PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
Breaking bread
POSTED
November 7, 2009

Given its prominence in the NT, it’s striking that the LXX rarely speaks of “breaking bread.”  One of the few times the phrase occurs is in Jeremiah 16:7, where, strikingly, it is joined to a statement about a “cup of consolation.”  Broken bread and cup is Eucharistic.

Jeremiah is warning about the calamity about to fall on Jerusalem: Marriages will end, people will die and be exposed without burla, there will be no voice of bride or groom.  Likewise, there will be a cessation of funeral meals: No more “breaking bread in mourning” and no more “cupt of consolation to drink for anyone’s father or mother.”

Jesus’ broken bread and cup of consolation are a funeral meal - more precisely, a pre-funeral meal mourning His approaching death.  And like Jeremiah Jesus speaks of an interruption of the meal - no more “fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29).  Jesus is prophesying a kind of exile, time of distress, Messianic woes, but a distress that will later be reversed in a resurrection/return from exile.

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