Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 49-50 and Romans 11

Jeremiah 49 - Oracle on the Ammonites – The lands of Gad, on the east bank of the Jordan, had been taken by Ammonites after the collapse of the northern kingdom. (Amman, Jordan today).  Milcom is the God of the Ammonites.  Jeremiah promises destruction of them as well and eventual restoration too

           

Against Edom – an implacable enemy of Israel, they profited from Judah’s downfall. They were renowned for their wisdom, but it does not save them from destruction: “As when a lion comes up from the thicket of Jordan to the permanent feeding rounds, So I, in an instant, will drive men off; and who I choose I will establish there!  For who is like me? Who can call me to account? What shepherd can stand against me?” (49:19).

           

Against Damascus -“How can the city of glory be forsaken, the town of delight. But now her young men shall fall in her streets, and all her warriors shall be stilled” (49:25).

           

Against Arabia – “Hazor shall become a haunt of jackals, a desert forever, Where no man lives, no human being stays” (49:33).

           

Against Elam – An ancient kingdom east of Babylonia. “I will bring upon Elam the four winds from the four ends of the heavens: I will scatter them to all these winds, till there is no nation to which the outcasts of Elam shall not come” (49:36).

Jeremiah 50 – Against Babylon: Jeremiah foresees their defeat in 538 BC at the hands of the Persians, though he foresees that it will be the Medes who overtake them. At this time the Medes were stronger than the Persians in the northern area. The defeat of Babylon will bring the return of the people of both Israel and Judah to their lands. “My people are like sheep whose shepherds have let them get lost in the mountains. They have wandered like sheep from one mountain to another, and they have forgotten where their home is” (50:6). The Lord’s judgment on the Neo-Babylonians is very harsh – a little inconsistent, I think, with earlier reference to them as being “sent” by God to punish His unfaithful people. It is a little hard to believe that the same hand wrote these words as wrote the words of Jeremiah 6 or 13, when the Lord was threatening His unfaithful people with destruction from the North.

Now it is the Neo-Babylonians who are threatened with punishment for having destroyed the Lord’s Temple and taken His people into exile. And the Israelites and Judeans will be brought back to get a new start. “I will punish the king of Babylon and his land as once I punished the king of Assyria; but I will bring back Israel to her fold, to feed on Carmel and Bashan, and on Mount Ephraim and Gilead, till she has her fill” (50:18-19). “They shall seek Israel’s guilt, but it shall be no more, and Judah’s sins, but these shall no longer be found; for I will forgive the remnant I preserve” (50:20). 

Romans 11 – “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? Of course not! For I too am an Israelite. . .” (11:1). NO! The call of God and the favor of God toward the Jews is ‘irrevocable’ we learn in this passage (29): “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

Paul refers to a story from the Hebrew Scriptures about Elijah and the prophets of Baal to justify the approach he (Paul) and ultimately many in the early church will take to the Jewish reluctance to accept Christ - his tendency to reproach them in a prophetic way.  This prophetically critical approach to the community at large familiar to those in the Jewish tradition. It is part of their own sacred writings, so it is not surprising that Christians took this same tack, which modern “liberal” scholars reproach Christians for today.  Paul refers to the Elijah story: Elijah says to God, “I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to the sword.  I alone am left, and they seek to take my life” (1Kings 19:10 and 18). Paul compares himself and the Jews (and Gentiles) who do accept Christ to the 7000 faithful Jews of the Elijah story—those whom God set aside to be the saving “remnant.” He says, “So also at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (11:5).

The good to be found in the unfaithfulness of the Jews is the opportunity it gives to take the message out to the Gentiles. But when all the pagans have been brought in the Jews will also be converted.  God has not forgotten them. 

What I find interesting about this passage is the light it could shed on the unfaithfulness of those gathered into Christ, namely us, the pagans, the second half of God’s harvest in the world.  What does the history of the Jews have to teach us about our own problems.  The problem of unfaithfulness in and amongst God’s people is not something that began with the Jews’ rejection of Christ. It was part of the relationship from the beginning. Elijah himself is quoted by Paul as prophetically addressing it.  But there will always be a remnant that God can build upon.  Christ opened the invitation of God to all the nations; but the ingathering that came of it has been very much like the first ingathering.  It has been marked by both heroic faithfulness and mass back-sliding.  If we only could see in Jewish history the pattern of our own, we would not keep looking back at the Jews and talking about how unfaithful THEY were in not accepting Christ.  It is WE whom we must tend to, our failure to be true to our roots.

Paul says this too. “For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.  Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?’” (11:32-34)