NOTES for Jer 5:1-31
Today’s reading helps us understand better what the biblical authors mean when they speak of “God’s punishment.” The passage begins with a rather bleak spiritual picture: in all Jerusalem there is no one who seriously reflects on such fundamental things as righteousness (“justice”) and faithfulness to God (“truth”) (vv. 1–5). As we can see, this applies not only to ordinary people who are not particularly versed in the Torah, but also to those who can and should understand it and know what they are doing. Yet the most terrible thing here is not even the sin itself, but an attitude towards God that may be called practical atheism: people who know everything about the Torah that they are expected to know evidently break the commandments not because they hope for forgiveness, but because they do not, in practice, believe in God (vv. 12–13).
This practical atheism did not necessarily have to be open; it could well coexist with an outward—and sometimes perhaps ostentatious—religiosity. Yet these practical atheists regarded prophetic preaching with hostility, at the very least, because the prophets always reminded people not of outward religiosity but of the living, real God, of whom those who broke the Torah preferred not to think. Even in this situation, however, God does not desire the complete destruction of His people (vv. 10, 18). It might seem entirely futile to maintain any kind of relationship with people who say “no” to God. Even a militant atheist has more opportunity to find God than a cold-blooded cynic: a furious denial of God is still a relationship and, under certain conditions, can change into its direct opposite, whereas cynicism excludes every relationship completely—the cynic needs and cares about no one but himself. Only one thing can spiritually awaken such a person and bring him to his senses: a catastrophe, the collapse of every plan and hope, one in which it becomes absolutely clear that there is no possibility of changing the situation by one’s own strength.
Of course, even this does not in itself guarantee that the cynic will reconsider his attitude to the world, but it offers at least some possibility. Yet in that case the catastrophe cannot be final, for then it would be simply meaningless to speak of any change of life, even in the future. And God permits His people to pass through such a catastrophe—a catastrophe that one could survive spiritually only by wholly surrendering oneself to God’s will and becoming part of the remnant of which the prophets spoke.