NOTES for Jer 21:1-14

Biblical history is the story of God promising something to people and then fulfilling His promise. But of course this pattern is too simple to describe so profound a process as the development of the relationship between God and humanity. At a certain point in Sacred History, people face a choice that does not fit this pattern: to follow the “way of life,” they must renounce their inheritance, leave the city of the Promise, Jerusalem, and go into captivity, losing every connection with the homeland promised to them. In this complicated world, distorted by human unfaithfulness, it often turns out that God and the most sacred and precious things—homeland, friends, family—stand on opposite sides of a choice. For some, this choice proved impossibly difficult. For others, God Himself proved dearer than all His promises and gifts...