Jeremiah 9c. 'Speak!' Thus says the LORD.

 God has instructed Jeremiah to tell the people that they might as well go ahead and call professional mourners so they can practice their dirges and be ready to sing. 

 The previous section began with one word: “Consider.” Derivatives of the root of this word occur nearly 200 times, often used by God through the prophets, including Job. God told Jeremiah to be wise and skillful with God’s word; to discern what God is saying and attend to its meaning. 

 Now, God gives the next command.   

9:22. Speak! Thus says the LORD:

“Human corpses shall fall   

like dung upon the open field,

like sheaves behind the reaper,   

and no one shall gather them.”

 Did that actually happen? Yes. According to the account of Josephus, the historian, Nebuchadnezzar’s army scorched the whole land of Judah, then besieged the city of Jerusalem where people took refuge. There the people were racked by disease (too many people) and killed off by constant attacks. The Babylonians were relentless. Josephus says that they put up towers as high as the city wall all around. From there they drove defenders back away from the wall. The city fell to the Babylonians in 586 B.C.; then they ransacked the place and ravaged the few who remained.  

“Now the general of the army, Nebuzaradan, when he had carried the people of the Jews into captivity, left the poor, and those that had deserted, in the country” (Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 9, Paragraph 1). 

The temple was burned, the city destroyed, and the people either died from disease or were killed by the sword. A few, the remaining elite, were captured and deported. Only a small number survived. It was good to be left behind. 

 The image that God uses means something to those who have harvested wheat, as I have. Whether by scythe or a modern combine, the blade swipes through the fragile wheat stems and they fall together either into the cradle or into the throat of the combine. Not one stalk, not two, but 50 or more at a time, over and over. That is the scene that God wants the people to imagine as Jeremiah preaches; and it is terrifying to think that the Babylonians will ‘mow ‘em down.”

9: 23-24.  Thus says the LORD: “Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom; do not let the mighty boast in their might; do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast, boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the LORD; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD.

 The word ‘boast’ appears four times here, in English. In Hebrew, the word is halel as in Halel-u-Yah, “praise the Lord” or “glory to God.” So, what is there worth boasting about? Who wants to shout “Halelujah” now?

 The text says, literally, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the mighty man glory in his strength, nor the rich man glory in his wealth.” 

 God is preaching through the warnings of Jeremiah, and people are not listening. They are too smart for that. They are too powerful to be worried about an invading army. They are too rich to worry about becoming destitute. Or so they think. It is dangerous when a nation gets smug like that. 

 Echoing perhaps Ecclesiastes, a book purportedly written by Solomon centuries before, Jeremiah agrees that “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

 Solomon realized that “The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness. Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them” (Ecclesiastes 2: 14). Solomon realized that they all die in the end.  

 Looking around and considering life, Solomon saw that ‘common sense’ ranked people the wrong way. 

“Again, I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster” (Ecclesiastes 9: 11-12). 

Thus, the elite who grasp wealth and the power to manage the laws so that they keep it to themselves, the upper class who use their ill-gotten gains to satisfy themselves do not consider that whatever mansions and companies they have built are only temporary. Death lasts forever; life is short-lived.  

 Solomon concluded on this note. “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will indeed bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or bad” (Ecclesiastes 11: 13-14). 

 That is why, in the Proverbs, Solomon repeats several times, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This is a theme that Jeremiah has introduced once before in Chapter 8, verses 8 and 9 when he implied that the wise have so distorted their interpretation of the law of the Lord that, in effect, they have twisted it to their own use. Thus, they have rejected the word of the Lord.

 What the power-hungry miss is the essential character of God, that is, the way God thinks and acts, which should be appreciated, glorified, and emulated. What is the essential character of God? God says that we should “...understand and know me, that I am the LORD; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD.” Do our leaders act like that? Do our Christians act like that?

 The key words here are chesed, mishpat, and tzedeq. Righteousness is the obligation to help others, and justice is fair play for all. When these three are held in tension, a balance that God achieves and we are to imitate, then the world works right. Human wisdom, the strength of armies, and wealth of the rich cannot stand against the essential character of God. 

9:25-26.  The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will attend to all those who are circumcised only in the foreskin: Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all those with shaved temples who live in the desert. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”

 Judah is not the only circumcised nation; other nations also practice circumcision though perhaps without the special meaning that God gave Abraham. These verses say that God works with Judah and with the Nations. 

 There is a distinction, though, between circumcision of the outward flesh and a metaphorical circumcision of the heart. The nations, including Israel, tend not to align their hearts and lives to God. And you see how that is working out.