One of my favorite puns in the Hebrew Bible is that of Jer 1:10-11. The KJV reads:
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. Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well
seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.
The KJV translation is difficult to comprehend,
and it offers no help as to why this would be meaningful to the prophet
Jeremiah.
The 1985 JPS Tanakh of this text reads thusly:
The word of
the Lord came to me: What do you see, Jeremiah? I replied: I see a branch of an
almond tree ( שָׁקֵ֖ד ) The Lord said to me: You have seen right, For I
am watchful ( שֹׁקֵ֥ד) to bring My word
to pass.
“Almond tree” and “watchful” are the same root in
Hebrew, but vocalised differently. The first is shaqad and the second is
shoqed.
A modern example would be Pres. Nelson seeing a
brown bear and God telling him “In a like-manner, I will no longer bare these
bad ministering statistics!” It is a pun that only works in the original
language.
While re-reading The Older Testament by
Margaret Barker, I found the following discussion of Jer 1:10-11 and related
texts that might shed some light on the passage:
The association of the lamp with the Servant Song in Isa. 42
The
branches of the Menorah are described in Exod. 25.32 as qānīm, ‘reeds’.
This may be a technical term, or it may refer to their being hollow. The
Servant of the Lord in Isa. 42 is also described as a ‘reed’. Now reeds in the
Old Testament frequently stand for unreliable allies, e.g. Isa. 36.6; Ezek.
29.6; but this is an unlikely meaning in Isa. 42. The Servant was a bruised reed.
In the next line we find a wick, suggesting that in this passage the
reed should be read as a part of a lamp, as it is in Exodus. A different pointing
of 42.3 gives perfect parallelism with 42.4, and a very different meaning to
the passage as a whole. In 42.3 yšbwr should be read as niph’al, yiššabēr;
ykbnh should be read as qal, yikbeh, giving: ‘A bruised reed, he
will not be broken, a spluttering wick, he will not be put out; he will being
forth justice . . . ‘, to be read parallel to 42.4, ‘He will burn dimly, he
will not be broken, until he has established justice.’ If an ancient lamp
symbolism underlies this Servant Song, we have a strong link between the Servant
and the royal figure, and between the royal figure and the lamp. The Servant,
the struggling lamp of his people, would not fail, and would eventually bring
forth the justice expected of a royal figure. If the passage is not menorah
imagery, the readings are a remarkable coincidence.
The lamp
was a tree-like object, decorated on its branches with ‘almond work’ (Ex9d.
25.33). We do not know what craftsmanship was involved in this type of work,
but almonds do have a peculiar significance in the Old Testament. Apart from
the tale of the blossoming priestly rod in Num. 17.8, there is Jeremiah’s call vision,
Jer. 1.11-12. The prophet saw an almost rod and knew that Yahweh was watching.
There is a word-play šāqēd/šōqēd, but there may have been more significance
to the almond rod. It was the almond-like branches of the lamp which were the ’eyes
of the Lord’ for Zechariah. Perhaps Jeremiah saw in the almond rod something
which he already knew to symbolize the watching presence of the deity. The tree
symbol, however, was associated with the king. Even without the considerable
evidence from the surrounding nations, Jotham’s parable (Judg. 9), Isaiah’s
prophecy (Isa. 11) and the messianic title ‘Branch’ (Isa. 4.2; Zech. 3.8) would
indicate the importance of the royal tree. Having established the link between
the king figure and the Menorah, it is very significant indeed that Philo links
the Menorah not only to a tree, but to the tree of life, especially since the
ancient king was believed to embody the life of his people. The tree of life
stood in the garden of Eden; later tradition recalled the divine throne set up
for judgement by the tree of life (Ap. Moses. 22ff). Both Eden (see below) and
the divine throne must be memories of the ancient Temple. In Solomon’s Temple,
an Eden place, the heavenly world was indistinguishable from the world below,
and what fragments remain of its cult are embedded like pieces of a mosaic in
later constructions.
The ancient
cult was the original setting of the Menorah. It was a complex symbol of life,
light and the presence of God, embodied in the person of the king whom it also
represented. There was other agents of God on earth, just as there were other branches
of the lamp; each had/was a star, each was a son of God, with access to the
divine council and authority to speak in the name of Yahweh. Once our crippling
distinction between heaven and earth is removed, expressions such as ‘sitting
on the throne of Yahweh as king instead of David’ (1 Chron. 29.23) and the
messianic titles in Isa. 9 can be read for what they really were. We might also
have an explanation for the LXX of Daniel 7.13, ως υιος ανθρωπου ηρχετο, και ως παλαιος ημερων παρην.
These
possibilities contribute greatly to our understanding of the New Testament,
especially the Fourth Gospel. Bearing in mind that the early Church used
several trees to carry the tree of life symbolism, the saying about the vine
and the branches (John 15.1 ff) can be seen to entail all the sons of God
theology which is made explicit in Paul, but neither of these was a Christian innovation.
Similarly, images of sonship, life, light, kingship, ascent, descent, divine
judgement in the presence of Jesus and the prominence of the temple setting can
all find a common point of origin in a tradition which remembered the older
ways. The collection of titles in the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel was
not the result of Christian conflation from several current expectations; the
Christian position actualized an existing set of expectations. It is remarkable
that so many of the themes and motifs of the Fourth Gospel can be related to
the symbolism of the great lamp. Where these older ways of thought were
perpetuated we do not know, but the remarks in Josephus and Philo show they were
remembered, even if we now have no written deposit upon which to draw. (Margaret
Barker, The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal
Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity [London: SPCK Press, 1987;
repr., Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005], 229-30)
