NOTES for Jer 5:1-31
Today's reading helps us better understand what the biblical authors mean when they speak of "God's punishment." The passage begins with a rather grim spiritual picture: in all Jerusalem there is no one who seriously thinks about such basic things as righteousness ("justice") and faithfulness to God ("truth") (vv. 1-5). This applies, as we can see, not only to the common people, who are not especially versed in the Torah, but also to those who can and should understand such things and know what they are doing. But the most terrible thing here is not even the sin itself, but the attitude toward God that can be called practical atheism: people who know about the Torah everything they are supposed to know are, it appears, breaking the commandments not because they hope for forgiveness, but because in fact they do not believe in God (vv. 12-13).
Such practical atheism, however, did not have to be open; it could even coexist with external, and sometimes perhaps showy, religiosity. But these practical atheists met prophetic preaching at least with hostility, since the prophets always reminded people not of external religiosity but of the living, real God, of whom the violators of the Torah preferred not to think. Even in such a situation God does not desire the complete destruction of His people (vv. 10, 18). It would seem completely futile to maintain any relationship with people who say "no" to God. Even a militant atheist has more opportunities to find God than a cold-blooded cynic: fierce denial of God is still a relationship, and under certain conditions it can change into its direct opposite; cynicism excludes every relationship completely, since a cynic needs and cares about no one except himself. Only one thing can awaken such a person spiritually and bring him to his senses: catastrophe, the collapse of all plans and hopes, in which it becomes perfectly clear that there is no possibility of changing the situation by one's own strength.
Of course, even this in itself does not guarantee that the cynic will reconsider his attitude toward the world, but it is still at least some possibility. Yet in that case the catastrophe must not be final, because then it would be meaningless to speak of any change of life, even in the future. And God allows His people to pass through such a catastrophe, one that could be survived spiritually only by fully surrendering oneself to God's will and becoming part of that remnant of which the prophets spoke.