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12. Jeremiah's Complaint

¹ You are always righteous, LORD,
   when I bring a case before you.
Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
   Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
   Why do all the faithless live at ease?
² You have planted them, and they have taken root;
   they grow and bear fruit.
You are always on their lips
   but far from their hearts.
³ Yet you know me, LORD;
   you see me and test my thoughts about you.
Drag them off like sheep to be butchered!
   Set them apart for the day of slaughter!
⁴ How long will the land lie parched
   and the grass in every field be withered?
Because those who live in it are wicked,
   the animals and birds have perished.
Moreover, the people are saying,
   “He will not see what happens to us.”

God’s Answer

    ⁵ “If you have raced with men on foot
   and they have worn you out,
   how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble Or you feel secure only in safe country,
   how will you manage in the thickets by Or the flooding of the Jordan?
⁶ Your relatives, members of your own family—
   even they have betrayed you;
   they have raised a loud cry against you.
Do not trust them,
   though they speak well of you.

    ⁷ “I will forsake my house,
   abandon my inheritance;
I will give the one I love
   into the hands of her enemies.
⁸ My inheritance has become to me
   like a lion in the forest.
She roars at me;
   therefore I hate her.
⁹ Has not my inheritance become to me
   like a speckled bird of prey
   that other birds of prey surround and attack?
Go and gather all the wild beasts;
   bring them to devour.
¹⁰ Many shepherds will ruin my vineyard
   and trample down my field;
they will turn my pleasant field
   into a desolate wasteland.
¹¹ It will be made a wasteland,
   parched and desolate before me;
the whole land will be laid waste
   because there is no one who cares.
¹² Over all the barren heights in the desert
   destroyers will swarm,
for the sword of the LORD will devour
   from one end of the land to the other;
   no one will be safe.
¹³ They will sow wheat but reap thorns;
   they will wear themselves out but gain nothing.
They will bear the shame of their harvest
   because of the LORD’s fierce anger.”

¹⁴ This is what the LORD says: “As for all my wicked neighbors who seize the inheritance I gave my people Israel, I will uproot them from their lands and I will uproot the people of Judah from among them. ¹⁵ But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to their own inheritance and their own country. ¹⁶ And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, ‘As surely as the LORD lives’—even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal—then they will be established among my people. ¹⁷ But if any nation does not listen, I will completely uproot and destroy it,” declares the LORD.

He explains by another comparison what we have just observed; he calls those pastors or shepherds whom he had before compared to wild beasts; for by saying, “Come ye, all the wild beasts of the wood,” he doubtless meant the same as those of whom he now speaks; and yet he calls them pastors. But he touched the Jews to the quick, for they could not bear him to discharge the office of a pastor towards them. God ought to have been the pastor of his chosen people; but they were wild beasts. “Forsaken them have I,” he says, “for they were wholly unworthy. What now then? Other pastors shall come, but those of a very different character, being fiercer and more cruel than wolves or any savage wild beasts.” Though then the Prophet blends various comparisons, we yet see that he handles the same subject; we also see why he thus changes his expressions, for there is a meaning in every word he uses. It is indeed certain that those also are called pastors who would come as leaders or chiefs from Assyria and Chaldea; but there is no doubt here an implied antithesis, such as I have referred to, as though he had said, “I have hitherto been a shepherd to you, and was wining to continue to be so perpetually; but as ye can no longer bear me, other shepherds shall come, who will treat you according to their own will and disposition.”