Jeremiah Was Not To Take A Wife Or Have Sons And Daughters, Attend Funerals, Or Participate in Feasting, As A Sign Of The Devastation That Was Coming On Judah Which Would Transform Life For All Its Inhabitants Who Survived (Jeremiah 16:1-13).
In powerful words YHWH now tells Jeremiah that he is to demonstrate to Judah what is coming on them in three distinct ways, each of which was to do with things central to Judah's way of life: firstly by himself not taking a wife or having children, secondly by refraining from attendance at funerals, and thirdly by not taking part in celebratory feasting. And he was to make it clear that in doing so he was conveying to the people the words of YHWH. Abstaining from marriage and not having children would be a sign of what was coming on Judah in that his restraint would indicate that they, their wives and their children were to die in disgrace. Abstaining from attendance at funerals would indicate that well-being had been taken from them and that death had become so much a part of life that mourning could be ignored. Abstaining from feasting would indicate the dark times that were coming when there would be nothing to celebrate, not even marriage. For YHWH was taking away their ‘shalom', their shalom (peace, well-being) from them.
Furthermore he had to make these words very clear to the people, and when they asked why this evil was coming on them, and what sin they had committed that rendered it necessary, he was to point out that it was because of the way in which they had forsaken YHWH and had turned to other gods and had not obeyed His Instruction (Torah, Law). It would happen because they were walking in the stubbornness of heir own hearts and were refusing to listen to YHWH. That was why they would be cast out of the land to serve other gods in other lands in which they would be strangers. It would be because He had withdrawn His favour from them.
In some ways we today are called on to deliver a similar message, For while we are urgently to seek to bring people under the sound of the Gospel, it is to be with the recognition that for the large majority of people only judgment awaits. And it is a judgment that could come at any time, for ‘at such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man will come' (Matthew 24:44). So the message is that at any time judgment could descend on this (or a future) generation. That is why we need to have the same urgency and concern as Jeremiah.
‘The word of YHWH came also to me, saying,'
Jeremiah emphasises that everything that he says and does is because YHWH has spoken to him, and His word has come to him. And this time it has come in order that by his own self-sacrifice he might bring home to the people the important lesson, that their futures were in future to be so troubled that what was usually central in their lives would through wholesale death become non-existent.
There is a reminder in these words that receiving the word of the Lord should be what is centrally important in all our lives.