For go now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it, for the wickedness of my people Israel.
God sends Jeremiah to people who felt safe because His temple stood in their city. His answer to them is a journey: go to Shiloh, look at the ruins of the first place He put His name, and ask why they are ruins.
Shiloh was where the tabernacle — God's tent among Israel — stood after they entered the land. One writer draws out what that nearness demanded, and what the ruins now say.
His Name demanded holiness in them and obedience from them. It demanded practical godliness, and a national life He could smile upon. How Israel's history comments on Israel's disobedience! The ruins of Shiloh show Jehovah's unchanging holiness. Their desolation is a powerful witness to God's displeasure when people depart from Him. Yet the ark stayed there for more than three hundred and fifty years. Every one of those years declares the Lord's great patience with His rebellious people!
The wickedness the verse names was not only among the people. It reached the priests who served at that very spot.
Shiloh was the place where God had put His name; but what was the end of it? A witness of judgment to all generations… Under the priesthood there was complete corruption, even in the priests. We see it in 1 Samuel 2, and in the moving scene of chapter 3, which marked Ichabod on the people of God.
("Ichabod" means "the glory has departed" — the name given when enemies captured the ark.)
Judah assumed the temple tied God's hands: He had chosen it, so He must defend it. Shiloh answers that.
Shiloh was the place where the tabernacle first stood in the land. What was Shiloh now? God had profaned it: and God would do the very same thing where the ark was now placed, where the sanctuary was in Jerusalem. 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 of the priests was the most offensive evil under the sun. The greater the truth, the blessing, or at least the privileges, He had granted to the Jewish people and their priests, the greater the wickedness of their insults to His holiness in His own temple.
The same writer notes the reversal this produced: the building they leaned on became the target the invader wanted most.
The temple was not their strong fortress against the judgments of the king of Babylon. Far from it: the temple would be the main point on which all these judgments would converge. And if the king of Babylon destroyed the city of Jerusalem as a whole, the sanctuary would suffer most of all.
There is a pattern here. It explains why the chant "the temple of the Lord" rose loudest when behaviour was worst.
The most ancient relations with God serve no good purpose when man puts his trust in them. When he is far from God, he attaches himself to the old things that God set up, so as to reject what God may be giving now… God had established the altar, temple, sacrifices, feasts, and priests. But when wickedness is there, judgment must begin with His house… Those who say, "The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are these," are not the ones occupied with the Lord of the temple. The more evil the conscience is, the more it attaches itself to forms.
What fell at Shiloh fell again at Jerusalem. One writer traces the same rule into our own day.
Peter tells us, "Judgment must begin at the house of God." We see it in the symbolic history of the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. God will judge corrupt Christendom no less than He judged corrupt Judaism… When the truth is falsified and true piety is gone, what can come but judgment from God? — and all the more so if this false thing bears His holy Name.
Shiloh stood in the territory of Ephraim. But losing the sanctuary was not the end of the story.
The failure of the tribe moved the place of God's sanctuary out of the territory of Ephraim, where it had been, and it settled at last in the inheritance of Judah, at Jerusalem… Here we see the truth found everywhere in Scripture. When the first man fails, and everything entrusted to him falls into ruin, God comes in and brings in Christ, "the second Man." Under His headship, and in His hands, everything is secured beyond change.
- Name — Shiloh was where God first made His name dwell in the land. That nearness demanded holiness, obedience and real godliness.
- Ruin — The corruption reached even the priests. The place God had chosen became a witness of judgment to every generation after.
- Reality — God will not bind Himself to maintain an empty form. The greater the privilege, the greater the offence of insulting His holiness in His own house.
- Forms — The further a conscience drifts, the tighter it grips old forms. Those who chant "the temple of the Lord" are not the ones occupied with the Lord of the temple.
- Christ — Judgment begins at God's house, then and now. But the first man fails, and all he was trusted with falls into ruin. Then God brings in the second Man, and in His hands everything is secure.
And now, because ye have done all these works, saith Jehovah, and I spoke unto you, rising up early and speaking, and ye heard not, and I called you, and ye answered not;
God says this to people who felt safe because they had His temple. He answers that false security with a fact they could not deny. He had spoken to them again and again, and they never listened or answered.
The chapter builds its case on the ruin of Shiloh, where God's tent, the tabernacle, once stood. One commentator asks what its fate says about any sacred building:
Shiloh was the place where Israel first set up the tabernacle in the land (verse 12). 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 of the priests was the most offensive evil under the sun.
Where the ESV says God spoke "persistently," older translations read "rising up early." That phrase runs through the whole book. One writer counted the repetitions and read them as a window into what God felt:
One feature of this book shows the intensity of feeling that filled the Lord's heart for His people and city. Strong expressions come over and over again. In His concern for their good He speaks of "rising up early" to speak to them, time after time — eleven times at least! How this speaks of the Lord's intense love for them! No wonder He wept over Jerusalem! "They have forsaken Me!" "They have forgotten Me!" "They have turned their backs on Me!" He says again and again. This shows how He felt their treatment, and the bitter suffering they were bringing on themselves.
Zephaniah uses the same phrase, but of the people instead of God:
"I said, Surely you will fear Me, you will accept instruction; so that your dwelling would not be cut off, however I punished them. But they rose early and corrupted all their deeds." The LORD rose early to send them messages and warnings. They rose early to indulge in their wickedness.
God kept calling long after Jeremiah. One writer traces that line of renewed testimony to its end:
In His goodness, God has renewed His testimony again and again. In His patience He has sent His prophets, rising up early, as it is said, to send them until there was no remedy (see Jer. 7). Last of all, He sent His own Son. The result, as we have already said, is that all the righteous blood, from Abel to Zechariah, came upon one generation. By rejecting God's last witness, they filled up the measure of their fathers' guilt.
So much speaking, and no answer. One writer explains why the prophetic word alone could never secure a heart:
"I spoke to you," He said to His people, "rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear; and I called you, but you did not answer" (Jer. 7:13)… God never left Himself without a witness on earth. But Israel's sad history of backsliding proved one thing beyond question. To secure men for Himself, God needed something other than the prophetic word, or even the ministry of angels. God knew what was needed from the beginning… He would reveal Himself as Father. That revelation would secure a true and steadfast response in the hearts of men.
The threat falls on the building because it carries His name. The same principle reaches past Jerusalem:
Likewise the apostle Peter tells us, "Judgment must begin at the household of God" (1 Peter 4:17)… God will judge corrupt Christendom no less than He judged corrupt Judaism… When people falsify the truth and true godliness is gone, what can come but judgment from God? This is all the more true if this false thing bears His holy name.
- He spoke. God's complaint is not silence but disregard. He rose up early to speak, and the repeated phrase shows how much He cared.
- They rose too. He rose early with warnings. They rose early to corrupt their deeds — the same energy, in the opposite direction.
- No shelter. Shiloh proved God will not prop up an empty form. A building with His name on it protects no one whose life insults Him.
- No remedy. The prophets kept coming until only His Son was left to send. Patience has an end, and rejecting the last witness fills up the account.
- Still speaking. The prophetic word never won the heart. So God kept something in reserve — to reveal Himself as Father, and win the answer no warning could.
I will even do unto the house which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh;
Judah kept coming to the temple to worship while their lives were full of wickedness. God answers their confidence in the building by pointing to a ruin they could go and see.
The verse calls the temple "the house that is called by my name." That phrase runs through the whole chapter.
The house of God is what bears His holy Name, as He says, "which is called by My Name" (Jer. 7:10-11, 12, 14, 30). In Old Testament times this could be said of either the Tabernacle or the Temple, but of no other such structure then or since. Both are mentioned here (vv. 1-11, 12-14).
"In which you trust" is God's own description of what they were doing. The habit was old, passed from parents to children.
Just as their fathers had put their confidence in the ark rather than in Jehovah, so their children trusted in the temple rather than in Him whose Name the temple bore. Because of the wickedness of His people, for the honour of His holy Name, God must bring His judgment on them and on His house.
Their reasoning assumed that God would stay put no matter how they behaved in front of Him.
God stoops to reason with His people, in spite of how coarse they are. He points them to Shiloh, where the tent of meeting was first set up. How empty and foolish the notion, that God would keep His seat where His people insulted Him to His face!
God does not argue from theory. Shiloh was the first place He chose for His name, and the ruins were still there to see.
Jehovah's changeless holiness is written on the ruins of Shiloh. Its desolation is a powerful witness to God's displeasure against turning away from Himself... Yet each of the three hundred and fifty years and more that the ark remained there declares the Lord's great patience with His rebellious people! God will always keep His truth, but He has made His saints the caretakers of it; if, then, His people dishonour Him, He will scatter them, and they will lose their place of trust.
What happened there was not a local accident but a lasting lesson.
Shiloh was the place where God had put His name; but what was the end of it? A witness of judgment to all generations. Under the priesthood there was complete corruption, even among the priests.
God gave them the house, and He gave them the land. They took that long run of favour as proof that nothing could go wrong.
Their boast in an unbroken succession of national privilege was a false trust... There is nothing more certain to bring destruction on Christendom than the idea of a security that cannot fail. I do not mean security for the soul, for the believer. That assurance is quite right. We cannot hold too strongly to the eternal life of the believer. But some apply to the state of Christendom the idea that it will go on for ever, when God has warned us in His word that Christendom will fall just like the Jewish state before it. To think that way is to be caught by the tricks of the wicked one.
The same mistake did not end with Judah.
They trusted in the temple of the Lord, as if some kind of blessing were attached to the house itself and the house would shield them from disaster... Such a false trust in ordinances and outward worship is only too obvious in Christendom also. The masses of unsaved people with their religious observances think it is a protection and secures the Lord's help and blessing.
The line of judgment does not stop at Jerusalem.
Judgment fell on the house "that was in Shiloh," where the Lord made His name dwell at first (Jer. 7:12); then it came on the house at Jerusalem... And so it happened. In the same way the apostle Peter tells us, "It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God" (1 Peter 4:17)... Corrupt Christendom will be judged no less than corrupt Judaism was... When the truth is falsified and true godliness is gone, what can come but judgment from God? — and all the more so, if this false thing bears His holy Name.
- Name. The temple was holy only because God's name was on it. That name marked out two buildings in Israel's history and no others.
- Trust. The name became their excuse. One generation leaned on the ark, the next on the building. Neither leaned on God.
- Shiloh. God points to a place they could walk to. Shiloh saw over three centuries of His patience, then ruin. The rubble still shows His holiness.
- Gift. God gave them the house and the land, and He could take both back. A long run of privilege is no promise that it will last.
- Warning. The name they hid behind is the reason judgment reaches them first. God judges His own house first, not last.