Chapter 15
2021-Remember that this year, the 5th message is broken into two days. It started yesterday, and continues to the end today, and we also get the very short 6th message.
God's answer to the prayer in the previous chapter:
1 Then the LORD said to me, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! [Jer 15:1 ESV] 2021-This is not a "new" message, because it is spoken directly to Jeremiah, and perhaps because of "then".
You never want to find yourself in this situation with God. This in connection with the previous verses, shows why sometimes punishment cannot be averted. Events cannot be averted. Perhaps a sickness must run its course. Sometimes these things are random and because sin corrupted the perfect natural system God created. But other times....God still works in the world, every day. Sometimes, He dispenses punishment. (2022 - this first verse is similar to the verses that say though Job, Noah, or Daniel...)
God has sent the people out from His sight. From His throne if you will. They have made a petition to the King, and the King has said for them to get out his very sight. He is done with them.
In vs 2 they ask where they are to go? What is to become of them if the "King" will not help them in their current straights. And this is God's answer:
2 ..."'Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence, and
those who are for the sword, to the sword;
those who are for famine, to famine, and
those who are for captivity, to captivity.' [Jer 15:2b ESV]
God doesn't care what death awaits them, they are to depart to the sad end appointed to them.
vs 3, The four forms the punishment of Judah will take:
3 I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the LORD:
the sword to kill,
the dogs to tear, and the
birds of the air and the
beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. [Jer 15:3 ESV]
Are there four because four is the number of man?
2021 - There are no Babylonian soldiers listed among the destroyers...oh yes there are. That is the sword. Then dogs to attack the wounded survivors and finish them off, and birds and beasts to feast on the carrion of war. No aid for the wounded, no mourners for the dead.
vs 4 is the reason for the punishment. God points to the specific sin that has brought this one. Is this like "the straw that broke..."? Does God work that way? Or was this just the sin that ran the bucket over and required action? Is this how God works?
4 And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem. [Jer 15:4 ESV]
I seem to recall that God told Hezekiah that the nation would be punished because of him, but that it would not happen in his time, but in a later time. God knew already that Manasseh would be an exceedingly evil King, and that He would be a provoker, a repeat offender, and go further in sin than those who had come before. Manasseh went past the line, as God knew he would. As much as Hezekiah had earned retribution from God, Manasseh earned it more. God waits. He forbears. But then His justice must be done.
2023 - Manasseh was from 696 BC to about 650 BC. I forgot exactly but it's in the chart. I thought Manasseh was way earlier than Hezekiah, and that the end of Israel was pronounced long before 700 BC. But apparently it is just that I read it much earlier than I read Jeremiah.
vss 5-9, God is still talking, speaking of the punishment and His reasons for it:
Does this verse sound like a parent at the end of their patience?
6 You have rejected me, declares the LORD; you keep going backward, so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you-- I am weary of relenting. [Jer 15:6 ESV]
vs 10. Jeremiah wishes he'd not been born, because it seems everyone in Judah hates him. And you can see why they would!
An interesting verse, in light of all the book eating that is done in the Bible:
16 Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. [Jer 15:16 ESV]
Has some bearing on whether books were literally eaten, or the phrase means read/studied/understood/assimilated and that sort of thing. Ties to the book John eats in Revelation.
God answers him though:
God first says that he will save and protect Jeremiah from what is coming. Jeremiah still complains further, and is feeling that God promised him water to refresh him through all this but that there is none. God has an answer for that also. He answers in vss 19-21.
God seems to me to promise Jeremiah that the people's scorn will turn to respect. They will end up coming to Jeremiah for help, instead of wishing he was dead. God tells Jeremiah to hang on and then this verse:
21 I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless." [Jer 15:21 ESV]
What a promise!
These verses, 10-21, have the same "ring" to them as I have seen in several chapters of the Quran. Muhammad seems often to have complained about his treatment by those around him, and often receives the answer that in the next world, things will be better. Here, Jeremiah is told things will be better also in this world. It seems almost like Muhammad seized on the book of Jeremiah, and this aspect of Jeremiah's life, and put himself into it, and wrote from Jeremiah's perspective here. Could Muhammad have had a copy of Jeremiah? Interesting if he had Jeremiah, and only Jeremiah...no, that's not right. Muhammad could not read...
2023 - These verses:
15 but 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.' For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers.
16 "Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares 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. ...
I wonder if this is an actual reference to the purpose of the 144,000 sealed in Revelation. We are not told what their purpose is, nor is it even hinted. First fishers, to lure those interested in the bait, and then hunters, to find those hiding from fishers? Is that what it means? Or is is just about underwater and hiding. Maybe none of them come of their own volition but must be sought out and brought home from the places they have been hidden for so long.
18 But first 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." [Jer 16:15-16, 18 ESV]