-- then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.
Jeremiah stands in the temple courtyard and tells the crowd what God will do to the temple and the city. The threat lands on the one thing Judah thought was safe. Does God's presence in a place ever protect the people in it?
Everything turns on what Shiloh was. God had put His name on that place, and then left it:
A place within the territory of Ephraim, where the tabernacle stood at the close of Joshua's life. Eli was priest there, and there Samuel began his ministry. The ark had been moved from Gilgal and stayed at Shiloh. Then it was carried into the camp, and the Philistines captured it. God had put His name there. But because of the wickedness of the Israelites He forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh, and afterwards the place stood as a sign of desolation.
Judah assumed God had tied Himself to the building. Shiloh says otherwise:
Shiloh was where the tabernacle first stood in the land. What was Shiloh now? God had profaned it. He would do the very same thing in Jerusalem, where the ark and the sanctuary now stood. It is impossible that God should bind Himself to maintain an empty form. He would no longer sustain what was a beautiful picture of His truth. In His eyes, the state of the people and the priests was the most offensive evil under the sun.
They leaned on God's faithfulness. That is what made their fall certain:
That is exactly what they did in Jeremiah's time when judgment was coming, and what Christendom is doing now. They said, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these," and, "The law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise." All the while they were going to Babylon. The faithfulness of God was unchanging. But the moment they used it to prop themselves up in a place of evil, it became the very ground of their ruin. The same principles that would be our security become our ruin if we leave out the sense of where we are.
The second half of the verse is not a random punishment. It reverses what the house and city were for:
The prophet took his stand in the court of the Lord's house to speak the word concerning it. This house gave the city its character. It was meant to be a centre of blessing to all nations and a house of prayer for all people. But because of the wickedness of the people the Lord declares, "I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth." What a contrast we see here between His will and His way!
The threat is the second half of a condition, and the condition is where the mercy sits. The same passage names what shuts that door:
How tireless is the patience of the Lord! He promises to relent of the evil He could not help but threaten, if only they would listen and turn from their evil doings. But if they kept on rejecting the prophets He had sent — "rising up early and sending them," as He says — let them prepare for the worst. No mercy would turn aside His profaning of the sanctuary that their sins had already profaned. It is an awful state of delusion when men presume on God's favour to His people, despite their indifference to His will and glory. They claim God must be faithful at the expense of His character.
A ruined house of God drags His own name down with it. That has always seemed strange, and one writer gives the reason:
How strange it must often have seemed to many souls, that God can let His own people dishonour His name. They ought to be testifying for Him. And yet so it is. God would rather give up His own glory for the present, and hand His strength over into captivity, in the words of Psalm 78:61, than let His children go unrebuked and come to harm. He loves their profit more than His own present glory, though in the end everything will be for His glory.
Our standing is simply and entirely that of faith. We have no other. The moment we begin to think we have a standing-place apart from faith, we forget the basic principles of our calling. However free we may be, by grace, from the present condemnation of such a truth, the lesson will be of little value to us if we pin it on others and fail to apply it to ourselves.
- Shiloh — God put His name there, then left it. The ruin was already history, so no one could call the threat unthinkable.
- Form — God will not prop up a beautiful picture of His truth. Not when the people using it have become the worst evil in His sight.
- Reversal — the house meant to bless all nations becomes a curse to all nations. Misused privilege does not stay neutral. It turns.
- Presumption — claim God's faithfulness while ignoring His will, and that faithfulness becomes the ground of ruin, not safety.
- Mercy — the threat still hangs on an "if." God warns so that He will not have to strike. He loves His people's good more than His own present glory.
And the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of Jehovah.
Jeremiah stands in the temple courtyard and gives God's message to a full house. Priests, prophets and ordinary worshippers all hear him. Verse 7 is the quiet hinge of the chapter. Everyone heard — and what happened next shows that hearing God's word is not the same as receiving it.
This was not Jeremiah's first public assignment. Each new task pushed him further into the open:
In chapter 2:1-2 he must "Go and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem." In chapter 7:1-2 the test gets harder, since he must "Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord!" Then, in the early years of Jehoiakim's reign, after nineteen years of ministry, God calls him to "Stand in the court of the Lord's house, and speak to all the cities of Judah... all the words that I command you to speak to them." He must not leave out a single word.
So the crowd heard the whole message, with nothing trimmed. The same rule holds for anyone who carries God's word:
It is unworthy of a servant to cut down the Master's message. Let him also take care not to add to His words, or to the tone in which they should be spoken. Much depends on this, especially when dealing with others.
The message ended with a threat against the temple itself. God's patience had been long, and the people had misread it:
How tireless the Lord's patience is! He promises to turn back from the disaster He had to threaten — if only they would listen and turn from their evil ways. But if they kept on rejecting the prophets He had sent — He says He was "rising up early and sending them" — let them prepare for the worst... Men fall into a terrible delusion when they count on God's favour to His people while caring nothing for His will and His glory. They claim God must stay faithful to them, even at the cost of His own character.
Verse 7 says they heard. The very next verse says they seized him. The step from one to the other is short when the conscience is already uneasy:
In this state a bad conscience makes men relentless. They have no faith in God's warnings, any more than in His promises, so their one desire is to stamp out the testimony that stings them.
In their own eyes the anger was religious, not personal:
They were indignant that the prophet should pronounce ruin upon the holy temple of Jehovah. To them his warnings of judgment sounded like an attack on Jehovah's blessing on the nation, and on His choice of Israel as His people. Did not his words prove that Jeremiah had less confidence and less faith in Jehovah than they?
Notice the order in the verse: priests first, prophets next, the crowd last. The men closest to holy things led the attack — and God found help elsewhere:
The priests, prophets and people seized the prophet because of his word, and tried to have him put to death, bringing him before the princes... We learn here that when the priests and those who claimed to be nearest to God (and who should therefore know His mind best) became the greatest enemies of the truth, the Lord used others to rescue His servant. Sometimes He uses the most unlikely people, as He used the princes here. This teaches those who serve Him to trust in the Lord at all times.
The message they heard was not a sentence already passed. It carried a condition:
Jeremiah's prophecies are more conditional than any other, except only Jonah's. In fact they state the condition even more plainly than Jonah's did. Jonah did not put forward a condition: "If you repent, God will spare Nineveh." But Jeremiah does state the condition: "If you repent, the Lord will turn back from what He means to do."
- Full message. God told Jeremiah to hold nothing back. Cutting the Master's message down to size is beneath the servant who carries it.
- Full hearing. Priests, prophets and people all heard. No one in that temple court could later plead ignorance.
- Full offence. The word struck at their confidence in the temple. Men who count on God's favour while ignoring His will hear a warning as an attack.
- Full hostility. A guilty conscience does not argue with the testimony. It tries to silence it — and those closest to holy things led the way.
- Full mercy. Even so, the threat carried a condition: turn back, and God Himself will turn from the judgment He announced.
And it came to pass when Jeremiah had ended speaking all that Jehovah had commanded [him] to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, Thou shalt certainly die.
Jeremiah has just finished a short, sharp sermon in the temple courtyard, and the crowd turns on him at once. His attackers are not foreign invaders but the priests, the prophets and the worshippers in God's own house.
This scene belongs to a new reign. One writer sets the timing:
Years have gone by; Josiah is dead; the brief reign of Jehoahaz has come to an end. Jehoiakim has just taken the throne. Once more Jeremiah prophesies "in the court of the Lord's house." When they hear him, the priests, the prophets, and all the people seize him and say, "You will surely die" (v.8).
The arrest follows a message that was still an offer of mercy, not a closed verdict:
Jeremiah 26 begins this series of details with a prophecy from the start of Jehoiakim's reign. God warns the people, who are already in sin, that if they repent they will escape. We have seen this note again and again in the prophecies of Jeremiah, as though God said, "Today, if you will hear My voice." Circumstances made this appeal urgent, for if Israel did not repent, the house of the Lord was to be like Shiloh.
The arrest came only after Jeremiah had spoken "all that the LORD had commanded him." That one word — all — points back to his orders. He was to hold nothing back. One commentator draws out what this asks of anyone carrying a message for God:
It is unworthy of a servant to cut down the Master's message. But he must also take care not to add to His words, or to the tone in which he delivers them. Much depends on this, especially when dealing with others.
He obeyed to the last word. The cost came at the end of the sermon, not the beginning.
The verse names them in order: priests, prophets, then all the people. That order matters.
As usual, it was the religious element that was most wounded by the word of God and most hostile to His servant. The priests and the prophets decided on his death, with all the people easily stirred up and misled — and this in the Lord's house.
The crowd is carried along. It does not act on its own judgment.
In their eyes, Jeremiah had not just predicted disaster. He had insulted their God. Their outrage had a religious logic to it:
They were indignant that the prophet should pronounce ruin upon the holy temple of the Lord. To them, his warnings of judgment sounded like an attack on the Lord's blessing upon the nation, and on His choice of Israel as His people. Did not his words prove that Jeremiah had less confidence and less faith in the Lord than they?
That confidence was a trap. It turned God's faithfulness into a shelter for sin:
It is a terrible delusion when men presume on God's favour to His people, despite their own indifference to His will and glory. They insist God must be faithful even at the cost of His character. So they let off the very people Satan has turned into God's worst enemies — and they do it under cover of His name, His law, and His land.
The threat in verse 8 was never carried out. God had promised Jeremiah that his enemies would not win, and the rest of the chapter shows it:
They strive against him; but, as the Lord had promised, they gain no advantage over him. We see that it is the ecclesiastical party that excites the people against the testimony which God bears to them by the mouth of the prophet. But God turns the heart of the princes and of the people towards him.
One writer sees the same pattern long after Jeremiah's day:
Then he was arrested for his faithfulness and threatened with death, "You shall surely die." The priests and the prophets were his accusers before the princes. How often this has been repeated in the history of God's true witnesses!
- Mercy first. The sermon that got Jeremiah arrested was an offer of escape. If the people repented, the judgment would not fall.
- All of it. They seized him only after he had spoken every word he was given. A servant who trims the Master's message is unworthy of the errand.
- Religion first to strike. God's word wounded the religious leaders most, and they led the call for his death. The crowd followed, easily stirred.
- Presumption, not faith. They mistook confidence in the temple for loyalty to God. They used His faithfulness as cover for lives that ignored His will.
- Preserved, not silenced. They fought him and gained nothing. God turned the hearts of the princes toward the man they had condemned.
Why hast thou prophesied in the name of Jehovah, saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant? And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of Jehovah.
Jeremiah had just finished delivering God's word in the temple court, and the crowd answered by seizing him and calling for his death. Their charge was the sentence about Shiloh — so why did that one threat drive worshippers to murder?
The crowd threw the name Shiloh back at Jeremiah. The place behind that name had a history they all knew.
Shiloh was a place within the territory of Ephraim, where the tabernacle stood at the close of Joshua's life. Eli was priest there, and there Samuel began his ministry. God had put His name there, but because of the wickedness of the Israelites He abandoned the tabernacle at Shiloh, and afterwards the place was held up as a sign of desolation.
Jeremiah's hearers assumed the temple kept them safe. One writer names that assumption as the disease behind the riot.
No mercy would turn aside His profaning of His sanctuary, which their sins had already profaned. The temple He would make like Shiloh, and the city a curse before all nations. It is an awful state of infatuation when men presume on God's favour to His people, despite their indifference to His will and glory. They claim the necessary faithfulness of God at the expense of His character.
Verse 9 is not an argument. It is a demand that the speaking stop. One commentator traces that demand to the state of the men who made it.
In this state a bad conscience makes men implacable. They have no faith in God's threats, any more than in His promises. So their one desire is to put out the testimony that galls them.
The mob thought it was defending God. In their minds Jeremiah was the one with the small view of Him.
They were indignant that the prophet should pronounce ruin on the holy temple of Jehovah. It seemed to them as if his warnings of judgment were an attack on Jehovah's blessing upon the nation and on His choice of Israel to be His people. Did not his words prove that Jeremiah had less confidence and less faith in Jehovah than they had?
Verse 9 ends with the whole crowd around Jeremiah; older translations read that they gathered against him. But not everyone in Jerusalem shared their verdict.
The princes of Judah showed more conscience than the people or the priests or the prophets. The priests influenced the people, as is usually the case. The princes were men of more independent mind, and less swayed by the feelings of the masses. The weight and seriousness of the prophet's warnings impressed them to some extent.
The threat they found intolerable had never been final. Jeremiah's reply to them held out a way back, and one writer notes how rare that is among the prophets.
"Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the LORD your God" — and the Lord will relent of the disaster He has pronounced against you. Jeremiah's prophecies are more conditional than any other, except only Jonah's. In fact they are stated even more conditionally than Jonah's own. Jonah did not put the condition into words: "If you repent, God will spare Nineveh." But Jeremiah does state the condition: "If you repent, Jehovah will repent of what He means to do."
This arrest was not a one-off. Another commentator looks past Jeremiah to what came after him.
Then he was arrested for his faithfulness and threatened with death: "You shall surely die." The priests and the prophets were his accusers before the princes. How often this has been repeated in the history of God's true witnesses!
- Shiloh warned. God had once put His name on Shiloh, then left it in ruins. That empty site proved a holy place is no charm.
- Presumption deafened. The worshippers claimed God's faithfulness while ignoring His will. They traded on His character instead of answering to it.
- Conscience hardened. They had no faith in His promises, and none in His threats. So they set out to silence the voice that disturbed them.
- Zeal misfired. They called Jeremiah the man of small faith. They were sure that defending the building was defending God.
- Mercy remained. The sentence they tried to kill him for came with a condition: turn, and the Lord will turn from the disaster.