Chapter 26
This chapter starts message 12, with these words:
1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the LORD: [Jer 26:1 ESV] Not sure what voice this is in. We also get a fixed point in time, early in Jehoiakim's reign. Vs 2 though is specific. Jeremiah is again to stand in the gate of the Lord's house. So this word was to be delivered in a specific place. The third such message in this book so far. God adds that Jeremiah "...do not hold back a word."
2023 - This verse:
3 It may be they will listen, and every one turn from his evil way, that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because of their evil deeds. [Jer 26:3 ESV]
I get the idea that God would go to almost any lengths to avoid sending the desolation that is due upon Judah. In his justice he knows they have earned it, deserve it, and have avoided it for too long. And yet here we are, deep into Jeremiah's ministry, and God is telling them to turn back, and that if they will He will still relent, that it is not yet too late. For all those who start their speeches with "How can a loving God allow...", here is a good, relevant, still valid answer. Sometimes what happens to individuals is not about those individuals but about whole nations. Sometimes God sends sword, famine, and pestilence to try and turn a whole people back to himself. The swords don't have to be armies. Anyone can pick up a sword and swing it at guilty and innocent alike. Sickness does not play favorites. Good people can get sick as easily as bad people. In this chapter of Jeremiah, God has given Judah more chances than we would ever give anyone, more chances than even the most loving parent would give their own child. Even so, despite constant rejection of his pleas, God gives them yet another chance. Those who judge God as unloving ALWAYS base that on the most inexplicable (to us) evil in the world. They NEVER look for a larger, more important purpose served even by these horrors. God is judged as unloving only by those whose vision is fixed on their own limited and self-serving interests. They claim to reject a God they judge unloving when the real consideration is that they reject any god but their own egos. They refuse to accept obligation to - or even the existence of - a greater being than themselves. Those who ask this question make themselves gods in their own minds, and worship only themselves.
Possible FB post...needs to be shortened.
The message is simple and direct: The time is late. Listen now, and repent, or reap severe consequences.
2025 - This verse:
6 then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.'" [Jer 26:6 ESV]. Shiloh was mentioned back in Chapter 7 also as an object lesson of what God is will do in the face of unrepentance.
I did a search to see what had happened to Shiloh because I did not remember anything really big about that city, other than the old tent tabernacle and the Ark was there for a while and so there were prophets there.
Here is what I found:
The Fall of Shiloh
Philistine Attack:
In a devastating battle, the Philistines defeated Israel, captured the Ark of the Covenant, and destroyed Shiloh with fire (1 Samuel 4).
Divine Judgment:
The destruction was seen as God's judgment for Israel's idolatry and disobedience, a lesson that God's presence wasn't a guarantee against punishment (Jeremiah 7:12-14).
This is the battle where the Phillistines took the ark back to their cities and we have the mice and tumor story. Eli's sons, Hophni and Phineas are killed in this battle. However, I do not see anything here about Shiloh being sacked, burned, or captured. Not in 1Sam 4. In fact, Eli was waiting in Shiloh when he got news that his sons had been killed. Shiloh was behind the lines. So there is nothing in 1Sam 4 about its destruction.
There is this:
The prophet Jeremiah explicitly points to Shiloh's fate as a warning to Jerusalem, saying, "Go now to my place in Shiloh... and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel" (Jeremiah 7:12). So we see in this earlier verse that something very bad had happened at Shiloh, but we have no idea of when, or the causes - direct and indirect - other than God's judgment on the place.
So in the note above, from the Gemini AI, the whole "destroyed with fire" thing is an hallucination. There is no attack on Shiloh at all in that chapter, much less a reference to it being burned with fire.
What we do know, from Jer 7, is that it was pretty much wiped out at some point. We do know it is used in this same chapter by Jeremiah as a "proof" that just because a place was once in God's favor, a departure from his commands and a turning to other gods has, and still can, lead to the absolute destruction of a place - even the Temple, even God's own city of Jerusalem.
The priests and prophets and people that hear this message, spoken in the Temple, seize Jeremiah shouting "You shall die". Could I deliver such a message knowing that was going to be the reaction? He told them that Jerusalem would be like Shiloh. Apparently they really got upset about that comparison.
Officials come up from the king's house to adjudicate the matter. The mob says Jeremiah should die because he prophesied against the city. That's their reason. The truth of what he said is not weighed nor considered. Jeremiah's turn to speak comes. He does not back down. He says God told me to say that, and if you will turn from your ways, God will relent, and the disaster will not come. However, if you kill me, it is on you.
2025 - This verse:
15 Only know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood upon yourselves and upon this city and its inhabitants, for in truth the LORD sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears." [Jer 26:15 ESV].
Here is a textual example of what "innocent blood" means in the Bible. My tendency has always been to associate abortion with "shedding innocent blood". God gets angry when innocent blood is shed and becomes the avenger of that blood. Therefore, the U S today ought to look out because God will destroy her for all the abortions any time.
But in this verse, it is Jeremiah, a grown man, possibly and old man, who's death sentence pronounced by the officials of the King and duly carried by those assembled would qualify as the shedding of innocent blood.
This term is much more broad in application than the way I previously understood it.
I am NOT saying abortion is less horrible than I previously thought. If God held the murder of Jeremiah, a grown man and a sinner, to be innocent, imagine the magnitude of the offense when it is unborn babies who's blood is shed! I am just saying there is a lot more innocent blood out there that God will avenge, then just aborted babies.
We should also remember that the whole world is aborting babies. It is not just the U S.
Surprisingly, the officials back Jeremiah. And some elders remind the people that Micah (the same one) said about the same thing in Hezekiah's time, and those people, under Hezekiah's leadership, mended their ways, and Micah's prophesied devastation did not come...or at least not in Hezekiah's time. MSB says that in the official's minds, not killing Micah is what saved them, so they don't want to kill Jeremiah. They don't realize that both Micah and Jeremiah are about to be correct. Interesting that Micah prophesied in Hezekiah's time, the first King of Judah to begin his reign after Samaria had fallen.
Remember that God waited for the horrors of Manasseh to renew his intention to devastate, and it is still coming. So Hezekiah listened.
Now they contrast Micah with a prophet named Uriah. He prophesied of destruction in Jehoiakim's reign. This King wanted Uriah killed, and Uriah ran for his life to Egypt. But Jehoiakim sent men after him, brought him back, and killed him with the sword. (I don't remember this being recorded elsewhere.) Remember too that vs 1 of this chapter says it takes place when Jehoiakim is at the beginning of his reign.
Even so, Jeremiah was not handed over for death. Unlike Jesus when He was tried. If God delivered Jeremiah here, he most certainly could have delivered Jesus in the same city. He was helped by the intervention of one Ahikam, also mentioned in 2Ki 22:12, 14, during Josiah's reign. This is the father of Gedaliah, who ends up serving as governor over Judah under the Babylonians after 586 BC - the final fall of Jerusalem.