Scripture Daily

Context No. 508 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 31:1-6: in context

1“At that time,” says the LORD, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they will be my people.” 2The LORD says, “The people who survive the sword found favor in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.” 3The LORD appeared of old to me, saying, “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore I have drawn you with loving kindness. 4I will build you again, and you will be built, O virgin of Israel. You will again be adorned with your tambourines, and will go out in the dances of those who make merry. 5Again you will plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. The planters will plant, and will enjoy its fruit. 6For there will be a day that the watchmen on the hills of Ephraim cry, ‘Arise! Let’s go up to Zion to the LORD our God.’”

This comes in the middle of Jeremiah, a book heavy with judgment and coming disaster, and suddenly the tone breaks open into pure tenderness. God speaks to a people who are about to lose everything, and he tells them what lies underneath all his dealings with them. I have loved you with an everlasting love, he says; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Notice the logic of that sentence, because everything hangs on the word therefore. His drawing of them, his patient pursuit, his refusal to let them go, does not spring from anything they have done to deserve it. It springs from a love that is everlasting, a love that was already there before they existed and will still be there when everything else has passed.

And because that love is the foundation, he can promise what follows: I will build you again, and you will be built. The people who are about to be torn down are told they will be rebuilt, that they will dance again with tambourines, plant vineyards again on the hills, and one day climb up to Zion with the watchmen calling them home. All the joy that judgment is about to strip away, he promises to give back, again and again is the refrain, because the love beneath it never actually left. His love is not the reward for their recovery; it is the cause of it.

That reorders how I understand God's love for me, which I am forever tempted to treat as conditional, something I earn on my good days and forfeit on my bad ones, a love I must keep securing by my performance. Jeremiah says the love came first and lasts forever, that God draws me because he already loves me, not the other way around, and that this everlasting love is what rebuilds the joy my failures tear down. Do I live as someone loved with an everlasting love that drew me before I could earn it, or as someone anxiously trying to deserve a love I secretly fear is conditional?

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