I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and the voices of bride and bridegroom in this place. When you tell these people all this and they ask you, “Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?”

Then say to them, “It is because your fathers forsook me, declares the Lord, and followed other gods and served them and worshipped them. They forsook me and did not keep my law. But you have behaved more wickedly than your fathers…I will show you no favour. HOWEVER…” (Jeremiah 16:9-14)

In last week’s study we noted that at the beginning of chapter 16 Jeremiah was told “You must not marry and have sons or daughters in this place” because they would all die in the terrible destruction that was coming upon Judah. Today’s message is a follow-up to this statement. Jeremiah had even been told not to attend any funeral gathering or to mourn with the bereaved because “‘I have withdrawn my blessing [shalom], my love [chesed] and my pity [rahamim], from this people,’ declares the Lord” (Jer 16:5).

This pronouncement must have hit the people of Jerusalem with staggering astonishment. It struck at the very root of their faith. Surely God would never break his covenant promises to the people of Israel: even though they were lax in obeying the Torah, they were convinced that God would never be unfaithful to them and therefore they were secure. At a single stroke, Jeremiah brushed all this aside as being just folk religion. Of course, God was a faithful covenant-keeping God who would never break his promises: but those promises were based upon the condition of Israel’s faithfulness, that they would have no other gods.

God’s Red Line

It was the breaking by their fathers of the first commandment that started the rot and now they themselves were behaving even more wickedly than their parents. They could not go on quoting the proverb, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge” as Ezekiel reminded the people in exile in Babylon (Ezek 18:2). It was not just their fathers; they themselves were doing even more wicked things than their parents. They were actually sacrificing babies in the fire – worshipping the gods of Babylon with these atrocious practices in the valley of Gehenna just outside Jerusalem.

Of course, God was a faithful covenant-keeping God who would never break his promises: but those promises were based upon the condition of Israel’s faithfulness.

With these detestable acts of infanticide, they had passed the final red line in offending God. The Lord had not only withdrawn his shalom and chesed, but he had actually withdrawn his rahamim – his mercy. Only judgment now lay ahead. Jeremiah punched home this message, saying, “You have behaved more wickedly than your fathers. See how each of you is following the stubbornness of his heart” (Jer 16:12). The verdict upon this behaviour was, “So I will throw you out of this land into a land neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favour” (Jer 16:13).

They had chosen to serve the gods of Babylon, right there in the Promised Land that God had given to Israel, polluting the land that was holy because it belonged to the Lord, who had entrusted it to his covenant people. The sheer wickedness and effrontery of the people, in defiance of the most basic principles of loyalty, was breathtaking!

Jeremiah’s Dilemma

Jeremiah could hardly believe it when he went out to see what was happening in the valley, which he called the ‘valley of slaughter’ (Jer 7:32). He was speechless as he heard God say “I will bring to an end the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate” (Jer 7:34).

These were the same words which God had repeated in today’s reading and now Jeremiah heard the final pronouncement. God said, “I will throw you out of this land into a land neither you nor your fathers have known,” which echoed the words God had given him at the close of his Temple Sermon: “I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim” (Jer 7:15).

With detestable acts of infanticide, the people had passed the final red line in offending God.

This faced Jeremiah with a huge dilemma. The people had committed abominable sins in just the same way as King Manasseh, who had brought judgment on himself and his children’s generation by filling Jerusalem with the blood of the innocent. God had allowed the Assyrians to take him captive, although he is reported to have returned to Jerusalem following repentance (2 Chron 33:12-20).

The great dilemma facing Jeremiah lay in interpreting God’s declaration of his intention to throw Judah out of the land. Was this a final banishing of the people of Israel from God’s presence? Was God saying that the people of Israel had now broken the covenant irrevocably, so that he would destroy them in the same way as he had intended destroying them when they worshipped the golden calf at Sinai? Then Moses had intervened, pleading for mercy, and God relented. Would he relent again now?

“However…”

But immediately after the pronouncement “For I will show you no favour”, there came the word ‘HOWEVER’. Jeremiah must have breathed a huge sigh of relief! “The days are coming”, declared the Lord, “when men will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt’, but they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them’. For I will restore them to the land I gave to their forefathers” (Jer 16:14-15).

These were the most wonderful words Jeremiah had heard in the whole of his life and ministry – “I will restore them to the land I gave to their forefathers.” Jeremiah could now face the inevitable judgment that was coming, in the knowledge that God had not finished with the people of Israel and Judah. They were still his chosen ones whom he would never abandon, although they would have to be banished from the land for a season, in order to cleanse a purified ‘remnant’ through whom he would fulfil his Messianic purposes to bring salvation to all nations.

This article is part of a series on the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. Click here to read previous instalments.