Devotional Commentary on Jeremiah 5

Hilkiah, the father of Jeremiah, taught him well. He probably advised him that if he as a prophet wants to be effective among the remnant of God, he has to cite in his message from Moses (Deuteronomy and Job); from Isaiah, from Joel, from Hosea and also from Micah. Jeremiah did and we can see it in chapter 5. God gives messages to every generation utilizing earlier messages of prophets to their generations and then He strung the citations together to form a streamline wholesome message. That is chapter 5. He asks his people to do surveillance in Jerusalem whether there is one person doing justice or is truthful? (verse 1). Just like the case with Abraham and Sodom, the Lord says if there is one, “I will pardon her” (verse 1f). Then Jeremiah cites their words they say in the country: “As the Lord lives”  = hyyhwh, when they swear (verse 2a). The most profound archaeological discovery from chapter 26 of Jeremiah’s date in Israel was the Lachish Letters number III and IV that they found around 1935 at the inner gate complex to the city destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. It will be expounded when we get there in chapter 26, but on Lachish Letter III the scribe from Lachish wrote: “As the Lord lives” = hyhwh (Lachish Letter III Obverse line 9). The first report on it by Seventh-day Adventists was made by W. L. Emmerson in 1935 in Signs of the Times in Australia (see online). They swear falsely because their lives do not match their clinging to the Lord. Even though God has punished them, says Jeremiah, but evil do not weaken (verse 3c), they do not take correction (verse 3e), they refused to repent (verse 3g). Jeremiah analyzed the condition of the people in the land by using Isaiah 27 and Hosea 4 with similar conditions in their time: they are poor, foolish, do not know the way of the Lord nor the ordinance of their God (verse 4). He decided to go and speak to the great leaders (verse 5a-b) because they are rich, wise, know the way of the Lord and the ordinances of their God (verse 5c-d). Shockingly he discovered they too have broken bonds with God (verse 5e-f). Because of the leaders decision to go against the Word of God and follow conventional cultural habits of the trends of the time, a lion (Babylonian empire) will slay them; a wolf [the Late Egyptian loanword s3b jackal which is the same as the word in Hebrew z`b for wolf] (Medo-Persia empire) will destroy them in future and a leopard (Greek empire) will watch their cities (verse 6). It is because of their transgressions and apostasies. This problem of Israel lays open to the Lord who speaks the same as in the time of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:21: why should I excuse you? You have forsaken Me running after other gods, committing adultery (verse 7). Jeremiah sees them as “well-fed lusty horses” but they run after their neighbor’s wife (verse 8). In Africa they say: “Spekvet en blink verhaar” (Ham-fat and shiny hairless). The Lord contemplates punishment on this nation (verse 9). The Lord will punish with justice but the severity of the punishment will be softened according to His mercy (verse 10). God’s punishment is a two-edge sword: justice and mercy, that kissed each other. “Destroy but do not execute a complete destruction” says the Lord. Punishing the remnant is different than the Final executive punishment in Hell. The remnant can convert like evil sinful Manasseh who became saint Manasseh and evil sinful Saul who became saint Paul after conversion. God leaves room for improvement. They have done evil to God (verse 11). They said: not Him, He is too kind to bring evil upon us, for God is love and all humans will be save, no one will ever be lost (verse 12). The prophets like Jeremiah and Uriah (chapter 26) “are wind” and the people and leaders are citing here from Moses’ masterpiece, Job 8:2. It is the words of Bildad and we know that Bildad speaks patches of truth framed in error. He was familiar with the eschatology taught to Adam and successive generations in the Book of Adam and what was there in the Book of Noah, both books used by Moses for excerpts in Genesis 1-11 (Job 8:8-10). Bildad said that Job should allow himself to be led by empiricism, the truths that are coming from observations using the senses (Job 8:8). This injection of humanism, rationalism, existentialism and experientialism is according to Bildad, just what Job needs. Job’s remote eschatology in distant future is too much a “pie in the sky” for Bildad and he wants to realize eschatology. Bildad’s problem is that he wants to bring the other-worldly in this-worldly, of what God explicitly stated is other-worldly. So the leaders and theologians in Jeremiah’s day, except his father, used Bildad’s words to color the true eschatological perspective in falsifying shades of darkness. What prophets are saying will be done to themselves, these leaders and people were saying (verse 13). Again Jeremiah pulled out the Hosea scroll to Hosea 6:5 and says the intention of God to make His Word in the mouth of prophets fire, to consume the people with punishment (verse 14). He took Moses book of Deuteronomy 28:19 and let the Lord declare that He will bring a nation (Babylonians) to Israel “a nation whose language you do not know nor can you understand what they say” (verse 15). They are mighty men (verse 16) and what they will do will be according to warnings to Moses in Deuteronomy 28:31, 33 that harvest and food and their sons, flocks, vines, fig trees will be devoured. He rolled open the Hosea scroll further to Hosea 8:14 that the “fortified cities in which you trust” will also be destroyed (verse 17). There is no security on this earth but of God. Again justice and mercy kissed each other and complete destruction is not in mind (verse 18). Jeremiah anticipates that the people will be shocked and ask why? He rolled open Deuteronomy one column further in 29:24 and wrote down from Moses the answer: “As you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers” citing also from Deuteronomy 28:48 in the previous column (verse 19). The young Jeremiah follows the instructions of his father well: if you want to be an effective prophet, you must cite and use the Spirit of Prophecy and the Word of God. Your sermon should not be “I” talking but “God” talking. Jeremiah opened the Isaiah scroll and went to the column 6:9 and connected it to Isaiah 43:8 saying that the foolish and senseless people have eyes but are blind, ears but is deaf (a typical case of the Laodicea remnant at the end of time according to the book of Revelation 3:14-22). He asked whether the people really fear the Lord (verse 22). God’s identity is clear to Jeremiah in the open scroll of Deuteronomy in front of him at the column 28:58 that the sea was given a boundary and limit by sand not to cross over by God. Jeremiah rolled the book of Moses in Deuteronomy slightly on the right and reverse in the book to the column of 21:18 and cited from there that the people are “stubborn and rebellious heart, they have turned aside” (verse 23). For another aspect of God’s identity he opened his favorite book Joel 2:23 and cites the Early Rain and Latter Rain experience of God’s Spirit promise and says the people do not realize this (verse 24). God keeps the appointed weeks (of the plan of salvation and time prophecies of world events) of the harvest (the worldwide global evangelism and then the end shall come as Jesus said) (verse 24f). Sins, iniquities, wicked men among the remnant who sets traps (verse 26), deceived (verse 27). Jeremiah rolled Moses book of Deuteronomy slightly on the left and forward to 32:15: They are fat with the incomes from hedonism or pleasure-seeking businesses “fat, they are sleek, they also excel in deeds of wickedness” (verse 28). He added the scroll of Isaiah to it in 1:23 that the orphan, the rights of the poor they are weak to defend (verse 28d-h). He opened the book of Hosea to use a shocking phrase from 6:10 that “an appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land” (verse 30). Jeremiah says that the prophets are prophecying falsely, the “priests rule on their own authority” not the Word of God but on the authority of popular cultural habits of our times (verse 31a-b). And what about the members of the remnant of Jeremiah’s time? Jeremiah unrolled the Book of Micah to 2:11: And the people “love it so”. The Californian spirit loved this abandoning of the Bible as relevant for our times, says Jeremiah and some of the members in the church are thrilled with it. Jeremiah concludes with the same question the prophet Micah asked: “But what will they do at the end of it?” What are they going to do in the Eschaton, the End of Time, the Sealing, the Little Time of Trouble, the Time of Jacob’s Trouble, the Second Coming?

Dear God, suddenly Jeremiah is no longer speaking to his people but to us. We are sinful, we are evil, we are stubborn, we are blind and deaf, we are rebellious of heart, we denounce the Spirit of Prophecy as past-gone wind. Open our eyes before it is too late. Amen.