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Context No. 1115 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 49:23-33: in context

23Of Damascus: “Hamath and Arpad are confounded, for they have heard evil news. They have melted away. There is sorrow on the sea. It can’t be quiet. 24Damascus has grown feeble, she turns herself to flee, and trembling has seized her. Anguish and sorrows have taken hold of her, as of a woman in travail. 25How is the city of praise not forsaken, the city of my joy? 26Therefore her young men will fall in her streets, and all the men of war will be brought to silence in that day,” says the LORD of Armies. 27“I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it will devour the palaces of Ben Hadad.” 28Of Kedar, and of the kingdoms of Hazor, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon struck, The LORD says: “Arise, go up to Kedar, and destroy the children of the east. 29They will take their tents and their flocks. they will carry away for themselves their curtains, all their vessels, and their camels; and they will cry to them, ‘Terror on every side!’ 30Flee! Wander far off! Dwell in the depths, you inhabitants of Hazor,” says the LORD; “for Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has taken counsel against you, and has conceived a purpose against you. 31Arise! Go up to a nation that is at ease, that dwells without care,” says the LORD; “that has neither gates nor bars, that dwells alone. 32Their camels will be a booty, and the multitude of their livestock a plunder. I will scatter to all winds those who have the corners of their beards cut off; and I will bring their calamity from every side of them,” says the LORD. 33Hazor will be a dwelling place of jackals, a desolation forever. No man will dwell there, neither will any son of man live therein.”

Jeremiah pronounces judgment on Damascus, whose people melt with fear at the bad news, and then on the desert tribes of Kedar and Hazor. God summons Babylon against them with a chilling description: go up against a nation at ease, that dwells securely, that has neither gates nor bars, that dwells alone. These are the wandering herdsmen of the desert, far from the great wars, confident in their isolation, and God declares that even they, tucked away and undefended, will be plundered and scattered.

The phrase that stops you is the description of Kedar: a nation at ease, that dwells securely, without gates or bars, dwelling alone. On the surface it sounds idyllic, a people so remote and untroubled they did not even bother with city walls or gates, living in careless peace. But the passage turns that very security into their exposure. Their sense of being safely out of reach, too far away and too unimportant to be a target, was itself a false comfort; when God summoned Babylon, their lack of gates and bars meant nothing could keep the disaster out. There is a warning here against a particular kind of complacency, the assumption that because trouble has not found us, because we feel remote from the storms that hit others, we are somehow immune. The nation that dwelt alone and at ease, sure nothing could reach it, was reached. True security is never in our distance from danger or in the walls we build, but in God alone, and a people at ease in anything else is more exposed than it knows.

Where have I grown complacent, feeling safely out of reach of trouble that hits others, and have I mistaken distance or ease for a security that only God can actually give?

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