The cost of making God known (Jer 16:1-21)

The passage today ends on the nations coming and knowing God (Jer 16:19, 21), but what does this mean? How can God be known when He is invisible? His actions in the world, of course, demonstrate His power, justice, and compassion, though it takes wisdom to make sense of God’s involvement. He also reveals Himself in His Word for those who know and have access to it. Yet meeting someone in person is so much better. For Christians, of course, the incarnation, Jesus’ flesh-and-blood reality is the fullest revelation of who God is (Col 1:15; 2:9), but what of the Old Testament? In a limited sense, the prophets sometimes embodied God for the people. Hosea is the best-known example when he was commanded to marry a harlot and thereby demonstrated God’s pain over His relationship with unfaithful Israel (Hos 1:2).

Carrying the people’s burden, embodying God

In our reading, Jeremiah’s behaviour points in two directions. On the one hand, he was commanded not to marry or have children in vivid illustration of the destruction that would overtake Judah when many died and family ties were brutally severed (Jer 16:1-4). In ancient Israel, being single was an anomaly (there is no word for ‘bachelor’ in Hebrew) and not having children to carry on the family name was a tragedy. The prophet thus suffered the people’s fate by deliberately sharing in the burden of their punishment even though he was innocent. He was also to absent himself entirely from the social gatherings in the community, whether for mourning or celebrations,[1] which once again showcased that such occasions would be lacking when the judgment fell. At the same time, it also embodied how God distanced Himself from His people, from their ordinary joys and sorrows, and how He had withdrawn from them expressions of His love and compassion (Jer 16:5-9). For a God whose nature is love and default approach is grace (Exod 34:6-7; judgment is God’s ‘unusual work’ – Isa 28:21-22) this must have gone against the grain, as much as abstaining from such occasions would have been hard on Jeremiah. Appreciating God’s pain is difficult for us who live on the human plain but seeing Jeremiah’s terrible isolation can give us a glimpse into the heart of God.

Judgment, restoration and the nations

It is shocking, then, how little the people understood God despite the sacrifices made by the Lord Himself and His prophet and could not see that judgment was the outworking of their idolatry and the abandonment of the Lord (Jer 16:10-13). Nevertheless, the restoration to follow was going to be so great that it would eclipse references to Israel’s iconic deliverance from Egypt (Jer 16:14-15). The ‘therefore’ in v.14 highlights the connection that judgment was necessary first, however, and the conquering armies are described as fishermen and hunters who plucked people from hiding and took them into captivity (Jer 16:16-18 cf. Amos 4:2; Hab 1:14-15). The double repayment probably refers to the two Babylonian sieges of Jerusalem in 597 and 587 BC (v.18), when exiles were taken in two waves. The sudden reference to the nations’ recognition that their idols were nothing is unexpected (Jer 16:19-20), but perhaps it follows from seeing how God acted towards His people in both judgment and mercy (Jer 16:21). Thus, the Lord makes Himself known through the prophet who embodies Him to the people but also through the people whose fate the nations watch. Although the original design was for Israel to show God to the world through obedient living (Deut 4:5-8), God could use even their disobedience to demonstrate His character to the world.

The incarnation and our challenge

Returning to the initial question, knowing God is best achieved by His coming down to our human level, foreshadowed in the life of the prophets and ultimately fulfilled in the incarnation. Jesus Christ took on the burden of human life with all its concomitant suffering including death and separation from God, a tremendous cost to make the Lord known and, in the final analysis, to save us from sin. The prophet and the people’s example show, however, that in a small way, we too are called to be God’s presence for others, all the more so as we are ‘in Christ’ and His Spirit lives in us. May our lives be lived in such a way that God’s power, love, and justice be known in the world.

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[1] Mourning included certain rites, among them shaving the head, though gashing oneself was a pagan custom (Jer 16:6). Cutting the body was meant to avert the jealousy of the dead and pre-empt their attempt to harm the living.

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