Day 218. Jeremiah 1-3

Jeremiah has been called "the weeping prophet," and his message is at times a somber one. But the very fact that the LORD continues to speak to his people through prophets is always a hopeful sign. After Jerusalem's destruction—about chapter 30—the weight of Jeremiah's message shifts from the coming destruction to the coming redemption in which the exiles will return and the city will be rebuilt. But these earlier chapters have more tears in them than shouts of joy.
Every prophet is given the task of speaking to a particular situation in the life of the people of God—that is as true of the prophets today as it was in Jeremiah's time. Jeremiah began to deliver his sermons—they have come to be called "jeremiads," sermons whose content is primarily judgment and doom—during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. Josiah had come to throne at the age of eight as a result of a palace coup in which his wicked grandmother Athaliah was deposed. Under the influence of the high priest, he ruled well and sought to reform the religious life of the nation and centralize its worship in Jerusalem.
But his reign ended in tragedy. Josiah was killed in an aborted attempt to delay the Pharaoh Neco, who was hurrying north through Israelite territory to reinforce the armies of waning Assyria and keep them from being overwhelmed by the rising power of Babylon. The Pharaoh was trying to maintain the balance of power in the region. What Josiah was doing, we are not certain, but he was wounded in the battle and carried back to Jerusalem to die. The Pharaoh retaliated by sacking Jerusalem and taking Josiah's older son Jehoahaz, who reigned only three months, away to Egypt as a hostage. He was never heard of again; the pharaoh then placed another son, Jehoiakim, on the throne as a puppet-king. While Jehoiakim was king, Babylon destroyed the combined power of Assyria and Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish in modern Syria (the year was 605 B.C.) Now the little kingdom of Judah (the northern kingdom of Israel had long since vanished) passed from the power of
Egyptians into the hands of the Babylonians—a very dangerous place to be. Everything stood on a razor's edge,
This chaotic period is the background of the call of Jeremiah, who says that "the word of the LORD came" to him to tell him that even before he had been born he had been "consecrated" and "appointed a prophet to the nations" (1:4). The word for "prophet" in Hebrew means "one who has been appointed to a task"—Jeremiah's task was to deliver the uncompromising word of judgment he had been given not just to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, but to the whole world of the time. Like Isaiah, he has an international vision of God's will, a revelation which embraces all of human history, not just the history of the Jews.
But Jeremiah did not take on this enormous task without reservations. He already had an assured place in society. We are told that he came from a relatively high status background—he comes from a priestly family "in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin" (1:1). When the call of the LORD comes to him the prophet protests "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy" (1:6). It was an excuse, of course. Certainly Jeremiah was young at the time, but hardly a boy, and the plea based upon his youth is not accepted. The LORD replies that he must not say that he is boy, because he is to speak what he is commanded. "Do not be afraid of them," God tells him, "for I am with you to deliver you" (1:8). Then in a gesture that recalls the experience of Isaiah, the LORD touches the prophet's mouth and gives him his commission "to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" (1:10).
Then he is delivers his first revelation--the LORD shows him a vision of "a boiling pot, tilted away from the north" (1:13). Then he is given its interpretation. The boiling pot is the disaster "out of the north" that is about to boil over upon the inhabitants of Judah. The LORD is stirring up "all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north" (1:14), and they will besiege Jerusalem. God is doing this because the people "have made offerings to other gods, and worshipped the work of their own hands" (1:16). Now the prophet is to set aside his fear and "stand up and tell them everything" that God has commanded them, and he is not to be afraid because the LORD will make him a "fortified city" that can endure a besieging army of kings, princes, priests and the people of the land. "They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you" (1:19).
So now we hear the first of Jeremiah's sermons—the first of his "jeremiads"-- proclaimed "in the hearing of Jerusalem" (2:1). Jeremiah himself apparently wrote these early sermons down some twenty years after he spoke them, but they are such lively writing that we can vividly hear in them his voice addressing a crowd of listeners.
The substance of the sermon is this: the LORD first asks the people to recall their sacred history, especially exodus from Egypt and the gift of the Promised Land. But the people repaid the gift with unfaithfulness to the giver. God makes his accusation against the whole of society--"The priests did not say, 'Where is the LORD?' Those who handle the law (the scholars and scribes) did not know [its giver]; the rulers transgressed against [him]; the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit" (2:8). And because of the failure of their leaders, the people have turned from the LORD to other gods. They have committed two evils, according the LORD--"They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (2:13),
They have chosen empty idols over the living God and played the whore with foreign deities and with foreign alliances--with Egypt (2:16) and with Assyria (2:18)--rather than putting their trust in the Lord. They have said—"It is hopeless, for I have loved strangers, and after them I will go" (2:25). The voice of prophet becomes the conduit through which the words of the LORD pour--"You have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah." Now in the coming time of trouble let all those gods save you (2:28). So the people shall be tragically disappointed-- "put to shame by Egypt, as [they] were put to shame by Assyria," because those nations will prove as useless as their idols, and "the LORD has rejected those in whom [they] trust" (2:36-37).
Because of its people's whoring after other gods and nations, the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed—divorced by God. The unfaithful northerners "went up on every high wall and under every green tree, and played the whore there" (3:6). Her "false sister" Judah saw all this, but has done the same thing. She pretends to repent, but she does not return to Lord "with her whole heart, but only in pretense" (3:10). Judah only pretends remorse, and then shows herself worse than "faithless Israel" (3:11).
But to the "false sister" the prophet offers mercy. If Judah will repent and turnaround the LORD promises to "give [the people] shepherds after [his] own heart, who will feed [them] with knowledge and understanding" (3:15). If they repent he will call all the nations "to the presence of the LORD in Jerusalem" (3:17). They will not need the ark of the covenant of the LORD there any more—they would not even miss it if were gone, because "the throne of the LORD" himself will be with them (3:16).
The constant refrain of Jeremiah's preaching is this—"Return, O faithless children, I will heal your faithlessness" (3:22). The LORD calls upon his willful people to his past faithfulness and come back to him and let him heal their relationship. All they need to do is repent and acknowledge the truth—"We have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our ancestors, from our youth even to this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God" (3:25). If they only do that, repent and return, the LORD will heal and restore them. Otherwise "the boiling pot tilted away from the north" will boil over and destroy them.