Jeremiah 16.b. Strange Behavior.

 We learned last week that Jeremiah not only prophesied (preached) but he also performed the word of God. That is, he conformed his behavior to demonstrate the word of God; perhaps for those who were hard of hearing. That’s a joke, but too true as a metaphor. Maybe the people who refused to hear the word of God would believe it if they saw it. Here are some additional instructions for Jeremiah about how to perform as a prophet.

16: 5-9.  For thus says the LORD: Do not enter the house of mourning or go to lament or bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the LORD, my steadfast love and mercy. Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them; there shall be no gashing, no shaving of the head for them. No one shall break bread for the mourner, to offer comfort for the dead, nor shall anyone give them the cup of consolation to drink for their fathers or their mothers. You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to banish from this place, in your days and before your eyes, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

 What is God’s message? It is that the people may be going about their regular business now, things like attending funerals and celebrating weddings, but these ‘normal’ behaviors will soon come to an abrupt end. People will die, they will be killed by war or disease actually, and no one will hold a funeral for them or even bury them. No time for such niceties when you are running for your life.

 So, God tells Jeremiah to stop attending funerals and weddings now. Even though it seems safe now; don’t go. Such strange behavior will be a performative prophecy about what life and death will be like in the near future. Previously, Jeremiah has prophesied a vision of people lying on the ground and decaying, rather than being buried (Jeremiah 8:2, 9:22); soon it will come true.

 Interestingly, the text implies that people have been gashing their skin and cutting their hair in their lamentations over the dead. We come to this conclusion with a ‘mirror reading’, that is, if God is telling them not to do something that is because they are doing it. At any rate, these things had already been prohibited in the law (Deuteronomy 14: 1; Leviticus 19: 26-28). God continues giving instructions to Jeremiah. 

16: 10-13.  And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?’ then you shall say to them: ‘It is because your ancestors have forsaken me, says the LORD, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have behaved worse than your ancestors, for here you are, every one of you, following your stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me. Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor’.

 Haven’t we seen this scene before? Every sermon of Jeremiah from the beginning has some complaint against God followed by God’s judgment on Judah. “For they have turned their backs to me, and not their faces. But in the time of their trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’” (2: 27). God has made his answer clear, “For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever” (7: 5-7). 

“Forever and ever”? This back and forth has gone on too long. Now God says that he will “hurl” the Israelites out of this land. Period. The “forever and ever” was always conditional. That is, if the people of Israel and Judah adopt a godly character, show each other grace and mercy, and act justly toward the most marginalized people in society, then they will live in the land forever and ever. If not, then the covenant is null and void. 

 God says that if the people prefer to serve other gods, and thus become like those gods, then God will “hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor’.    

 That God will show “no favor” is spine-chilling. It is in the nature of God to show favor or show mercy, but that comes to an end for habitual sinners who show neither remorse nor repentance. Hard times are coming.

16: 14-15.  Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, “As the LORD lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” but “As the LORD lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors.

 God does not live in time; time was created with the universe. So, God takes a more expansive view of his relationship with Israel and Judah. We learn here that ‘forever and ever’ is a punctuated promise. By that I mean that it does not mean ‘continuously’ live in the land. God has long-term intentions that require short-term adjustments. However, God will get done what God intends to do. Israel will be expelled for several generations, but someday their descendants will come back. That return began about 70 years after Judah’s exile. Zerubbabel led the first group in 538 BC, followed in intervals by Ezra and then Nehemiah. That is why the Jews were living in Judea when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

16: 16-18.   I am now sending for many fishermen, says the LORD, and they shall catch them, and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

 God has his own timetable and his own measurements. God is never early and never late; God does what he intends to do exactly when he wants to do it.

16: 19-21.    O LORD, my strength and my stronghold,   

my refuge in the day of trouble,

to you shall the nations come   

from the ends of the earth and say:

Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies,   

worthless things in which there is no profit.

Can mortals make for themselves gods?   

Such are no gods!

Therefore I am surely going to teach them,

this time I am going to teach them my power and my might,

and they shall know that

my name is the LORD.

This looks like a formal prayer or song for temple worship, to remind the people of exactly where the problem lies. When we celebrate, let us celebrate God’s goodness and follow with a lament about our ancestors’ tendencies toward wickedness.

 My favorite patriotic hymn, America the Beautiful, contains these phrases that are worth some thought:

“America! America! God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”

“America! America! May God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness, and every gain divine.”

“America! America! God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.”

Let it be so.