Jeremiah 6:1

JEREMIAH 6

DESTRUCTION FROM THE NORTH;

THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM;

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

A number of such titles as the ones cited here are assigned to this chapter by various authors. There is very little in the chapter that requires any extensive research; and we shall depart from our usual procedure by giving our own paraphrase of this tragic prophecy.

True to the pattern throughout Jeremiah, the three subjects treated here, namely, (1) a description of the tragic fate of the city, (2) the character and identification of the instrument (the destroyer) God would use in the execution of his judgment against the city, and (3) a summary of the reasons why God judged Jerusalem and Judah to be worthy of the penalty about to fall upon them, Jeremiah jumbled all of these topics together. In our paraphrase, we shall reorganize them topically.

THE AWFUL FATE TO BEFALL JUDAH AND JERUSALEM

The daughter of Zion (a poetic name for Jerusalem) shall be cut off (Jeremiah 6:2); she shall be encircled with tents (Jeremiah 6:3); the lengthening shadows mark the closing of the Day of God's Favor upon racial Israel (Jeremiah 6:4); her palaces shall be destroyed (Jeremiah 6:5); the military shall cast up a mound against her (Jeremiah 6:6); she shall be uninhabited, a desolation (Jeremiah 6:8); the vine of Israel shall be stripped and gleaned (Jeremiah 6:9); the wrath of God shall be poured out upon her children, the young men, the husbands and wives, and even upon all the old people (Jeremiah 6:11); the houses, fields, and wives of the people shall be taken away from them and given to the invaders (Jeremiah 6:12); the nation shall fall; it shall be cast down (Jeremiah 6:25); God will bring evil upon her people (Jeremiah 6:19); God will place stumblingblocks in their way; fathers and sons, friends and neighbors shall perish (Jeremiah 6:21); the power of the defenders shall be feeble, and anguish shall overwhelm them (Jeremiah 6:24); the people will fear to go outside, for the sword of the enemy will be everywhere (Jeremiah 6:25); they shall clothe themselves in sackcloth and ashes, mourning as for an only son; destruction shall descend suddenly upon them (Jeremiah 6:26).

CHARACTER AND IDENTITY OF INVADERS

This had been accomplished already by the specifics Jeremiah gave in the preceding chapter, which made it certain that God's instrument in the fall of Jerusalem and the deportation of the people was to be Babylon; but some of the same clues are mentioned again.

It will be a military destruction from the north with tents, military equipment, trumpets, etc. (Jeremiah 6:1,4,17, and Jeremiah 6:22); the result shall be accomplished by a siege, as indicated by the tents and the mound against the city, earmarks of an all-out war (Jeremiah 6:4); the great nation from the north will have skilled bowmen, cruel, merciless horsemen who shall bring death to thousands (Jeremiah 6:23); their approach to Jerusalem shall be like the roaring sea-surge of a mighty hurricane (Jeremiah 6:23); the merciless swords of the enemy, lurking everywhere, shall spare no one (Jeremiah 6:25); they will strike suddenly (Jeremiah 6:16), as already indicated in Jeremiah 5 by the comparison with the leopard, the swiftest of animals; they shall burn Israel as a refiner burns metal to remove the dross; only Israel is all dross (Jeremiah 6:31).

WHY PUNISHMENT OF ISRAEL WAS REQUIRED

God made it perfectly clear why it was required by the Divine justice that punishment and destruction were to be meted out to racial Israel. Jerusalem was producing nothing but wickedness, violence, and oppression (Jeremiah 6:7); they would not hear the Word of God (Jeremiah 6:10); they hated the word of God (Jeremiah 6:10); all of them were covetous and dealt falsely (Jeremiah 6:13); they loved their false prophets who cried, Peace, peace, when there was no peace (Jeremiah 6:14); they refused to be ashamed of their sins (Jeremiah 6:15); they declared, "We will not listen to God" (Jeremiah 6:17); their thoughts were evil, and as for God's Law, they rejected it (Jeremiah 6:19); their hypocritical and insincere offerings were not acceptable to God (Jeremiah 6:21); Israel had become a nation of grievous revolters, all of them habitual slanderers, and dealing falsely (Jeremiah 6:28); after God had repeatedly pleaded with and corrected his people, and after the exercise of near-infinite patience, and after it was perfectly clear that Israel had no intention of returning to God or in any sense mending their ways, God finally summarily rejected them and consigned their nation to destruction and captivity (Jeremiah 6:30).

Jeremiah 6:1-2

We shall now examine the text of this chapter.

"Flee for safety, ye children of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem. and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise up a signal on Beth-haccherem; for evil looketh forth from the north, and a great destruction. The comely and the delicate one, the daughter of Zion, will I cut off."

"Ye children of Benjamin ..." (Jeremiah 6:1). "The reason that Benjamin is mentioned here is that Jerusalem geographically belonged to the territory of Benjamin."[1]

"Out of the midst of Jerusalem ..." (Jeremiah 6:1). In Jeremiah 4:6, the people were warned to flee "to Jerusalem"; but here, they are warned to get out of Jerusalem. The capital of Judah is doomed to destruction. "The capital being doomed, and the destruction coming from the north, the only safety would have been toward the south."[2] Also, it may be supposed that some sought the safety of the rugged mountains toward the Dead Sea.

"Tekoa... and Beth-haccherem ..." (Jeremiah 6:1) These towns in the vicinity of Jerusalem were mentioned to indicate the near approach of the enemy, Tekoa being "only ten or twelve miles south of Jerusalem,"[3] and Beth-haccherem being only "four and a half miles west of Jerusalem."[4]