Bird's-eye view
In this section of Jeremiah's prophecy, the Lord, through His prophet, is pressing His covenant lawsuit against Judah. The charge is idolatry, which the Bible treats not as a simple mistake in religious opinion, but as spiritual adultery. The tone is one of sharp, cutting rebuke, exposing not only the sin but the utter foolishness of it. God lays bare the shame of His people, a shame that is corporate and all-encompassing, from the king on his throne to the prophet in his study. Their apostasy is depicted as a grotesque inversion of the created order, where they attribute their very existence to inert wood and stone. Yet, this profound rebellion is coupled with a shallow, self-serving religiosity. They want nothing to do with God until trouble hits, at which point they expect Him to function as a cosmic emergency service. The passage climaxes with a blast of divine sarcasm, mocking their flimsy, man-made gods and challenging these idols to do what only Yahweh can: save. It is a powerful indictment of a people who have exchanged the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns, and who are about to discover just how useless those cisterns are when the heat of judgment arrives.
The core of the issue is a turned back. They have turned their backs on their Creator, their Redeemer, their Husband. This is a posture of contempt and rejection. And in that posture, they have manufactured a legion of alternative deities, one for every city, proving that polytheism is simply the spiritual expression of a fragmented and disintegrating culture. God's response is not to plead, but to challenge: let your gods save you. This is the ultimate test of any religion, and God is about to demonstrate before all the nations that the idols of Judah are nothing, and that He alone is God.
Outline
- 1. The Covenant Lawsuit: The Shame of Adultery (Jer 2:26-28)
- a. A Corporate Shame (Jer 2:26)
- b. A Grotesque Inversion (Jer 2:27a)
- c. A Fair-Weather Faith (Jer 2:27b)
- d. A Sarcastic Challenge (Jer 2:28)
Context In Jeremiah
Jeremiah chapter 2 functions as the opening argument in God's prosecution of Judah. The prophet has been commissioned in chapter 1, and now he begins to deliver the word of the Lord. The chapter is structured as a covenant lawsuit (rib), where God recalls His past faithfulness to Israel, particularly during the wilderness period, which was like a honeymoon (Jer 2:2-3). He then contrasts this with Israel's shocking and unprecedented apostasy. They have forsaken Him, the "fountain of living waters," for "broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jer 2:13). This is the central metaphor. The verses immediately preceding our text describe Judah's frantic and shameless pursuit of idols, using the imagery of a wild donkey or a camel in heat (Jer 2:23-25). Our passage, then, moves from the frantic nature of the sin to the public shame that must follow. It is a declaration of the verdict that is coming. The shame of being caught is the natural consequence of the shamelessness of the sin.
Key Issues
- The Nature of Shame
- Corporate Solidarity in Sin
- The Absurdity of Idolatry
- The Folly of Pragmatic Religion
- The Impotence of False Gods
The Log in Your Own Eye
When a culture gives itself over to idolatry, it is not simply making a theological blunder. It is engaging in a fundamental act of rebellion that reshapes the entire society. And because we become like what we worship, a society that worships deaf, dumb, and blind idols will become deaf, dumb, and blind itself. The leaders will be blind guides, the priests will speak lies, and the people will love to have it so. This is precisely the situation Jeremiah confronts.
The shame described here is not a godly sorrow that leads to repentance. It is the raw, public humiliation of being caught red-handed. It is the shame of a thief discovered with his hand in the till. God is pulling the sheet off of Judah's spiritual adultery, exposing it for all the world to see. And this exposure is total. It is not just a few bad apples; the whole barrel is rotten, from the top down. The king who should enforce God's law, the princes who should administer justice, the priests who should teach the truth, and the prophets who should speak for God, all are implicated. When the leadership of a nation is corrupt, the entire nation is brought to shame. This is corporate responsibility, a concept our individualistic age despises, but which Scripture teaches plainly. The whole house of Israel is shamed because the whole house of Israel has sinned.
Verse by Verse Commentary
26 “As the thief is shamed when he is found, So the house of Israel is shamed; They, their kings, their princes, And their priests and their prophets,
The comparison is stark and unflattering. Israel is not like a bride who has tragically fallen, but like a common thief, caught in the act. The key is "when he is found." Sin loves the darkness. Hypocrisy depends on concealment. But God is bringing everything into the light. The shame here is not the internal pang of conscience; it is the public disgrace of exposure. And notice the scope of this shame. It is the "house of Israel," the entire covenant people. Then Jeremiah proceeds to name names, not of individuals, but of offices. The entire leadership structure is corrupt. The executive branch (kings), the judiciary (princes), and the religious establishment (priests and prophets) are all united in this apostasy. When the very institutions designed to uphold righteousness become the chief promoters of wickedness, the shame is complete and the judgment is near. This is a top-down corruption, a systemic failure.
27a Who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ And to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
Here Jeremiah exposes the sheer, jaw-dropping stupidity of idolatry. This is not sophisticated, nuanced paganism. This is primitive, brute-force foolishness. They take a piece of wood, likely carved into an Asherah pole, and call it "father." They take a piece of stone, perhaps a sacred pillar, and say, "you birthed me." They are reversing the roles of Creator and creature in the most literal way imaginable. A man takes an axe, chops down a tree, carves part of it, and then bows down to the thing he just made and calls it his source. Paul unpacks the philosophical underpinnings of this in Romans 1, but Jeremiah gives us the raw, unvarnished absurdity of it. This is what happens when you reject the true Father; you will inevitably adopt a ridiculous substitute. You will worship the creation rather than the Creator, and in doing so, you make yourself less than the thing you are worshiping.
27b For they have turned their back to Me And not their face; But in the time when their evil comes they will say, ‘Arise and save us.’
This is the central act of rebellion. The posture of worship is to turn one's face toward God. The posture of contempt is to turn one's back. They have deliberately, consciously rejected Yahweh. Their idolatry is not an innocent mistake; it is the fruit of a prior decision to forsake the living God. But their rejection of God is not absolute in one respect. They still want Him to be their cosmic bodyguard. Their theology is entirely pragmatic. When things are going well, they have no time for God. But as soon as trouble hits, "in the time when their evil comes," which means the time of their calamity, they suddenly remember His address. Their prayer, "Arise and save us," is not a cry of repentance, but a demand for service. It is the foxhole prayer of a man who wants God's deliverance but not God Himself. They want a savior, but not a Lord. This is the religion of convenience, and God is having none of it.
28 But where are your gods Which you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you In the time when your evil comes; For according to the number of your cities Are your gods, O Judah.
God's response is pure, holy sarcasm. It is a divine taunt. "You have turned your back on Me, and now you are in trouble. Fine. Don't come crying to Me. Go ask your other lovers for help. Where are they?" He points out that these are gods "which you made for yourself." They are custom-built deities, designed to serve their worshipers' lusts, not to challenge them. And then comes the challenge: "Let them arise." This is the ultimate test of divinity. Can your god act? Can he save? The implied answer is a deafening no. These gods are impotent. They cannot see, cannot hear, and certainly cannot save. The final line is a jab at the sheer proliferation of their idolatry. They didn't just have one or two false gods; they had a pantheon. Every city had its own local Baal, its own patron deity. Their apostasy was as widespread as their population. They had traded the one true God for a multitude of useless idols, and now they were about to reap the bitter harvest of that exchange.
Application
It is tempting for us to read a passage like this and thank God that we are not like those primitive Judeans, bowing down to blocks of wood and stone. But we must not be so hasty. As John Calvin said, the human heart is a perpetual idol factory. Idolatry is not fundamentally about statues; it is about placing a created thing where only the uncreated God should be. Our idols today are more sophisticated, but no less damning.
We say to our career, "You are my father," looking to it for our identity and provision. We say to our political party or ideology, "You gave me birth," looking to it for our salvation and our sense of belonging. We turn our backs on the God of the Bible, on His law and His gospel, because we find them inconvenient. We prefer gods of our own making, gods who affirm our choices and never challenge our sins. But just like the gods of Judah, our modern idols are impotent. When the real trouble comes, a cancer diagnosis, a financial collapse, the ruin of a nation, the day of judgment, our money, our status, our politics, and our self-esteem will be utterly useless. They cannot arise and save.
The application is therefore a call to radical repentance. It is a call to turn our faces back to the one true God. It is a call to confess our "fair-weather faith" and to seek God for who He is, not for what we can get from Him. The shame of the thief is what awaits all who are found clinging to their idols on the day of judgment. But for those who turn to Christ, there is a different reality. On the cross, Jesus bore the ultimate shame. He was publicly exposed, mocked, and treated as a criminal, so that all who trust in Him might be clothed in His righteousness and never be put to shame. He is the God who can and does arise to save, not because we deserve it, but because He is merciful.