NOTES for Jer 12:1-17
Jeremiah’s grief merges with God’s grief: in this tragic lament of one rejected by his own people, it is difficult to distinguish God’s voice from the prophet’s own. The most terrible thing is happening: the people closest to them reject His faithfulness and love (and the prophet’s), reject their desire to draw nearer, and gladly destroy everything that has been built. God and man want to love, but receive hatred in return; this is an injury they share... Yet something is astonishing: Jeremiah urges God to show justice, punish the apostates as they deserve, and shatter the peace of his treacherous offenders. At the same time, he knows that God is more just than he himself, and this contradiction leaves him perplexed. What kind of God is this, whose love and judgment are so like—and at the same time so unlike—those of human beings?