Jeremiah 18:13-15

D. The Accusation Against the Nation Jeremiah 18:13-15

TRANSLATION

(13) Therefore thus says the LORD: Ask now among the nations who has heard such things. An exceedingly horrible thing has the virgin of Israel done! (14) Does the snow of Lebanon depart from the rock of the field? Shall the strange, cold flowing waters be dried up?[211] (15) Yet My people have forgotten Me; they offer incense to vanities which caused them to stumble in their ways, the paths of old, to walk in by-paths, a way that is not built up.

[211] The Hebrew says plucked up. The reading dried up, which is followed by the American Standard Version, necessitates reversing two letters in the word in question.

COMMENTS

In Jeremiah 18:13-15 Jeremiah presses the point that the nation has a serious flaw of which the divine Potter is acutely aware. Judah's horrible sin, unheard of among foreign nations, is that she has rejected her God. A virgin should keep herself undefiled for her future husband; but the virgin of Israel has defiled herself with the worship of heathen deities (Jeremiah 18:13). That this national apostasy is unnatural is brought out by two rhetorical questions in Jeremiah 18:14. Does the snow of Lebanon depart from the rock of the field? The summit of Lebanon is snowcapped the year around. The snow does not leave the mountain even in the hottest weather. Shall the strange, cold flowing waters be dried up? The reference here is probably to the mountain streams which perpetually flow down the slopes of the Lebanon mountains. These waters are called strange or foreign because they are not of Israel. The basic implication of the two questions is that nature pursues her course unchanged whereas Judah has unnaturally changed her course. They have offered incense to vanities or nothingness, i.e., nonentities. These idols have been major stumbling blocks in the paths of the men of Judah. The people of God have forsaken the old paths (cf. Jeremiah 6:16) to walk in by-paths. A great deal of effort went into preparing a first class roadway in antiquity (see Isaiah 40:3-4). But the people of Judah preferred to travel a way that is not built or cast up. i.e., a road that was not properly constructed but just carelessly trodden down. Instead of the ancient, well-marked paths of righteousness the people of God had chosen rather to walk in footpaths which were not clearly defined and led to no place. Such paths are unfit for any child of God to trod!