NOTES for Jer 30:1-24

Jeremiah's prophecy about the people's future seems to supplement the letter he wrote to the inhabitants of Jerusalem deported to Babylon. In it, he destroys all the exiles' hopes of returning home soon, warning that the captivity will be long. And now a prophecy sounds that gives hope: a prophecy about the new historical and spiritual era awaiting the people. Of course, nothing will happen by itself. Nothing will come of it without repentance, without rethinking what has been done and repenting of sins, without a renewed turning to God. But this prophecy also has another, providential aspect: it concerns God's plans.

Here it becomes especially clear that if God's people have any future at all, any chance of a new historical life, it is only because they remain part of His plan. Were it otherwise, the history of the Jewish people would have ended there in Babylonia after the defeat of Judah, just as, a little over two centuries before the Babylonian captivity, ten of the twelve tribes dissolved into the Assyrian Empire after the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Such is the peculiarity of the fallen world: sin is absolute there, while righteousness is relative. Once committed, sin—whether the sin of one person or of an entire people—sets in motion a chain of consequences that cannot be broken within this fallen world.

With the coming of Christ, the situation changes radically, but in Jeremiah's time almost six centuries still remained before His Incarnation. Under these conditions, the chance of a new historical life for the people—even after repentance and conversion—could be granted only as a miracle of God, as His direct intervention in the course of events. Yet such a miracle is possible only in response to conversion, as Jeremiah reminds his contemporaries.