Jeremiah 15

It’s ironic Manasseh turned out to be Judah’s most notorious king. His dad, King Hezekiah, was one of the most respected kings of the Israelite people. Manasseh pointed the nation of Judah back to idol worship. The most repulsive act of worship he performed for an idol was the sacrifice of one of his sons. “Manasseh sacrificed his own son and burned the body on an altar. He consulted sorcerers, wizards, fortunetellers, along with mediums who tried to contact the dead. These sins made the LORD angry. Manasseh put a carved image of the goddess Asherah on the Temple property. This is the same Temple that the LORD told David and his son Solomon would become his home” (2 Kings 21:6-7).

The writer’s visual image is one of a farmer throwing threshed grain stalks in the air. The useless chaff that had encased the kernels blow away in the wind. It’s unclear what moment in history the writer is talking about. Babylonians deported the people of Judah once before the massive exile in 586 BC. First in 597 BC and later in 582 BC. But there’s a possibility the writer was thinking of the Assyrian deportation of the northern Jewish nation of Israel in 722 BC, about a century before Jeremiah.

Making sons was the most important job a woman had in that patriarchal era, when men were men and everyone else was pitifully less. At least that’s a common understanding among scholars. Mothers with lots of children, especially males, were often treated as successes, with the children serving as God’s stamp of approval. Mothers with no children were treated as though they got what they deserved. Jesus corrected that mistaken notion when his disciples pointed out a man born blind. They asked Jesus who sinned enough to make God punish the man like this? Was it his parents or himself. Jesus said neither: “He was born blind so people could see” (John 9:3). Then Jesus healed him.

Let’s pause a moment because by now, many aren’t feeling the love of God. In fact, to some he’s probably looking hateful and petty. As in, “So if they won’t worship me, I’ll turn them into dogfood.” That’s rough of God, some would say. One Christian response is that God is loving but a disciplinarian who, in this case, will use the death of the Jewish nation to convince a future generation to return to him. Another Christian approach is to say God didn’t dictate his prophecies to Jeremiah. Instead, he gave Jeremiah the key points of the message, allowing the prophet to use his own approach to the delivery. That would help explain why the prophets vary in the way they present God’s message. It’s God’s message at the core, but organized, sometimes written, and finally delivered by humans.

This verse is impossible to translate accurately and with complete confidence. Ancient translations use different words, which change the meaning. One interpretation has Jeremiah telling his enemies that he’s trying to help them. Another version has God promising to strengthen Jeremiah. Yet another has God admitting that he put Jeremiah in this pickle, but that the pickle will sweeten and turn into something good—implying a new Jerusalem full of people devoted to God.

Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian invaders from what are now Iraq and Iran all invaded the Jewish homeland from the north. They couldn’t come directly from the east because there was about 400 miles (640 km) of desert in the way. That’s about a three-week journey, with no more water than you can carry.

“In the Temple” is a guess. The high priest Hilkiah found the long-lost “book of laws God gave us. It was in the Temple” (2 Kings 22:8). This happened in 622 BC, during the reign of King Josiah, just a few years before Jeremiah launched his ministry in 627 BC, through to 586 BC. That’s when Babylonians leveled Jerusalem. Another interpretation is that Jeremiah was talking about when he personally received a message from God.