Monday February 1st 2021
f the major prophets, Isaiah is not wrongly often regarded as full of beauty. The first thirty-nine chapters make a great Advent read, with the joyous comfort of Isaiah 40 arriving on Christmas day and the remaining chapters carrying through the rest of Christmas into the new year. Isaiah is full of some majestic and upbeat prophecies, beautiful words that stir the heart and soul, like a husband pursuing and wooing his bride.For me, Jeremiah, the mourning prophet, is full of a particular beauty, to which I might be attuned thanks to ancestral Scottish blood. As an anonymous poet quipped:
From the great gales of the north
Are the men that God made mad:
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
Some gentle Puritans whom I love such as Richard Sibbes have continued in the same vein as this mourning prophet pleading to his people. Consider these:
Jeremiah 6:16
Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.Jeremiah 9:23-24
Thus says the Lord:
"Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the might man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight," says the Lord.
Jeremiah 10:24
Correct me, O Lord, but in justice;
not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing.
Jeremiah 31:9
They shall come with weeping, And with supplications I will lead them. I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters, In a straight way in which they shall not stumble; For I am a Father to Israel, And Ephraim is My firstborn.
Note the gentleness of God there: His mercy, His faithful loving care, His shepherding, His fatherliness, and His lack of capriciousness, grudging, resentment, or revenge as He leads even the blind, lame, and pregnant among the throngs who have been lost and suffering as a result of their sins but return in repentance to God.
Jeremiah 35 is a story partly about the importance of honoring one's parents: the story of the Rechabites.
As a final example, Jeremiah 22:3 does not require of a country the receiving of all refugees, but it demands not mistreating those refugees who are here.
Thus says the Lord: "Execute judgment and righteousness, and deliver the plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place."
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