Chapter 16

(Double punishment referenced in vs 18.)

So 14 started with "The word of the Lord that came..."

15 with "Then the Lord said to me...."

and now 16 starts with "The word of the Lord came to me..."

The difference in these three is that 14 begins a narration, while 15 and 16 are from Jeremiah's perspective.  Third person vs first person.  Is this the divider for the messages?

Jeremiah is told not to marry, not to reproduce, because sons and daughters will remain unburied, as dung, as food for birds.  This was desecration.  Perhaps a tactic of the Babylonians to instill fear into those they came against.

This verse, giving a specific time frame for when these bodies were going to be laying around everywhere, unmourned, unburied:

2021 - But look how this is worded:

4 They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried. They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth. [Jer 16:4 ESV]

This is about the fall of Jerusalem, conquered by Babylon.  But disease seems to be a large part of it too, perhaps weakening the city before Babylon even arrived.  So many were dying of disease - at some point...I guess it could be during the siege - that they couldn't be buried.  Hmm.  This would also be the case if they were surrounded and could not take the bodies outside the walls for burial.  The bodies would just be stacked.

Vs 5 has this phrase - "...for I have taken away my peace from this people..."  Surely that is a factor in the unrest, the constant distress and friction and "playing the victim" that characterizes this country.  Can I make a FB post of this?  Here is the whole verse: 5 "For thus says the LORD: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament or grieve for them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy, declares the LORD. [Jer 16:5 ESV]

9 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will silence in this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. [Jer 16:9 ESV]

God gives Jeremiah an answer for the question that will inevitably be asked by these people.  A stupid question, but an expected question.  They will ask why this has happened to them.  As if they don't know, as if it is not obvious.  They will ask why as if they are innocent.  And perhaps they were so far gone that they thought they were innocent (Romans 1).  Here is God's specific answer, in depth:

11 then you shall say to them: 'Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the LORD, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, 12 and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. [Jer 16:11-12 ESV]

Because of these sins of your fathers:

1.  Going after other gods

2.  Serving and worshiping other gods

3.  Forsaking God

4.  Forsaking God's law.

5.  For being worse in these things than your fathers!!!  This is why it is coming on your generation specifically!

2020 - I don't think we worship idols today.  I think we put things before God, but I don't think we worship idols.  (2021-Today we worship science.  We look to science for all the explanations.  I commented on that elsewhere recently - could look it up - but that's our idol now.  Science can explain it, it don't have to invent God to explain it.  God is just the answer required by the ignorant, superstitious masses of the past.  We are now too smart to need that.  So said Nietzsche.)   The Bible talks at length about what an idol is, what it is made of, that is made to be worshiped, that sacrifices are offered to it, and so on.  Idols are the object of religious worship and activity in the Bible.  Today, we might go fishing every Sunday instead of going to church.   That does not make our bass boat our idol, nor does it make the lake our idol.  I never heard of anyone sacrificing a frog or a chicken to his bass boat.  No one prays to his boat to get rid of his cancer or release his child from jail.  No.  These things are NOT idols.  These are a different thing.

So it is interesting that the first two things on the list pretty much went away after the Babylonian captivity.  In the Jerusalem of Jesus' time, idols in the temple didn't happen.  There were no statues to Aphrodite in the streets...though the Romans may have brought their own with them.  There are cultures in the world today that do still have idols - Japan, China, and almost certainly others.  But in the US?  In Israel?  In England and France?  No.  There is no idol worship in these places.  So if the US is being punished today, it is not about the first two things on the list, it is about the last three. 

Hmm...This just hit me (2020)  The US displaced the American Indian and occupied his land.  If we make that an analogy to Israel conquering Canaan - or any other invasion in history - and we say a successful invasion is by God's hand - then the invaded and occupied country continues and is blessed only so long as the invaders avoid items 1-5 better than the people they displaced.  But once the invaders are worse than what went before, then God's wrath is invoked.  He does not want places to be worse than they were before.  So could we do a compare and contrast of the Indians that were here when the US was invaded with the practices in this country today?  Go even further...look at other invaded and occupied countries through history and use the checklist above...Talk about an interesting study...

These verses:

14 "Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,' 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. [Jer 16:14-15 ESV]  So this speaks to a "re-start" with the people.  Instead of those God brought out of Egypt to Canaan, we will someday have the people God brought out of the north, and the rest of the planet back to the land of Canaan.  So Babylon is the first punishment, and they will return from the North.  This may have to do with the return in Nehemiah's time.  (2021 - Sure looks to me like this prophecy is confined to the return from Babylon.)  The return from everywhere else may refer to the second scattering in 70 AD, which was the end of Israel as a nation until 1948.  Then in '48, they begin to return, from here there and everywhere.  Surely they are now spoken of as a people brought from all the countries where he'd driven them.  I think this is a reference to the Tribulation and on into the Millennial.  We haven't seen Jeremiah look this far down the road very much, but I think that is exactly what he is doing here.

Then the next verse:

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. [Jer 16:16 ESV]  Jesus tells his disciples he will make them fishers of men.  Jesus was talking about the start of the church age.  The fishers are about the church age.  Then the hunters...the 144,000 of Revelation?  Are they referred to as hunters?  (Not that I can see.  144000 is used three times in Revelation, but I see nothing that could be construed to make them hunters. They are, however, seen as witnesses who go out and convert and bring home the Jews scattered abroad during Trib and Great Trib.  (No...I don't think they're portrayed as witnesses, either.  We've all heard that, but I cannot find the verse.)  So maybe it is in that sense that they are hunters, searching and rescuing the scattered of Israel.  I do like this as the distinction between fishers and hunters though.  Fishers who pull up the remnant and keep God's people moving forward though in limited numbers, and then the hunters to find them ALL and bring them home.  I do like how this fits with the 144,000.)

2023 December - This verse:  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. [Jer 16:16 ESV].  Is this a prophecy of both the 144,000 and their purpose.  In context, the Jeremiah passage is about the return from Babylon...and yet in vs 18 we get "but first I will doubly repay".  So you get into whether Babylon was one, and 70 AD was two, and that we're still in progress.  You have to say near far.  But I am liking the "wrap-around" interpretation of such prophecies better than the near far right now.  So I would say the taking away to Babylon is the beginning of the double punishment in 586 BC, and in vss 16:1-13, and then to the final coming home of Israel during the seventieth week, AFTER his wrath is spent, after the whole double is complete.  I think looking at it this way works very well.  AND, if you don't try to make this Jewish homecoming about the return from Babylon, then you don't have to do a lot of slicing and dicing within verses for the parts that came true at the return from Babylon and the parts that have not yet come true, but will in the 70th week.  Arguably they will ALL come true in the 70th week, and the ones that we think of as already coming true are really just shades and shadows of how obviously they will come true then.  Also copying this back to Jeremiah.

Wrote this next today (12/23/23) at Rev 7 about the 144,000 and copied it back here:

2023 December - This verse:  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. [Jer 16:16 ESV].  Is this a prophecy of both the 144,000 and their purpose.  In context, the Jeremiah passage is about the return from Babylon...and yet in vs 18 we get "but first I will doubly repay".  So you get into whether Babylon was one, and 70 AD was two, and that we're still in progress.  You have to say near far.  But I am liking the "wrap-around" interpretation of such prophecies better than the near far right now.  So I would say the taking away to Babylon is the beginning of the double punishment in 586 BC, and in vss 16:1-13, and then to the final coming home of Israel during the seventieth week, AFTER his wrath is spent, after the whole double is complete.  I think looking at it this way works very well.  AND, if you don't try to make this Jewish homecoming about the return from Babylon, then you don't have to do a lot of slicing and dicing within verses for the parts that came true at the return from Babylon and the parts that have not yet come true, but will in the 70th week.  Arguably they will ALL come true in the 70th week, and the ones that we think of as already coming true are really just shades and shadows of how obviously they will come true then.  Also copying this back to Jeremiah.

And then moving on to this next paragraph on vs 18...

And then this verse...so many "heavy" verses right here together:

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 16:18 ESV]  Double has to mean something.  I don't think it is a reference to severity - twice as bad - but to how many times it is inflicted.  As in 40 lashes two different times.  This is how I see this.  I think this is right.

2021 - I did a word study on "double", saved elsewhere.  This means twice, not intensified.  And if we look at the prophecy with this in mind, it should be pretty obvious that the return in vs 15 is first about Babylon, and specific to that.  But when you throw this "twice" into the prophecy, you must look forward to the dispersion of 70 AD and the still future return from that second time. 

2023 - I like this as corroboration of the interpretation that the fishers and hunters are the church age and the 70th week.  I think it is critically important that vs 18 starts with "But first...".  First, there is DOUBLE REPAYMENT.  How can that be JUST about Babylon and not about 70 AD also.  Before he brings them home the double repayment must be complete.  This is talking about week 70, not about Babylon.

This is an interesting verse:

21 "Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the LORD." [Jer 16:21 ESV]

I don't know what this is about, what it is that God will only do this once.  MSB says it turned Israel against idols once and for all, and not only them, but many surrounding Gentiles.  MSB says that after they came back from Babylon, the Jews entirely and permanently renounced idols.  And many Gentiles did also.  We don't worship idols in the US today.  There are no idols in Islam.  I think some still exist in Buddhism, maybe in Taoism?  But for the most part, the world no longer worships idols.  This is not what I'd have pulled out of this verse.  It took someone else to explain it to me.  However, the difference is that the explanation is based on other scripture, not on a personal explanation from Jeremiah of what he meant, as told to someone else, but from the context of the previous verses:

19 O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: "Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. 20 Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!" [Jer 16:19-20 ESV]

It would be long, but might work on FB.  Better for website.