Scripture Daily

Context No. 1036 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 18:11-17: in context

11“Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘The LORD says: “Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a plan against you. Everyone return from his evil way now, and amend your ways and your doings.”’ 12But they say, ‘It is in vain; for we will walk after our own plans, and we will each follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.’” 13Therefore the LORD says: “Ask now among the nations, ‘Who has heard such things?’ The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing. 14Will the snow of Lebanon fail from the rock of the field? Will the cold waters that flow down from afar be dried up? 15For my people have forgotten me. They have burned incense to false gods. They have been made to stumble in their ways in the ancient paths, to walk in byways, in a way not built up, 16to make their land an astonishment, and a perpetual hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished, and shake his head. 17I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy. I will show them the back, and not the face, in the day of their calamity.

God tells Jeremiah to warn Judah: I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan; so turn back, each of you from your evil way, and mend your ways. It is an invitation to repent while there is still time. But the people's answer is chilling in its flatness: it is no use; we will follow our own plans, each of us acting according to the stubbornness of his evil heart. God responds with astonishment, asking the nations if they have ever heard of anything so strange, that his people have forgotten him, the one constant, as unnatural as the snow of Lebanon disappearing or cold mountain streams drying up.

The most sobering line is the people's reply: it is no use. On the surface it sounds like despair, a resigned hopelessness, but God treats it as something worse, a mask for stubbornness. We will follow our own plans, they say; the hopelessness is really a decision, a way of refusing to change while sounding merely defeated. It is one of the oldest dodges, saying it is too late, nothing can be done, when what is actually happening is that a heart has decided not to turn. And God names the underlying tragedy: my people have forgotten me. That is the strangeness he points at, that a people would forget the God who is more reliable than snow on the mountains or streams that never fail, and trade him for gods and paths that lead nowhere. Forgetting God is not a small lapse of memory; it is the root from which the whole slide comes. And the flat it is no use is how forgetting protects itself from the call to return.

Do I ever hide behind it is no use, dressing a stubborn refusal to change as mere hopelessness, when God is actually calling me to turn back while there is still time?

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