We recall that Anathoth was Jeremiah’s home town (Jeremiah 1:1), and so it is sad to recognize that it was the people he grew up with who had formed a conspiracy to kill him (11:21). They had said “You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand” (11:21). And “Let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered” (11:19).

This prompted Jeremiah to raise a complaint: “You will be in the right, O Lord, when I lay charges against you; but let me put my case to you. Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Jeremiah 12:1). The verse gives us a window into the complexity of Jeremiah’s theology. He recognized well that God’s perspective on things must be deeper than his own: it can only be that God’s decisions are just. At the same time, it often doesn’t look that way, and Jeremiah had the confidence that he could ask God hard questions without putting his piety or his relationship with the Lord at risk (12:3). The conventional wisdom (expressed so clearly by Job’s friends) insists that it will always be the case that the guilty suffer and the righteous prosper. But Jeremiah recognized that this simply isn’t true; often the guilty do just fine. Why is that?

God’s reply to Jeremiah began with a question instead of an answer: “If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?” (12:5). It’s a difficult response. At first it seems irrelevant: who asked anything about horses? But the metaphor means that the race you are running is about to get a lot tougher; the anxiety you have experienced so far is mild compared to what is going to happen.

The shepherds of Israel have made the land desolate (12:10); exile is coming because people trust in lies instead of in God (13:24); “no one shall be safe” (12:12). And when people ask, “Why have these things come upon me?” it will be for the greatness of their iniquity (13:22). So God has a two-fold answer to the case Jeremiah has offered: first, that God has shown mercy in that our many sins have not been immediately punished every time, giving us time to repent (12:16, 13:15-17); and second, there does indeed come a point where God’s forbearance comes to an end (13:25-27).

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We see the sins of others against ourselves – sometimes inadvertent, often deliberate – with great clarity, O Lord, and we wonder why you are so slow to punish them like they deserve: and we are so cavalier about our own sins against you. Teach us to repent, O God: to turn our hearts to you, in renewed devotion!

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