NOTES for Jer 4:1-31

Jeremiah is a prophet of catastrophe: not only because the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah and the fall of Jerusalem took place before his eyes, but also because of how vividly and clearly he sees the approaching threat. It is as if he already hears the enemy trumpets and the shouts of soldiers.

All the more astonishing is that behind the inevitability of war and Judah's national collapse he sees the possibility of salvation: repentance, turning to God and His commandments. He perceives history as a living process of the relationship between God's people and God, a process in which spiritual renewal can stop war, and the reverse as well. He connects the moral condition of people and the most complex historical processes into one whole, proceeding not from sociological or political premises, but from knowledge of God as the Creator of history, and of the human being, on whose relationship with the Creator this history so strongly depends.

It cannot be said that there were no people in Israel who understood that repentance could turn aside the disaster drawing near. They utter cries of repentance, yet in general these are only words; the Lord does not see a true turning in His people.

To prevent disaster and be saved from destruction, what is needed is "circumcision of the heart," an inner change that would lead to true relations with God. The prophet calls Jerusalem, and above all those who possess power, to wash evil from the heart, for evil, like a bird, has already built its nest there.

At the same time, very little time remains. Jeremiah already sees the enemy swiftly approaching and bringing devastation. But conversion is still possible. That is why the prophet's soul languishes so deeply, as he never tires of calling his people to true repentance.

Today's reading confronts us with one of the most astonishing mysteries of the prophetic vision of history in general and of historical upheavals in particular. On the one hand, the prophet calls his compatriots to turn back and change their whole lives, promising that if they do so, they will not have to wander the earth as exiles (vv. 1–4). On the other hand, he speaks of the coming war and the devastation of the country as a settled matter (vv. 5–9). A revelation so contradictory in meaning evidently perplexes even Jeremiah himself (v. 10). But God does not resolve his perplexity: He only warns that the danger hanging over the country is near (vv. 11–12), while the prophet evidently places his last hope of possible deliverance from it in the people's repentance and turning back (vv. 13–14).

God confirms that Jeremiah has understood correctly, saying that calamity is falling upon the country because of the people's sinfulness (vv. 15–17). Eventually it will be revealed to the prophet that the catastrophe approaching the country will bring about the dispersal of God's people throughout the world of which Isaiah of Jerusalem had already spoken, associating it with the emergence of the messianic remnant (Isa. 10:20–23; Jer. 50:17–20).

Isaiah evidently associated this dispersal with the Assyrian invasion; Jeremiah associates it with the Babylonian invasion. This discrepancy raises a natural question: are prophecies of this kind connected with the apocalyptic moods that accompany every time of turmoil? And if not, how can such a significant difference in timing be explained? Does it mean that Isaiah was mistaken in speaking of a dispersal when the devastation of Judah and Jerusalem was still more than a century away?

The answer to this question appears to lie in the revelation received by Jeremiah, to whom God speaks both of the possibility of peace if the people turn to Him and of the inevitability of war brought about by the people's sins. Apparently, God has no predetermined timetable for the catastrophe awaiting the people. It is quite possible that, had Israel remained unconditionally faithful to its God, there might have been no catastrophe at all, and the entire people would have become the messianic remnant. Sadly, actual history unfolded differently, and so both the national catastrophe and the emergence of the remnant became inevitable.

But even with this far from ideal course of events, possibilities remain both as to the timing and the scale of the catastrophe. In principle, the age of captivity could indeed have begun for God's people as early as the Assyrian invasion, had the people not turned to God and repented of their sins, and had King Hezekiah, who was then ruling in Jerusalem, not entrusted everything to God's hand (Isa. 37:14–20). Historians would then have had to speak not of the Babylonian captivity, but of the Assyrian captivity. Yet judging by what God says to Jeremiah, the Babylonian captivity might not have occurred either, or it might have lasted less than seventy years, had the people turned to God in the face of the threatened Babylonian invasion as they had during the Assyrian invasion. Nothing in God's plans is predetermined when it comes to the fate of individuals or entire peoples; everything is determined solely by their spiritual choice.