... for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever. - Jeremiah 3:12

Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn forever. - Jeremiah 17:4

Skeptic Sam Gibson tells us, "Apparently, the Lord was not so merciful with Judah for this second verse is aimed at them. They will not be given the chance to mend their ways and fly straight. Apparently, the author of this particular book was from the northern kingdom of Israel." Apparently, Sam isn't very good at reading things in their context -- or at reporting things honestly. Jeremiah 3:12 in full reads, "Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever." Sam leaves out the conditional part, which makes all the difference in the world: It is clear by chapter 17 that the conditions have or will not been fulfilled by the subject of the anger, and moreover, clear that the "will not" here is not an eternal absolute but a matter of the present situation in line with the ancient practice of hyperbole (in which "forever" is used to stress the seriousness of the action).

The Ebon website has 2 cents to put in on this, and it is mostly panic-button polemic. Ebon amusingly comments that my "response to this one is brief" and remarks, "if [Holding] was tired by now, I don't blame him." The joke is on him, since none of the linked items were composed at the time I responded to him. The response was made to Sam Gibson long before I ever knew Ebon existed. So much for that psychological trip.

Ebon is confused about where I think the hyperbole is. It is in both passages, actually; and in fairness I did not when I composed this have a link to my (yet unwritten) item on hyperbole in ancient language, so we will somewhat excuse Ebon's ignorance here. (Though the meaning of the passages is clear enough but for the Skeptical tendency to out wooden-literal fundamentalist Christians) . However, rather than actually answer this argument, Ebon offers the straw man that such hyperbolic reading allegedly causes problems elsewhere. For example, he thinks it "would seem to create a considerable problem for the Christian idea that Hell is an eternal, endless punishment…" No it doesn't - see part 2 of this item. We are also weakly warned against the supposed dangers of "of interpreting the Bible too loosely and non-literally" as though it were as dangerous and addictive as eating Pringles. (That's what a disciplined mind and research is useful for, Ebon. How do we know the Resurrection is not a metaphor? Because we know a great deal about Jewish beliefs in Resurrection and how they worked; because the Gospels are in the format of narrative biography and not an "obscure" literary genre - hint: Earl is eating carrion with that "Gospels as midrash" idea). Beyond this Ebon imagines that the hyperbolic interpretation of 17:3 is contradicted by his wooden-literal reading of 17:2, where he interprets "discontinue" as a permanent cessation (no tendency to assume his own conclusion here!). Ebon fails to realize that a temporary failure of the Israelites to possess the land of the covenant is a discontinuity of their inheritance. This type of error would seem possible only in the case of one who assumes that the contradiction claims are legitimate without giving any consideration to the case advanced in favor of the contradiction. Throughout his screed, Ebon appears to regard the various texts as contradictory until proven otherwise and merely evidences his own limited experience with and exposure to relevant scholarship.