A People of (Very) Hard Hearts

Thinking about Jeremiah 37.2 this morning. The people of Israel had everything that they needed to repent and turn away from their sins. They had the prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar and the army of Babylon would destroy them. They had Jeremiah's repeated warnings of God's impending judgment. They would not listen.

A couple of thoughts. First, God will do what he says. All of the hope in the world will not undo what he has said that he will do. King Zedekiah was hoping that the withdrawal of the Babylonian army after their first venture into Israel meant that Jeremiah was wrong. Zedekiah was the one who was wrong.

John Calvin makes the second point: For he intimates, that though God did not appear from heaven, it was sufficient to condemn the unbelieving, that he spoke by his Prophets. Hearing God's word through Jeremiah ought to have been enough to make them repent. They did not need for God to appear to them. The lesson for us is that we have God's word. It ought to be sufficient for us to repent of our sins and follow God.

Third, as Calvin also points out, the people exhibit a strange blindness to their position. They have already seen the king's own sons slain before his eyes by the Babylonians, and yet they do not listen to God's word through Jeremiah.