What God’s perseverance says about Him (Jer 36:20-32)

In an earlier post I mentioned that my Dad taught me English in my teenage years. Day after day, he would come into my room and ask if we were studying tonight and if I said ‘not tonight’, he would not force it on me. I had bursts of enthusiasm when I worked hard and made progress over a period only to lapse for days even weeks into surviving mostly on aptitude rather than hard work or rejecting the opportunity to learn altogether. It must have been an exasperating process for Dad, but he never wavered. When I reached a certain level, he would give me English children’s books to read to awaken my enthusiasm. When he saw that I enjoyed singing English Christmas carols, he created a little booklet transcribing the lyrics of my favourite songs for me. When later I discovered among his collection of books English novels that I enjoyed reading, he readily gave them to me to keep. Looking back, I admire his perseverance and know that underlying all that effort was his love.

Jehoiakim’s attitude

As the story of Jeremiah’s scroll continues, God’s Word finds its way into the royal court (Jer 36:20-21) because God perseveres with His people and their king. However, what follows is chilling in its contempt for Him. Jerusalem in winter is relatively mild (the high-low is about 14-8 degrees Celsius in December, though on rare occasions it may even snow). Nevertheless, mornings and evenings especially would have been cold in a stone palace, so a brazier was meant to take the chill off a little. The king’s response to the reading is not red-hot rage, but cold-blooded scorn. He does not take the scroll from the reader and throw the whole thing in the fire without hearing it to the end, but brazenly listens to the words and destroys them section-by-section, even as his court officials plead with him not to do it (Jer 36:23-25). The contrast with his father Josiah, who tore his clothes when the book of the law was read to him, could not be greater (2 Kings 22:8-13). Not only does Jehoiakim destroy the message, but he goes after the messengers, Jeremiah and Baruch, yet God blocks his intent (Jer 36:26).

God’s perseverance in the face of rejection

At this point, we would think that God has surely had enough of this people. The section between Jeremiah 34-36 has dealt with various attitudes towards God’s Word from half-hearted obedience and its reversal (the release of Hebrew slaves and their re-enslavement; Jer 34:10-11), through ignoring it as the crowd did on the public reading of Jeremiah’s scroll (Jer 36:10), to Jehoiakim’s scornful rejection and destruction of it (Jer 36:23). In the end, all these amounted to the same thing: they did not listen (Jer 36:31). Judgment then is necessary (Jer 36:29-31), if only to awaken those whose heart is not entirely hardened against God. When people ignore or mock our advice, it is understandable that we figuratively shake the dust off our sandals, but God still perseveres and His Word is written again with additional material included (Jer 36:27-28, 32). Paradoxically, like Pilate in the Creed, Jehoiakim the scripture-burner ended up in scripture himself. Berrigan expresses the irony well.

Willy-nilly, the king who would destroy scripture is herewith included in scripture – as fact and parable. He has earned his dubious eminence – by burning scripture – in-the-making. And lo! Despite his wintry fires and hot furies – we have in hand the scripture he sought to destroy.[1]

Responding to His love

I wonder how the Jews felt after judgment fell when they were reading or hearing God’s words through Jeremiah’s scroll in exile. Did it stir their heart with hope? Did God’s perseverance move them to repentance? His was no sentimental attachment blazing into fire today and gone tomorrow, but a fierce love that persisted long after others would have given up. May the Lord’s love reach into our hearts and lead us to respond by living for Him.

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[1] Daniel Berrigan, Jeremiah: The World, the Wound of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 155.

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