Jeremiah calls the people to obedience

Jeremiah 7:1-11, 21-23

Jeremiah’s words in this chapter represent a kind of brief summation of what he explains at more length in other passages. As such, it is a useful passage to study when one is not studying the entirety of the book.

It is important to remember, as we read this passage, that Judah is currently under threat of invasion. The northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen to the Neo-Assyrian empire circa 722 BC. Decades have passed, and Babylon has overthrown Assyria. This new Babylonian empire is now at the borders, so to speak.

Safety in God’s presence?

With the threat of invasion looming, God’s people rely on the idea of God living with them in the Temple. They imagine that, since God’s Temple is in Jerusalem, they are safe from invasion, for how could God allow his home to be pillaged?

Through Jeremiah, however, God warns them that this is a false hope. Instead of trusting in the Temple, in the trappings of ceremonial religion, the people ought to obey God’s word. As we see in chapter 26, the people should “amend [their] ways and [their] doings.” There we see Jeremiah’s general calling to rebuke God’s people.

Now we learn the specifics of how the people have gone wrong and what they ought to do to change their behavior. Jeremiah stands in the gate of the Temple, proclaiming that the people cannot assume safety simply because of the presence of the Temple. Instead, Jeremiah explains that the people should change their behavior. They should “truly act justly one with another,” and they should cease oppressing the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow. Further, they should “not go after other gods.”

These warnings bring together the two major areas of failure that Jeremiah denounces throughout his ministry. First, the people of Judah have failed to care for the least and the last. Second, the people have failed to maintain their loyalty to Yahweh alone. In the latter case, they have worshiped gods in addition to Yahweh.

Their sin isn’t so much abandoning Yahweh in favor of other gods but rather hedging their bets by worshiping Yahweh as well as other gods. After all, isn’t more better? Not when it comes to worship, says Jeremiah.

Justice. Justice. Justice.

Then there is the constant refrain to do justice for the oppressed, to care for immigrants and orphans and widows and the poor. This refrain is present not only in Jeremiah but in the majority of other prophets as well.

In the Mosaic law, God gave specific instructions on how the community was to care for these groups. For instance, farmers were not supposed to extract all the profit possible from their business. Instead, they were to leave some of the fields unharvested so the poor could harvest them (Leviticus 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19-21). These laws were meant to benefit not only citizens, but immigrants. In fact, God specifies that immigrants are to enjoy all the rights and privileges of citizens (Leviticus 19:33-34).

God, through Jeremiah, continues, warning that the people are trusting in deceptive words (likely a reference back to verse 4 and their reliance on the Temple). The implication of verse 9 is that the people imagine they can steal and murder and commit adultery and swear falsely—all things associated with taking advantage of the poor or those over whom you have some status or power—without repercussion. Furthermore, they believe they can make offerings to Baal, a Canaanite storm God that the Israelites often worshiped, and go after other gods—and then turn around, run to the Temple, and proclaim safety.

In the end, God wonders if “this house, which is called by my name, [has] become a den of robbers in your sight?” (vv. 10-11). These words will no doubt sound familiar to some readers, and well they should! Jesus quotes this very passage in Matthew 21:13. In the Gospel, the Pharisees become so upset at Jesus precisely because they understand the context of Jeremiah. They understand that Jesus is saying, in effect, that they are doing the same things the people in Jeremiah’s day were doing. They are failing to care for the least and the last and they are failing to trust in God alone. In the Gospels, Jesus continually teaches that his followers should love their neighbors and care for the least and the last.

Jesus goes so far as to suggest, in Matthew 25, that the way people treat the hungry, and immigrants, and those without clothing, and prisoners is how they treat Jesus (see Matthew 25:41-45). In other words, Jesus identifies with these oppressed groups and warns his followers to treat them how they would treat Jesus. As Christians, we are commanded to care for the least and the last just as much as—if not more than—God’s people in Judah were commanded to care for them.

Cries for justice today

In the Church of the Brethren, it is these commands of Jesus and the prophets that have encouraged such statements as the 1963 resolution “The Time Is Now to Heal Our Racial Brokenness.” More recently, Annual Conference passed the 2022 statement “Standing with People of Color,” which says, in part, “We recognize the struggles faced by many of our sisters and brothers of color and believe the church should be agents of change. We encourage congregations, districts, agencies, and other denominational entities to continue to follow the teachings of Jesus by living out the great commandment of loving our neighbor as ourselves.”

Similarly, in 2022, Annual Conference passed a lament of the Doctrine of Discovery, which references the 1991 statement on peacemaking and 1977 statement on justice and nonviolence, saying, “We cannot retreat from the world. . . . We must become aware of the rampant injustice and subtle hidden violence in today’s world, examine our own involvement, and identify nonviolently with the oppressed and suffering.”

And yet, standing with the oppressed, the poor, immigrants, or orphans represents a difficult proposition for modern Christians. Our entire lives and society have become so polarized and politicized that our first reaction may be defensiveness when we read the above quoted statements—to say nothing of the biblical passages, like Jeremiah 7, on which they are based! Passages such as this one are not easy to wrestle with. They challenge us and, hopefully, move us to renewed commitment to God’s laws, as Jeremiah 7:23 suggests.

The words of Jeremiah 7 invite us to examine ourselves. How do we hear the prophetic warnings of Jeremiah when we have failed to accompany victims? How do we hear the invitation to “amend your ways and your doings” when our ways involve turning a blind eye to the poor and our doings involve calls for mass deportation of immigrants or asylum seekers? Do these words prick us? Do they pierce our hearts? Are our hearts soft enough to break, or are they hardened such that—as the religious leaders in Jeremiah’s day, and later in Jesus’ day—we lash out at the messenger? Do we even feel secure enough to have these conversations with our brothers and sisters in God’s family, or do we worry that the polarization of the world has infiltrated the church?

While these are all good questions and legitimate concerns, we must always remember that Scripture speaks a word of hope. As we have seen many times, there is always room for repentance and for amending our ways. There is always the hope of adapting our lives and treating others the way God intends them to be treated going forward.