Jeremiah 11:14-23: a reflection

14“Therefore don’t pray for this people. Don’t lift up cry or prayer for them; for I will not hear them in the time that they cry to me because of their trouble. 15What has my beloved to do in my house, since she has behaved lewdly with many, and the holy flesh has passed from you? When you do evil, then you rejoice.” 16The LORD called your name, “A green olive tree, beautiful with goodly fruit.” With the noise of a great roar he has kindled fire on it, and its branches are broken. 17For the LORD of Armies, who planted you, has pronounced evil against you, because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done to themselves in provoking me to anger by offering incense to Baal. 18The LORD gave me knowledge of it, and I knew it. Then you showed me their doings. 19But I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter. I didn’t know that they had devised plans against me, saying, “Let’s destroy the tree with its fruit, and let’s cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.” 20But, LORD of Armies, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind, I will see your vengeance on them; for to you I have revealed my cause. 21“Therefore the LORD says concerning the men of Anathoth, who seek your life, saying, ‘You shall not prophesy in the LORD’s name, that you not die by our hand’— 22therefore the LORD of Armies says, ‘Behold, I will punish them. The young men will die by the sword. Their sons and their daughters will die by famine. 23There will be no remnant to them, for I will bring evil on the men of Anathoth, even the year of their visitation.’”

Jeremiah makes a painful discovery in these verses: the people plotting to kill him are the men of Anathoth, his own hometown, his own neighbors and kin. I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter, he says, and I did not even know they had devised schemes against me. The betrayal came from the people closest to him, and he did not see it coming.

There is a particular wound in being turned on by your own, and Jeremiah feels it fully. He does not pretend it does not hurt, and he does not hide his desire for justice. But notice what he does with it: LORD of Armies, who judges righteously, to you I have committed my cause. He does not take vengeance into his own hands; he hands the whole matter, wound and all, to the God who judges rightly.

That is the turn worth learning. When you are betrayed, especially by those who should have been for you, the temptation is to nurse it, to plot your own justice, to let it harden you. Jeremiah shows another way: feel it honestly, and then commit your cause to God. The gentle lamb led to slaughter also points ahead to another who was led in silence and entrusted himself to the Father. Give your wound and your case to the God who judges rightly, and let him carry what you cannot.

Lord, when I am wounded by those closest to me, keep me from taking my own vengeance. I commit my cause to you, the God who judges rightly, and I trust you to carry what I cannot.