Scripture Daily

Context No. 833 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 49:12-22: in context

12For the LORD says: “Behold, they to whom it didn’t pertain to drink of the cup will certainly drink; and are you he who will altogether go unpunished? You won’t go unpunished, but you will surely drink. 13For I have sworn by myself,” says the LORD, “that Bozrah will become an astonishment, a reproach, a waste, and a curse. All its cities will be perpetual wastes.” 14I have heard news from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the nations, saying, “Gather yourselves together! Come against her! Rise up to the battle!” 15“For, behold, I have made you small among the nations, and despised among men. 16As for your terror, the pride of your heart has deceived you, O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, who hold the height of the hill, though you should make your nest as high as the eagle, I will bring you down from there,” says the LORD. 17“Edom will become an astonishment. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished, and will hiss at all its plagues. 18As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and its neighbor cities,” says the LORD, “no man will dwell there, neither will any son of man live therein. 19“Behold, he will come up like a lion from the pride of the Jordan against the strong habitation; for I will suddenly make them run away from it, and whoever is chosen, I will appoint him over it. For who is like me? Who will appoint me a time? Who is the shepherd who will stand before me?” 20Therefore hear the counsel of the LORD, that he has taken against Edom, and his purposes that he has purposed against the inhabitants of Teman: Surely they will drag them away, the little ones of the flock. Surely he will make their habitation desolate over them. 21The earth trembles at the noise of their fall; there is a cry, the noise which is heard in the Red Sea. 22Behold, he will come up and fly as the eagle, and spread out his wings against Bozrah. The heart of the mighty men of Edom at that day will be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.

Jeremiah's oracle against Edom is heavy with judgment, and much of it falls on the pride of a people who thought their mountain fortresses put them out of reach. But near the end God asks a string of rhetorical questions that reach past Edom and say something about himself. He pictures himself coming up like a lion against Edom's stronghold, and then he says: for who is like me? Who will summon me? And what shepherd can stand before me?

Sit with those three questions, because each one closes a door people are always trying to pry open. Who is like me? There is no one to compare him to, no rival, no equal to appeal to over his head. Who will summon me, who will appoint me a time? No one can drag God into court on their schedule, subpoena him, set the terms and the timetable and require him to appear and explain himself. And what shepherd can stand before me? No ruler, no nation, no force can plant itself in his path and hold. Edom had imagined it could outlast anything from its cliffs, but the deeper point is that no one, anywhere, sets the agenda for God or resists his purpose when it moves. He is not a power among powers to be negotiated with or outwaited. He answers to no one, keeps no calendar but his own, and no shepherd of any flock has ever made him stand still.

God asks who could ever summon him to a time and place, or stand before him and hold. Where am I quietly trying to set the terms for God, to summon him on my schedule, instead of standing before the One no one appoints or resists?

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