Day 221. Jeremiah 9-11

T. S. Eliot wrote—"Humankind cannot stand very much truth," and the prophet Jeremiah knew the meaning of that. Speaking the truth as well as hearing the truth is a painful experience, and people will do just about anything to avoid that pain, as the prophet Jeremiah discovered.
The book that bears his name is not only a collection of the oracles he spoke in Jerusalem during the last years of the kingdom of Judah, it is a chronicle of his own suffering in seeing his whole world crumble—once in vision and then again in actuality. "O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes [were] a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people," he cries out. And in a natural desire to escape his calling and find the peace of solitude, he continues—"O that I had in the desert a travelers' lodging place, that I might leave my people and go far away from them" (9:1-2). It is passages like this one that justify Jeremiah's epithet—the weeping prophet. But if their judgment moves the prophet to sorrow, their easygoing immorality and dishonesty move the LORD to fury—"They have taught their tongues to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent" (9:5).
The LORD has no choice, he tells the prophet, but to "refine and test them [with fire], for what else can [he] do with my sinful people." But it is not just the human world that will be devastated, the land itself will suffer with them—"Take up wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard; both the birds of the air and the animals have fled and are gone" (9:10). Why is the land ruined, empty, and silent? Because the people "have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals," the pagan gods their ancestors learned to worship from the Canaanites they found living in the Land of Promise (9:14). And it is because of the apostasy and disobedience of generations, that the land will be emptied and the people scattered "among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have heard" (9:16).
According to his nature, God has been faithful to the promises —"I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD" (9:24). But his people, generation after generation, have proved unfaithful to the covenant—"uncircumcised in heart" (9:26). They follow the "customs of the peoples" and worship idols of their own making—helpless things that "cannot move" (10:4). The LORD ridicules these absurd rivals to his power that human beings set up in his place --"Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good" (10:5). But the LORD is "the living God and the everlasting King" who made the heaven and the earth (10:10), and his is worth both of fear and trust. He is not like the other gods, those "works of delusion," for
his power is at work in human history, to save and to punish.
And it is in history that the people of Israel must feel the weight of his punishment; his power works through ruthless kings and devouring empires. The prophet hears "a great commotion from the land of the north" (10:22). The enemy—Babylon the Great—is coming. The LORD is about to "sling out the inhabitants of the land" (10:18). The people are told to get ready and "gather up their bundle from the ground" because they are going into exile (10:17). The professional mourners are told to take up a lament—"Death has come up into our windows, it has entered our palaces, to cut off the children from the street, and the young men from the squares" (9:21).
The prophet begs for mercy for his people, seeking to find some mitigating excuse. The LORD himself knows that "the way of human beings is not in their control" (10:23). They cannot help being wayward. On behalf of his people, he begs for a proportionate punishment—"Correct me, O LORD, but in just measure; not in your anger, or you will bring me to nothing" (10:24).
But the LORD brushes aside the prophet's excuses and instead commands him to say to the people—"Cursed be anyone who does not heed the words of this covenant, which I commanded your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, [out of] the iron-smelter" (11:3). At Mount Sinai God bound himself to the people of this promise and gave them his Law to guide their lives "yet they did not obey or incline their ear" (11:8). From the beginning they broke the covenant, and went after other gods. Now "assuredly I am going to bring disaster upon them that they cannot escape," says the LORD. "Though they cry out to me, I will not listen" (11:11). And to the prophet Jeremiah, who weeps for his people and seeks to make some allowance for their behavior, the LORD says—"Do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I [am determined]--I will not listen when they cry out to me in their time of trouble"
(11:14). They have provoked "me to anger by making offerings to Baal" (11:17); they are altogether treacherous.
And Jeremiah himself gets taste of their treachery as our reading ends. He has become aware of a scheme among the "people of Anathoth," his own hometown where his father is a priest, to kill him and "destroy the tree with its fruit" (11:19). Apparently they are sick of hearing his somber prophecies. They warn him –"You shall not prophesy in the name of the LORD [any more], or you will die by our hand" (11:21). He cries out to God for help and retribution, and the LORD promises a terrible retribution against those who have tried to silence his messenger. In "the year of their punishment," he announces, the citizens of Anathoth shall be utterly annihilated—"not even a remnant shall be left of them" (11:23).
It is a bad idea to trifle with prophets—history is filled with examples to prove it.