Jeremiah

I liked the verses in Chapter 1 where God says "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee." It reminded my of how my mother would always tell me, "God knew you before you were even born." It was always reassuring to me.

Jeremiah has a lot of interesting quotes that, translated, don't make much sense. Example: "Return ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backsliding." This verse conjures images of kids sliding down snowy hills on their backs...

There's a lot of horse imagery in the Bible. I found it somewhat strange that God would pick a horse to represent anger and vengeance. He says they will "devour the land and [...] all those that dwell within." I never really thought of horses as particularly ferocious.

Jeremiah 16: The most angry chapter in the Bible.

Another example of mis-translation: "One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe and the other basket had very naughty figs." Naughty figs? I remember those really old commercials for california raisins where the raisins were in a rock band. I guess their groupies could be naughty figs...

Later, God alludes to "evil figs" to describe the people of Israel.

Jeremiah 41 really points out how different the ancient Hebrews were than other civilizations at the time. It says that the Israelites considered "treasure" to be "wheat, barley, oil and honey." No gold, silver, or jewels.

More prophet-feeling-like-a-woman-in-labor stuff. Pretty prominent theme in the prophecy books.