The Skeptics Annotated Bible (564 page)

And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.
—
Jeremiah 19.9

Jeremiah has a bad reputation. It is well deserved.

If I were God, I’d be really pissed. Here are some of the awful things Jeremiah says about, or attributes to, God.

• He will bring evil to cities, destroying them and wiping out their inhabitants.
  4.6-8
  
• He will send lions, wolves, and leopards to tear people to pieces.
  5.6
  
• He will kill everyone: family and friends, husbands and wives, children and old people.
  6.11
  ,
  21
  
• He will pour out his anger on both man and beast. Not even the trees will be spared from his wrath. And the ground itself will burn forever.
  7.20
  
• He will feed people to the birds and the beasts and no one will scare them away.
  7.33
  
• He will cover the earth with dead bodies that will not be buried. “They shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.”
  8.2
  ,
  9.21-22
  ,
  25.33
  
• People will choose to kill themselves, rather than be tortured and killed by him.
  8.3
  
• To punish men, he will “give their wives unto others.”
  8.10
  
• He will send serpents and cockatrices to bite people.
  8.17
  
• He is the source of all evil.
  11.11
  ,
  16.10-19.3
  ,
  23.12
  ,
  26.3
  ,
  13,19
  ,
  32.42
  ,
  35.17
  ,
  36.3
  ,
  36.31
  ,
  40.2
  ,
  42.10
  ,
  44.2
  ,
  45.5
  ,
  49.37
  ,
  51.64
  
• He forbids others from praying for his victims. Such prayers would be useless anyway, he says, because he “will not hear them in their time of trouble.” 11.14,
  14.11-12
  ,
  15.1
  
• He will kill the young men in war and starve children to death.
  11.22-23
  
• His sword will “devour” everyone until “no flesh shall have peace.”
  12.12
  
• He will make everyone drunk and then “dash the fathers and the sons together.”
  13.13-14
  
• He will kill everyone by war, starvation, and disease.
  14.12
  ,
  21.6
  ,
  24.10
  ,
  29.17-18
  ,
  42.17-18
  ,
  22
  
• He will destroy by famine and sword those who are misled by the prophets.
  14.16
  
• He will kill people with swords, tear their flesh with dogs, and feed their bodies to the birds and beasts, because of something some former king did.
  15.2-4
  
• He will kill children, make more widows than there are grains of sand, terrorize cities, and kill the survivors.
  15.7-9
  
• He will force parents to eat their own children, and friends to eat each other.
  19.7-9
  
• He will force people to get drunk and then kill them with a sword.
  25.27-29
  ,
  51.39-40
  
• He will bring evil on all flesh.
  45.5
  
• On the day of the Lord, his sword will become drunk with blood.
  46.10
  
• He plans to kill just about everybody. “No city shall escape” and “cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.”
  48.8-10
  
• He will “break in pieces” pretty much everyone and everything.
  51.21-23
  

1
The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin:

2 To whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.

4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

5
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee
; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

(1.5)
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”
Christians often cite this verse as biblical proof that a fetus is a person. Their rationale is this: if God knows us in the womb, then fetuses are people, too. Of course, they often overlook the verses that show God’s willingness to kill both the born and unborn.

6 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.

7 But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.

8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.

9 Then
the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.

(1.9)
“The LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.”
God puts words in Jeremiah’s mouth.

10 See
, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down,
to build, and to plant.

(1.10)
“I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down.”
God will set Jeremiah over nations and kingdoms do build up or destroy or whatever.

(1.11-13) God plays a few silly “What do you see now?” games with Jeremiah.

11 Moreover
the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree.

(1.11)
“The word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree.”

12 Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.

13 And
the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot
; and the face thereof is toward the north.

(1.13)
“The word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot.”

(1.14-15) God will send enemy nations against his “chosen people.”

14
Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.

(1.14)
“Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.”

15 For, lo,
I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north
, saith the LORD; and they shall come, and they shall set every one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof round about, and
against all the cities of Judah
.

(1.15)
“I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north … against all the cities of Judah.”

16 And
I will utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods
, and worshipped the works of their own hands.

(1.16)
“I will utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods.”
9 How many gods are there?