A Final Appeal For Repentance Before It Is Too Late, For if They Do Fail To Respond Their Final Judgment Will Come Upon Them (Jeremiah 13:15-27).
The people are called on to look to YHWH while there is still a glimmer of light, because if they do not gross darkness will descend upon them, something which causes Jeremiah to weep at what is coming. The assumption then being made that they will refuse to respond, it results in advice being given to the monarchy to divest themselves of their signs of authority, an indication of subjugation, and the warning being given that the whole land even down to the Negeb will shortly be deserted. This is because those to whom they have cosied up (both their neighbours and especially Babylon) will take possession of them, with the result that they will be embarrassed and shamed, something pictured in graphic terms on the basis of their lascivious behaviour in the hills.
“Hear you, and give ear. Do not be proud. For YHWH has spoken.”
“Give glory to YHWH your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble on the mountains of gathering gloom (twilight), and, while you look for light, he turn it into the deep darkness, and make it gross darkness.”
If only they will turn and give glory to YHWH whilst there is still a glimmer of light all could be well. But if they refuse to turn then He will cause darkness to surround them, and the mountains on which they live and move will become dark mountains in the same way as day becomes night, and while they are looking for some glimmer of light He will turn it into deep darkness, and make it gross darkness.
‘Give glory to YHWH your God.' This may have been a regular way of calling on men to recognise and admit their sin. Compare its use in Joshua 7:19; Malachi 2:2; John 9:24.
“But if you will not hear it, my soul will weep in secret for your pride; and my eye will weep sore, and run down with tears, because YHWH's flock is taken captive.”
But what if they do not hear and repent? Then Jeremiah will weep for them in secret because of their proud obstinacy. His eyes will weep until they are sore, and will run down with tears. He is trying to bring home to them the seriousness of the situation. And why will he weep like this? Because they, YHWH's flock, have been taken captive. They have been carried off into exile. The idea was almost incomprehensible. YHWH's flock taken captive by others! But they had observed its happening to Israel. Now it would happen to them. YHWH's favour was dependent on their response.
Paradoxically the people may still have prided themselves on the fact that they were ‘YHWH's flock'. People are very good at assuming that they are special and that God looks down on them benevolently no matter what they do. But they are to recognise that far from that being so they will soon be a captive flock in the hands of strangers. It is not, however, something that Jeremiah is complacent about. It grieves him to his heart. This should not be happening to the flock of YHWH and is only doing so because of their intransigence and obstinacy.
“Say you to the king and to the queen-mother, Humble yourselves, get down, for your head ornaments are come down, even the crown of your glory.”
Jeremiah now seeks to bring home the implications of his message. The king and queen mother will have to step down from their thrones in acts of humiliation. Their crowns and head ornaments will come down from their heads as they are divested of their glorious crowns which indicate their status. They will become subjects and humble suppliants. If they will not humble themselves before YHWH, they will be humbled before another who has less good intentions towards them.
Note the reference to the queen mother. The constant reference to the queen mother in Kings brings out the special status that she enjoyed in Judah. She may even have acted as regent when the king was absent. Many associate this passage with Jehoiachin who with his mother was carried off to Babylon (2 Kings 24:12). But it could relate to any Judean royal house.
“The cities of the South are shut up, and there is none to open them. Judah is carried away captive, all of it, it is wholly carried away captive.”
A further consequence is indicated. The ‘cities of the south' are the cities of the far south, the Negeb (compare Genesis 12:9), the semi-desert pastureland which was the southern border of Judah. Even those remote cities on the farthest borders away from the north will be affected. They will be closed up because there will be no one available to open their gates. They will be cities of the dead. (Compare Isaiah 24:10). In other words they will be desolate, and all of Judah will have gone into captivity. The rape of Judah is in mind. Few will be left in the land.
“Lift up your eyes, and behold those who come from the north. Where is the flock that was given to you, your beautiful flock?”
And who will do this to them? Let them lift up their eyes and look to the north. It is the invaders who come from there who will do it. Where then will be the flock that YHWH gave to the leaders of Judah to watch over, their beautiful flock? Compare Jeremiah 23:1; Jeremiah 50:6; Jeremiah 50:17; Isaiah 53:6; Ezekiel 34:6. The feminine singular verbs and pronouns indicate that ‘the daughter of Jerusalem' (i.e. as responsible for its inhabitants, and those who lived around it) is in mind.
“What will you say, when he shall set over you as head those whom you have yourself taught to be your friends? Will not sorrows take hold of you, as of a woman in travail?”
The greatest ignominy will be found in that their conqueror will set over them rulers from among those with whom they have at one time or another been in alliance. They had ‘taught them to be their friends' and now they would have been set over them. It would cause them grief of heart and anguish like that of a woman bearing a child, used as an illustration because it was the worst kind of experience that men came across in their daily lives. Certainly when Nehemiah came back Jerusalem would be subject to Sanballat the governor of Aram (Syria) in association with Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian, together with the Ammonites, the Arabians and the Ashdodites (Nehemiah 4:1; Nehemiah 4:17; Nehemiah 6:1).
“And if you say in your heart, ‘Why have these things come on me?'”
At some stage they will begin to question in their why all this has happened to them. It will be the first stage in possible repentance. Jeremiah 13:24 reveals that this was to be seen as YHWH speaking.
“Because of the greatness of your iniquity are your skirts uncovered, and your heels suffer violence.”
And the answer is already provided for them. It is because of the greatness of their iniquity. This is a reminder, as so much of Jeremiah is a reminder, of the seriousness with which God views sin and disobedience to His commandments. We must never think that because forgiveness is so freely offered by God that it means that our sins are not really important. We have only to look at the blood-stained and awful history of the world to see what devastation sin has wrought. And it is our sin. Some ask why God allows these things? The answer is clear. It is because if He once interfered ALL of us to the very last man and woman would perish.
And it was because of their indwelling sin that they would be humiliated before the nations. The uncovering of the skirts was, outside the privacy of marriage, an act of contempt and shame. No one bothered about the uncovering of a prostitute. The ‘heels suffering violence' may be a euphemism for being violently sexually assaulted or even raped. Prostitutes were regularly treated harshly by their clients. Thus Judah were being revealed as spiritual prostitutes. Alternately the clothes that indicated the rank of the great ladies may be in mind. The ‘heels suffering violence' probably then refers to men and women who were used to being properly shod being forced to march barefoot (compare Isaiah 20:2-4). They were used to allowing their heels to hit the ground first, and being unused to walking barefoot, would, once they were led away as captives, soon experience the consequences.
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good, who are accustomed to do evil.”
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” was a well known proverb. In the Ancient Near East the North African (strictly speaking not Ethiopian, rather northern Sudanese) was noted for his darker than normal skin. Rather than being olive skinned he was black. No racism was intended. It was simply a matter of fact. As was also the case with the leopard. It could not disguise itself by removing its spots. It was stuck with them. Both were facts of life. So was it also a fact of life that those who were hardened in sin did not ‘do good'. They might appear to do so, but it would be from a wrong motive. They were hardened sinners. Judah's judgment was coming on them because they were so hardened in sin that there was no hope of repentance. (Compare Jesus' warning to the Pharisees that they were in danger of becoming the same - Mark 3:29).
“Therefore will I scatter them, as the stubble which passes away by the wind of the wilderness.”
And it was because they were so hardened in sin that YHWH would scatter them in the same way as the stubble left in the fields is picked up by the wind and scattered (compare Psalms 1:4; Job 21:18). The wind from the wilderness was the fierce east wind which was so often used as a picture of judgment.
“This is your lot, the portion measured to you from me,” the word of YHWH, “Because you have forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood.”
YHWH makes it clear that while they have brought it on themselves it is His hand that is at work in what is happening. It is the lot that He has chosen for them, the portion that He is measuring out to them, because they have forgotten Him and put their trust in lies. And this is the prophetic word of YHWH, guaranteed and certain.
Notice the twofold emphasis. On the one hand YHWH is carrying out His will in accordance with His own determination. On the other it is man in his extreme sinfulness who must bear the responsibility. He brings his judgments on himself.
We are reminded here, as so often, of two parallel strands in history. God does not cause men to be vile, and to behave vilely, but He utilises their vileness as they freely exercise it (and are therefore to blame for it) in bringing about His purposes. men may think that they are in control, but overall it is God Who is in control. The same idea lies behind the words, ‘shall evil come on a city and YHWH has not done it?' (Amos 3:6).
“Therefore will I also uncover your skirts on your face, and your shame will appear.”
And it is because of their evil behaviour in forgetting God and listening to palatable lies that they are to be exposed to shame. They will be treated with the contempt with which a common prostitute was treated in those days, as a thing of nought, to be exposed and humiliated without a thought. They will be laid bare before the nations.
“I have seen your abominations, even your adulteries, and your neighings, the lewdness of your whoredom, on the hills in the open country (fields). Woe to you, O Jerusalem! you will not be made clean. How long will it yet be?”
But it will be very much a case of reaping what they have sowed. They have revealed themselves as no better than common prostitutes by their lewd behaviour on the open hills. Their neighings (cries of lust and passion) and their willingness to engage in free sex at their hilltop sanctuaries will rebound upon them.
And because they have now gone too far there is no opportunity of cleansing for the present generation. Their behaviour and attitudes have negated all their ritual activity in the Temple, which is no longer acceptable. All that they can expect to face is ‘WOE'. And this will be so for a long time to come. How long it will be is left an open question (elsewhere it is fixed at seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11-12; Jeremiah 29:10) dated from the initial exile, and then at seventy ‘sevens' (Daniel 9) indicating a long while to come).