August 31, 2020: Day 9 – Jeremiah 9

We find another chapter where Jeremiah prophecies what is to come for the people of Israel.  The beginning is interesting because the speaker states that he wishes that his head were a spring of water.  This would allow him to weep day and night.  How nice it would be to have provided for us the means by which we could express our emotions in a very public way.  What we find described can be a public mourning for events that were cataclysmic to the nation.

It seems as if in vs.4 we have a Soviet era warning which is: “Beware of your neighbors.”  During the time of the Soviet Union people were not able to trust anyone, not their neighbors nor their kin because it would not take much for them to report each other if they suddenly became unhappy with each other for any reason.  Here we find the author saying that society is so corrupt that no one is willing to follow God.  No one.  As a result we find in vs.7: “I will refine and test them.”  

Throughout this entire chapter there is a warning for all those who put trust in their own wisdom, in their own might, in their own wealth, that if they boast, they should boast in the Lord.  God will always act with steadfast love, justice and righteousness.  Those are not the standards that we use to define our actions.