Year 2, Week 12, Day 2 Bible Reading Observations

Year 2, Week 12, Day 2

I have a brief observation for today’s reading of Jeremiah 14-15.

Today’s reading continues the second collection of declarations against Judah. Remembering the basic structure of the Book, Jeremiah 2:1-20:18, the first segment of the Book, contains two collections of declarations against Judah (and these two collections correspond to the two collections in Jeremiah 46:1-51:64). Jeremiah 14 is a dialogue between Jeremiah and the LORD in which Jeremiah confesses the corporate sinfulness of Judah in his pleadings before the LORD: “We acknowledge our wickedness, O LORD, and the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you. Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake; do not dishonor your glorious throne; remember and do not break your covenant with us” (Jeremiah 14:20-21). Jeremiah continues interceding even as the LORD has struck the land with drought: “The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought: “Judah mourns, and her gates languish; her people lament on the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem goes up” (Jeremiah 14:1-2). Jeremiah knows that the LORD is their only hope: “O you hope of Israel, its savior in time of trouble, why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?” (Jeremiah 14:8). Jeremiah 15 reinforces the LORD’s commitment to bring judgment upon Judah: “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! And when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD: “‘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” (Jeremiah 15:1-2).

One of the things that struck me from today’s reading is the LORD’s continued insistence that Jeremiah refrain from interceding for Judah: “Thus says the LORD concerning this people: “They have loved to wander thus; they have not restrained their feet; therefore the LORD does not accept them; now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.” The LORD said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (Jeremiah 14:10-11). Jeremiah’s intercessions for Judah have occurred consistently up to this point, but so has the LORD’s instructions for Jeremiah to stop his interceding: “As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you” (Jeremiah 7:16). The LORD’s instructions for Jeremiah to sustain his intercessory is linked to what season it was in Judah’s life: “See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). This was not the time for building and planting, but for plucking up, breaking down, destroying, and overthrowing. First these judgments must come: “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” (Jeremiah 15:3).

The LORD promises that He will preserve Jeremiah through this season of judgment: “And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the LORD. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless” (Jeremiah 15:20-21). But the LORD would not even hear the great intercessors from previous crises in Israel’s life: “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people.” The LORD’s mention of Moses and Samuel indicate that Jeremiah probably had those two men in mind as he requested: “Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake; do not dishonor your glorious throne; remember and do not break your covenant with us” (Jeremiah 14:21). Samuel appealed to the sake of the LORD’s name as he interceded: “For the LORD will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself” (1 Samuel 12:22); and Moses appealed to the Covenant that the LORD made with Abraham: “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever” (Exodus 32:13). Jeremiah surely knew that through the intercessions of Moses and Samuel, the LORD relented. But such stays of judgment would not occur in Jeremiah’s day. The people of whom the LORD once promised, "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17); would now experience the inverse: “I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the seas; I have brought against the mothers of young men a destroyer at noonday; I have made anguish and terror fall upon them suddenly” (Jeremiah 15:8). Intercessions would not be heard while judgments were being implemented.

What struck you in today’s reading? What questions were prompted from today’s reading?

Pastor Joe