Jeremiah 12:7-13

IV. THE PAIN OF GOD Jeremiah 12:7-13

TRANSLATION

(7) I have forsaken My house, I have left My inheritance; I have given the beloved of My soul into the hands of her enemies. (8) My inheritance has become to Me like a lion in the woods; she has raised against Me her voice; therefore I hated her. (9) Has My inheritance become to Me a many-colored bird of prey? Are birds of prey gathered against her? Go, gather all the beasts of the field, bring them to devour. Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trodden underfoot My portion. They have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. (11) He has made it a desolation, it mourns before Me being desolate; desolate is all the land, for there were none who took it to heart. (12) Upon all the bare heights in the wilderness the spoilers have come; for the LORD has a sword which devours from one end of the land unto the other: so there is no safety for anyone. (13) They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns; they pained themselves, they have not profited. Be ashamed because of your increases, because of the fierce anger of the LORD.

COMMENTS

Most commentators have failed to note how Jeremiah 12:7-13 is related to its context. The passage is usually wrenched from its connection with the preceding prayer and treated as a separate unit from a much later period of the prophet's ministry. Cheyne, for example, feels that the passage is descriptive and not predictive and assigns it to the period of the guerrilla warfare against Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:1-2). The present writer believes that Jeremiah 12:7-13 is part of God's answer to the prayer of Jeremiah and therefore is to be assigned to the early years of Jehoiakim. This, of course, means that the passage is predictive. God is describing the destruction and desolation which will shortly befall His people. The future is known to God and therefore He can describe in the past tense what to man is yet future.

One of the basic ways in which God deals with self-pity in the Scriptures is to place His heaviness of heart in contrast to the sometimes petty and inappropriate depression of His servants. By learning that God suffers because of the sin and consequent destruction of His people, the man of God comes to realize that the persecution and trial which he experiences is really nothing compared to what God must bear. In Jeremiah 12:7-13 one can feel the pain of God as He speaks of the ruination of My house, My inheritance, My pleasant portion, and the beloved of My soul. Jeremiah, wallowing in self-pity because his family and friends were opposing him, needed to learn how much God suffers when His beloved people rise up in open rebellion against Him. Jeremiah, who had called for the hasty execution of divine judgment upon his enemies, needed to realize how much it grieves God to pour out His wrath. Brash young preachers and discouraged old saints would do well to meditate long on this paragraph.

Only with great reluctance did God give His beloved nation over into the hands of their enemies (Jeremiah 12:7). As the lion in the woods challenges those who come near, so Judah has raised up her voice in open defiance against God. God therefore hates Judah, i.e., He treats Judah as though she were an object of His hatred. To interpret hate here in the absolute sense would be to contradict what has just been said, viz., that Judah is the beloved of God (Jeremiah 12:7). I hate her is the strongest possible way of saying that God withdrew His love for Judah when He gave her into the power of her enemies. In astonishment God asks if Judah has become in respect to Him a many-colored bird of prey. Other birds of prey would gather about such a queer looking bird and pluck it to pieces. All the scavenger beasts of the field are bidden to come and join in devouring the strange looking bird (Jeremiah 12:9). In Isaiah 56:9 the wild beasts are symbolic of the heathen powers employed by God to chastise His people (cf. Ezekiel 34:5).

One can sense the pathos as God continues to describe what has and will befall the nation of Judah. Human shepherds, political rulers both foreign and native, have destroyed the vineyard of the Lord, Israel and Judah. By their actions they have made the pleasant portion of God, the land of Judah, a desolate wilderness (Jeremiah 12:10). Because he, i.e., the enemy, has made the land a desolation, the land mourns, unable to produce its fruit. The land mourns before Me, literally, upon me. Freedman suggests that this phrase be rendered to My grief.[195] God is grieved over the condition of His land. Yet none of the leaders of the nation are concerned about the impending disaster for there were none who took it to heart (Jeremiah 12:11). Even in the most remote areas of the land the sword of divine judgment wielded by the enemy will do its deadly work. No one is safe from the spoiler (Jeremiah 12:12). Why will all of this tragedy befall Judah? By use of a common proverb Jeremiah gives the answer: They have sown wheat, but they have reaped thorns. The leaders of Judah have plotted, schemed, planned, worked and invested in formulating what they believed to be an adequate national policy. Unfortunately they had planted their wheat without divine direction and consequently their harvest would be one of thorns, i.e., humiliation, ruin, destruction and death. Of such a harvest they would be ashamed for it clearly indicates that they are under the wrath of God (Jeremiah 12:13).

[195] Freedman, op cit., p. 90.