Scripture Daily

Context No. 851 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 18:18-23: in context

18Then they said, “Come! Let’s devise plans against Jeremiah; for the law won’t perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let’s strike him with the tongue, and let’s not give heed to any of his words.” 19Give heed to me, LORD, and listen to the voice of those who contend with me. 20Should evil be recompensed for good? For they have dug a pit for my soul. Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them, to turn away your wrath from them. 21Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and give them over to the power of the sword. Let their wives become childless and widows. Let their men be killed and their young men struck by the sword in battle. 22Let a cry be heard from their houses when you bring a troop suddenly on them; for they have dug a pit to take me and hidden snares for my feet. 23Yet, LORD, you know all their counsel against me to kill me. Don’t forgive their iniquity. Don’t blot out their sin from your sight, Let them be overthrown before you. Deal with them in the time of your anger.

Jeremiah's enemies have grown tired of his warnings, and they make a cold decision. Come, they say, let us plot against Jeremiah; we still have the law from the priest and counsel from the wise and the word from the prophets, so we do not need this one. Let us strike him with the tongue, slander him, ruin him with words, and pay no attention to anything he says. They plan to destroy the man who has been telling them the truth, and to do it by talk. And the wound that opens in Jeremiah is that these are people he had prayed for. Should evil be repaid for good, he cries to God; remember how I stood before you to speak good on their behalf, to turn your wrath away from them.

What follows is one of the harshest prayers in the Bible. Jeremiah asks God to give their children to famine, their wives to widowhood, their men to the sword, and not to forgive their sin. It is shocking, and it is not offered as a model of serenity. But notice what he is actually doing with all that rage: he is taking it to God. He does not slaughter his enemies himself, and he does not paste on a false calm and pretend he is not devastated by being betrayed by the very people he interceded for. He brings the raw, ugly, vengeful truth of what he feels and lays it down in prayer, and leaves it there, in God's hands, for God to deal with. There is a strange permission in that. The alternative to acting on our darkest impulses is not to bury them where they rot, but to carry even those to God honestly, and let him be the one who judges.

Betrayed by the people he had prayed for, Jeremiah took his rage straight to God rather than acting on it or hiding it. Where am I either nursing a secret desire for revenge or pretending I feel no anger at all, when I could bring the raw truth of it to God and leave it in his hands?

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