There is much more to this passage than I am able to put into words. However, early in it the prophet makes a point which I want to focus on. Assuming the prophet is Jeremiah, as tradition claims for this Book, we can see a parallel between what is written at the beginning of Chapter 3 and his life. He saw the destruction of Jerusalem coming and prophesied calling the people to change their ways to avoid it. But they did not listen and the destruction came. Then, even after the destruction and the suffering he experienced leading up to it, he was forced to join those who fled to Egypt. Yet, for all of this, he remembered that God’s love is faithful and endures forever. He put his hope in God and was not disappointed.
The prophet reminds us that the Lord is good to those who depend on Him. Therefore, we should submit to His discipline from an early age. Let us patiently wait for the Lord’s salvation and quietly accept His demands.
Here the prophet, generally thought to be Jeremiah, laments the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophet writes of how beautiful Jerusalem had been and how it has been devastated. However, he warns everyone that Jerusalem’s devastation resulted from the sins of her people. They had given no thought to the consequences of their action and lived for the moment; sinning without fear of what would happen later. They listened to prophets who told them what they wanted to hear rather than those who spoke God’s word. The people thought that because the Temple was there that God would never allow the city to fall. They turned from God to make friends with other nations (Note: this does not necessarily mean that it was wrong for them to make friends with those nations. The wrong was in turning from God to do so). However, when God brought home the consequences of their sins, none of those nations were willing, or able, to come to their aid. In all of this Jerusalem, and the Kingdom of Judah, are object lessons for all nations and peoples. If you turn from God and sin against Him when His judgement comes none will stand by you to offer you aid.
Babylon was chosen by God to punish His people by conquering Jerusalem and destroying the Temple there. Yet, here Jeremiah prophesied that God would punish Babylon and the Babylonians for what they had done to the people of Jerusalem. So, let’s recap. Jerusalem and the Temple was destroyed because of the sins of the Jewish people. Babylon was God’s chosen tool for this task. Nevertheless, God chose to punish Babylon for what they did to the people of Israel.
As I read this I thought about the modern state of Israel. There are many who condemn the modern state of Israel for what they perceive as the sins of its politicians and people. I am not going to address the merits of those accusations today because it is not relevant to the point. If the people of the modern state of Israel are guilty of the sins which their opponents accuse them of, God will punish them and the state of Israel will fall. However, those who work to bring that about will pay a price, even if they are doing so because of the sins of the people of Israel.
However, as I started typing the last paragraph I realized there is a more general lesson. One which all of us should heed. Those who repeatedly sin will suffer God’s punishment for their sins (especially the sins of oppressing the weak and powerless). However, when that punishment is delivered by their fellow human, the one delivering the punishment may be sinning by doing so. We are all sinners and avoid God’s terrible punishment only by His grace. It is not our place to decide who should receive God’s punishment and who should receive His grace. Let us leave that to God. Our place is to demonstrate God’s love. That we should not leave to God.
Today’s passage contains some of Jeremiah’s prophecies against the nations surrounding Judah. These prophecies condemn them for their idolatry. My first thought as I read Jeremiah’s prophecy against Ammon was of the Muslim Arabs living in lands which Jeremiah would have considered part of Israel’s land. God promised the destruction of Ammon for its idolatry, but also promised to restore its people after a time. I am really hesitant to apply Old Testament prophecies to the modern world because I have seen so many people read their own understanding of the world back into these prophecies and then use them to support their own bias. We should instead seek to discover God’s message for us in these passages. Which leads me to the following point: these prophecies have one common thread. All of the nations Jeremiah prophecies against held enmity towards God’s chosen people.
When Jeremiah speaks of the fall of Edom, he tells us that in the midst of the death and destruction God will protect the orphans and the widows. This reflects a theme which comes up again and again in the Old Testament. God comes to the defense of the powerless when the powerful abuse them. We should take two things away from this. If we use whatever power we have to take advantage of the powerless we make ourselves God’s enemies. When we help those in need, we act on God’s behalf.
Today’s passage contains a short message from God to Baruch, Jeremiah’s loyal assistant and scribe. The message suggests that Baruch was an ambitious man, which may explain the suspicion that those remaining in Judah had towards him. God said to Baruch through Jeremiah that he should give up on his ambitions because they would only lead him to greater sorrow. However, God promised to preserve his life despite the destruction that so many around him would experience. Baruch’s faithfulness did not gain him the reward for which he had hoped, but gained him a valuable reward nonetheless. This message was delivered to Baruch before the fall of Jerusalem, but is recorded here after the accounts of he and Jeremiah being forced to join those who fled to Egypt. Jeremiah had told those who fled to Egypt that neither they nor their children would see their homeland again. However, not all of those who went to Egypt did so voluntarily and I think this message to Baruch is recorded here as a reminder that Jeremiah’s prophecy did not apply to them.
After the murder of the governor appointed by the Babylonians, the people remaining in Judah were afraid of what the Babylonians would do to them. Initially, they did the right thing, they went to Jeremiah and asked him to tell them what God wanted them to do. However, when Jeremiah came back 10 days later and told them that God’s answer was for them to stay in Judah and submit to the king of Babylon, they did not trust him. Despite having promised that they would do whatever Jeremiah told them God commanded and despite Jeremiah’s warning that tragedy would follow them should they go to Egypt, they chose to flee to Egypt rather than remain in Judah. This really reminds me of the lesson I took from King Zedekiah’s last consultation with Jeremiah. How often do we choose to act counter to what we know to be God’s will because we do not truly trust God to care for us? Because we are afraid of what will happen to us if we do His will? The lesson here is that the consequences of not doing God’s will are always worse than doing God’s will.
King Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, refused to take Jeremiah’s advice to surrender to the Babylonians because he was afraid of what the Babylonians would do to him. Instead, he chose to continue the fight until the city walls fell, at which point he attempted to flee in the night. However, the end result was exactly what Jeremiah had told him would happen. If Zedekiah had done as Jeremiah advised, the worst that would have happened would have been what happened and those for whom he was responsible would have suffered less and Zedekiah would probably have been treated better than he was. An important lesson for us: if we do as God directs, we may experience the suffering we fear, but we will save others from suffering. However, if we do not do as God directs we will definitely suffer and will likely cause others to suffer needlessly as well.
I find interesting what the rest of this passage reveals about the military defense of the Kingdom of Judah. I had written an entire paragraph about this, but realized it did not lead to the point. Jeremiah had prophesied that those who remained in Judah after the first group taken into Exile by the Babylonians would be killed or scattered. After the fall of Jerusalem, they had an opportunity to live in the land peacefully under the Babylonians. Something Jeremiah had been advising them to accept for years. However, after one of those too zealous to accept such an outcome killed the governor appointed by the Babylonians, the rest were too fearful to remain. So, we see that Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled through the actions of the people themselves.
I am struck as I read through the Book of Jeremiah by the political factions within the Kingdom of Judah during Jeremiah’s lifetime. In today’s passage we see that one faction wanted to kill Jeremiah, and other prophets of God, while another faction protected them. King Jehoiakim was a member of the anti-prophet faction, later, his brother, Zedekiah was part of the pro-prophet faction when he was king. When Jehoiakim was king, those supporting Jeremiah were able to protect him, but later when Zedekiah was king those opposing Jeremiah were able to endanger his life. We see from various comments of King Zedekiah recorded here that he was not a strong enough king to stand up to the faction which wanted Jeremiah dead. As I read this, King Zedekiah was not just politically weak, but also a personally weak man. Part of him wanted to do what was right, but he was too afraid of others to do so. It seems likely to me that King Jehoiakim was similarly weak, but, since he did not desire to do what was right, covered it up by being a bully.
The question is, what does all of this mean for us? Well, we see that God protected Jeremiah for doing his will, both when King Jehoiakim tried to have him killed and later when those who opposed him tried to starve him to death. I will note that through all of this Jeremiah experienced quite a bit of suffering, and that God allowed several other prophets to be killed. We also see that King Zedekiah’s failure to do the right thing did not protect him from the consequences he feared. There is one more thing which I want to point out. Those who wanted to kill Jeremiah did so out of “patriotism”. They felt that his prophecies concerning the fall of Jerusalem encouraged the enemies of Judah, especially its internal enemies. They placed what they perceived as the best interests of the nation above doing what was right. Of course, it is quite likely that some of them mistook their own interests for the interests of the nation and allowed others to do things they knew to be wrong because they needed support for their policies.
Jeremiah predicted the fall of Jerusalem, but he also prophesied that God would never abandon the Jewish people. What I find interesting is that Jeremiah’s prophecy here was in response to people saying that Israel was not worthy to be counted as a nation. This struck me because there are many people saying the same thing today. I thoroughly believe that those people will discover that God’s promise given through Jeremiah is every bit as true today as it was then. The reason that people said it then was much different from the reasons people say it today. When Jeremiah prophesied, God promised to restore the people of Israel to their land. Today, they have been restored to that land, but some people refuse to recognize that this came about because of God’s action. It may be that God will once again exile His people from the land He gave them because of their sin, but those who choose to be their enemies will pay a price for their hostility. God has restored the people of Israel to their land several times throughout history, and each time, He exiled them once more when they failed to faithfully follow His commands.
After the above prophecy, Jeremiah condemns the elites of Jerusalem for their failure to stay the course when they repented and turned back to God, or, at least, claimed to do so. They had freed their Hebrew slaves, their fellow Israelites whom they had enslaved for one reason or another. By doing so as part of a religious revival they acknowledged that continuing to keep them as slaves was a sin. However, they soon repented of freeing their slaves and re-enslaved them on one pretext or another. Jeremiah unfavorably contrasts this with the Recabites, who followed the commands of their ancestor to not drink wine or live in houses. They had followed these commands since the time of King Jehu of Israel, when their ancestor helped Jehu eliminate Baal worship in the Northern Kingdom. The Recabites followed their ancestors commands for generations, but the elites of Jerusalem would not remain faithful to God’s commands for even a matter of months. To which of these groups do you and I belong?
Through Jeremiah God promises to enter into a new covenant with the people of Israel (from other passages, both in Jeremiah and elsewhere, we learn that this covenant extends to all people). This new covenant was necessary because the people of Israel were unable to keep the original one (no one would have been able to do so). The new covenant which God made does not require teachers who have been extensively trained to understand what God commands and how those rules fit together. God has provided simple and basic rules which anyone can understand for themselves if they so desire. Further, He has placed His Spirit in those who wish to follow this new covenant to explain to them from within what He desires. This does not mean that there is no place for teachers of God’s will. It means that you can go to Scripture for yourself, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, determine if what the teacher is teaching matches what God has said through Scripture.
On a slightly different note, Jeremiah was accused of being a traitor to his people because he prophesied that Jerusalem would fall and that the people of Judah should submit to the Babylonians. This accusation was wrong on several counts. First, Jeremiah also prophesied that Babylon would be destroyed for what it did to the people of Israel (including Judah). Second, we have today’s passage where Jeremiah demonstrated his belief that the nation of Israel would one day be restored. Jeremiah purchased land from a relative and sealed the deed and other ownership documents in a clay jar to preserve them against the time when the Jewish people would once more be able to buy and sell land in the Land of Israel. He had told the people of Jerusalem that they would go into exile, but he had also told them it would only be for 70 years. In today’s passage, he put his money where his mouth was by buying land.
The prophet reminds us that the Lord is good to those who depend on Him. Therefore, we should submit to His discipline from an early age. Let us patiently wait for the Lord’s salvation and quietly accept His demands. 
