Grief Misdirected: A Lament for the Living Dead
Introduction: The Grammar of Grief
In our therapeutic age, we are taught that grief is a private affair, a subjective journey through personal loss. We are told that all tears are created equal, and that the important thing is to "process our feelings." But the Word of God does not leave us to such sentimental nonsense. God is intensely interested in the grammar of our grief. He does not just see that we are weeping; He asks what we are weeping about. There is a godly sorrow that leads to life, and there is a worldly sorrow that leads only to death. And here in Jeremiah, God gives us a lesson in how to direct our lamentations. He commands a startling redirection of national grief, away from a dead righteous king and toward a living, exiled one.
The historical situation is this: the good king Josiah, the great reformer, has been killed in battle against Pharaoh Necho of Egypt. The nation is plunged into mourning for their fallen leader, a man who had turned the nation back to the law of God. His son, Shallum, also called Jehoahaz, takes the throne. By all indications, he was a man cut from the same cloth as his father, ready to continue the reforms. But his reign lasts a mere three months. Pharaoh Necho, not wanting a man with backbone on the throne of Judah, deposes him, carts him off to Egypt in chains, and installs his more pliable brother, Jehoiakim, as a puppet king. And it is into this moment of national trauma that Jeremiah speaks the word of the Lord. The people are weeping for the dead hero, Josiah. But God says, "Stop. You are weeping for the wrong man."
This is a hard word. It cuts against the grain of natural sentiment. But it is a necessary word, because it teaches us to see things as God sees them. It teaches us to measure tragedy not by the cessation of breath, but by the cessation of usefulness in the covenant. It is a lesson in distinguishing between an honorable death and a dishonorable life. It is a call to reserve our deepest sorrows not for the saints who go to their reward, but for those who are removed from their calling, rendered impotent for the kingdom, and sent away to live out their days as a monument to judgment.
The Text
Do not weep for the dead or console him,
But weep continually for the one who goes away,
For he will never return
Or see the land of his birth.
For thus says Yahweh in regard to Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who became king in the place of Josiah his father, who went forth from this place, "He will never return there; but in the place where they took him away into exile, there he will die and not see this land again."
(Jeremiah 22:10-12 LSB)
A Commanded Cessation of Mourning (v. 10a)
The prophet begins with a sharp, counter-intuitive command.
"Do not weep for the dead or console him..." (Jeremiah 22:10a)
The "dead" here is unquestionably the good king Josiah. His death was a national catastrophe. He was the last great hope for Judah, a king who walked in the ways of his father David. The people's grief was natural, understandable, and in a certain sense, appropriate. They had lost a righteous ruler. But God puts a limit on it. He says, in effect, "That's enough. Dry your tears for Josiah."
Why? Because Josiah's story, while ending tragically for the nation, ended gloriously for him. He died in the line of duty. He was gathered to his fathers, spared from seeing the full measure of God's wrath that was about to be poured out on Judah for her generations of covenant rebellion. As the prophetess Huldah had told him, "Behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place" (2 Kings 22:20). His death, from God's perspective, was a mercy. He had finished his race. He was safe in the arms of his Lord. To weep for him endlessly would be to weep selfishly, to mourn what his death meant for Judah, not what it meant for him.
This is a principle for all the saints. The apostle Paul tells the Thessalonians not to grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). When a believer dies, it is a graduation, a promotion. It is a departure to be with Christ, which is far better. Of course we feel the sting of loss. Tears are not forbidden. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. But our grief must be disciplined by hope. Our sorrow must be shaped by the reality of the resurrection. To weep for the dead in Christ as though they have been annihilated is to deny the gospel. God here is teaching His people to have an eternal perspective. Josiah is fine. More than fine. Save your tears.
A Commanded Continuation of Weeping (v. 10b-12)
But God is not against weeping. He is against misdirected weeping. He immediately redirects their lamentation to a far greater tragedy.
"But weep continually for the one who goes away, For he will never return Or see the land of his birth. For thus says Yahweh in regard to Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah... 'He will never return there; but in the place where they took him away into exile, there he will die and not see this land again.'" (Jeremiah 22:10b-12)
This is the true tragedy. This is the object of godly sorrow. Weep for Shallum. Weep for him bitterly, continually. Why? Not because he is dead, but precisely because he is alive. He is alive, but his life is now a living death. He is a king with no kingdom, a man with no country, a son of the covenant cut off from the land of promise. Josiah's story is over. His testimony is complete. But Shallum's story is one of tragic incompletion. He was a righteous man, it seems, poised to carry on his father's work. But he was thwarted by the geopolitical machinations of a pagan king, which were themselves instruments of God's judgment on a faithless people.
The finality of the sentence is brutal. "He will never return." "There he will die." "He will not see this land again." This is a picture of utter hopelessness from an earthly perspective. To be cut off from the land was, for an Israelite, to be cut off from the central stage of God's covenant dealings. It was to be rendered irrelevant to the story of redemption as it was unfolding in that place. Shallum was not a martyr; he was a casualty. He was not a trophy of grace in the same way his father was; he was a monument of judgment.
This is what we are to weep over. Weep over the squandered potential. Weep over the righteous man rendered useless for the cause. Weep over the silencing of a faithful voice. Weep over the man who has to live out his days in a foreign land, remembering what might have been. This is a far greater tragedy than a good death. A good death is a victory. A wasted life is a disaster.
Application for a Dethroned Church
The application for us should be as sharp as Jeremiah's prophecy. We live in an age where the church in the West is being systematically dethroned. Like Shallum, we are being carried away into a kind of cultural exile. The levers of power are in the hands of our modern Pharaohs, who have no time for men of backbone and conviction. They much prefer the pliable Jehoiakims who will parrot the state religion of secularism.
So where should our tears be directed? We rightly honor the saints of old who have died in the faith, the Josiahs who fought the good fight and now rest from their labors. But we should not spend all our time building monuments to the dead. God commands us to weep for the living. We should weep for the church that has been exiled from the public square. We should weep for the Christian men who have been deposed from their leadership in the home and in the culture. We should weep for the generation of Christians who have been carried off to the Egypt of secular universities and have died there, never to see the land of their spiritual birth again.
Our greatest sorrow should not be for our martyrs, but for our sell-outs. Weep for the pastor who traded his prophetic backbone for a mess of seeker-friendly pottage. Weep for the Christian college that quietly dropped its biblical standards to keep the government money flowing. Weep for the father who is alive and well in his own home, but is in exile from his spiritual responsibilities, a living dead man. This is the true tragedy. This is what calls for continual weeping, for godly sorrow, for repentance.
But our weeping must not be the weeping of despair. Jeremiah was a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist. He knew that this exile was not the final word. He was the prophet who also spoke of a new covenant, when God would write His law on His people's hearts (Jer. 31:33). The exile of Shallum was a judgment, but it was a judgment that would ultimately pave the way for a greater King, one who would go into the ultimate exile of the cross and the grave. Jesus was carried away, cut off from the land of the living. But unlike Shallum, He returned. He returned in glorious resurrection power, and He is now enthroned at the right hand of the Father. And because He returned, no exile is final for those who are in Him.
Therefore, let us learn the grammar of godly grief. Let us weep rightly, for the right things. Let us weep for our cultural exile, for our loss of nerve, for our compromised testimony. Let that godly sorrow produce in us a true repentance. And let that repentance drive us to the King who returned from exile, who is able to restore all that has been lost, and who will one day bring all His people home, never to be carried away again.