Scripture Daily

Context No. 934 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 26:7-11: in context

7The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the LORD’s house. 8When Jeremiah had finished speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You shall surely die! 9Why have you prophesied in the LORD’s name, saying, ‘This house will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, without inhabitant’?” All the people were crowded around Jeremiah in the LORD’s house. 10When the princes of Judah heard these things, they came up from the king’s house to the LORD’s house; and they sat in the entry of the new gate of the LORD’s house. 11Then the priests and the prophets spoke to the princes and to all the people, saying, “This man is worthy of death, for he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your ears.”

Jeremiah has just delivered a sermon in the temple courts, warning that if Judah will not repent, God will make this house like Shiloh, the sanctuary that was destroyed, and the city a desolation. The reaction is instant and violent. The priests, the prophets, and all the people seize him, shouting you shall surely die. When the officials of Judah hear the uproar, they come up and hold a hasty trial in the gate, and the priests and prophets press the charge: this man deserves death, for he has prophesied against this city.

What got Jeremiah nearly killed was telling the truth about a sacred institution. The temple was the pride and security of Jerusalem, the guarantee, people assumed, that God would never let the city fall. To stand in its courts and say it could become like Shiloh, a heap of ruins, sounded like blasphemy, and the professional prophets and priests, whose livelihood and status were bound up with the temple, led the mob. It is a recurring pattern: the people most invested in a religious system are often the least able to hear that it has gone wrong, and they treat the warning as an attack rather than a mercy. Jeremiah is not against the temple; he is against the lie that the building could save a people who had abandoned God's ways. For saying so he is put on trial for his life by the very people who should have listened. Telling an uncomfortable truth to those who do not want it is dangerous work, and the prophets kept getting killed for it.

When someone warns that something I trust in has gone wrong, do I hear it as a possible mercy, or do I react like the crowd and want the messenger silenced?

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