NOTES for Jer 23:1-40

The rebukes continue, but once again amid severe warnings we see a ray of hope. The people still have only to go into exile and a new slavery, yet words of prophecy are already sounding about the coming return from captivity - about the fact that the same Lord who once led His people out of Egyptian captivity will free them also from the rule of new conquerors. But more than that, He gives a prophetic promise of the righteous Branch of David. Even if this part of the prophecy was not fully understood by Jeremiah's contemporaries, here the seed of readiness to receive the Savior was planted in their hearts, a seed that would have to sprout over the following centuries.

It must not be accidental that precisely after the prophecy about the One who will become the Good Shepherd, the Lord again returns to denouncing false shepherds and false prophets.

This problem, however, is relevant today as well. And the issue is not only that in every age there have been enough frauds who fooled a trusting public. Perhaps far more dangerous is sincere and selfless self-deception, when a person mistakes his own conclusions, or a projection of the subconscious, the deception of his own heart, for a voice from above. But here prophecy warns of the danger: if former prophets turned away from the Lord, exchanging Him for Baal, then new ones risk exchanging the Lord for their own illusions and dreams.

Speaking about the future of his people, all the prophets of before captivity mentioned a certain trial, which will consist of the eviction of the people from the land given to them by God and the dispersal among the neighbors. But these same prophets were assured that this eviction is not for ever, that it is only a means to remind to the people God, that they forgot, and the Torah, that they violated systematically. And Jeremiah speaks about the return of the people, as something predetermined.

Apparently, such an assurance under the light of this freedom, which God gives to man, seems a little bit strange: because nobody can predict, which choice will make the people from these catastrophic events, which he will have to try. But the problem as we see, in this case was not only in the choice of people, but also with the plan of God. And in this plan entered the return of the people, and the coming of the Messiah, and the salvation of humanity.

The question consisted only in knowing, who of the people in its current state will turn out being participant to the realization of God’s plan, and who will stay aside. Here man is indeed given a complete freedom. Because indeed, God is also free, and He is not going to change His plans only because somebody of those who was born among His people, they do not please. Such persons can stay with their bad will.

Certainly, such a bad will ends up not so good for them, but it will already be their business and their choice. After all they will stop simply having a relation with the people of God, as it happened with several Jews, who refused the faith of their fathers and associated themselves in Babylon during the captivity. And those who stayed, became the pit of a new nation, this remnant, about which the prophets spoke.

In the prophetic books the Messiah is often called a "sprout" or a "shoot." Jeremiah calls Him this as well. What does this title mean? At first glance it can seem that this epithet does not fit very well for the righteous king as the pre-exilic prophets saw the Messiah. After all, a sprout is something weak, barely breaking through the earth, something that can easily be damaged, intentionally or by accident. But it is precisely with young shoots that the possibility of renewing and rejuvenating a garden or vineyard is connected. In a vineyard, for example, old branches have to be pruned periodically in order to give young shoots the opportunity to grow.

If this is not done regularly, at some point one can be left without a harvest. It is no wonder that the prophet connects the future of the people precisely with young shoots, and their return from Babylon to the land of their fathers with the Messiah, who will become the embodiment of the people's spiritual renewal (vv. 5-6). Jeremiah understood perfectly what many of his contemporaries refused to understand. At that time, after some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem had already been deported to Babylon, many thought that everything happening was merely a small historical misunderstanding. These people were sure that it would soon end and everything would again be as before.

They did not believe that Jerusalem, the city of a great tradition, the only city on earth where the Temple of the one true God stood, could be destroyed. It seemed to them that God would never allow such a thing. Therefore they were ready even for an anti-Babylonian uprising, in order to bring nearer the day of complete liberation from the power of Babylonia. But these people did not understand the main thing: without spiritual renewal the people have no future.

In place of the former people a new one had to appear, just as young shoots appear on a vine in place of old, cut-off branches. Jeremiah spoke of the spiritual renewal of the people and of movement forward, into the future. The majority of his contemporaries wanted, on the contrary, to return to the past. They dreamed not of spiritual renewal, but of a restoration of the past, which seemed ideal to them. But God decided otherwise.

He had no need for restoration. But the spiritual renewal of His people was absolutely necessary. All later Jewish history confirmed the prophet's rightness. But the matter is not only the spiritual condition of the people. The matter is also that without its spiritual renewal the Messiah would have had no one to come to. The history of the people had to continue for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom. And God continued it, carrying out His plan for the salvation of the world.

In many cultures—indeed, in almost all except our modern one—a name was not merely a word, but an expression of essence. This is why the names of God in Holy Scripture are so important. Today’s reading mentions this name of the King: “The Lord is our righteousness.” It follows that this is important not only for understanding our relationship with Him, but also for understanding Him. It is generally obvious that we can have no justification apart from Him. What could justify us? What could free us from responsibility for our actions? Only He can have mercy and free us from the consequences of what we do. But this is also part of His essence. He is the One who shows infinite mercy, the One who does not demand justice but Himself justifies the sinner. He justifies in the only possible way—by taking the guilt and the consequences of guilt upon Himself...

For us living after that the Birth became a fait accompli, it is important to feel the expectation of Christ's coming, with which several generations of people lived. Among other things, we have to remember that the life of these people very little distinguished itself from ours, except the techniques which were different. But ancients were tortured by the same moral problems, were frightened by the same things that frighten us, and they also worked with difficulty in order to gain by the sweat of their face the bread of affliction. That is why the salvation that God promised to His people and the whole world with Christ’s coming is also necessary for us today, just as to the prophet Jeremiah at the end of the 7th century before. J.C.

Jeremiah delivers to us God's word, in which he accentuates some important things. In the first place, Christ is David’s descendant; He will be a righteous Branch. The problem is that Jeremiah pronounces this prediction to the successors of king Josiah, extremely unattractive people from moral point of view, and even from the political point of view. A little bit before that God said to Jeremiah that because of the sins of its members, the dynasty of David will soon end and will never reign. Only the Messiah, the descendant of one of the lines of this dynasty, will be the Righteous Branch, but His righteousness is of divine origin.

Secondly, in the counterweight of the earth power of the David’s, Christ will be a king acting wisely. Jeremiah speaks about this, when the rulers of his country, seems as if compete with each other in foulness. The earth power generally rarely distinguishes itself with a wise care concerning the welfare of people, and we know this not worst than ancient Israelis... That is why is so important the opposition proposed by the prophet of the wisdom of Christ-King, Which will lead people to life.

Finally, the prophet underlines that the coming of Christ will bring to the world "judgment and justice". Christ says Himself that He brought into the world light, in which became visible all the deeds of men - and in this consists the justice. And it is not less important for us that the Light of Christ lights for all His followers the way to life, and judgment and justice become the reality of the life of concrete people.

Childlike naivete can at times be very sincere, especially when it concerns one's relationship with God. Here is a typical episode: a girl of about four is walking with her mother, who is scolding her for bad behavior. The girl wants to say something in reply, but holds back. Her mother insists: "Well, say it, say what you think!" The girl brushes it off: "Later, in the underpass!" They both come to the pedestrian underpass and go underground. There the girl declares to her mother: "You are nasty!" Her mother is surprised: "Why couldn't you say that to me up above?" The girl answers: "Up above God will hear!"

The four-year-old girl's answer would be amusing and naive, if we ourselves were not so much like her when it comes to our relationship with God. The fall, this distancing of the human being from God, does not begin by chance with a person trying to hide from Him, hiding in order to conceal sin. Perhaps not because of fear of punishment, but because one does not want to admit one's own failure either to oneself or to Him.

Deep down, the overwhelming majority of us believers would like God never to see our sins. We would like Him to be near and look at us when, as it appears to us, we are good and ready to meet Him: for example, during prayer or when we are doing something good. But it is better to sin somewhere in a dark corner, in an underpass, in the desert, in the forest - in short, far away from altars and churches.

It appears to us that if God is far away, then He neither sees nor knows, and that in this respect He is like us: after all, we too know little or nothing at all about those who are far from us at a given moment. With God everything is different, and through His prophet He reminds us of this. His nearness does not mean that He learns something new about us that He did not know before; it means that we have come into the center of His attention, have somehow drawn that attention, and now He is going to intervene directly in our life, to enter it in order to change something in it.

And here, quite naturally, we want to look better than we really are. But God does not need us to "look" like anything; He needs us simply to be. To be as we are, and to let Him into our life as it is, so that we may give Him the chance to make it, with our participation of course, what it ought to be according to His design and plan.

A question to the point: can it really be that because we feel distant from God, He becomes less God? Is His goodness less, His love less, His omnipotence less? What foolishness!

Perhaps this comes from our "material" experience, which tells us that the effect of something on us weakens as distance increases. Then God's distance even becomes convenient: we can take Him less seriously. We understand that He has reasons to be displeased with us, but if He is far away, then it is not so frightening and we do not need to hurry very much to change. We already begin deliberately pushing Him away from ourselves, building barriers between ourselves and God, anything to avoid falling into the hands of the Living God. All of this, of course, is self-deception. God is always and everywhere the Same. He is always near us, even when we think He is far away. And the point is not to hide from Him in fear or run away, but to seek Him in trust, turn to Him, and draw near to Him.