Jeremiah 5: No Way Out

Twice in this chapter the Lord speaks through Jeremiah and asks, "Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord; and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?" (vs. 9 and 29)  It seems that there is no way out, either for the people to be punished or for God to act in judgment.

At first, God instructs Jeremiah to act something like Diogenes and go out in search of an honest person in the city.  "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note!  Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks the truth - so that I may pardon Jerusalem" (vs. 1).  Like Diogenes, who would come several centuries after Jeremiah, however, his search is fruitless.  (This challenge to find a righteous person in order to save the city from destruction is also similar to Abraham's plea for mercy for Sodom in Genesis 18.)

What the prophet finds instead of those who act justly and seek the truth are people who resist correction and "have made their faces harder than rock" and "refuse to turn back" (vs. 3).  Jeremiah reasons that these are only the poor he has encountered and that he will have success among the rich (vs. 4-5).  He found no better results there, however.

In passages like these, we get the sense that the Lord is a very reluctant punisher.  He comes across as actually wanting to find a way to pardon and forgive the people, but there is no way out.  God's hands are tied.  (This mental image would undoubtedly come as quite a shock to any Calvinists among us!)  The Lord asks plaintively: "How can I pardon you?  Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no gods.  When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of prostitutes" (vs. 7).  It is then where we get the Lord's first set of rhetorical questions about the impossibility of not bringing punishment upon the nation in verse 9, only to be repeated in verse 29.

In spite of His fierce wrath for their sins which are listed throughout this chapter, God still desires to make the punishment fit the crime.  He mercifully leaves room for the idea of limited suffering and for the return of a remnant from exile.  "But even in those days, says the Lord, I will not make a full end of you.  And when your people say, 'Why has the Lord done all these things to us?' you shall say to them, 'As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours'" (vs. 18-19).  There may be no way out, but there is still a glimmer of hope even in the midst of the nation's darkness.