Scripture Daily

Context No. 512 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 31:15-22: in context

15The LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” 16The LORD says: “Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” says the LORD. “They will come again from the land of the enemy. 17There is hope for your latter end,” says the LORD. “Your children will come again to their own territory. 18“I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as an untrained calf. Turn me, and I will be turned, for you are the LORD my God. 19Surely after that I was turned. I repented. After that I was instructed. I struck my thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even confounded, because I bore the reproach of my youth.’ 20Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I still earnestly remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him,” says the LORD. 21“Set up road signs. Make guideposts. Set your heart toward the highway, even the way by which you went. Turn again, virgin of Israel. Turn again to these your cities. 22How long will you go here and there, you backsliding daughter? For the LORD has created a new thing on the earth: a woman will encompass a man.”

This passage begins in inconsolable grief. A voice is heard in Ramah, God says, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. It is the sound of a mother who has lost her children to exile and will not accept any comfort. And into that grief God speaks, not with a rebuke for her refusal to be consoled, but with a promise: restrain your voice from weeping, for your children will come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future. But it is what comes next, when God turns to speak of the wayward child himself, that is almost startling in its tenderness.

God has been disciplining Ephraim, the wandering, unfaithful people, and he hears Ephraim finally beginning to turn: you disciplined me, and I was disciplined, like an untrained calf; bring me back, and I will return. And listen to how God responds to that first flicker of repentance. Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I still remember him earnestly. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him. This is God in the very act of correcting his child, and what he confesses is not cold justice but an aching, yearning love. Even as he speaks against Ephraim, his heart is turning over inside him, remembering, longing, unable to stop loving the very child he is disciplining.

That heals a picture of God I carry when I know I have wandered and sense his discipline on me. I imagine him distant, cold, arms folded, finished with me, tolerating me at best. Jeremiah shows the opposite: a Father whose heart yearns for his straying child in the middle of the correction, who cannot mention the discipline without immediately confessing how much he still loves and longs for him. When I am aware of God correcting me for my wandering, do I picture him as done with me, or can I believe that even now his heart is yearning over me, remembering me, aching to have mercy?

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