Scripture Daily

Context No. 519 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 44:15-19: in context

15Then all the men who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, even all the people who lived in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, 16“As for the word that you have spoken to us in the LORD’s name, we will not listen to you. 17But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil. 18But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of the sky, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.” 19The women said, “When we burned incense to the queen of the sky and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our husbands?”

This is one of the most defiant scenes in all the prophets. Jeremiah has warned the Judeans who fled to Egypt to stop worshiping the queen of heaven, a pagan goddess, and here they answer him to his face, a great crowd of them, with a flat refusal: as for the word you have spoken to us in the LORD's name, we will not listen to you. And then they explain their reasoning, and the reasoning is the disturbing part, because it is an argument from their own experience, read exactly backwards.

We will keep burning incense to the queen of heaven, they say, as we and our fathers used to do, because back then we had plenty of food, we were well off, and we saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to her, we have lacked everything and been consumed by sword and famine. Look at what they have done with their history. During the years they served the idol, life was good, so they credit the idol. When they stopped, under King Josiah's reforms, disaster followed, so they blame the God who called them away from it. They have taken the actual sequence of their lives and bent it into a case for the very sin they were told to abandon, concluding that the idolatry worked and obedience ruined them. The evidence is arranged to justify what they already wanted to do.

I do that more often than I would like to see. When I want to return to something God has called me out of, I can rewrite my own story to justify it: things were better when I was doing that, I was happier before I gave it up, obedience has cost me and brought me nothing. The facts get quietly rearranged to defend the thing I am already determined to keep. Where have I twisted the story of my own life into an argument for a sin I do not want to give up, and am I reading my history for the truth, or to justify what I have already decided to do?

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