Jer. 4 (first cut)
1) Some time ago, before Brueggemann shared breakfast with his buddy Mick Saunders, he (Walter not Mick) made a tape with some good analysis of this passage.It was available at CTS church resources in the basement of library, unless they removed VHS. It's touched on at 542-3 of TOT. this is one of the few OT passages where the primordial nothingness (tohu and bohu-formless and void) get picked up in other Biblical material.

2) Notice that the elements of creation structure are removed due to the acts of Israel. the threat takes on a cosmic dimension, not dissimilar to Tillich's citation of the shaking of the foundations. this may be a place ot consider theology of creation ex nihilo or an ordcered cosmos from the disorder of unstructured choas. One could go to Levenson 's Creation and the Persistence of Evil as an approach to a seemingly autonomous chaotic tension in the world.On the other hand,think of how some biologists speak of self-organization. Some of the business books pick up on chaos as possibly eventuating into creative solutions, but they are just business books, after all.

3) Give examples of where a person's world is falling apart. When does a community's world fall apart? (Sept. 11 is Saturday)

4) With his relational perspective Freheim (God and the World, for instance) makes repeted reference to the passage as an example of how enmeshed the natural order can be in human stewardship, with use or misuse. I think of some Indian tribes who saw sin as despoiling the area where they lived or the hunting grounds.
5) How do you interpret God's fierce anger?

6) How do you think God reacts when warfare ruins the environment? How does God react when warfare kills civilians...warriors?