Chapter 6
2024 - In NASB95, this is in prose format.
Starts with a call to "Flee for safety...", for death is coming from the north. Here is the verse:
1 Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem! Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem, for disaster looms out of the north, and great destruction. [Jer 6:1 ESV]
This is addressed to Benjamin, not Judah. And instead of telling them to run into the fortified city, as in 4:5, they are to leave it. Perhaps the warning is that Jerusalem will be the focal point of God's wrath against Judah. Be anywhere but there.
5 Arise, and let us attack by night and destroy her palaces!" [Jer 6:5 ESV]
Jerusalem was besieged, I believe. I wonder if Babylon broke into the city at night, ultimately. Is that when she fell?
Attack will come from all directions.
vs 7 is appalling:
7 As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her evil; violence and destruction are heard within her; sickness and wounds are ever before me. [Jer 6:7 ESV]
God says there is no one who will listen to His warnings (from Jeremiah?) because to all in Judah, His word is scorned. So the invader will take them, old and young, husband and wife. None spared in this time.
2023 - This about what is going on inside the walls of Jerusalem. It is a place filled with always fresh evil. That is why it must be destroyed. Vs 6b ends with "...there is nothing but oppression within her." These are terrible things to have God say about you. These are his chosen people, and they have so abandoned God that he can say they keep evil fresh as a well keeps water fresh. And look what he did to them? We have to keep such things in mind when we think about how the Jews were treated in WWII, and about how the whole world - or almost the whole world - is against them now. So many are calling for genocide, for extermination of all Jews. This verse might be relevant: 17 Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea. [Rev 12:17 ESV]. This was Satan's reaction when the woman was protected in the desert. So far as I am aware, nothing like this sequence is in progress. What we have now, and what has been going on since the crucifixion, is that blindness is come upon the Jews. Here are the verses:
8 as it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day." ...
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. [Rom 11:8, 25 ESV]
What I am getting at is that the horrible things that happen to Israel now may be a part of the punishment for rejecting the Messiah when he came. If God would send Babylon to besiege Jerusalem over their idolatry and pervasive oppression and evil in those days, why are we surprised when Israel is hated and violently attacked today? We ought to see these things less as atrocity against the chosen and more as an ongoing sign of God's continuing wrath toward them. We ought to shake our heads and feel sorry for them. Could we even say that by migrating back to Israel, these concentrated Jews are inviting concentrated wrath against themselves. Would they not be "safer" if they remained scattered until the time that God himself protects them against all enemies on the wide highways of their journey home? Perhaps in establishing this nation in 1948 they are in fact preempting God's plan for them, and THAT is why such violence and hatred continues to be turned on them? Maybe. It ought to be considered.
2023 - Another one that might be written about Oct 7: 21 Therefore thus says the LORD: 'Behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish.'" [Jer 6:21 ESV]
2023 - WAY too much time on these first verses. Reading straight through the rest...
This verse:
14 They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace. [Jer 6:14 ESV]
I have heard this before...but I don't know where. Word search says Jeremiah uses the phrase twice, second time will be in Chapter 8. I think I heard it from a secular source though....It is a very ... hmmm....It really grabs your attention, pulls you right to it, focuses you.
2023 - In Hebrew, if I am getting BLB correct, it would be Shalom, shalom, ayin shalom. Worked on it quite a while. Pretty sure this is the right pronunciation.
vss 16, 17, God says He has warned them, time and again, but they refuse to listen. Therefore....
What is about to happen is summarized in 26b:
26 ...for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us. [Jer 6:26 ESV]
vss 27-30, This seems new to me. The people are compared to iron and bronze, silver. God says He is using bellows and fire to try and refine them but even that does not work. They are called "rejected silver". They are a precious metal that cannot be refined. It is too corrupt. Never seen this analogy before. MSB says instead of "precious metal" they were iron, bronze, lead, and un-refinable silver. Same thing...Jeremiah was the "tester", looking for some value in Judah and Jerusalem and finding none at all. The point of all this is that God has repeatedly, continuously, and ever more drastically sent His correction to these people, but nothing has gotten their attention. Nothing can change them from the dross that they are into something that is useful to God. They resist refinement as a corrupt metal cannot be purified. There are "contaminants" that cannot be removed by any method available to the refiner. The metal must be discarded.
2020 - Isaiah, and the minor prophets of his time, have a lot of prophecy about the Millennial, and even later. Much of what they said could be applied both near and far. So far in Jeremiah, it has all been pretty clearly about the coming Babylonian invasion of Judah and Jerusalem. I've seen very little that might be pointing to Tribulation or the Millennial or the new heaven and earth. So far, Jeremiah is about the "right now" of his own lifetime.