Jeremiah 5:1

NO! NOT ONE!

‘If there be any that executeth judgment.’

Jeremiah 5:1

I. A nation’s moral ruin.—The desperate condition of the Hebrew people is described in moving terms. Both high and low were equally corrupt, therefore judgment could not be delayed (Jeremiah 9:9; Jeremiah 44:22). When men become ungodly, the bands of society are dissolved. Ingratitude towards the God Who has fed them to the full is certain to make men reckless of the relative duties that they owe to their fellow-men. To love God first is the guarantee of love to one’s neighbour. We have similar reasons to deplore the decline of religion in our national life.

II. God’s executioner.—Babylon is summoned to destroy the sinful nation, though not utterly. But the people would not believe that their end was near. When warned by the preacher of the inevitable fate of the wicked, the ungodly will still whisper to themselves, even if they dare not say it openly, ‘It is not He.’ But there is a precise exactitude in God’s retributive justice, so that men may read their sin in their punishment. If we forsake God, we shall be forsaken by Him; if we serve strangers in our own land, we shall serve them in a land that is not ours.

Illustration

‘Diogenes, the cynic, was discovered one day in Athens in broad daylight, candle in hand, looking for something. When some one remonstrated with him, he said that he needed all the light possible to enable him to find a man. Something like that is in the prophet’s thought. God was prepared to spare Jerusalem on lower terms than even Sodom, and yet He was driven to destroy her. Both poor and rich had alike “broken the yoke and burst the bonds.” ’