No Relent

Jeremiah 15

Jeremiah 15:1–9 ESV

Then the Lord said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! And when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “ ‘Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence, and those who are for the sword, to the sword; those who are for famine, to famine, and those who are for captivity, to captivity.’ I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem. “Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will grieve for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare? You have rejected me, declares the Lord; you keep going backward, so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you— I am weary of relenting. I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land; I have bereaved them; I have destroyed my people; they did not turn from their ways. I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the seas; I have brought against the mothers of young men a destroyer at noonday; I have made anguish and terror fall upon them suddenly. She who bore seven has grown feeble; she has fainted away; her sun went down while it was yet day; she has been shamed and disgraced. And the rest of them I will give to the sword before their enemies, declares the Lord.”

There is many ways that you could describe this passage but the main one that comes to my mind is intense. It starts out by saying that even Moses and Samuel couldn’t change what is going to happen. This is significant because it is likely that Jeremiah would have wished one of them would have been there in this situation but God is saying that even that would not help.

God says that there will be 4 types of destruction that they will suffer; pestilence, sword, famine, and captivity. This is all because of the wrongdoing that the people of Judah have done, they have turned away from Yahweh and now they will pay for it and there is nothing that can make the Lord relent.

God’s righteous justice and wrath are in perfect sync with his love and salvation. Without then salvation amounts to nothing. Know this, the people that are being talked to here in this passage turned away from God and are going to receive their punishment. If we turn from God the same thing will happen to us some day. But thanks be to God for Jesus that we have a way for forgiveness. So many will not accept it though and what awaits them is far worse than anything that this passage mentioned.