NOTES for Jer 2:1-37
Jeremiah's denunciation of Israel's apostasy, which we find in today's reading, strongly recalls what other prophets of the pre-exilic era said to the people. And yet there is something special in this preaching. It is the people's denial of their sin (v. 23). Such denial appears here for the first time in the history of the people of God, and it looks rather strange: the fact of participation or nonparticipation in pagan cults is obvious to everyone; how can one deny what is obvious to everyone?
To understand the situation, it is important to take into account the features of King Josiah's religious policy, during whose reign, apparently, the prophet's preaching quoted here was delivered. Josiah carried out a whole series of religious reforms in the country. He eliminated all pagan sanctuaries and centralized the Yahwistic cult. During Josiah's reign, Yahwistic religiosity came back into fashion, and, as usually happens in such cases, a multitude of Yahwistic believers were immediately discovered in Judah, people who only recently had been pagans.
It would appear that such a religious revival could only be welcomed, and many people truly did welcome it. But Jeremiah reminds these recent pagans of their pagan past and reproaches them for apostasy. At first glance, this position is strange. But the prophet clearly understood perfectly what others did not understand. He knew that genuine conversion to God is impossible without repentance, without a complete reexamination of one's entire former life and without awareness of one's responsibility for the sins committed. But this, it appears, is exactly what had not happened. These recent pagans, who had once easily and thoughtlessly exchanged Yahwism for paganism, now just as easily and thoughtlessly, following not so much the voice of their own heart as the new fashion and the policy of the authorities, were returning to the faith of their fathers.
Jeremiah knew what such faith was worth, since he, like every prophet, had deep and very personal relations with God. He understood what genuine conversion was, and he was clearly repelled by the superficial religiosity that the newly minted "Yahwists" apparently loved to display. And this is no surprise: God revealed hearts to the prophet. And in the heart he saw the same paganism as before, only lightly covered with a new religious form.