In today’s section, we read about:
Jeremiah’s call and his early visions showing Judah’s sin
God offers hope to Judah if they return to him, but they won’t
Judah rejects God’s final warning, and an invasion from the north is foretold
Jeremiah goes to the Temple and denounces the deception of false prophets
Jeremiah mourns for Jerusalem and for the impending destruction
Some thoughts that occurred to me:
After the wonderful conclusion to Isaiah, the situation described here in Jeremiah is very depressing, with sin, idolatry and not one righteous man. No wonder Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet.
God gives Jeremiah such amazing promises with this call – He has formed him in the womb and set him apart to be a prophet (1:5); He has promised to be with Jeremiah and to protect him (1:8); God has put His words in Jeremiah’s mouth (1:10); God has made him strong (1:18). And there is a warning to Jeremiah not to be afraid, or else what he fears might happen (he will look foolish in front of others) will come to pass when he doesn’t do what God has instructed.
There is a whole litany of the ways in which Israel has rejected God, even though this is plainly madness – “Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!” (2:11) “For my people have done two evil things: / They have abandoned me- / the fountain of living water. / And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns / that can hold no water at all.”
What they will suffer is a result of their own choices and their own sinful actions – “your wickedness will bring its own punishment. / Your turning from me will shame you. / You will see what an evil, bitter thing it is / to abandon the Lord your God and not to fear him.”
In chs 2 and 3, we see the image of Judah as an unfaithful wife. God has already ‘divorced’ Israel because of her unfaithfulness (idolatry) and now Judah is behaving even worse.
There is the promise of restoration at the end of ch 3. I find the reference to the Ark of the Covenant interesting. We noticed that there was no reference to it in Ezra or Nehemiah, when the Israelites returned from their exile in Babylon, and here in 3:16 we are told “you will no longer wish for ‘the good old days’ when you possessed the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant. You will not miss those days or even remember them, and there will be no need to rebuild the Ark.”
3:23 – “Only in the Lord our God will Israel ever find salvation.”
4:1 – “if you wanted to return to me, you could.” But of course they just carry on in their foolish, sinful ways, and so God’s judgment is pronounced.
Again and again, I am struck by how, in the midst of God’s punishment and judgment, there is so often mercy, and a remnant remains. Here we see this in 4:27.
The judgment pronounced in ch 5-6 is the result of the people choosing that path in spite of repeated warnings from God.
In ch 7, Jeremiah confronts the complacency of the people, who think that they will be OK because God wouldn’t allow anything to happen to the Temple. But 7:11, God condemns them for the way they have treated the Temple (as Jesus does later in Lk 19:46), and points out what has happened to Shiloh. The people will soon find their complacency is unfounded, and Jeremiah weeps for this fate.
Today’s section can be summed up by 10:8 and 10:10 – “People who worship idols are stupid and foolish;” and “but the Lord is the only true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King!”
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