Scripture Daily

Context No. 1831 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 49:34-39: in context

34The LORD’s word that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning Elam, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, saying, 35“The LORD of Armies says: ‘Behold, I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might. 36I will bring on Elam the four winds from the four quarters of the sky, and will scatter them toward all those winds. There will be no nation where the outcasts of Elam will not come. 37I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies, and before those who seek their life. I will bring evil on them, even my fierce anger,’ says the LORD; ‘and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them. 38I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from there king and princes,’ says the LORD. 39‘But it will happen in the latter days that I will reverse the captivity of Elam,’ says the LORD.”

Among Jeremiah's oracles against the nations comes one concerning Elam, a people far to the east. God declares judgment: he will break the strength of Elam, scatter them to the four winds, bring the sword after them until they are consumed, and set his throne there in judgment. It is a hard word of ruin. And then, at the very end, comes an unexpected turn: but it will happen in the latter days, says the LORD, that I will reverse the captivity of Elam.

The surprise in this oracle is its last line. Elam was a foreign nation, outside God's covenant, under a severe word of judgment; we might expect the oracle to end in unrelieved ruin. Instead, God adds a promise of restoration: in the latter days, I will reverse the captivity of Elam. Even for this distant, pagan people, God's last word is not destruction but a future mercy. The judgment is real and severe; but beyond it, God holds out restoration, even to Elam. This is a striking glimpse of the breadth of God's mercy. We might imagine God's restoring purposes reserved for his own covenant people, and his dealings with the nations to be only judgment. But here, tucked into an oracle of doom against a foreign enemy, is a promise that God's mercy reaches even them, that his purposes for the nations are not only judgment but, in the end, restoration. God's heart is wider than we tend to assume; his desire, Scripture says elsewhere, is that all people be saved, and his mercy reaches to peoples we might write off as beyond it. There is encouragement in this on two fronts. It assures us that no people, no nation, is finally beyond the reach of God's mercy; even Elam, even the distant and the pagan, receives a promise of restoration. And it warns us against a narrowness that would confine God's mercy to our own kind, assuming that those outside our circle are objects only of judgment. The God who promised to restore even Elam is a God of wider mercy than we imagine. His judgments are real; but his last word, even to the nations under judgment, can be restoration.

Do I confine God's mercy in my imagination to my own kind, assuming those outside my circle, the distant, the different, even the hostile, are objects only of judgment, or can I let the surprising promise to restore even Elam widen my sense of God's mercy, which reaches, in the end, to peoples I might write off as beyond it?

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