Context No. 3411 of 4322 · Jeremiah
Context · Reflection
Jeremiah 9:12-16: in context
12Who is wise enough to understand this? Who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it? Why has the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? 13The LORD says, “Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in my ways, 14but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.” 15Therefore the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says, “Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink. 16I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.”
The question is asked, why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness? And God gives the answer plainly: because they forsook my law, did not obey my voice, but followed the stubbornness of their own hearts and the Baals their fathers had taught them. The disaster was not random or unexplained; it was the harvest of a persistent choice.
Two things stand out in the answer. There is the stubbornness of their own heart, the willful preference for their own way over God's. And there are the Baals which their fathers taught them, sin learned and handed down through the generations, passed on like an inheritance. Ruin followed the long refusal to listen. There is sober warning here in seeing consequences traced honestly to their real root, not to bad luck but to the forsaking of God, and in noticing how patterns of unfaithfulness get taught, by example, to the children who come after.
Do I trace my troubles honestly to their real roots, and am I careful what patterns I am teaching, by example, to those who come after me?
Sources
- Jeremiah 9:13: "Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in my ways."
- Jeremiah 9:14: "But have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them."
- Deuteronomy 29:18: "Lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison."