Jeremiah has already shown himself to be, as he is called, the weeping prophet. In this little book helps us to understand not only how Jeremiah felt, but how God mourned also. This book has been a comfort to many who mourn. Light breaks through in the middle, in chapter 3, with words that are used in one of our greatest hymns. The book ends with poignant questions to God.
A warning for our time is here in chapter 2:
14 Your prophets have said
so many foolish things, false to the core.
They did not save you from exile
by pointing out your sins.
Instead, they painted false pictures,
filling you with false hope.
A favorite to introduce today’s proverbs:
12 Thieves are jealous of each other’s loot,
but the godly are well rooted and bear their own fruit.
This chapter has four instances of ‘joined in unity’ with Christ. Note that Paul calls the Ephesians ‘holy people/saints’, but they were humans like us. In Indonesian, we found that it was better to translate, ‘people made holy by God’, as the readers could call themselves that, but didn't feel that they were up to being called ‘holy people’.
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