Jeremiah 13:11

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!

‘That they might be … but they would not.’

Jeremiah 13:11

I. This parable of the girdle may really have been transacted.—By some such striking symbol, enacted before the people, their attention must have been powerfully arrested. Or, it may be that this is only a vivid style of presentation. Whichever it is, the chief idea is the intimacy of relationship between the chosen people and their God. Oh that He would cause us to cleave unto Him! At the same time, the degradation of the best is to the worst, and nothing more strikingly sets forth the condition to which those may sink who have abused the highest possibilities than the condition of this marred and profitless girdle. Capernaum would not be as she is to-day unless she had been lifted to heaven in privilege. O my soul, beware! Since thou art capable of God’s best and highest, thou art also liable to the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

II. The people answered the prophet very rudely and roughly.—They mocked at his words. But Jeremiah wept bitterly over their obduracy and pride. He saw the inevitable doom to which the young king, Jehoiachim, the queen-mother, and the whole land were drifting. These are the tears that we may all covet. We have shed tears of proud mortification, of vexation, of hot temper, of disappointment and chagrin, but God give us to shed tears for the sins, and woes, and doom of a lost world.

III. Jerusalem is apostrophised, and asked where the beautiful flock of sister and daughter towns was which had gathered under her lead.—Ah, they were destroyed, and their people were in captivity. Their destruction had come from those who had been allies and friends; and their sin was so deeply seated and inveterate, that such a fate was inevitable—there was no hope of reformation. What a terrible thing sin is! Of how many of our sorrows and disasters it is the cause. Cleanse Thou me, O God, from secret faults!

Illustration

‘It is hardly likely that a literal journey of two hundred miles, there and back, was undertaken by the prophet, though, of course, it may have been. Probably this prophecy of the approaching captivity of the people was given in this way to make it more graphic and impressive. The corrupted garment was an emblem of the sad effect that association would have on too many of the chosen people, which would cause them to be marred and spoiled.’