How to understand God’s intent through events? (Jeremiah 24)
Jer 24:1-10
After the Christchurch earthquakes some Christians insisted that the city suffered terribly because the people there were more sinful than the rest. This is a common connection made between tragic events and God’s judgment and the Old Testament provides ample examples where such a link is appropriate. However, there are also cases – most famously Job’s – where suffering is not the result of sin. Jesus in a similar context of questions also negated an easy equation between sin and misfortune (Luke 13:1-5; John 9:1-3). How events are interpreted in our personal lives, or more broadly in the world, are fraught with difficulty and it can be confusing to make sense of what is happening to us. How then are we to evaluate cause and effect and God’s intent?
Background to Jeremiah’s vision
Judah faced just such a challenge after the first siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC. King Jeconiah (Josiah’s grandson) surrendered to the Babylonians, so the city was spared destruction. However, he was taken into captivity along with some officials and craftsmen (Jer 24:1). The Babylonians appointed his uncle, Zedekiah (Josiah’s son) and he was to be the last king of Judah before Jerusalem was besieged a second time in 587 BC and destroyed with most of the population taken into exile. This was still in the future, however, and those who remained in the city in the interim probably applied the conventional wisdom of the day and assumed that the exiles were the guilty ones and they who had been spared were innocent. Jeremiah’s vision of the good and bad figs turns these assumptions on their head.
God’s interpretation of events
Figs and fig trees were a well-known feature of the landscape in Israel, like olive trees and vines. They grew quite large and provided ample shade on hot days. The image of everyone sitting under their fig tree was a picture of peace and prosperity (e.g. Zech 3:9-10), while the destruction of such a tree indicated coming disaster, even judgment (e.g. Jer 8:13-14; cf. Luke 13:6-7). Thus, using figs as symbolic of God’s people was immediately recognisable for an ancient audience. However, God’s surprise is that the good figs are the ones in exile (Jer 24:5)! The point is not that they were any better in themselves, but that God marked them out ‘for good’, i.e. a good future (Jer 23:6).[1] Not only will the Lord bring them back into the land, but He will enable them to know and seek God (the giving of a new heart, i.e. will), so that their covenant relationship as expressed in the formula, ‘they will be my people and I will be their God’ will be restored (Jer 24:7). On the other hand, those who might have felt superior for being spared or went to live in Egypt for safety would not escape judgment (Jer 24:8-10). The logic of why God chose one group over the other is not spelt out. Nevertheless, the point of difference seems to be between those who will have lived through the exile in Babylon as opposed to those who did not. Perhaps it is through the bewilderment and trauma of being uprooted from the land promised to Israel that God could soften the heart of the exiles and give them a new orientation.[2]
Seeking the Lord for answers
This passage teaches us that a period of plain sailing is not necessarily God’s approval on our lives and misfortune can be a time for God to chastise and discipline, to awaken us to the need of seeking Him. As Hebrews encourages disheartened and struggling believers, if we never experience God’s discipline, then we are not true sons of God (Heb 12:5-8). The Lord shapes and moulds us through difficult times, which may or may not be due to sin. As we have seen, suffering can come to us for a variety of reasons. That is why it is important to keep a humble heart and seek the Lord for answers. We may not be given a reason every time, but the Holy Spirit can convict of sin and reveal to us what we need to know to move forward.
[1] Translations of Jer 24:5 sometimes sound like God regarded these people as inherently good, but in the Hebrew ‘for good’ comes at the very end of the sentence: ‘I will regard the captives of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for good’. Jeremiah 24:6 makes explicit what is ambiguous in v.5, namely that God has good intentions for these people.
[2] Of course, there were those who would be taken into exile after the second siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC and we should not read the prophecy rigidly as if God made a distinction between ‘the chosen’ first wave of exiles as opposed to the second wave. The point is that the Babylonian exile was the watershed experience, which led to the renewal of a remnant, no matter when people ended up there and this is borne out in later books. The postexilic Book of Ezra especially tends to identify ‘the sons of Israel’, i.e. God’s people, by default as those who returned from exile (e.g. Ezra 2:1-2). Isaiah likewise makes no distinction among the exilic group but treats them as God’s servant (Isa 48:20).
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