Jeremiah 6:16-21

4. Prescription for deliverance (Jeremiah 6:16-21)

TRANSLATION

(16) Thus said the LORD: Stand along side the ways and observe. Ask for the old ways where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your soul. But they said, We will not walk in it! (17) I have set over you watchmen. Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they have said, We will not hearken! (18) Therefore hear, O nations! Know, O congregation, what is in them. (19) Hear, O earth. Behold, I am about to bring calamity unto this people, the fruit of their thoughts; for they have not paid attention to My words and as for My law, they have rejected it. (20) Why should you bring incense from Sheba, and sweet cane from a distant land. Your burnt offerings are not pleasing and your sacrifices do not satisfy Me. (21) Therefore thus says the LORD: Behold, I am about to give unto this people stumbling and they shall stumble over them, fathers and sons together. The neighbor and his friend shall perish.

COMMENTS

In the view of Jeremiah the nation was at a crossroads. He calls upon the people to stand, i.e., halt their headlong rush to destruction. Jeremiah urges them to select the old path of fidelity to God and adherence to His holy law and then to walk in that path. The old paths are those which previous generations have trodden to find salvation and divine blessing. There is but one way which has the blessing of the Lord and that is the way of obedient faith. True reformers are not those who are advocating new things but those who give due weight to old truths. The person who walks the old path will find spiritual rest for his soul. He will live a life free from anxiety about the here and now and the hereafter as well. In spite of this tender and gracious appeal on the part of God the people of Judah persist in stubbornly refusing to yield to His will. Their defiant response to the appeal is, We will not walk in it! (Jeremiah 6:16). Again God appeals to them to hearken to the alarm sounded by the prophetic watchmen whom He has placed over the nation (cf. Ezekiel 3:17; Ezekiel 33:1). Like watchmen of a city who stood on a high tower scanning the horizon for the first appearance of danger, so God's watchmen would constantly be on the lookout for any danger to the continued existence of the nation of Judah. At the first appearance of danger these faithful watchmen would sound the alarm by blowing the trumpet of God's warning word throughout the land. God's second appeal is also rejected. The hardened people declare that they will not hearken to the alarm of the watchmen (Jeremiah 6:17).

In view of the double rejection of the appeal of God sentence must be pronounced against Judah. The nations of the world are called upon to hear the pronouncement (cf. Micah 1:2; Isaiah 18:3). The congregation of nations should note the sin and ingratitude which dwells in the heart of God's chosen people. The ultimate objective of this instruction to the nation is didactic. God is about to teach a lesson to all the nations of the world by punishing His own people for their national sins. If the nations really know what is going on in Judah they will be able to apply the lesson to themselves (Jeremiah 6:18). The whole earth hears the horrible sentence of judgment: I am about to bring calamity unto this people. This punishment is the ripe fruit, the direct result, of their wicked and rebellious thoughts. They have not paid any attention to the word of God spoken through the prophets and furthermore they had rejected his written law (Jeremiah 6:19). Everywhere the Jews were scattered among the nations they became witnesses to their own guilt and the righteousness of the divine retribution against them.

Continued perfunctory observance of Temple ritual will not save the people from destruction. Someone has said, The less religion a man has in his heart the more he puts into his buildings and ceremonies. Whether or not that statement is universally true, the men of Judah certainly had an elaborate external religion completely divorced from personal holiness and morality. They went to much trouble and considerable expense to import the ingredients for the incense and anointing oil. Sheba was 1500 miles south of Jerusalem in southwestern Arabia. This may well have been the nearest location from which the proper ingredients specified in the law (Exodus 30:34) could be obtained. Sweet cane or calamus (Exodus 30:23), an ingredient of the holy anointing oil, was imported from a distant land, perhaps India. There was nothing wrong, of course, with the zeal of these people in obtaining these rare materials. Yet their burnt offerings and sacrifices were completely unacceptable to God. Jeremiah was not opposed to sacrifice. As a matter of fact he specifically approved of it (Jeremiah 17:26; Jeremiah 27:21-22; Jeremiah 33:10-11; Jeremiah 33:18). But Jeremiah, like all the prophets before him, regarded sacrifices without obedience as worthless.[170] The men of Judah were prone to make up in the outer what they did not possess in the inner. God has never been satisfied with mere externalities, with ceremonialism, with formalized and fossilized ritual. The men of Judah thought they were keeping God happy and on their side by going through the outward motions of worship. It was a tragic theological miscalculation, one which ultimately resulted in the destruction and ruin of the nation. They might be able to sidestep or rationalize the various disciplinary disasters which God had brought upon them. But in a very short period of time God would place before them a stumbling-block, Nebuchadnezzar, which they would not be able to sidestep. The whole nation would stumble over that obstacle and fall to their ruin (Jeremiah 6:21).

[170] 1 Samuel 15:22; Isaiah 1:11; Amos 5:21-24; Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6-8.