“Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,
look around and consider,
search through her squares.
If you can find but one person
who deals honestly and seeks the truth,
I will forgive this city.
Although they say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’
still they are swearing falsely.”
Lord, do not your eyes look for truth?
You struck them, but they felt no pain;
you crushed them, but they refused correction.
They made their faces harder than stone
and refused to repent.
I thought, “These are only the poor;
they are foolish,
for they do not know the way of the Lord,
the requirements of their God.
So I will go to the leaders
and speak to them;
surely they know the way of the Lord,
the requirements of their God.”
But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke
and torn off the bonds.
Therefore a lion from the forest will attack them,
a wolf from the desert will ravage them,
a leopard will lie in wait near their towns
to tear to pieces any who venture out,
for their rebellion is great
and their backslidings many.
“Why should I forgive you?
Your children have forsaken me
and sworn by gods that are not gods.
I supplied all their needs,
yet they committed adultery
and thronged to the houses of prostitutes.
They are well-fed, lusty stallions,
each neighing for another man’s wife.
Should I not punish them for this?”
declares the Lord.
“Should I not avenge myself
on such a nation as this?
“Go through her vineyards and ravage them,
but do not destroy them completely.
Strip off her branches,
for these people do not belong to the Lord.
The people of Israel and the people of Judah
have been utterly unfaithful to me,”
declares the Lord.
They have lied about the Lord;
they said, “He will do nothing!
No harm will come to us;
we will never see sword or famine.
The prophets are but wind
and the word is not in them;
so let what they say be done to them.”
Therefore this is what the Lord God Almighty says:
“Because the people have spoken these words,
I will make my words in your mouth a fire
and these people the wood it consumes.
People of Israel,” declares the Lord,
“I am bringing a distant nation against you—
an ancient and enduring nation,
a people whose language you do not know,
whose speech you do not understand.
Their quivers are like an open grave;
all of them are mighty warriors.
They will devour your harvests and food,
devour your sons and daughters;
they will devour your flocks and herds,
devour your vines and fig trees.
With the sword they will destroy
the fortified cities in which you trust.
“Yet even in those days,” declares the Lord, “I will not destroy you completely. And when the people ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ you will tell them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your own land, so now you will serve foreigners in a land not your own.’
“Announce this to the descendants of Jacob
and proclaim it in Judah:
Hear this, you foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes but do not see,
who have ears but do not hear:
Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord.
“Should you not tremble in my presence?
I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
they may roar, but they cannot cross it.
But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts;
they have turned aside and gone away.
They do not say to themselves,
‘Let us fear the Lord our God,
who gives autumn and spring rains in season,
who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’
Your wrongdoings have kept these away;
your sins have deprived you of good.
“Among my people are the wicked
who lie in wait like men who snare birds
and like those who set traps to catch people.
Like cages full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful
and have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not seek justice.
They do not promote the case of the fatherless;
they do not defend the just cause of the poor.
Should I not punish them for this?”
declares the Lord.
“Should I not avenge myself
on such a nation as this?
“A horrible and shocking thing
has happened in the land:
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?
- Jeremiah 5:1-31
To read Jeremiah 6:1-30, click this link HERE.
To read Jeremiah 7:1-34, click this link HERE.
“‘At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves. They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped. They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like dung lying on the ground. Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, declares the Lord Almighty.’
“Say to them, ‘This is what the Lord says:
“‘When people fall down, do they not get up?
When someone turns away, do they not return?
Why then have these people turned away?
Why does Jerusalem always turn away?
They cling to deceit;
they refuse to return.
I have listened attentively,
but they do not say what is right.
None of them repent of their wickedness,
saying, “What have I done?”
Each pursues their own course
like a horse charging into battle.
Even the stork in the sky
knows her appointed seasons,
and the dove, the swift and the thrush
observe the time of their migration.
But my people do not know
the requirements of the Lord.
“‘How can you say, “We are wise,
for we have the law of the Lord,”
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
has handled it falsely?
The wise will be put to shame;
they will be dismayed and trapped.
Since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
what kind of wisdom do they have?
Therefore I will give their wives to other men
and their fields to new owners.
From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
“Peace, peace,” they say,
when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct?
No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush.
So they will fall among the fallen;
they will be brought down when they are punished,
says the Lord.
“‘I will take away their harvest,
declares the Lord.
There will be no grapes on the vine.
There will be no figs on the tree,
and their leaves will wither.
What I have given them
will be taken from them.’”
Why are we sitting here?
Gather together!
Let us flee to the fortified cities
and perish there!
For the Lord our God has doomed us to perish
and given us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against him.
We hoped for peace
but no good has come,
for a time of healing
but there is only terror.
The snorting of the enemy’s horses
is heard from Dan;
at the neighing of their stallions
the whole land trembles.
They have come to devour
the land and everything in it,
the city and all who live there.
“See, I will send venomous snakes among you,
vipers that cannot be charmed,
and they will bite you,”
declares the Lord.
You who are my Comforter in sorrow,
my heart is faint within me.
Listen to the cry of my people
from a land far away:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King no longer there?”
“Why have they aroused my anger with their images,
with their worthless foreign idols?”
“The harvest is past,
the summer has ended,
and we are not saved.”
Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
I mourn, and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
for the wound of my people?
- Jeremiah 8:1-22
Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments
Jeremiah 5:1 ‘not one person’: “It was a wonderful offer on the part of God to forgive the inhabitants of the whole city of Jerusalem for the sake of one person. And it was all the more remarkable because he gave them time to make a thorough search to see whether such a person could be found. Into what a horrible state of guilt the Jewish capital must have fallen when not one person, even among the magistrates or the priests, cared for that which was just and true.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:3 ‘God sees His faithful’: “If there is any faithful person anywhere, God sees him. He regards him with attentive delight, and he will take care of him with the utmost vigilance.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:3 ‘refusing to repent’: ”God chastened the wayward Israelites many times for their sins, but they refused to change their ways, and then they even blamed God! He brought charges against them (Jer. 2:9 NKJV), but instead of confessing and repenting, they complained and brought charges against Him! None of His discipline seemed to do any good. ‘You struck them, but they felt no pain; you crushed them, but they refused correction’ (5:3 NIV; see 7:28; 17:23; 32:33; 35:13).”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 5:5 ‘only wind’: “After searching among ‘the poor’ and ‘foolish,’ Jeremiah concluded, ‘They don’t understand the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.’ Therefore, he turned to the powerful people of his day. But Jeremiah found no improvement among them; they were even worse than the poor and ignorant. To them, the prophets had ‘become only wind’ (5:13).”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:6 ‘lion’: “Three animals which tear and eat their victims represented the invader: the lion (see note on 4:6, 7), the wolf, and the leopard, picturing vicious judgment on both poor (v. 4) and rich (v. 5).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 5:7 ‘adultery’: “Often the idea of adultery is figurative of idolatry or political alliances (see note on 3:1), but the language here refers to physical adultery by men seeking out a harlot or going to their neighbors’ wives (v. 8), thus violating the seventh Commandment (EX. 20:14).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 5:10 ‘not the Lord’s’: “The people, depicted as vine branches to be destroyed (cf 11:16, 17), did not genuinely know the Lord in a saving relationship, but had forsaken Him and given allegiance to other gods. The description of having eyes but not seeing, and ears but not hearing (v. 21) is used by Isaiah (6:9) and Jesus Christ (Matt. 13:13) for such false professors as these branches. Jesus also referred to false branches in John 15:2, 6 which were burned.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 5:12-14 ‘When God has had enough’: “It is a dreadful state of things when God turns from pleading with people to threatening them. When he ceases to invite them to return to him and denounces them as transgressors against his laws. At such times he makes the words that come out of the mouths of his prophets to be like fire, and people are utterly consumed by them as the stubble in the field is destroyed by the devouring flames.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:18 ‘God remembers mercy’: “Even in the midst of his wrath, God remembers mercy. He utters a terrible sentence concerning transgressors in verses 14-17 and then pauses and says, ‘But’—listen to the gentle note of pity in that word. Still does he spare the guilty, and in his long-suffering he gives them further opportunities to repent.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:19 ‘seeing sin in its punishment’: “A person often may see his sin in its punishment. Because they had served foreign gods, therefore, the Lord sent them to serve foreigners in a foreign land. We must remember that our sin will come home to us in some form or other. If we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind. Therefore, let us beware of scattering seeds of sin, for they will produce a terrible harvest of woe.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:22 ‘sand … of the sea’: “God’s providential acts in the natural world such as (1) creating the seashore to prevent flooding, (2) giving rain at the appropriate times (v. 24), and (3) providing time for harvest (v. 24) are witness to the Lord’s reality and grace. As the nation turns away from God, He will take these unappreciated, gracious gifts away (v. 25).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 5:24 ‘blind to the obvious’: “Though God gives timely and suitable seasons for the growth and ingathering of grain—rain when it is needed to aid the springing up of the blade and fine weather for garnering the harvest—yet many do not see the hand of God at all; and they are, therefore, not moved by gratitude to bless his name and fear him to whom they are indebted for all that they receive. Oh, what ungrateful and blind creatures we human beings are!”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:25 ‘missing God’s blessings’: “Does any unconverted person know what good things he or she has missed? Nothing can ever give back to you the years that have gone or impart to you in the future the joy you might have had, but which you have missed.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:25 ‘natural punishment’: ”A basic principle is enunciated in Jeremiah 2:19: God punishes us by allowing our own sins to bring pain and discipline to our lives. ‘Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you. This is your punishment. How bitter it is!’ (4:18 NIV). ‘Your wrongdoings have kept these [rains] away; your sins have deprived you of good’ (5:25 NIV). The greatest judgment God can send to disobedient people is to let them have their own way and reap the sad, painful consequences of their sins.”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 5:26 ‘those who catch men’: “Such may even be in the church itself, making as loud a profession as the most genuine Christian. ‘They catch men.’ Beware of these man-catchers who entrap souls and ruin them forever, ensnaring them by leading them into evil habits and transgressions. Jeremiah further described them and their deeds in verses 27-29.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 5:31 ‘when error is preached and wrongdoing is practiced’: “It is a most horrible thing that God’s own people should ever be willing that error should be preached and that oppression and wrongdoing of any kind should be practiced. When those who profess to know God’s Word endorse what is contrary to the truth of God, error is kept in power. Then God asks, ‘But what will you do at the end of it?’ Is your religion of such a character that when with some form or falsehood you come to die, it will bear that will not stand the test of you up? Or have you taken up your dying hour?”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 6 ‘Babylonians are coming’: ”The closing section of Jeremiah’s sermon in chapter 6 focuses on the invading Babylonian army and the devastation they will bring to the kingdom of Judah. In that critical hour, the prophet told the nation what God was doing.
“Sometimes suffering brings out the best in people, but that wouldn’t happen in the siege of Jerusalem. When God turned on the furnace, it would reveal the people as rejected silver, nothing but dross to be thrown away. He wasn’t purifying them; He was punishing them. They weren’t being refined; they were being rejected. They were too cheap to preserve.”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 6:9 ‘thoroughly glean’: “Unlike the benevolent practice of leaving food in the field for the poor to glean (Lev. 19:9, 10; Ruth 2:5—18), the Babylonians will leave no one when they ‘harvest’ Judah.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 6:14 ‘Hope in Christ and nowhere else’: “Between God and the returning soul there is a zone of obscurity through which he cannot see. It is the light that no man can approach unto and past which no one can go on his feet or by means of reason or theological knowledge. There faith must make its leap of pure trust into the arms of God crying with Job, ‘Though he slay me, yet will l trust in him’ (Job 13:15), or with Newton, ‘O Lord, l trust in Thee completely, and if I go to hell I’ll go down standing on Thy Word.’
“It is this utter desperation that brings the witness, and yet I cannot tell anyone how to reach such a state. All I can do is to urge everyone to repent and believe on Jesus Christ. If the repentance is genuine and the faith real, all human confidence will come crashing down and the humbled soul will be forced to make its leap of faith alone.
“The reader that cannot find his way from here is in all probability still impenitent. And let him beware of seeking cheap comfort from a text jockey who will cry ‘Peace, peace; when there is no peace’ (Jeremiah 6:14). He had better by far take his Bible and retire to the secret place to seek God alone. If there’s hope for him, he‘ll find it there. But he’ll find it nowhere else.”
- A. W. Tozer, The Size of the Soul
Jeremiah 6:19 ‘Thinking about doing evil’: “Observe here how God declares that he would not only punish Israel for gross overt acts of sin but that he would also bring on the nation terrible chastisements for their plotting. This is a solemn warning and full of instruction. Our thoughts are not free before God. I have no more authority to think of God as I please than I have to act before him as l please. We know that God has told us in Psalm 139:2,23 that he is constantly watching our thoughts. And we have it on record that God is also angry on account of evil thoughts (Gn 6:5-6). That evil thoughts and schemes are of the utmost importance may likewise be inferred from the fact that God here makes them the ground of punishing his people. He speaks of ‘the fruit of their own plotting.’ The plot in itself may not be a great thing, but what will it come to? It may even be a little thing, but what will be the end of it? Evil plotting is in itself evil.
“And what is more, the thought of evil paralyzes the finer faculties of the soul. The more we think of sin and become familiar with it, the less terrible it seems to our apprehension. Those who plot evil § have thought on it, meditated, and deliberated about it until at last it seems to them but a mere trifle—and then they go forth to do it without misgiving. l do not believe a person becomes a villain all at once. He puts his soul to school—his thoughts are his teachers—or, rather, they are the school-books in which his soul reads, and at last he becomes capable of transacting the deeds of a = scoundrel.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 6:27-30 ‘I have set you’: “God placed Jeremiah as a kind of assayer to test the people’s obedience. He also was a ‘fortress,’ meaning a ‘tester’ who works with metals. Their sin prevented them from being pure silver; rather, they were bronze, iron, lead, even impure silver, so that they failed the test.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 7:1-10:25 ‘Outside Truth, everything is false’: ”God … commanded Jeremiah to go up to the temple and proclaim His message to the hypocritical people gathered there. In this courageous sermon, the prophet exposed the nation’s false hope (Jer. 7:1—8:3), their false prophets (8:4—22), their false confidence in the covenant they were disobeying (9: 1—26), and the false gods they were worshipping (10:1-25). In other words, Jeremiah dealt with their sinful mistreatment of the temple, the law, the covenant, and the Lord Himself. It wasn’t a popular message to deliver, and it almost cost him his life!”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 7:1-3 ‘Holiness’: “Many of Judah thought that if they went up to the temple, it was all right with them. It they only went through the outward ritual, they would certainly be accepted. They must have been astonished when Jeremiah met them at the temple door and told them that the best worship of God was holiness—not the mere outward ceremony but cleansing of the heart before him.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 7:4-7 ‘blessing to holy people’: “The blessing is not to the temple and the temple worshipers; the blessing is to holy people, to such as love righteousness, to such as obey the living God and do justice between them and others—and especially between themselves and the poor and needy of the earth.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 7:11-16 ‘the state of one’s heart’: “Through the sin of Eli’s sons, God forsook Shiloh and the tent of his house, and the ark of his covenant were removed— and Shiloh became an utter desolation. So will God do to any church that becomes unfaithful to him. Think not that God is tied to any place or to any ministry. If we so not walk before him faithfully he may take the candlestick out of its place. He may take the talent away and give it to others and then ‘Ichabod’ will be written on the walls (see 1Sm 4:21), whether it is of Shiloh or of Jerusalem. Jeremiah has thus shown us clearly that no confidence can be placed in holy places or outward ceremonies—the state of one’s heart and one’s life is the all-important matter.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 7:18 ‘the queen of heaven’: “Cf. 44:17-19, 25. The Jews were worshiping Ishtar, an Assyrian and Babylonian goddess also called Ashtoreth and Astarte, the wife of Baal or Molech. Because these deities symbolized generative power, their worship involved prostitution.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 7:22 ‘I did not … command’: “Bible writers sometimes use apparent negation to make a comparative emphasis. What God commanded His people at the Exodus was not so much the offerings, as it was the heart obedience that prompted the offerings. See this comparative sense used elsewhere (Deut. 5:3; Hos. 6:6; 1 John 3:18).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics
Jeremiah 7:23 ‘The old ways preserve worshipping in truth’: “The error that everything new is good and everything old is bad takes place in the realm of practice and worship and religious activity generally. This is a view … [that] can lead, of course, to great rebellion against the truth. …
“We will never be where we ought to be until we go back to those old paths and learn to find God. [Then] we will cease to be bored with God. … We will center our affections upon God and Christ … and become specialists and experts in the realm of the spiritual life.
“It is amazing how little outside stimulus we need if we have that inward stimulus. It is amazing how much God will meet our needs. It will not be God and something else. It will be God everything.
“And then, wisely, we will gear into our times … and in a moment we will become … alert to the needs of the world around us. … At the same time, our great anchor will be God above.
“… God will be enough.”
- A. W. Tozer, Tozer Speaks to the Students
Jeremiah 7:29 ‘cut off your hair’: “This is a sign depicting God’s cutting the nation off and casting them into exile. Ezekiel used a similar illustration by cutting his hair (Ezek. 5:1-4). God never casts away the genuinely saved from spiritual salvation (John 6:37; 10:28, 29).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 7:31 ‘burn their sons’: “Though God forbade this atrocity (Lev. 18:21; 20:2-5; Deut. 12:31), Israelites still offered babies as sacrifices at the high places of idol worship (Tophet) in the valley of Hinnom (south end of Jerusalem). They offered them to the fire god Molech, under the delusion that this god would reward them. See note on 19:6.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 8:1 ‘desecration of the graves’: “It was a common practice to bury treasure with the bodies of kings; hence when any land was invaded by foreign foes, they broke open the tombs and searched for hidden valuables. It was a sign of the special detestation of the enemy and of their fury against the people when they dragged the carcasses out of the graves and scattered the bones to the four winds. In this case it was foretold that this desecration would not only take place with regard to the bones of the kings, in whose tombs the greatest treasure might be expected to be found, but the bones of princes, priests, prophets, and people were all to be alike brought forth.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:3 ‘experts in torment’: “There was to be stern treatment for the dead, but it would be worse with the living, for the Chaldeans were strong, fierce, cruel, and most ingenious in the torments they inflicted on their captives. It was awful to be living in such times as those, and it is always terrible to be living when God’s judgments are abroad in the earth and sinners are hardened in their sin.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:4-7 ‘no matter how often you fall, get back up’: ”Their refusal was irrational (Jer. 8:4—7). Jeremiah used analogies from human life and nature to illustrate his point. When people fall down, they get up again. That’s the sensible thing to do. If they find themselves walking on the wrong path, they retrace their steps and get on the right path. Conclusion: If people can be sensible about these everyday matters, why can’t they be sensible about eternal matters, especially since the consequences are much more tragic?”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 8:4-5 ‘restored to God’s favor’: “Some fall into sin, but by God’s grace they are raised out of it, and they turn away from iniquity and are restored to God’s favor. But others, like the people of Jerusalem, day after day grow more outrageous in their wickedness. Perseverance in evil is the venom of evil.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:6 ‘the warhorse’: “As the warhorse is eager for the fray and at the first blast of the trumpet seeks to dash into the center of the fight, so did these ungodly people. Instead oi turning to God, they turned more desperately to sin.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:8-12 ‘deception’: ”Their refusal was caused by deception (Jer. 8:8—12). ‘Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?’ (Jer. 8:9). Just as they boasted that they possessed the temple, so they boasted that they had the divine law (v. 8), but possessing the Scriptures isn’t the same as practicing the Scriptures. Although the Bible is still a best seller, its popularity isn’t keeping Western society from crumbling morally and spiritually. There appears to be no connection between what people say they believe and the way people act.”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 8:8 ‘Not just reading, but obeying’: “Bible societies may go on printing Bibles by the millions, but as long as people do not obey what is taught in the Bible, the work of the printing press, like that of the copyist, will be in vain. We need more than the letter of the Word, valuable as that is. We need to know, in spirit and in truth, what the Spirit teaches through the letter and also to practice it. God grant that even our Bibles may not rise up in judgment against us!”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:11 ‘Give a warning or flattery’: “It is dreadful when those who ought to warn the people and speak sharp, stern, honest, faithful words, simply flatter them.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:13-22 ‘judgment, despair, anguish’: ”Their refusal would lead to judgment (Jer. 8:15-22). These verses blend three voices: God’s voice of judgment, the people’s voice of despair, and the prophets voice of anguish as he contemplated the ruin of a once-great nation. God declared that the fields would be ruined (v. 13), the cities would be destroyed (v. 17), and the people would be either slain or taken captive (v. 19). 1t would be like drinking poison (8:14; 9:15; 23:15), experiencing an earthquake (8:16), being attacked by venomous snakes (v. 17), or being crushed and broken (v. 21).”
- Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive
Jeremiah 8:13 ‘Know the giver of the gifts’: “They would not recognize the giver, so the gifts would be taken away from them.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:14-16 ‘Heard from Dan’: “Dan was the northernmost tribe, bordering on Phoenicia. And after Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Phoenicians, he began to march through the territory of Dan. The mighty horses were a prominent part of the Chaldean force—so the poet-prophet pictures them as being heard as far as from Dan all the way to Jerusalem, so terrible was their snorting. This, of course, is the imagery of poetry, but there was terrible reality behind it.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:17 ‘crafty as serpents’: “Such were the Chaldeans—crafty as serpents, full of the venom of cruelty wherever they came. There was no way of charming them as a serpent may be charmed. They came on a deadly errand and thoroughly performed it.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
Jeremiah 8:19 ‘far country’: “This is the cry of the exiled Jews that will come after they are taken captive into Babylon. They will wonder why God would let this happen to His land and people.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Jeremiah 8:20-22 ‘we are not saved’: “The coming devastation is compared with the hopeless anguish when harvest time has passed but people are still in desperate need. Jeremiah identified with his people’s suffering (v. 21) as a man of tears (cf. 9:1), but saw a doom so pronounced that there was no comforting remedy. There was no healing balm, the kind in abundance in Gilead (east of the Sea of Galilee), and no physician to cure (cf. Gen. 37:25; 43:11).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics
Jeremiah 8:22 ‘no balm nor physician in Gilead’: “No, there is none. There is balm in Christ; there is a physician who once hung on Calvary‘s cross, but there is no balm and no physician in Gilead.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes
My Thoughts
I think I could write several posts on each of these chapters. It starts with God going on a quest to find an honest man in all of Judah, and none were found. Diogenes of Sinope was said to have gone on such a quest, but Diogenes escaped his hometown after skimming money from the city’s coffers. (Maybe now it is clear why he was homeless, living in an abandoned tub, and dumpster diving for his food. – Think off the grid.) At least God, being Holy, could stand as judge to determine who might be the slightest bit honest.
The people swear by the temple, but then use the temple for the worship of false gods, thus swearing falsely. But God might forgive the poor and uneducated. They might not know any better, but the priests and rulers were just as bad.
Then they talk of prostitutes. In those days, worshipping false gods had an element of sexual depravity associated with it, thus the prostitutes were most likely shrine prostitutes. Steven McAlpine wrote in his book Being the Good Bad Guys that the secular progressives argue that the church is obsessed with sex, but as Rev. McAlpine points out, only because we have to answer their arguments. The point is that as far back as the incident with Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, and much before that, the false gods of the world focus of the sexual, while true Christians focus on God’s Word, marriage between men and women, no extramarital or pre-marital sex, and only having two genders. It is not reactionary. It is adhering to the Word of God, and these four chapters clearly state when God is ignored bad things happen, and late in Jeremiah 8 it says that when bad things happen, the people run to the cities to die to avoid being killed in the countryside. Think Climate Change. The secular world insists they can fix it, but they ignore the One who created the world. Again, a really bad idea.
The idea of serving foreigners in their foreign land as a punishment for worshipping the foreigners’ gods is fitting. It goes along with being strung out when hooked on drugs, the hangover after getting drunk, the broken bones from the car crash from racing on the major roads at night, and other sins that produce a built-in punishment.
Jeremiah 5 ends with a plea to protect the orphans and the poor, for those who think that is a New Testament concept.
Jeremiah 5 and 6 both start with the forces that will do this destruction coming from the north and then near the end of Jeremiah 8 it says the same, with Dan being the northmost tribe when considering the unified 12 tribes of Israel.
I could also spend a few posts on Jeremiah 6:5 alone. It was not until the last couple of centuries that wars were fought at night. Even in the War of the 1860s in the USA, General Robert E. Lee refused to attack the northern forces at night. It was not the gentlemanly thing to do. Yet, fifty years before, the USA would not have their national anthem if it were not for the British attacking Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor at night – Star-Spangled Banner, bombs bursting, etc. – with fireworks like we have today used to illuminate the targets for the naval ships to get better aim, while preventing the soldiers in the fort from getting any sleep that night.
That latter argument is why there is night fighting these days, especially if you can see in the dark and they cannot.
Screaming “Peace, Peace” when there is no peace appears in Jeremiah 6:14 and Jeremiah 8:11. No one blushing appears in Jeremiah 6:15 and in Jeremiah 8:12. They may not have had pride parades to flaunt their sin, but they held the idea that they were allowed to do the sins that they performed. Nothing has changed, just the window dressing and the media coverage and the speed in which people learn of such sinfulness.
But God promises to provide strength to those who remain faithful and worship in Truth.
Jesus quoted Jeremiah 7:11 when He cleared the temple of its “den of robbers.”
In the middle of Jeremiah 8, Jeremiah mentions the “queen of heaven” being false worship done in the home, performed by the parents to indoctrinate the children. Recent legislation, maybe approved by now at the federal level, makes it a criminal offense for parents to try to dissuade underage children of their gender dysphoria. To the point of the government taking the children away from the parents and hiding them from their parents.
People say the Bible is not relevant. Most who say that are the proponents of this sinful lifestyle and they prey upon so-called Christians who do not read their Bible or do read it without understanding. We are living Jeremiah 5-8 today, only this time it is the entire world that has gone insane, not just the tribe of Judah.
Some Serendipitous Reflections
“Jeremiah 5: 1. If Jeremiah walked your neighborhood, what would he find? What are people’s relationships to God like in your neighborhood, town or city? Would your ‘truth rating’ save the city?
“2. Is honesty that hard to practice? Why? When is it easy to be truthful? When is it hardest? In what area of life do you need to raise the level of honesty?
“3. Who are the ‘fatherless’ and ‘poor’ in today’s society? Do you know any of these people? How are they treated? What can the group do to defend the rights of the poor?
“4. Who do you think are false prophets today? What is their lie? How do they ‘profit’?
“5. People in Jeremiah‘s day were blind to their faults and easily led to presume their innocence. What accountability mechanisms do you have in place to help detect ‘spiritual blind spots’ in your life? How can your group or family help in this?
“Jeremiah 6: 1. What do you think was God’s purpose in this warning? What does this tell you about God’s character?
“2. Smokers know cigarettes cause cancer; Californians know an earthquake will come eventually. Why do people frequently ignore warnings? What warnings does God have for your society? Are you paying attention or ignoring them?
“3. If material gifts and burnt offerings were unacceptable to the Lord (v.20), What kind of gifts or offerings do you think would have been acceptable to the Lord?
“4. If presents are not good substitutes for time and attention spent on our children, what does that say about what we should be giving to the church and charities? Do you know anyone who tries to buy God off with gifts instead of obedience (no names)? Are you ever tempted to do this?
“5. Have you experienced God’s refining fire? What ‘silver’ came to the surface? What dross remains to be burnt away?
“Jeremiah 7:1-29 False Religion Worthless: 1. Where are you in your spiritual journey: (a) Egypt? (b) Going forward? (c) Backward? (d) At the Temple gate? (e) Elsewhere?
“2. Do people in your church substitute being religious for being obedient? Do you? How can you make sure you’re not fooling yourself?
“3. What does God have to do to get the attention of people today? What message does he want to send to you? Are you listening?
“4. How did Jesus see Jeremiah’s words fulfilled in his day (see Mt 21:12-13)? What would Jeremiah and Jesus say about what goes on in churches today? In what ways is your church ‘doing business’? Who are the ‘paying customers’? What‘s the ‘product‘?
“Jeremiah 7:30-8:5 The Valley of Slaughter: 1. In what ways do parents hinder the religious growth of their children today? How will this affect the church? What do you think of ‘consulting the stars’? How might God frustrate those who trust their daily horoscope?
“Jeremiah 8:6-8:22 Sin and Punishment: 1. What ‘social sins’ prevail today, as in Jeremiah‘s day? What other parallels do you see between the people and the leadership of Judah and those of your country?
“2. How do you respond to them: (a) Moral outrage? (b) Self-denial? (c) Genuine sorrow? (d) Do-nothing resignation? (e) Flight to warmer, safer climates? (f) Determination to change things?
“3. Jeremiah deserved his reputation as the ‘weeping prophet’. Who in your society has that reputation of intensely and extensively grieving over the social sins of the nation?
“4. How might you learn to be more genuinely anxious over the welfare of others, even to point of weeping?
“5. Upon what human institutions do people pin their hopes for ‘peace now’? What might Jeremiah say at one of their conferences?”
- Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups
Jeremiah 5 and 6 one set of questions each. Jeremiah 7-8 is divided into three sets of questions as noted above.
Note the first question. We could ask if our church or our denomination might do with their “truth rating.” And we might get a totally different answer when applying the question from neighborhood to town to greater community, etc. And if you feel your neighborhood has a high “truth rating”, what is it doing to spread that rating to the larger community that may have a poor “truth rating?”
Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.
If you like these Thursday morning Bible studies, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Thursday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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