Readings:
Jeremiah 6-8
Sirach 38

God continues his oracles against Jerusalem and Judah. The crimes they’ve committed against the laws that they freely agreed to are unnumbered and their sins are as many as the stars in the sky. They’re told of a terrible and merciless enemy from the north, who will come and destroy them for their sins.

If you look at a map you’ll notice that Babylon is east of Judah, but because of limited mobility and the scarcity of navigation aids, the ancient near East was traversed by staying close to the Euphrates or Tigris rivers. So from Babylon, one would travel up to what’s today the Turkish-Syrian border and then the stretch of arid land to cross was much smaller before you could follow green valleys down into the Galilee region and from there into Judah.

And if they paid attention to what was said and promised and warned, from Mount Sinai to Mount Gerizim, they’d know that this was the consequence spelled out for breaking the covenant and worshiping foreign gods. But the book of the law had fallen out of fashion in a sense, and the people had been in idolatry so long that they very well might be shocked to hear of these consequences.

In chapter 7 God gives another oracle to Jeremiah that he’s to announce on the doorstep of the temple. Here he warns them not to trust in the temple, because it’s just a building. He goes on to talk about the things the people were doing like adultery and worshiping Baal, and then coming to the temple to worship the God of their fathers. That was putting trust and faith into the building and the empty ritual, while disregarding the commandments and relationship with the God they’re ostensibly worshipping.

God has zero interest in being part of a pantheon, he is making this explicitly clear to this generation of Israelites. It’s either him or nothing, but don’t try to cover all your bases because that’s not part of the deal.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Jeremiah 9
Sirach 39
2 Peter 1