Jeremiah (1-31) 22:20 Commentary and Bible Study

The command to go and cry has a feminine form, and should is therefore addressed to Jerusalem. ‘Go up to Lebanon, and cry; and lift up thy voice in Bashan, and cry from the passages’, or if rendered as a proper name, ‘from Abiram’. Lebanon in the north and Bashan to the east of Jordan, as well as Abiram – a mountain range on the border of Moab from where Moses viewed the promised land (Deuteronomy 32:49) – were all higher ground from where Jerusalem could call to help from their former friends when threatened by the Babylonian invasion. But the command is ironical, and intended to point out the absence of any friends who could save them. Judah had looked to Assyria (2 Kings 16:7) and to Egypt (Isaiah 30:1-3) for help, but that help dried up and Egypt fearing Babylon stayed at home (2 Kings 24:7).‘I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear.’ From the time when Israel had been delivered from Egypt – the time of her youth – God had sent his prophets to teach them and to command obedience, but they had refused to listen. They had habitually shut their ears because they immediately saw that to follow God meant losing the world. The reason is given: they had no sense of need – they regarded themselves as prosperous without the help of God, and therefore they paid no attention to his message. ‘The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity.’ Literally, ‘the wind shall shepherd all your shepherds’. The Babylonians are represented as a wind (Jeremiah 18:17) which will round up all these former allies of Judah, and carry them away. Nebuchadnezzar’s forces struck many other nations in the region, so that no one was available to help Judah and Jerusalem. These other nations had been her metaphorical lovers, as she had turned to them for help and worshipped their idols. ‘O inhabitant of Lebanon,’ – Judah is called by the name of this beautiful region which formed part of Israel’s land – ‘that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail!’ The nation has been self-satisfied and self-confident. How secure we can seem to be, to ourselves and to others! But when God judges, there is no defence against his armies. Those who boast that they have no need of the gospel, and they have everything they need, and they are certainly not going to waste time calling upon God for help or for salvation; these are the ones who are represented as gracious in their own eyes. All that will disappear as a morning mist, and they will be caught up in the reality of God’s punishment. It will be as if the birth pangs have come from which they cannot escape.