Jeremiah (1-31) 14:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Jeremiah prays on behalf of Judah, and he begins the prayer with an admission that what he is about to ask, his people have no right to request. He starts with an admission of Judah’s sin, sin which is extensive and prolonged – ‘our backslidings are many.’ This means that when he goes ahead and pleads, in spite of this, he is pleading for pure grace and mercy from the Lord. He knows that have taxed God’s patience to the limit. He does not know precisely where the limit lies, and at what point God will not longer listen to them. Certainly there comes a point at death when every unbeliever is beyond the reach of mercy. Their removal from the world is the signal that, in their particular case, God’s patience is exhausted. He will no longer hear them or deal with their souls. Judah’s only hope lay in this: that God’s ear would still be open to their cries, and that their appeals to his mercy would not be utterly rejected. The nation is about to come under discipline, but they do not know at this stage whether recovery from that discipline is possible. It is for the Lord alone to decide. In fact, it would not be until AD 70 that the nation would finally be cast off, and the national covenant would be ended. After that God would indeed save his elect among the children of Israel, but the nation as a whole would fall, and unbelieving Jews would never be dealt with again in the same way. That does not mean that the nation would cease to exist, or that it would play no part in prophecy, but it not any more receive the Lord’s protection under the national covenant.‘O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a stranger in the land’? It is an argument with the Lord. Jeremiah gives the Lord this title, ‘the hope of Israel’ – see also Jeremiah 17:13 – which acknowledges that Israel has no other helper, and that the help of idols or of other surrounding nations is futile. It is an admission of weakness and utter dependence on the Lord. He alone is their saviour, and they look in vain to any other saviour. Only he has the power to save them; only he has the affection for the nation that would make him want to save them. If God is this to them, then why should be ‘as a stranger in the land’, as one who is among them but does not act in their defence? Why should he? Well, the reasons are obvious: they have been backsliding for so long, and so flagrantly, so conspicuously. Yes, but Jeremiah pleads on the basis of grace alone, and therefore sets the nation’s sins out of the reckoning. ‘And as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night?’ – as one that is only passing through the land and does not live there, or feel any obligation to help the land, or maintain the house.‘Why shouldest thou be as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save?’ Switching the illustration, he uses another argument. Let not the Lord be like a man who suddenly faces a challenge that he cannot cope with and did not anticipate, whose strength has met its match. Jeremiah is certain that the Lord is nothing like such a man, and that if he wills, he can save his people in a moment. But he is choosing to act as one who either does not want to get involved, or who lacks the power to help. Jeremiah refuses to believe either of these options. His faith has to go on overcoming these obstacles as he approaches the Lord. ‘O LORD, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name; leave us not.’ He reasons with the Lord in prayer as one might reason with a reluctant deliverer.