Commentary - Jeremiah 16:1-13

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Jeremiah, the prophet's very life becomes the sermon. God's message of impending judgment upon Judah is so severe, so all-encompassing, that mere words are insufficient. God commands Jeremiah to embody the coming desolation through a series of radical deprivations. He is to remain unmarried and childless, symbolizing the death of the nation's future. He is to refrain from the normal human rituals of mourning and celebration, signifying God's complete withdrawal of peace and joy from the land. This is not a drill. This is the de-creation of a covenant people. When the people, in their spiritual stupor, ask why this is happening, God provides the unvarnished answer: generations of idolatry, culminating in a rebellion even more stubborn than that of their fathers. The judgment, therefore, is to be cast out and given over to the very idols they craved.

Outline

Commentary

1 The word of Yahweh also came to me saying, 2 “You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place.”

The word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah, and it is intensely personal. God is not asking him to deliver a difficult message; He is asking him to live one. In a culture where marriage and children were seen as a primary blessing from God and a sign of a man's standing, this command is jarring. This is not a call to some higher, more spiritual state of celibacy. It is a prophetic sign-act. Jeremiah's empty house is to be a billboard for Judah's empty future. To bring a wife and children into the world that was about to befall Jerusalem would not be an act of faith, but an act of cruelty. God is mercifully sparing Jeremiah's hypothetical family from the horrors to come. The covenant promise was to be fruitful and multiply, but Judah's covenant-breaking has reversed the blessing. The future is cancelled.

3 For thus says Yahweh concerning the sons and daughters born in this place and concerning their mothers who bear them and their fathers who beget them in this land: 4 “They will die of deadly diseases; they will not be lamented or buried; they will be as dung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by sword and famine, and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth.”

Here is the reason for the command. God does not deal in sentimentalism. The description is graphic because the reality will be graphic. This is the outworking of the covenant curses laid out plainly in Deuteronomy 28. They had chosen the curse, and now it was arriving. Death will be everywhere, and it will be ugly. But worse than the death is the dishonor. "Not be lamented or buried." The social fabric will be so torn that the most basic human decencies will be abandoned. To be left as dung is to be regarded as worthless refuse. This is what happens when a people makes themselves worthless through idolatry. The final indignity is to become carrion for scavengers, a complete reversal of man's dominion over the beasts. When you worship the creature rather than the Creator, you end up lower than the creature.

5 For thus says Yahweh, “Do not enter the house of the funeral meal, or go to lament or to console them; for I have withdrawn My peace from this people,” declares Yahweh, “My lovingkindness and compassion.”

The second prohibition is as radical as the first. Jeremiah is forbidden from participating in grief. He is to be an alien in his own culture's most profound moments of community. The reason is stated with divine clarity: "I have withdrawn My peace." The word is shalom, which means far more than an absence of conflict. It is wholeness, health, prosperity, and well-being. God is pulling the plug on all of it. He is also withdrawing His hesed (lovingkindness, covenant loyalty) and rahamim (compassion, mercy). These are the very attributes that define His relationship with His people. When God removes these foundational graces, society simply disintegrates. There can be no genuine comfort when the ultimate source of comfort has turned His face away.

6 Both great men and small will die in this land; they will not be buried; they will not be lamented, nor will anyone gash himself or shave his head for them. 7 Men will not break bread in mourning for them, to comfort anyone for the dead, nor give them a cup of comforting to drink for anyone’s father or mother.

Judgment is the great equalizer. Rich and poor, powerful and weak, all will fall together. The repetition of "they will not be buried; they will not be lamented" drives the point home. The pagan mourning rituals of self-mutilation will cease, but so will the legitimate and humane customs of comforting the bereaved. The grief will be so widespread and the chaos so absolute that no one will have the capacity to comfort his neighbor. Every man will be drowning in his own sorrow. The bonds of community, family, and friendship will be dissolved by the acid of God's judgment.

8 Moreover you shall not go into a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink.” 9 For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I am going to cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of rejoicing and the voice of gladness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.”

From the house of mourning to the house of feasting. Jeremiah is to abstain from both. He is to be a man set apart, a walking embodiment of the coming silence. God is turning the lights out on the party. The sounds of a healthy, functioning society are the sounds of joy, celebration, and especially weddings. A wedding is a sign of hope, a promise of a future, the formation of a new family. God says He is going to silence it all, and He will do it in their lifetime, right before their eyes. When a nation is under the judgment of God, the music stops.

10 “Now when you tell this people all these words, they will say to you, ‘For what reason has Yahweh declared all this great calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin which we have committed against Yahweh our God?’”

Here we have the deadened conscience of a rebellious people. After all these warnings, after the prophet's life has been turned into a living portrait of their doom, they have the audacity to feign ignorance. This is not an honest question. This is the self-justifying whine of a people who have lied to themselves for so long they have started to believe it. They are spiritually blind, unable to connect their actions to the consequences. Their sin is so pervasive it has become invisible to them, like the air they breathe. They look at the evidence, hear the verdict, and then protest their innocence. This is the heart of unrepentant man.

11 Then you are to say to them, ‘It is because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and have walked after other gods and served them and worshiped them; but Me they have forsaken and have not kept My law.’

God's answer is a straight punch. He begins with their history. Sin is a legacy, a corrupt inheritance passed down from one generation to the next. The root of the whole disaster was spiritual adultery. Their fathers forsook Yahweh, the God who had redeemed them and entered into a covenant with them, and they ran after cheap, man-made idols. They broke the first commandment, and from that initial act of treason, all other sins flowed. To forsake God is to forsake His law, because His law is simply a reflection of His character.

12 You too have done evil, even more than your fathers; for behold, you are each one walking according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, without listening to Me.

But they cannot blame it all on their ancestors. They are not simply victims of their upbringing; they are willing participants in the rebellion. And they have made it worse. They have added to the inherited sin. The core of their transgression is here defined as walking "according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart." This is the creed of fallen man: I will be my own god. I will determine right and wrong for myself. I will not listen. This stubborn refusal to hear the Word of the Lord is the very essence of sin. It is a declaration of autonomy, and it is a declaration of war against the Almighty.

13 So I will hurl you out of this land into the land which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers; and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will grant you no favor.’

The judgment is a masterpiece of divine irony. God will give them exactly what their hearts desired. They wanted to be like the other nations, with their other gods? Fine. God will "hurl" them, a violent and decisive action, into a land filled with idols. They can serve them to their hearts' content, day and night. Let them see what kind of salvation their false gods can provide. This is the terror of God's permissive wrath. And the final clause is one of the most frightening in all of Scripture: "I will grant you no favor." No grace. This is a picture of hell, to be utterly abandoned by God and given over completely to your own sinful desires. And yet, for the elect remnant, this severe and terrible judgment would be the very thing God would use to purge them, to bring them to repentance, and to prepare the way for the new covenant in Christ, who on the cross experienced the ultimate withdrawal of favor so that we might be received into it forever.

Application

The message of Jeremiah 16 is a hard one, but it is a necessary one. First, it teaches us that God takes sin seriously, and that He is not mocked. A nation that abandons God and His law will eventually face His judgment. The common graces that hold a society together, like peace, stability, and even the decency to mourn the dead, are gifts from God. When He withdraws them, civilization crumbles.

Second, we see the terrifying nature of a hardened heart. The people of Judah were so steeped in their sin that they could no longer recognize it as sin. We must constantly be on guard against this kind of self-deception, examining our own hearts and lives by the standard of God's Word, and being quick to repent when the Spirit convicts us.

Finally, this passage ought to drive us to the cross of Jesus Christ with profound gratitude. On the cross, Jesus was made a spectacle of judgment. He was forsaken by the Father, experiencing the ultimate withdrawal of favor that we deserved. He became a curse for us, so that all the covenant blessings might be ours. The silence of God that Judah experienced in judgment, Christ experienced on our behalf, so that we might hear the glad voice of the Groom calling His bride, the Church, to the eternal wedding feast.