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Context No. 2298 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 19:7-15: in context

7“‘“I will make the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem void in this place. I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies to be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth. 8I will make this city an astonishment and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues. 9I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. They will each eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies, and those who seek their life, will distress them.”’ 10“Then you shall break the container in the sight of the men who go with you, 11and shall tell them, ‘The LORD of Armies says: “Even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, that can’t be made whole again. They will bury in Topheth until there is no place to bury. 12This is what I will do to this place,” says the LORD, “and to its inhabitants, even making this city as Topheth. 13The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, will be as the place of Topheth, even all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the army of the sky and have poured out drink offerings to other gods.”’” 14Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the LORD’s house, and said to all the people: 15“The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says, ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words.’”

God sends Jeremiah with a vivid sign: he is to break a potter's clay flask before the people, declaring that God will so break this people and this city that it cannot be mended. And God gives the reason for this coming judgment: they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words. Behind the judgment lay a stubborn refusal to hear, a deliberate hardening against God's word, a stiffening of the neck so as not to listen. Their unwillingness to hear brought the breaking that could not be repaired.

The reason God gives for the judgment is worth pausing on: they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words. It was not that God had failed to speak; he had spoken again and again through his prophets. It was that the people had stiffened their necks against his word, deliberately hardening themselves so as not to hear, refusing to listen. Their trouble was not ignorance but a willful refusal to hear, a stubborn hardening against the word of God. And this refusal, persisted in, led to a breaking that could not be mended. This is a sober warning about the danger of refusing to hear God's word. It is possible to harden ourselves deliberately against God's word, to stiffen our necks so as not to hear, to refuse to listen to what we do not want to hear. And this stubborn refusal is grave, for it cuts us off from the very word that would correct and save us, and, persisted in, leads to a hardness that becomes beyond repair. They refused to listen, Zechariah says of the same people, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears, and made their hearts hard as flint. The willful refusal to hear God hardens the heart until it can no longer be softened. This searches whether we harden ourselves against God's word. Is there a word from God that we do not want to hear, and so stiffen our necks against, refusing to listen, hardening ourselves so as not to heed it? The people of Jeremiah's day made their necks stiff that they might not hear, and were broken beyond mending. And we too can harden ourselves against God's word, refusing to hear what we do not want to hear, until our hearts grow hard. He who is often reproved, the proverb warns, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken, beyond healing. The stubborn refusal to hear is a dangerous path. This calls us to keep our hearts and ears open to God's word rather than stiffening our necks against it. The people were broken because they made their necks stiff that they might not hear; and we are warned against the same hardening. Today, Scripture urges, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. This calls us to receive God's word with open, softened hearts, willing to hear even what we would rather not, rather than stiffening our necks against it and hardening ourselves until we can no longer hear, for the refusal to hear, persisted in, leads to a breaking that cannot be mended, while the open heart that hears and heeds is corrected and saved.

Is there a word from God that I do not want to hear, so that I stiffen my neck against it, refusing to listen and hardening myself so as not to heed it, and can the people of Jeremiah's day, who made their necks stiff that they might not hear God's words and were broken beyond mending, warn me against the dangerous path of the willful refusal to hear, moving me to keep my heart and ears open to God's word, receiving even what I would rather not hear rather than hardening myself until I can no longer hear?

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