Jeremiah (1-31) 2:23 Commentary and Bible Study

Jeremiah then emphasises how undeniable is Israel’s sin, how determined they are to sin, and how impossible it is to restrain them from sin. For its part Israel keeps up a steady refusal to accept God’s charges against it. It meets those charges with wide-eyed bewilderment that such things could be said. ‘I am not polluted, I have not gone after Baalim’; how can you accuse me of such things? Human beings in the state of sin have an amazing capacity to deny what is self-evident. In their efforts to conceal their guilt from themselves and from the Lord, they will tell themselves what they know not to be true, and they will do it so many times that they convince even themselves. But God is not going to back down in his condemnation of human sin. The Lord through Jeremiah draws attention to the evidence, which even rebellious Israel will be forced to admit. On the Day of Judgment, conscience will be reinforced by the testimony of God against us, so that we are unable to deny any longer what we have done. For Israel that judgment has come forward in time and now God’s charges are brought against them. ‘See thy way in the valley’, which Gill says refers either to the place where idols were setup (Isaiah 57:5-6), or to their pathway to the hills where they worshipped their gods. At any rate, Israel knew what Jeremiah was referring to. When God charges us with our sins, our consciences which we have managed to suppress successfully for a time will suddenly awaken and turn on us with full force. The prophet compares Israel to a dromedary (female camel), or to a wild ass which is accustomed to roaming freely without restraint. These are pictured as being on heat and looking for a mate. The impulse is so strong that there is no resisting the animal. It impels her to break out of any enclosure and find her way to a male with which to mate. As far as the male is concerned, it will have no difficulty in locating this female, for she will come to him and seek him out. So are the children of Israel in their determination to seek out their idols; nothing could restrain them. Their prophets had warned them and rebuked them countless times, but their just pushed them aside and continued on their way. It hardly took any effort on the part of the false prophets and the false priests of the idols to secure new adherents to their religion. Isarel came to them willingly, eagerly, unrestrainedly, and the idol worshippers hardly needed to do any work to lure them away from the true God.’‘Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go.’ This verse contains an exhortation from the Lord, followed by a refusal to pay any attention to the exhortation. The foot being unshod, or bare, may, as Gill suggest, be a euphemism for Israel’s adulterous action in which the shoe was put off in order to lie on a bed an prostitute herself to her lovers. This would then be another image of her idolatry, as is also the figure of withholding their thirst, that is, for false worship. But Israel’s answer is defiant. There is no possibility of my turning back from the course I have chosen. I will go on in the course and nothing you say is going to stop me. So great is her stubborn refusal to be corrected.