Year 3, Day 97: Jeremiah 44-45

Same Old, Same Old

The opening ten verses of Jeremiah 44 bring absolutely no comfort.  They also bring an incredible perspective on humanity.  Even in the face of great calamity, we are slow to change.

God lays down the law in these verses.  First of all, God is still none-too-pleased with the fact that many of the Hebrew people decided to go to Egypt.  God knows that nothing good happens to the Hebrew people when they head to Egypt.  They learn to follow other gods.  They are oppressed.  Yet here they are again, choosing to go back there.  They are ignoring the lessons that they could have learned if they just knew about their own history.

Second, God has an issue with their religious pursuits.  In Egypt, the people are already learning to follow foreign gods.  As if their forays with the Canaanite gods weren’t bad enough, they have even more to pick from now that they are in Egypt.  Every single one of them brings them further and further away from God.

Third, God takes issue with the fact that they have let themselves go “without a remnant.”  I’ll be honest here.  This is a new thought for me today, and I think it is a pretty deep one.  There is a remnant, of course.  But the remnant is in Babylon!  The remnant is among those who humbled themselves to God by surrendering to Babylon.  Those are the people that God is protecting.  Those are the people out of whom God will pull His remnant.  And these people in Egypt?  Well, they have cut themselves off of what God is doing in their midst.  What an incredibly tragic reality.  By their own choice (or by being taken hostage – for those like Jeremiah) they have cut themselves away from God’s provision.  What is really sad about this reality is that they were in God’s provision.  Had they just stayed in Judah even after the death of Gedaliah things would have been fine.  But now they have cut themselves off.  I wonder, how many times am I guilty of severing myself from what God desires to do in my life?

In the end, it still continues to be about humbleness.  For the most part, the kings of the Hebrew people did not humble themselves before God.  Their wives didn’t, either.  The individual households didn’t humble themselves before God – neither husband nor wife.  We continue to see people making decisions based on what they want to do rather than trusting God.  Humanity really does have an issue with humbleness, especially before God.

Rebellion

After Jeremiah gives this word of condemnation to the people, we get the expected response.  We don’t get the desired response.  We certainly don’t get the humble response.  But we do get the expected response.  The people will continue to rebel.

They believe themselves to be home here in Egypt.  They tell Jeremiah to his face that they will no longer listen to his words.  They will bow to the “queen of heaven” – probably a reference to Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess.

Then we see another problem with humanity.  We see just how flawed the human memory actually is.  The people – men and women alike – claim that they were fine when they worshipped the queen of heaven.  In fact, they claimed that it was when they stopped worshipping the queen of heaven that their life became worse.

The reality is that obedience to God had brought them prosperity.  It was their slow slide away from God’s ways that brought them into famine, disease, and war.  When they were humble before their God, things had gone well for them.  But human beings have flawed memory.  We remember things not according to what happened but how we internalize what happened.  In other words, we remember the past according to the way that makes sense to us.

Final Judgment

God ends this dialogue with the people by making one last promise.  God vows to let Egypt fall under judgment.  Just as the Hebrew people saw Jerusalem fall at God’s request so they shall see Egypt fall.  They will experience not one but two kingdoms fall over top of them. 

They will experience this for two reasons.  First, they brought judgment upon themselves.  They need even more of a fall from grace before they will learn to be humble.  Second, they will experience it to know who speaks for God and what God desires.  Even though they are disobedient, God has not fully given up.  God believes that with another fall and another culling of the people that a few faithful ones might remain.

More Timeline Issues

As we finish this blog post, we go into the very short chapter of Jeremiah 45.  This chapter is out of the chronology of Jeremiah once more.  This chapter would have been written immediately following the events of Jeremiah 36.  Baruch was discouraged.  He had suffered greatly.  It was hard watching his people fall and refuse to humble themselves.

Now I believe we see why this chapter has been moved to this place.  Jeremiah was likewise frustrated in Egypt.  It would be good for Jeremiah to remember the frustration of Baruch and God’s word to Baruch.  Being faithful to God while living in the world is usually a pretty frustrating endeavor.  We need the experience of the past to help us stay the course.

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