Context No. 3561 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Jeremiah 22:18-23: in context

18Therefore the LORD says concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: “They won’t lament for him, saying, ‘Ah my brother!’ or, ‘Ah sister!’ They won’t lament for him, saying ‘Ah lord!’ or, ‘Ah his glory!’ 19He will be buried with the burial of a donkey, drawn and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.” 20“Go up to Lebanon, and cry out. Lift up your voice in Bashan, and cry from Abarim; for all your lovers have been destroyed. 21I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way from your youth, that you didn’t obey my voice. 22The wind will feed all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity. Surely then you will be ashamed and confounded for all your wickedness. 23Inhabitant of Lebanon, who makes your nest in the cedars, how greatly to be pitied you will be when pangs come on you, the pain as of a woman in travail!

God pronounces a bleak judgment on King Jehoiakim, who will be given the burial of a donkey, dragged out and cast beyond the gates of Jerusalem, no one to mourn him. But the heart of the indictment is a single sentence: I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, I will not listen.

This has been your way from your youth, God says, that you have not obeyed my voice. He had spoken to Jehoiakim in his days of ease, and the king simply refused to hear. Prosperity had made him deaf; comfortable and secure, he saw no need to listen to God. There is a sober warning here about how ease and success can harden us against God's voice. It is often in our prosperity that we most need to listen, and most easily refuse. The habit of not listening, begun in youth and never broken, hardened over a lifetime into a settled deafness. God still speaks; the question is whether we will answer, like Jehoiakim, I will not listen.

Does prosperity or comfort make me deaf to God's voice, and am I forming a habit of listening to him, or of refusing to hear?

Sources

Jeremiah 22:21: "I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, I will not listen. This has been your way from your youth, that you didn't obey my voice."
Jeremiah 22:19: "He will be buried with the burial of a donkey, drawn and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem."
Proverbs 1:24-25: "Because I have called, and you have refused... but you have ignored all my counsel."