Day 220. Jeremiah 6-8

The writings of Jeremiah continually drive home the fact that knowing the future—or at least strongly guessing what it may be—is an agony, not a blessing. Human beings are not constituted to know more than they can see going right now or remember as having happened. It is a curse to see what God sees.
The prophet is forced to behold in his mind's eye the city of Jerusalem under siege. He sees the "great destruction" from the north bearing down on the little kingdom of Judah, a visible darkness like the shadow of a terrible storm being driven on by the fury an angry God. Then the city is surrounded, cut off. "Thus says the LORD of hosts; Cut down her trees; cast up a siege ramp against Jerusalem. This is a city that must be punished; there is nothing but oppression in her" (6:6). Ancient warfare was ecological—the countryside for miles around was skinned of vegetation. Trees were cut down for firewood sapping the walls. Earthen ramps were constructed to breach them. It is God himself who makes war on his city and his land, as he says "my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on human beings and animals, on the trees of the field and fruit of ground; it will burn and not be quenched" (7:20). Jeremiah tells this vision to the people,
but they remain "stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders; they are bronze and iron, all of them act corruptly" (6:28).
At the time the prophet seems overwhelmed by the force of the message he is given—"I am full of the wrath of the LORD," he says at one point. "I am weary of holding it in" (6:11). He looks around him with eyes sharpened by his vision of impending disaster and sees nothing but thoroughgoing corruption of society. Everyone is false, caring for nothing but money. Yet the prophet's special condemnation is reserved for the blind, lackadaisical religious leaders—"From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace" (6:13-14). They comfort the people with a sense of false security, when around them the prophet can see only terror and danger. So he asks the priest and teachers—"How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us,' when, in fact,
the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie?" (8:8)
They go on deluding themselves into believing that nothing is amiss, and yet behind the sounds of everyday life the prophet can hear the thunder of an approaching army—"See, a people is coming from the land of the north, a great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth. They grasp the bow and javelin, they are cruel and have no mercy, their sound is like the roaring sea; they ride on horses, equipped like a warrior for battle, against you, O daughter Zion!" (6:22-23).
The temple of Solomon stands in the midst of the city, a symbol of the presence of God with them. But the LORD, through his prophet, viciously attacks this illusion of security. The people practice abominations and then delude themselves into believing that having the temple will assure them of the LORD's protection in the face of their enemies. But the LORD himself says to them—"I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh" (7:14). Shiloh was the old sanctuary in which the LORD had been worshipped in the territory of the northern kingdom of Israel; when that kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians, the sanctuary there was utterly destroyed. The temple is not a shield to those who honor the LORD and then turn around and make sacrifices to the fertility goddess Astarte, "the queen of heaven," on the side (7:18).
The people make sacrifices in the temple and trust that that will save them, but they do no listen to the words of God's prophets. So the LORD warns Jeremiah that they will not listen to him either (7:27). Instead they practice the most absurdly self-destructive idolatry. They "burn their sons and their daughters in the fire" as sacrifices to the fierce Canaanite God Molech in the valley of Topheth or Hinnon outside the walls of Jerusalem to the south. But the LORD assures Jeremiah that soon that valley will be called the valley of Slaughter, because of the heaps of corpses that will lie there unburied. (By New Testament times the Valley of Hinnon was called "Gehenna"—the garbage dump of Jerusalem, a cursed place of continual burning and a synonym for hell.)
"In that time" that is coming bones of kings of Judah, officials, priests and prophets will be emptied out of their tombs and spread before the astral deities which "they have loved and served" (8:1-2). They themselves will sacrificed to their false gods. When that time comes there will be the end of joy and gladness—"the whole land shall become a waste" (7:34), and the "remnant that remains" shall prefer death for life (8:3).
The people may look hopefully for a break, for a "time of healing, but there is terror instead" says the prophet. He hears the "snorting of [of the invaders'] horses . . . in Dan on the far northern border of Israel, "at the sound of the neighing of their stallions the whole land quakes. They come and devour the land and all that fills it, the city and those who live in it. See, I am letting snakes loose among you, adders that cannot be charmed, and they shall bite you, says the LORD" (8:16-17).
And the prophet, far from feeling any satisfaction in his foreknowledge, is crushed and appalled by his own prophecy—"My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick" (8:18), he says. Jeremiah pities the people he is forced to condemn—he suffers with them, but he is constrained to tell them the terrible truth. "Is there no balm in Gilead?" he asks. Is there no comfort? Yes, there is comfort and healing, but not for Judah—not yet. Their sickness is their idolatry and greed. Healing can only come with repentance and justice in society. But those things are manifestly absent in Jerusalem, and "the health of [his] poor people" the prophet laments, has "not been restored" (8:22).