Scripture Daily

Context No. 1222 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 22:11-17: in context

11For the LORD says touching Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, and who went out of this place: “He won’t return there any more. 12But he will die in the place where they have led him captive. He will see this land no more.” 13“Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his rooms by injustice; who uses his neighbor’s service without wages, and doesn’t give him his hire; 14who says, ‘I will build myself a wide house and spacious rooms,’ and cuts out windows for himself, with a cedar ceiling, and painted with red. 15“Should you reign because you strive to excel in cedar? Didn’t your father eat and drink, and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. 16He judged the cause of the poor and needy; so then it was well. Wasn’t this to know me?” says the LORD. 17But your eyes and your heart are only for your covetousness, for shedding innocent blood, for oppression, and for doing violence.”

Jeremiah pronounces judgment on the kings of Judah. On one exiled king, Shallum, he says he will never return but die in captivity. Then a woe against a king, likely Jehoiakim, who builds a grand palace by injustice, using forced labor without paying wages, obsessed with spacious rooms and cedar paneling painted red, while doing nothing for the poor. Jeremiah contrasts him with his father Josiah: did not your father eat and drink and also do justice and righteousness? He judged the cause of the poor and needy, and it was well with him. And then the piercing line: is not this to know me? says the LORD.

The heart of the passage is that piercing question: is not this to know me? Jeremiah has just described Josiah doing justice for the poor and needy, and he equates it with knowing God. Not knowing God as a private mystical experience, not knowing God as correct doctrine, but knowing God as defending the cause of the poor, as doing justice and righteousness. To know God, this passage says, shows itself in caring for the vulnerable the way God cares for them. And the contrast is damning: the son builds his cedar palace on the backs of unpaid workers, cares only for his own comfort and grandeur, and by that very self-serving injustice reveals that he does not know God, whatever his royal titles. Real knowledge of God is not measured by our claims or our religious credentials but by whether we do what God does, judge the cause of the poor. It is a searching test. A person may profess to know God and build their comfortable life on injustice and indifference to the needy, and Jeremiah says that person does not know him at all. To know God is to do justice for the poor; the rest is self-deception.

If knowing God shows itself in doing justice for the poor and needy, as Jeremiah says, does my life reveal that I know him, or only that I know about him while my comfort rests on indifference?

Sources