An Everlasting Love

About a third of the way through the letter “J” in my dictionary you will come across the word “jeremiad”. And what, you ask, is a jeremiad? Well, a jeremiad is defined as (and I quote) “a long literary work, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall”.

With a long definition like that, it is clear to anyone who knows their Bible where the word “jeremiad” originates: from the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament—fifty-two chapters of almost uninterrupted gloom and doom. And if that weren’t enough, Jeremiah wrote an equally doleful sequel: the book of Lamentations—five more chapters of melancholy and woe!

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens, I remember coming across a book entitled, Are You Joking, Jeremiah? I don’t think it was the author’s intention to turn Jeremiah into a kind of seventh-century BC stand-up comedian. A humorist Jeremiah certainly was not. What the author was really trying to do was to ask the question, “Jeremiah, can things really be that bad? Are the circumstances really as dire as you want us to believe?” And I have no doubt that Jeremiah’s answer would have been an unequivocal “Yes”. Or maybe, “Worse!”

For the past few months I’ve been working my way through Jeremiah as a part of my daily quiet time. And it hasn’t been easy reading. Jeremiah lived in the late years of the seventh and the early years of the sixth century BC. He proclaimed the message that the Lord had entrusted to him over a period of forty years, spanning the reigns of the last four of Judah’s kings: Josiah (640-609 BC), Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), Jehoiachin (598-597 BC) and Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

As he wrote, all that was left of the once-great nation of Israel were just two of the original twelve tribes, Benjamin and Judah, clustered around the capital city of Jerusalem. Now their existence too was being threatened with the expansion of the Babylonian Empire to the north and the rapid advance of its seemingly invincible armies. What were the people of Judah to do?

Much of the leadership were urging that they form an alliance with the Egyptian Empire to the south—indeed, if worse came to worst, to abandon Judah altogether and flee to Egypt. Imagine the irony, though, of going back to the very place where their ancestors had escaped from slavery five hundred years before—to the land from which God himself had intervened to rescue them with miracles on a scale never witnessed before or since!

A Message of Warning

To Jeremiah the notion of turning to Egypt was unthinkable. God’s words through him to the people and their leaders were these: “If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up” (42:10). Again and again with words like these Jeremiah urged the people of Judah to remain in their land.

Yes, the Babylonian army would attack and enslave them. Yes, those who survived would be lucky to escape with their lives. And all of this, said Jeremiah, was not just that Judah happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, what was unfolding around them was the due punishment that they had brought upon themselves—retribution for the countless ways in which they had blithely abandoned God and his laws, to adopt pagan practices and to oppress the poor.

So it was that Jeremiah went through the streets of Jerusalem, confronting prophets and priests, generals, landowners, leaders, merchants and kings—anyone he could find—with his message of warning. And he didn’t fear to mince his words!

I have seen your abominations,

your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings,

on the hills in the field.

Woe to you, Jerusalem!

How long will it be before you are made clean? (13:27)

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,

and his upper rooms by injustice,

who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing

and does not give him his wages… (22:13)

Behold, the storm of the Lord!

Wrath has gone forth,

a whirling tempest;

it will burst upon the head of the wicked.

The anger of the LORD will not turn back

until he has executed and accomplished

the intents of his heart. (23:19-20)

Needless to say, Jeremiah and his constant warnings of doom did not meet with a positive response. On one occasion his prophecies were cut up and torn to shreds by the king himself. On another he was arrested on charges of treachery and locked away in a dungeon. And on still another he was tossed into a cistern and would have died of starvation in the mud had he not been rescued. Yet none of this halted Jeremiah’s determination to issue the warnings that God had given him.