Jeremiah (1-31) 7:17 Commentary and Bible Study

Then the reasoning switches, and here is a new theme. ‘Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?’ What is this seam of reasoning? Do you not know, he seems to be saying, that it's not just you – a man or a woman: how you live in rebellion against God. You are also going to be made responsible for all the people you influence, and infect with your godless religion, with your uncommitted, unrepentant, undedicated way of conducting your religious beliefs. ‘The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough.’ The whole family is scurrying about, frantically preparing the sacrifices to the pagan gods. They are all busy; the whole family is enthusiastic and committed and involved in this activity. You are insulting God, but you are also inciting others to do the same, and bringing your whole family under the same condemnation. ‘The women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.’ They have got to the point where they don't make their idolatrous worship preparations in a quiet place out of sight. They make their preparations and prepare their kindling wood and everything else in the streets of the city. It is blatant. They don't mind who knows. They are going to traipse out of town with their carts and their accoutrements, and they are going to worship their idols on the hills surrounding the city. They just do not mind who knows.‘Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD’ – the disobedient people of Judah and Jerusalem. What a strange expression! Is that really what the people are doing: intentionally provoking God to anger? In a way they are. They are on the one hand so religious that they go into the temple and go through all the ceremonial rites, and on the other hand, their looseness in their lives and their unbelieving ways in life generally is a kind of dare to God. It is as though they want to say to their neighbours and to their own families, ‘Of course it doesn't matter; we can get away with this; I have been living this way all my life, and God has done nothing about it.’ Is that attitude not calculated to provoke God to pour out his wrath on them? There is a sort of bravado mixed up in this. You can worship God and claim that you are all right for heaven, and yet you can go your way at the same time. It is a provocation to God, because it is in effect a statement which says: ‘Almighty God, I believe that you exist, but the fruits of any walk with you, and the supposed blessings and benefits and gifts that you give, are nothing in comparison to what I can get in the here and now. The things of earth are far better and far greater than you. That is what idolatry says. An alternative to God – it is the ultimate insult.But God will not display that anger immediately, and so the answer of verse 19 is there isn’t instant judgment, but there is a form of judgment. ‘Do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?’ They have got to face the consequences, obviously. What a disordered state of affairs: the creature provoking the Creator to act, to pour out his anger! What madness to act in this way! Of course God will confuse all his opponents, all who fight against him. How could it be otherwise? How could man with his limited understanding take on his Creator and expect to succeed. Man trying to provoke God thinks he is in control of the situation. God’s ability to confuse his enemies is a mark of his infinitely superior power and strategy. They aimed at one thing, and they arrived at another. It is an outcome designed by God to show how badly they have miscalculated, as all do who oppose the Lord. Do they not embarrass themselves? They trust in those gods, and how embarrassed they are going to be when the invasion comes, because the gods, the pagan gods they have trusted in, will have proved to be no defence, no protection. What an embarrassment! What a humiliation, when they have told their families that these would be the means of their deliverance! Then there is the terrible 20th verse: that the end will come for them and it will be completely final, and there will be no more blessing for them at all. ‘Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.’