Jeremiah's Distress At Their Treatment Of Him And His Violent Reaction To It (Jeremiah 18:19-23).
Jeremiah was naturally disturbed by this suggestion. But while recognising that Jeremiah's subsequent response does not match up to the teaching of Jesus Christ we do have to remember that he had not had the benefit of hearing Him. We must not judge Old Testament saints by New Testament standards. Even they could not have conceived of the sacrificial love that Jesus Christ had come to bring. Indeed it is this that demonstrates the supreme moral status of Jesus Christ above all others. No one else ever dared to teach that we should love our enemies, bless those who persecute us, do good to those who hate us and pray for those who use us badly. He was unique. It went against all that seemingly seemed rational.
Jeremiah had, after all, good reason for his distress and anger. He had fought for his people with YHWH, seeking to turn His wrath away from them, and he had loved them and had prayed for them even in the face of opposition and derision, yet all that they had done in return was to recompense him evil for good and dig a pit for him to fall into. In other words they had ‘fought' with him (compare Psalms 35:1) and then they had sought by every means to bring him down, to entrap him, and then to bury him (compare Psalms 57:6).
Furthermore we must recognise that what he was asking for was what he knew that YHWH had actually already declared that He would do to them. He was not trying to persuade YHWH to go against His otherwise merciful inclinations, but was simply showing that he had become so exasperated and upset that he had finally been persuaded to agree with Him. In other words he was demonstrating that he had finally been brought to the position of admitting that YHWH had been right after all. Can we criticise a man who takes up such a position when all that he is doing is agree that YHWH should carry out what He had already declared was His will in respect of them? He is simply agreeing that he now realises just how sinful and reprobate this people are, and that there is no hope for them (as they had themselves said) and confirming that he is resigned to YHWH doing what He had already purposed because he has nothing further to say in their defence. Every sentence of his cry to YHWH is in fact paralleled by previous declarations of YHWH indicating what He intended to do. We might even say, how could Jeremiah then have asked otherwise? And yet, with the example of Jesus Christ before us, we do ask that question, because we are called on to see things differently (compare Luke 9:54-55).
‘Listen to me, O YHWH,
And hear the voice of those who contend with me.
Will evil be recompensed for good?
For they have dug a pit for my soul.
Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them,
To turn away your wrath from them.'
He asks YHWH to take note of the way that the people were arguing with him and disputing his words (the word of YHWH), contending with him about every little thing; how they were recompensing him evil for good; how they had constantly sought to entrap and smother him; and how they had ignored the fact that he had stood before YHWH on their behalf and had tried to turn away His wrath from them. He had good cause to be aggrieved.
‘Therefore deliver up their children to the famine,
And give them over to the power of the sword,
And let their wives become childless,
And widows,
And let their men be slain of death,
Their young men smitten of the sword in battle.'
He therefore now basically admits that he has been wrong and calls on YHWH to carry out His stated purpose on the people. Let Him do His will. For the deliverance of their children to famine and the sword see, for example, Jeremiah 14:16; Jeremiah 14:18; Jeremiah 15:2. For their wives being childless see Jeremiah 15:8-9; Jeremiah 16:3-4; Jeremiah 16:6. For their wives becoming widows see Jeremiah 15:8. For them and their young men being slain see Jeremiah 11:22-23; Jeremiah 14:16; Jeremiah 14:18; Jeremiah 15:2; Jeremiah 16:3-4; Jeremiah 16:16. This was what YHWH had already commanded him to proclaim, while warning him not to pray for them because it was too late and the people had gone beyond the mark of what was acceptable. In view of the constant antagonism that he faced he can hardly therefore be castigated for echoing what YHWH had drummed into him as being His will, an antagonism which did after all reveal that YHWH was right.
‘Let a cry be heard from their houses,
When you bring a troop suddenly upon them,
For they have dug a pit to take me,
And hid snares for my feet.'
Then he prays (no doubt without thinking through fully what the actual consequence would be in terms of the cruelty involved) that the people might be taken by surprise in their houses as YHWH brought a military unit upon them, in the same way as by their traps they had sought to take him by surprise.
Here his prayer is more related to his own direct experience. These people had constantly sought to trap and ensnare him in all manner of ways, and to take him by surprise, and so he prays that they might, as YHWH has said, also find themselves similarly trapped as the enemy came upon them, so that they had to cry out in anguish and despair, and experience for themselves something of what they had made Jeremiah experience. He was asking that they reap what they had sown.
‘Yet you, YHWH, know all their counsel against me,
To slay me,
Do not forgive their iniquity,
Nor blot out their sin from your sight,
But let them be overthrown before you,
Deal you with them in the time of your anger.'
Finally he draws YHWH's attention to the way in which they had constantly plotted against him to kill him. We see in this a mirror image of what our Lord Jesus Christ also experienced in His life on earth, as He too faced constant plots against His life (Matthew 12:14; Matthew 27:1; Mark 3:6; Luke 6:11; etc.). And we recognise that Jesus' response was of a different kind to Jeremiah's as He prayed, ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.' But that is precisely the point. A greater and more compassionate than Jeremiah was now here, the submissive Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12), the ‘Lamb as it had been slain', in contrast with the hurt and bewildered ‘pet lamb led to the slaughter' (Jeremiah 11:19).
So Jeremiah prays (as YHWH has already made clear will be the situation) that He will not pardon their sins nor forgive their iniquity, but will rather allow them to be overthrown as they are dealt with by YHWH in His anger, an anger of which he himself has constantly been made aware (Jeremiah 4:8; Jeremiah 4:26; Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 7:20; Jeremiah 7:29; Jeremiah 8:19; Jeremiah 11:17; Jeremiah 12:13; Jeremiah 15:14; Jeremiah 17:4), and which earlier he had tried to avert on their behalf (Jeremiah 18:20). This was not, however, a prayer for their eternal condemnation, which was not an idea in Jeremiah's mind at the time, but was a prayer that they might not be spared what was their due at that time (their overthrowing) by a sudden act of mercy. He had had enough of their behaviour towards him and towards YHWH. Let them reap what they had sown. He was thinking in the short term not the long term. So yes, we may say that he fell short of the ideal, but there are very few even today, with Jesus' teaching echoing in their ears, who would have responded in any better way. He was essentially a prophet who was admitting that he himself had been wrong to want mercy for the people because they had gone too far, and was therefore asking YHWH to fulfil what He had made him prophesy. But we cannot, even as we say this, deny a certain level of understandable vindictiveness which he would have done better to have avoided (and would have had he been Jesus Christ)