeheartedly abandoned him, choosing instead to immerse themselves in pagan religion. Jeremiah has news for these people, and as the title o...

It's not easy being an Old Testament prophet. Jeremiah describes the feeling of being stabbed in the heart and writhing in pain. His compatriots seem not only content to turn their backs on God - the 'Big I Am' believed to have set the universe in motion - they are hedging their bets with every other deity then can grab hold of. The prophet describes his people as lusty stallions an...

A sex worker waiting by the road for hook-ups  A young camel so on heat she doesn't even need chasing. Such is the out of control idolatry of the nation of Judah. Yet one holy man can see the writing on the wall and is is tasked with warning his people before it's too late and God calls time on their nation. That man is Jeremiah. Join us as Season 20 begins. Written and produced by Chas...

The doom and gloom continues - this is a book by an Old Testament prophet after all - but there is also light at the end of the tunnel. Israel will rebound and its people will drink deeply "from her satisfying breasts." The prophet foresees a future where people are not only forgiven by God, he forgets the things they did wrong. Better still, he is planning an entirely new heaven and a n...

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” These words from The Battle Hymn of the Republic embody this passage from Isaiah's epic book. Poetry rises to a crescendo as the prophet explains the euphoria of his people's future hope as well as the brutal punishment which he believes God will rain down on I...

Doom is coming. The days of all those who fail to follow God wholeheartedly are numbered. Nor is this any kind of fair-weather following. Performative box ticking gets nowhere with God, it seems. Isaiah wants his people to be completely aware of what is coming if they do not undertake a volte face, put away their pagan idols and return to the one deity who has consistently fought their battles and...

A childless old woman who is drunk on wine is about as defenceless and vulnerable as life can get in Old Testament times.  This woman who represents the city of Jerusalem has been brought down by her own personal four horsemen: ruin, destruction, famine and sword.  She is inconsolable and her children are as powerless as she is, lying unconscious on the ground like an antelope caught in a net and...

Hard as it may be to believe that freedom and a return to Jerusalem are just around the corner for Israel's exiled Jews, Isaiah does what he can to impress upon his readers that this is exactly what is about to happen. He also appears to spell out in uncanny detail that a man is coming who will be verbally and physically abused for the wrongdoings of everyone else, and that he will be "a...

A shamed princess having to hoist her skirts in order to cross streams, and who sits in the dirt like a commoner. This is how the prophet Isaiah sees the proud empire of Babylon. It seems improbable, but Isaiah believes anything is possible with his God. Right now, God is predicting that his own people will be freed from Babylonian captivity without bloodshed or money changing hands, and that the...

A man who will be "a light to the Gentiles" and who will "open the eyes of the blind and set the prisoners free." It's easy to see how Christians believe Isaiah was predicting the arrival of Jesus. But the prophet promises action much sooner, and much closer to home. In a move unprecedented in Near Eastern history, Persia's king will set his Israelite captives free. ...

In this episode, we identify Lilith, a Jewish myth figure believed to have been married both to Adam and the Angel of Death. Isaiah also appears to predict New Testament holy man, John the Baptist, writes my favourite verse in the entire Bible, gets embroiled in a plagiarism battle and appears to hand his quill to another scribe. Quite an episode. Written and produced by Chas Bayfield Music by Mic...

As the title suggests, Isaiah doesn't pull any punches. If graphic and repulsive use of bodily fluids as a metaphor get his readers' attention, the prophet is all in. However, anyone looking for action and adventure may be disappointed; in Isaiah's book, the drama is all in the writing. If you want a quintessential raging Old Testament prophet so incandescent that he tips  into apoc...

Isaiah's tirade against Israel's neighbours continues, and with it come vivid descriptions of Near Eastern Mediterranean trade in the eighth century BC. But God's fury doesn't stop with pagan kingdoms and empires; Judah too is in the firing line. Oh, and in this episode, the prophet also strips naked, and remains "au naturel" for three years. Truly, there is nothing i...

If you picture in your head a robed, beared prophet raging with florid language at at a nation that isn't listening to him, you are probably thinking of Isaiah. In this episode, he launches a broadside against nations who he believes are enemies of God. These are Israel's near neighbours and the prophet foresees disaster for each and every one of them. Enjoy the schadenfreude. WARNING: T...