Jeremiah 2:17-32: a reflection

17“Haven’t you brought this on yourself, in that you have forsaken the LORD your God, when he led you by the way? 18Now what do you gain by going to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Shihor? Or why do you go on the way to Assyria, to drink the waters of the River? 19“Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backsliding will rebuke you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing, that you have forsaken the LORD your God, and that my fear is not in you,” says the Lord, GOD of Armies. 20“For long ago I broke off your yoke, and burst your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve;’ for on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed yourself, playing the prostitute. 21Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a pure and faithful seed. How then have you turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine to me? 22For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me,” says the Lord GOD. 23“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled. I have not gone after the Baals’? See your way in the valley. Know what you have done. You are a swift dromedary traversing her ways, 24a wild donkey used to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her craving. When she is in heat, who can turn her away? All those who seek her will not weary themselves. In her month, they will find her. 25“Keep your feet from being bare, and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is in vain. No, for I have loved strangers, and I will go after them.’ 26As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so the house of Israel is ashamed— they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, 27who tell wood, ‘You are my father,’ and a stone, ‘You have given birth to me,’ for they have turned their back to me, and not their face, but in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise, and save us!’ 28“But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves? Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble, for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah. 29“Why will you contend with me? You all have transgressed against me,” says the LORD. 30“I have struck your children in vain. They received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion. 31Generation, consider the LORD’s word. Have I been a wilderness to Israel? Or a land of thick darkness? Why do my people say, ‘We have broken loose. We will come to you no more’? 32“Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me for days without number.

God speaks through Jeremiah with the grief of a wounded love. He recalls how he had freed his people and planted them like a choice vine, and then asks how they could have turned away to other things. They had abandoned the Lord who led them and gone chasing after empty substitutes, and God asks pointedly what they gained by it. Their own wandering, he says, will become their correction; they will learn how bitter it is to forsake the Lord.

The saddest line comes near the end: can a young woman forget her jewelry, or a bride her wedding attire? Yet my people have forgotten me, days without number. God marvels that his people could forget him as no bride would forget her most treasured adornment. They had turned to gods that could not save, that would be silent in the day of trouble, and in doing so had forgotten the One who had loved and rescued them. It is a portrait of love betrayed by forgetfulness.

The heart of this passage is a question worth sitting with: what have you turned to that cannot finally satisfy, and has it quietly crowded out your memory of God? We rarely reject God with a dramatic no; more often we simply forget him, letting lesser things fill the place he should hold. Let Jeremiah's words search you. Return to the God who loved you first, and do not let him be the one you forget while remembering everything else.

Lord, you grieve when your people forget you, turning to things that cannot satisfy while letting the memory of your love fade. Search my heart for the substitutes I have chased. Forgive me for the ways I have forgotten you while remembering lesser things, and draw me back to you who loved and rescued me first. Be the One I never forget. Amen.