Tanak Foundations-Concepts in Jeremiah-Chapter 16

Jer 16.1-21 tells us about the distresses that are foretold for the people as punishment for their spiritual adulteries, but Yehovah will also restore them back to their own land (this will also allude to the Second Redemption) but only after a terrible exile. It also contains a promise that the non-Jews will realize all their pagan religions and beliefs contrary to the Torah is vain and worthless and they will also come to know Yehovah.

v 1…The word of the Lord also came to me saying,

v 2…”You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place (Judah because he will see them die or be carried away-Matt 19.12, 24.19; Luke 23.29; 1 Cor 7.6-29).

v 3…For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bear them, and their fathers who beget them in this land;

v 4…They will die of deadly diseases, they will not be lamented or buried; they will be as dung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by sword and famine, and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth.”

v 5…For thus says the Lord, “Do not enter a house of mourning (“banquet” in Amos 6.7 and associated with mourning) or go to lament or to console them; for I have withdrawn my peace from this people,” declares the Lord, “my lovingkindness and compassion.”

v 6…”Both great men and small will die in this land; they will not be buried, they will not be lamented, nor will anyone gash himself or shave his head for them (pagan customs for mourning-Lev 19.28, 21.5; Deut 14.1-2).

v 7…Neither will men break bread in mourning for them to comfort anyone for the dead, nor give them a cup of consolation to drink for anyone’s father or mother.

v 8…Moreover you shall not go into a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink (have nothing to do with them in mourning or feasting, in sadness or in joy).

v 9…For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I am going to eliminate from this place before your eyes and in your time the voice of rejoicing and the voice of gladness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.

v 10…Now it will come about when you tell this people all these words that they will say to you, ‘For what reason has the Lord declared all this calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin which we have committed against the Lord our God (as if they were innocent and didn’t know why all this was happening. But in reality, they knew)?’

v 11…”Then you are to say them, ‘It is because your forefathers have forsaken me,’ declares the Lord (the sins did not begin with that generation but it had been going on for a long time), ‘and have followed other gods and served them and bowed down to them; but me they have forsaken and have not kept my law (or Torah; here is the basic idea of spiritual warfare. Basic warfare is when one imposes his will over another. Strategy is how to win the war. A tactic is how to win battles. In spiritual warfare, the strategy of our enemy is to take the Torah away from the people, Jewish or non-Jewish, so that they do not know the Lord. The tactic is to get the Jews to look at what the non-Jews have done to them in the past and not see the Messiah in the Torah in his fullness. For the non-Jew it is to bring in confusion as to what the Torah is, what the concepts are and who the Messiah really is and what God said in relation to the Torah, and to not study the Torah at all. Then the two groups must be kept apart. This also applies to us personally).

v 12…’You too have done evil, more than your forefathers; for behold, you are each one walking according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, without listening to me.

v 13…So I will hurl you out of this land (head first, by force) into the land which you have not known (Babylon, Mesopotamia), neither you nor your fathers (Abraham did, but none of the recent generations did); and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I shall grant you no favor (they want to worship Babylonian gods, then they will go to Babylon).’

v 14…”Therefore behold, days are coming (Israel’s restoration and redemption is prophesied when Messiah comes),” declares the Lord, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt (this is the second, or messianic, redemption; why would they say this in Babylon now? The exile will render this meaningless unless it refers to a later time-Hos 2.14; Isa 11.10-12; Jer 23.5, 33.1-26; Mic 7.7-20),’

v 15…but, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where he had banished them.’ For I will restore them to their own land which I gave to their fathers (Jer 23.8).

v 16…”Behold, I am going to send for many fishermen (conquerors and speaks to the ease by which they will be caught),” declares the Lord, “and they will fish for them; and afterwards I shall send for many hunters (like Nimrod in Gen 10.9 and speaks of the keenness of their pursuit into every cave or hole) and they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and from the clefts of the rocks.

v 17…For my eyes are on all their ways (evil ways); they are not hidden from my face, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes (the root cause of their trouble).

v 18…And I will first doubly repay their iniquity and their sin (meaning completely and fully-Isa 40.2; Job 11.16; Jer 17.18), because they have polluted my land; they have filled my inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable idols (‘Sikkutz”-1 Kings 11.5) and their abominations (the Abomination of Desolation is a an idol that causes horror).”

v 19…O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of distress (the confidence of Jeremiah, but this also alludes to the Birth-pains or “tribulation” in the last days), to thee the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, “Our fathers have inherited nothing but falsehood (all the pagan religions and replacement theology of today will come to Yehovah), futility and things of no profit (all terms for idolatry).”

v 20…Can man make gods for himself (being weak himself)? Yet they are not gods (yet are made by man and have “deity” imparted to them, something man does not have himself)!

v 21…”Therefore behold, I am going to make them know (the non-Jews)-this time I will make them know my power and my might; and they shall know that my name is the Lord (Yehovah and all it implies-Exo 6.3).”

Posted in All Teachings, Articles, Idioms, Phrases and Concepts, Prophecy/Eschatology, The Festivals of the Lord, The Tanak, Tying into the New Testament

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