Context No. 2429 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Jeremiah 4:19-31: in context

19My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart! My heart trembles within me. I can’t hold my peace, because you have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. 20Destruction on destruction is decreed, for the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, and my curtains gone in a moment. 21How long will I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet? 22“For my people are foolish. They don’t know me. They are foolish children, and they have no understanding. They are skillful in doing evil, but they don’t know how to do good.” 23I saw the earth and, behold, it was waste and void, and the heavens, and they had no light. 24I saw the mountains, and behold, they trembled, and all the hills moved back and forth. 25I saw, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the sky had fled. 26I saw, and behold, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down at the presence of the LORD, before his fierce anger. 27For the LORD says, “The whole land will be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. 28For this the earth will mourn, and the heavens above be black, because I have spoken it. I have planned it, and I have not repented, neither will I turn back from it.” 29Every city flees for the noise of the horsemen and archers. They go into the thickets and climb up on the rocks. Every city is forsaken, and not a man dwells therein. 30You, when you are made desolate, what will you do? Though you clothe yourself with scarlet, though you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with makeup, you make yourself beautiful in vain. Your lovers despise you. They seek your life. 31For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who gives birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, saying, “Woe is me now! For my soul faints before the murderers.”

Jeremiah cannot keep his composure. My anguish, my anguish, he cries; his heart pounds at the sound of the war trumpet, and he sees a vision of the land undone, the earth waste and void again, the heavens without light, the birds fled, the cities in ruins. In the middle of it, God gives the diagnosis: my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are skilled in doing evil, but they do not know how to do good.

That last line is the haunting one. Not that the people cannot tell right from wrong in theory, but that they have practiced evil until they are good at it, and neglected goodness until they are clumsy at it. Skill runs where attention and habit go. And notice the prophet's own heart: he does not deliver the judgment coldly; it tears him up, his anguish echoing God's grief. Even amid the ruin, God adds a limit, I will not make a full end, a thread of mercy through the wreckage.

What have I grown skilled at through practice that harms, while I have let my hand for doing good go clumsy from neglect?

Sources

Jeremiah 4:22: For my people are foolish... They are skillful in doing evil, but they don't know how to do good.
Jeremiah 4:19: My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart! My heart trembles within me.
Jeremiah 4:27: The whole land will be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.