Scarecrows in the Cucumber Patch Text: Jeremiah 10:1-5
Introduction: The Fear Factory
We live in an age of manufactured terror. Modern man prides himself on his sophistication, his scientific rationalism, his liberation from the crude superstitions of his ancestors. But this is a sham. Modern man is just as superstitious, just as terrified, as any pagan staring at a solar eclipse. He has simply swapped out his idols. He no longer fears the signs in the heavens, but he is petrified by the signs on the stock market ticker. He doesn't tremble before a carved stone effigy, but he quakes before the pronouncements of the algorithm, the latest poll, or the consensus of "the experts."
The fundamental human problem is not a lack of information but a refusal to worship the right God. When you refuse to fear the living God, you do not graduate into a state of fearless autonomy. No, you graduate into fearing everything else. You become a slave to a thousand petty tyrants. Your life becomes a frantic effort to appease and placate a host of scarecrows that you yourself have propped up in the fields of your life. You learn the way of the nations, which is the way of anxiety, because the nations worship gods that are as anxious and impotent as they are.
Into this fear factory, the prophet Jeremiah speaks the Word of Yahweh. And this Word is not a gentle suggestion or a therapeutic affirmation. It is a command. It is a blast of cold, clean, liberating air into a stuffy, smoke-filled room of pagan dread. God is calling His people, then and now, to come to their senses. He is calling us to see the idols of the age for what they are: vanity, breath, nothingness. He is calling us to stop acting like terrified pagans and to start acting like sons and daughters of the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and all the signs within them.
The Text
Hear the word which Yahweh speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says Yahweh, "Do not learn the way of the nations, And do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens Although the nations are terrified by them; For the statutes of the peoples are vanity Because it is wood cut from the forest, The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. They make it beautiful with silver and with gold; They strengthen it with nails and with hammers So that it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, And they cannot speak; They must be carried Because they cannot take a step! Do not fear them, For they can do no harm, Nor can they do any good."
(Jeremiah 10:1-5 LSB)
A Call to Covenant Sanity (v. 1-2)
The address begins with a summons to listen. This is a covenant lawsuit in miniature.
"Hear the word which Yahweh speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says Yahweh, 'Do not learn the way of the nations, And do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens Although the nations are terrified by them;'" (Jeremiah 10:1-2 LSB)
Notice the authority. This is not Jeremiah's opinion. "Thus says Yahweh." The Creator of the heavens is about to give His commentary on the heavens. God is speaking to His people, "the house of Israel." This is a family talk. He is not addressing the pagans; He is addressing those who ought to know better. And the command is a sharp, two-pronged negative. First, "Do not learn the way of the nations." This is a call to be counter-cultural. The default setting of the fallen human heart is to assimilate, to blend in, to adopt the habits and fears of the surrounding culture. God commands His people to be distinct. Don't go to their schools of thought. Don't adopt their anxieties. Don't learn their liturgies of fear.
Second, and more specifically, "do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens." The nations looked at comets, eclipses, and constellations and saw in them the whims of capricious and impersonal forces or deities. They lived under the tyranny of the stars. Astrology is one of the oldest forms of fatalism. It teaches that your destiny is written in the sky, and you are just a puppet. But Yahweh says, "Do not be terrified." Why? Because He made those signs. They are His furniture. For the pagan, the signs in the heavens are the gods themselves or the script of the gods. For the believer, they are simply the handiwork of our Father. To be terrified by them is to fundamentally misunderstand who God is and who you are. It is to give more credit to the creation than to the Creator. The nations are terrified by them, that is their nature. But it must not be yours.
The Anatomy of Nothing (v. 3-4)
God does not just command; He gives the reason. And the reason is the utter stupidity of idolatry. He pulls back the curtain to show us how the sausage is made.
"For the statutes of the peoples are vanity Because it is wood cut from the forest, The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. They make it beautiful with silver and with gold; They strengthen it with nails and with hammers So that it will not totter." (Jeremiah 10:3-4 LSB)
The "statutes of the peoples," their customs, their religious observances, are "vanity." The Hebrew word is hebel, the same word that echoes through Ecclesiastes. It means vapor, breath, a puff of smoke. It is insubstantial, a complete nothingburger. And why? Because look at the process. It all starts with a tree from God's forest. A man, a creature, goes out with an axe, another created tool, and cuts it down. The created thing is manipulated by a creature.
Then the craftsman gets to work. He carves it and shapes it. But it's still just a block of wood. So what do they do? They "make it beautiful with silver and with gold." They dress it up. They put lipstick on a log. This is the essence of all false religion and all secular ideologies. You take a created thing, a concept from God's world, whether it is the State, or money, or race, or "Science," and you dress it up. You overlay it with the gold of rhetoric and the silver of propaganda to make it look impressive and divine.
But the best part is the final touch. "They strengthen it with nails and with hammers so that it will not totter." This god is so pathetic it cannot even stand up on its own. It needs a man with a hammer to keep it from falling on its face. Think about that. You are praying for help to something that you yourself had to nail to the floor. This is a devastating mockery. The idol has no inherent power, no stability, no life. All of its perceived authority is a human projection, propped up by human effort. This is a perfect description of the modern secular state. It is a wooden thing, decorated with the gold of patriotism and propped up by the nails of coercive force, and yet men bow down and worship it as their savior.
The Impotent Scarecrow (v. 5)
The prophet now delivers the punchline, a masterful image of utter futility.
"Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, And they cannot speak; They must be carried Because they cannot take a step! Do not fear them, For they can do no harm, Nor can they do any good." (Jeremiah 10:5 LSB)
A scarecrow. It has the shape of a man, but it is not a man. It is designed to inspire fear in birds, but it is just sticks and old clothes. It is stationary, silent, and stupid. This is the biblical assessment of every idol, every false god, every humanistic ideology. They are scarecrows in a cucumber patch.
Notice the characteristics. First, "they cannot speak." Our God is a speaking God. He reveals Himself in His Word. The idols are mute. They have no revelation, no wisdom, no comfort, no commands. All the words attributed to them are spoken by the priests standing behind the curtain. Second, "they must be carried." They are immobile. They have no agency, no power to move or act in the world. Our God is the God of the Exodus, the God who acts, who parts seas and topples empires. The idols have to be carted around in processions. They are baggage.
Therefore, the conclusion is inescapable and liberating: "Do not fear them." This is the command repeated. Why? Because fear is a form of worship. Whatever you fear, you are acknowledging its power over you. But these things have no power. "For they can do no harm, nor can they do any good." They are morally and metaphysically inert. They are zeros. They cannot bless you and they cannot curse you. They cannot save you and they cannot condemn you. All the power they seem to possess is the power you grant them by your foolish fear.
The God Who Carries You
The contrast could not be more stark. The central issue in this passage, and in all of life, is this: will you worship a god that you have to carry, or will you worship the God who offers to carry you?
The idols of the nations are a burden. You have to chop them, shape them, decorate them, nail them down, and then lug them around. And for all that work, you get nothing. They cannot speak, cannot move, cannot help. Modern idols are the same. The idol of materialism is a heavy burden, requiring endless work for stuff that cannot satisfy. The idol of political salvation is a crushing weight, demanding your total allegiance and delivering only tyranny and disappointment. These are all scarecrows that we labor to prop up.
But Yahweh, the living God, is entirely different. He is the one who says through the prophet Isaiah, "Listen to me, O house of Jacob... who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save" (Isaiah 46:3-4).
The gods of the nations are made by human hands. Our God is the one who made our hands. The gods of the nations need to be nailed down so they do not totter. Our God is the one whose hands were nailed to a cross, not out of weakness, but as the ultimate display of His sovereign power to save. That cross, which looked like the ultimate defeat, was in fact the toppling of every idol. On that cross, Christ made a public spectacle of all the principalities and powers that terrify the nations (Colossians 2:15).
The command, therefore, comes to us today with full force. Do not learn the way of the world. Do not be terrified by its headlines, its threats, its ideologies. They are all scarecrows. They are wood, silver, and gold, propped up and destined for the fire. Do not fear them. Fear instead the living God, who spoke and the universe leaped into existence. But do not just fear Him; trust Him. He is the God who does not need to be carried. He is the God who carries you.