4:9
The king and his officials, the priests and the prophets covered all aspects of leadership in the nation. The king and officials cover the civic leadership, a bit like our government and the civil service. The priests and prophets cover the religious leadership, which was very important in those days. There can be a time when they are all united in what they are doing (albeit that they were going down the wrong road), as there was in Judah. But a time will come when they all lost heart and be appalled, realising that they are totally out of control.
4:10
Jeremiah is shocked at the situation. He sees how utterly the people have been deluded. Note that he sees God as having sent leaders and false prophets to deceive the nation by their preaching of a false peace. This is a common Biblical view (ie God sends a delusion (2 Thes 2:11)). We tend to react against this, thinking that God deliberately set out to deceive people, and therefore it is God’s fault. This is not the way of it. The false prophets and leaders are responsible for their actions, and the people are responsible for their responses. The fact that the false prophets were believed indicates the true position of people’s hearts. The fact that Judah in Jeremiah’s day could believe that they would have peace when the sword was so close to them, signified how hard their hearts had become. There could be no peace while they were living in complete disobedience to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment