Study Desk

God continued: "Don't enter a house where there's mourning. Don't go to the funeral. Don't sympathize. I've quit caring about what happens to this people." God 's Decree. "No more loyal love on my part, no more compassion. The famous and obscure will die alike here, unlamented and unburied. No funerals will be conducted, no one will give them a second thought, no one will care, no one will say, ‘I'm sorry,' no one will so much as offer a cup of tea, not even for the mother or father.

"When you tell this to the people and they ask, ‘Why is God talking this way, threatening us with all these calamities? We're not criminals, after all. What have we done to our God to be treated like this?' tell them this: ‘It's because your ancestors left me, walked off and never looked back. They took up with the no-gods, worshiped and doted on them, and ignored me and wouldn't do a thing I told them. And you're even worse! Take a good look in the mirror—each of you doing whatever you want, whenever you want, refusing to pay attention to me. And for this I'm getting rid of you, throwing you out in the cold, into a far and strange country. You can worship your precious no-gods there to your heart's content. Rest assured, I won't bother you anymore.'

"Now, watch for what comes next: I'm going to assemble a bunch of fishermen." God 's Decree! "They'll go fishing for my people and pull them in for judgment. Then I'll send out a party of hunters, and they'll hunt them out in all the mountains, hills, and caves. I'm watching their every move. I haven't lost track of a single one of them, neither them nor their sins.

"They won't get by with a thing. They'll pay double for everything they did wrong. They've made a complete mess of things, littering their lives with their obscene no-gods, leaving piles of stinking god-junk all over the place."

"I'll use your mountains as roadside stands for giving away everything you have. All your ‘things' will serve as reparations for your sins all over the country. You'll lose your gift of land, The inheritance I gave you. I'll make you slaves of your enemies in a far-off and strange land. My anger is hot and blazing and fierce, and no one will put it out."

From early on your Sanctuary was set high, a throne of glory, exalted! O God , you're the hope of Israel. All who leave you end up as fools, Deserters with nothing to show for their lives, who walk off from God , fountain of living waters— and wind up dead!

God , pick up the pieces. Put me back together again. You are my praise! Listen to how they talk about me: "So where's this ‘Word of God '? We'd like to see something happen!" But it wasn't my idea to call for Doomsday. I never wanted trouble. You know what I've said. It's all out in the open before you. Don't add to my troubles. Give me some relief! Let those who harass me be harassed, not me. Let them be disgraced, not me. Bring down upon them the day of doom. Lower the boom. Boom!

"‘But if you won't listen to me, won't keep the Sabbath holy, won't quit using the Sabbath for doing your own work, busily going in and out of the city gates on your self-important business, then I'll burn the gates down. In fact, I'll burn the whole city down, palaces and all, with a fire nobody will be able to put out!'"

Then God 's Message came to me: "Can't I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?" God 's Decree! "Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don't cooperate and won't listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.

And I said to God : " God , listen to me! Just listen to what my enemies are saying. Should I get paid evil for good? That's what they're doing. They've made plans to kill me! Remember all the times I stood up for them before you, speaking up for them, trying to soften your anger? But enough! Let their children starve! Let them be massacred in battle! Let their wives be childless and widowed, their friends die and their proud young men be killed. Let cries of panic sound from their homes as you surprise them with war parties! They're all set to lynch me. The noose is practically around my neck! But you know all this, God . You know they're determined to kill me. Don't whitewash their crimes, don't overlook a single sin! Round the bunch of them up before you. Strike while the iron of your anger is hot!"

"‘And so it's payday, and soon'— God 's Decree!—‘this place will no longer be known as Topheth or Valley of Ben-hinnom, but Massacre Meadows. I'm canceling all the plans Judah and Jerusalem had for this place, and I'll have them killed by their enemies. I'll stack their dead bodies to be eaten by carrion crows and wild dogs. I'll turn this city into such a museum of atrocities that anyone coming near will be shocked speechless by the savage brutality. The people will turn into cannibals. Dehumanized by the pressure of the enemy siege, they'll eat their own children! Yes, they'll eat one another, family and friends alike.'

"Say all this, and then smash the pot in front of the men who have come with you. Then say, ‘This is what God -of-the-Angel-Armies says: I'll smash this people and this city like a man who smashes a clay pot into so many pieces it can never be put together again. They'll bury bodies here in Topheth until there's no more room. And the whole city will become a Topheth. The city will be turned by people and kings alike into a center for worshiping the star gods and goddesses, turned into an open grave, the whole city an open grave, stinking like a sewer, like Topheth.'"

The priest Pashur son of Immer was the senior priest in God 's Temple. He heard Jeremiah preach this sermon. He whipped Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks at the Upper Benjamin Gate of God 's Temple. The next day Pashur came and let him go. Jeremiah told him, " God has a new name for you: not Pashur but Danger-Everywhere, because God says, ‘You're a danger to yourself and everyone around you. All your friends are going to get killed in battle while you stand there and watch. What's more, I'm turning all of Judah over to the king of Babylon to do whatever he likes with them—haul them off into exile, kill them at whim. Everything worth anything in this city, property and possessions along with everything in the royal treasury—I'm handing it all over to the enemy. They'll rummage through it and take what they want back to Babylon.

You pushed me into this, God , and I let you do it. You were too much for me. And now I'm a public joke. They all poke fun at me. Every time I open my mouth I'm shouting, "Murder!" or "Rape!" And all I get for my God -warnings are insults and contempt. But if I say, "Forget it! No more God -Messages from me!" The words are fire in my belly, a burning in my bones. I'm worn out trying to hold it in. I can't do it any longer! Then I hear whispering behind my back: "There goes old ‘Danger-Everywhere.' Shut him up! Report him!" Old friends watch, hoping I'll fall flat on my face: "One misstep and we'll have him. We'll get rid of him for good!"

Oh, God -of-the-Angel-Armies, no one fools you. You see through everyone, everything. I want to see you pay them back for what they've done. I rest my case with you.

Curse the day I was born! The day my mother bore me— a curse on it, I say! And curse the man who delivered the news to my father: "You've got a new baby—a boy baby!" (How happy it made him.) Let that birth notice be blacked out, deleted from the records, And the man who brought it haunted to his death with the bad news he brought. He should have killed me before I was born, with that womb as my tomb, My mother pregnant for the rest of her life with a baby dead in her womb. Why, oh why, did I ever leave that womb? Life's been nothing but trouble and tears, and what's coming is more of the same.

God 's Message to Jeremiah when King Zedekiah sent Pashur son of Malkijah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to him with this request: "Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has waged war against us. Pray to God for us. Ask him for help. Maybe God will intervene with one of his famous miracles and make him leave."

"To the royal house of Judah, listen to God 's Message! House of David, listen— God 's Message to you: ‘Start each day by dealing with justice. Rescue victims from their exploiters. Prevent fire—the fire of my anger— for once it starts, it can't be put out. Your evil regime is fuel for my anger. Don't you realize that I'm against you, yes, against you. You think you've got it made, all snug and secure. You say, "Who can possibly get to us? Who can crash our party?" Well, I can—and will! I'll punish your evil regime. I'll start a fire that will rage unchecked, burn everything in sight to cinders.'"

Don't weep over dead King Josiah. Don't waste your tears. Weep for his exiled son: He's gone for good. He'll never see home again.

For this is God 's Word on Shallum son of Josiah, who succeeded his father as king of Judah: "He's gone from here, gone for good. He'll die in the place they've taken him to. He'll never see home again."