Today’s reading: Jeremiah 44; 1 Corinthians 3
Given the attitude of the Jews in Egypt, I’m honestly surprised they ever bothered to ask the Lord’s input on what to do in the first place.
When Jeremiah confronts them about their idolatry in Jeremiah 44, they don’t try to hide it or shy away from it, but boldly stand up for the queen of heaven they were making offerings to. Their logic is that when they were making offerings to her, everything was going fine, and it was only when they stopped making offerings to her that the Babylonians attacked and the people were carried off into exile, so clearly they should never have stopped. But if that’s the case, if they really believe the queen of heaven they were worshipping was more powerful or more important than Yahweh, why care at all what He, or Jeremiah, has to say?
The irony is that there was never a time they were worshipping other gods and it was going well for them. The northern tribes were carried off by the Assyrians for their idolatry, and the southern tribes too were under constant threat or having to pay tribute to foreign kings because they wouldn’t stay faithful to God. God was sending prophet after prophet, calling the people and their kings back to faithfulness, and they were largely ignored.
This interaction just goes to show how right God was to judge His people. He chose Abraham, raised up Israel, pulled them out of Egypt, gave them their land, protected them, provided for them, and promised to do so much more for them if only they would stay faithful to Him. The Jews weren’t sent into exile because they failed to keep some obscure Levitical law, accidentally ate an unclean animal, or forgot a festival here or there. The Jews were sent into exile because, despite all that God had done for them, and despite all His warnings about the way they were going, they would not leave off running after other gods. God was not setting a high bar for His people, really only requiring that they not sell themselves off to another god, and even that bar was too high for them…
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