consummate artist, who uses his artistic gifts to overthrow the deathly technique and unexamined ideology of his society. That which finally “plucks up and tears down, plants and builds” is not political strategy or military power. It is the ways of faithful and authoritative imagination which cannot be administered by the regime. The sovereign formula, “Thus says the LORD,” is used as verification for playful, free poetic speech by which God’s way is worked against the rulers of this age. Jeremiah’s