Jeremiah 5 - We are dealing here
with what the writer insists is universal
corruption. God just looks for one righteous
man. It isn’t a matter of not
“knowing” what they are supposed to do—God could forgive not knowing. But even those you expect to know, “the
great ones”—they too have “[broken] the
yoke, torn off the harness” (5:5) Their faithlessness leaves them prey to
the wolf, the lion and the leopard (5:6--images Dante uses in the Divine Comedy). They openly refuse to
take God into account, and the prophets “have
become wind . . . the word is not in them” (5:13). For these reasons, God
tells Jeremiah, “I will make my words a fire in your mouth, and make this people wood.
. .” (5:14). God will
bring a brave nation against them to reek devastation. But He will not permit their total
destruction—the point of the destruction
will be for people to ask, “Why has the Lord done all these things to us?” (5:19)
Like so much that is part of the life of Israel, the Lord sets it there so that people will be moved to ask probing
questions, questions that will lead to knowledge of God or repentance. The Lord is infinitely great and
powerful—“should [we] not fear [Him]?” (5:22)
We
modern people seem to feel it some kind of offense if something in God’s
revelation to us implies that we should feel awe or fear before God--heaven
forbid that we should tremble before the creator of the universe!—how absurd is
that?
Jeremiah also bemoans the way the wicked seem
to prosper. They have no fear of God, no respect for justice. “Monstrous, horrible things are happening in
the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests teach whatever they
please. And my people love it!
[irony – they don’t challenge it]” (5:30-31)
1 Corinthians 10:1-13 – Paul expounds on
the lessons Christians can learn from the OT narrative. As Christians enter
into Christ through baptism, the Israelites were “baptized into Moses” in their water passage. Similarly they “ate the same spiritual bread and drank the
same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them;
and that rock was Christ himself” (10:3). The rock that nourished the Jews in the wilderness was
Christ typologically present in the
water from the Rock, and in the manna.
This
Christian lens through which all the Old Testament narrative is seen is so
rich; it is the reason we must continue to keep the stories alive in the
Church.
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