Jeremiah 2:4-13

When it comes to expounding prophetic speeches, preachers face a major hurdle, which is that these speeches seem repetitive. Reading again and again about Israel’s idolatry becomes tiresome, and the temptation is to omit the prophets from the preaching schedule, convinced that the congregation knows that basic point and has nothing new to learn. Familiarity with the general theme renders the prophets stale.

The only way to make these texts live again with power is to attend closely to their language and their art. Doing so will allow the preacher to see what is distinctive about each passage. A given prophetic speech may contain a generic message about Israel’s sin, but its persuasive power dwells not only in its message but also in its rhetoric—in the way it communicates.

One way to appreciate the art of speeches such as Jeremiah 2:1-13 is to remember that they were first delivered orally and publicly:

Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord…. (2:2).

As a result, the prophets’ speech had to be capable of holding an audience’s attention in the grip of its words. To achieve that effect, they made their language concrete and filled with the metaphors of daily life:

I remember your love … as a bride (2:2).

Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest (2:3).

My people have … forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water (2:13).

The world of everyday existence revolves around concrete realities: brides, harvests, water. These mundane realities become, in the hands of the prophets, metaphors revealing truths about Israel and about God’s relation to Israel.

Jeremiah 2 also makes effective use of simple distinctions that invite hearers and readers to meditate on the contrast between what should be and what is. One of these is the difference between Israel’ original devotion and its later apostasy: In verses 2-3, God remembers:

I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord.

However, in Israel’s subsequent history leading to the present,

Your ancestors … went far from me and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves? (2:5).

Another distinction is between the good that God has done and the evil that Israel has done:

I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination (2:7).

Yet another distinction is between expectation and reality:

Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit (2:11).

Jeremiah 2 also uses rhetorical questions:

What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me? (2:4)

Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? (2:11)

These questions are “rhetorical” because they drive the hearer and reader to see the absurdity of the situation. “What wrong did your ancestor find in me?” appears to invite a response that lists wrongs. In fact, however, Israel knows that God has done no wrong. “Has a nation changed its gods?” seems to call for a consideration of religious history to see whether such a thing has happened, but really the question’s force lies in what it implies: it is absurd to think that a nation could swap one god for another, and yet this is exactly that Israel has done. Even if one traveled as far as Cyprus and Kedar (astonishingly long distances for ancient Israelites), one would not witness this exchange of gods. Israel has thus done the unthinkable.

Another aspect of the rhetoric of Jeremiah 2 is its use of the accusation or lawsuit:

Therefore once more I accuse you, says the Lord, and I accuse your children’s children (2:9).

This speech-form, thought by some to be situated in legal proceedings, is found also in Isaiah 1:2-4; Micah 6:1-2; and Hosea 4:1. The basic constituents are 1) the basis for God’s indictment of Israel:

What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me and went after worthless things? (2:4)

When you entered you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination (2:7).

The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?” (2:8)

2) the accusation (2:9) and 3) the witnesses. Just as in Isaiah 1 God calls on heaven and earth as witnesses and in Micah 6 summons mountains and hills, so in Jeremiah 2:

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked; be utterly desolate, says the Lord (2:12).

It is notable that verse 9 accuses not only Jeremiah’s contemporaries, but their children and grandchildren. This points to the generations who grew up during and immediately after the Babylonian exile, when Jeremiah’s oracles assumed written form and became a scroll. The scribes responsible for preserving and writing these oracles wanted to ensure that Jeremiah’s words were received, not merely as a historical record of the past, but also as an indictment of those exilic and post-exilic Jews who continued the ways of their parents and grandparents. In other words, the life-setting of Jeremiah 2 is not simply Jerusalem in the years just before the exile. It is also found in the life of the post-exilic community, which needed to hear Jeremiah’s message about apostasy. This reminds us that the scribes’ work of compiling, preserving, transmitting, and writing was done, not for antiquarian purposes, but to allow the prophetic word to speak to their own generations—the same purpose that preachers today have.

Another notable feature of Jeremiah 2 is its echoes of Hosea. It is Hosea that, like Jeremiah 2, regards Israel as God’s young bride. Similarly, it is in Hosea (see Hosea 2:15–16; 9:10; 11:1, 4) that Israel’s time in the wilderness is portrayed positively, as a sort of honeymoon period, contrary to the picture given in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, where the sojourn in the wilderness is a time of rebellion. Hosea’s positive assessment finds resonance in Jeremiah 2:

I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness (2:2).

These contrasting views of the wilderness journey remind us that the Bible has a flexible attitude toward its own traditions. The Bible’s self-interpretation, here and elsewhere, can surprise us in its ability to see the same thing from contrasting perspectives.

As is common in the prophets, Israel’s leader are, in Jeremiah 2, objects of special censure:

The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?” Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal (2:8).

To a very great extent, the prophets lay the blame for Israel’s sin at the feet of its leaders. The book of Jeremiah is especially concerned with the prophets of his day, because most of them were encouraging the king to adopt geo-political policies that, in the end, proved disastrous. True and false prophecy is thus one of the book’s overriding themes.

To sum up: As a denunciation of Israel’s sin, Jeremiah 2 is a familiar passage. Unfortunately, the Bible is not exempt from the truth that familiarity breeds contempt. The task of the preacher today is to make these words live for readers and hearers today. That task requires close attention to the rhetorical ploys used in the text. The preacher must learn to look past the text’s generic message and to be immersed in its small details that rendered it memorable and powerful for its first hearers and readers.