Chapter 17—Jeremiah Reproves Israel
The Lord gave Jeremiah a message of reproof to bear to his people,
charging them with the continual rejection of God’s counsel: “I have
spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto
Me. I have sent also unto you all My servants the prophets, rising up
early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his
evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve
them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to
your fathers.”
God pleaded with them not to provoke Him to anger with the work
of their hands and their hearts, “but they hearkened not.” Jeremiah
then predicted the captivity of the Jews as their punishment for not
heeding the word of the Lord. The Chaldeans were to be used as
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the instrument by which God would chastise His disobedient people.
Their punishment was to be in proportion to their intelligence and to
the warnings they had despised. God had long delayed His judgments
because of His unwillingness to humiliate His chosen people, but now
He would visit His displeasure upon them as a last effort to check them
in their evil course.
In these days He has instituted no new plan to preserve the purity
of His people. As of old, He entreats the erring ones who profess His
name to repent and turn from their evil ways. Now, as then, by the
mouth of His chosen servants He predicts the dangers before them.
He sounds the note of warning and reproves sin just as faithfully as
in the days of Jeremiah. But the Israel of our time have the same
temptations to scorn reproof and hate counsel as had ancient Israel.
They too often turn a deaf ear to the words that God has given His
servants for the benefit of those who profess the truth. Though the
Lord in mercy withholds for a time the retribution of their sin, as in
the days of Jeremiah, He will not always stay His hand, but will visit
iniquity with righteous judgment.
The Lord commanded Jeremiah to stand in the court of the Lord’s
house and speak unto all the people of Judah who came there to
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