Scripture Daily

Context No. 1610 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 48:1-16: in context

1Of Moab. The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Woe to Nebo! For it is laid waste. Kiriathaim is disappointed. It is taken. Misgab is put to shame and broken down. 2The praise of Moab is no more. In Heshbon they have devised evil against her: ‘Come! Let’s cut her off from being a nation.’ You also, Madmen, will be brought to silence. The sword will pursue you. 3The sound of a cry from Horonaim, desolation and great destruction! 4Moab is destroyed. Her little ones have caused a cry to be heard. 5For they will go up by the ascent of Luhith with continual weeping. For at the descent of Horonaim they have heard the distress of the cry of destruction. 6Flee! Save your lives! Be like the juniper bush in the wilderness. 7For, because you have trusted in your works and in your treasures, you also will be taken. Chemosh will go out into captivity, his priests and his princes together. 8The destroyer will come on every city, and no city will escape; the valley also will perish, and the plain will be destroyed, as the LORD has spoken. 9Give wings to Moab, that she may fly and get herself away: and her cities will become a desolation, without anyone to dwell in them. 10“Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD negligently; and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood. 11“Moab has been at ease from his youth, and he has settled on his dregs, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither has he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remains in him, and his scent is not changed. 12Therefore behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will send to him those who pour off, and they will pour him off; and they will empty his vessels, and break their containers in pieces. 13Moab will be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. 14“How do you say, ‘We are mighty men, and valiant men for the war’? 15Moab is laid waste, and they have gone up into his cities, and his chosen young men have gone down to the slaughter,” says the King, whose name is the LORD of Armies. 16“The calamity of Moab is near to come, and his affliction hurries fast.

Jeremiah pronounces judgment on Moab, a nation that had long lived undisturbed. Among the images he uses is a telling one drawn from winemaking. Moab has been at ease from his youth, he says, and has settled on his dregs; he has not been poured from vessel to vessel, nor gone into captivity; therefore his taste remains in him and his scent is unchanged. But the days are coming, God says, when I will send those who pour him off, and they will empty his vessels. Moab's long, undisturbed ease is about to end.

The image of wine settled on its dregs repays attention. In making wine, the wine is poured from one vessel to another to separate it from the sediment, the dregs, that settle at the bottom; wine left too long on its dregs grows thick, stale, and spoiled. And Jeremiah says Moab is like wine never poured off, settled comfortably on its sediment, never disturbed, never moved, its taste and scent unchanged because nothing has ever shaken it. It is a picture of the danger of an undisturbed ease that never refines us. Moab had never been through hardship, never been poured from vessel to vessel, and rather than making it better, this unbroken comfort had left it stale and complacent, settled on its dregs. There is a warning in that against the stagnation that comfort can breed. We might think that a life never disturbed by trouble would be the best of lives; but wine that is never poured off spoils, and a life never shaken, never moved out of its comfort, never refined by difficulty, can grow stagnant and stale, settled complacently on its own dregs. The disturbances God allows in our lives, the pourings-off from one vessel to another, the times we are moved out of our comfortable settledness, are often the very things that keep us from stagnating, that refine and improve us, separating us from the dregs. Undisturbed ease is not the blessing it appears; wine needs pouring off to stay good, and so, often, do we. The comfort that never shakes us can leave us stale; the disturbances that pour us off may be the mercy that keeps us from spoiling on our dregs.

Have I mistaken undisturbed ease for blessing, when wine left on its dregs grows stale, and can I see the disturbances God allows, the pourings-off from my comfortable settledness, as a mercy that refines me and keeps me from stagnating complacently on my own dregs?

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