Jeremiah 18:11 - Meaning and Application

These verses apply the broad truth of the chapter to the Jews and their present condition. God was now speaking against them to uproot, tear down, and destroy, because that was the kind of judgment their case had brought on itself (Jeremiah 18:11). He tells them to go and say to them, “Look, I am shaping disaster against you and planning harm for you.” Providence, in all its work, is clearly moving toward their ruin.

If they look at their own behavior toward God, they must admit they deserve this. If they look at his dealings with them, they must see that he is preparing it. He shapes evil as a potter shapes a vessel, making it fit the purpose he has in view. Yet he still invites them, by repentance and change of life, to meet him in the path of his judgments and stop his further action against them.

He says, “Turn now, each one, from your evil ways.” Then, according to the rule already given, God may turn from the evil he had announced against them, and the judgment that seemed already formed against them can be reshaped, with a better outcome for them. The warnings in God’s word, and the threats in his providence, should move us strongly to reform our lives. It is not enough to turn away from evil ways, we must make our ways and actions good, in line with God’s law.

God also foresees their stubborn refusal to accept this offer, even though it would help them so much (Jeremiah 18:12). They say, “There is no hope.” If they can only be rescued by turning from evil, then they act as if rescue is impossible, because they are determined to keep walking after their own plans. They refuse any more warning from the prophets, any more reasoning, any more pressure. They will have their own way, no matter the cost, and each one will do what his own evil heart imagines, refusing the restraint of God’s law.

What ruins sinners is the desire to live however they please. They call that freedom, but to be ruled by lust is the worst kind of slavery. See how strangely sin hardens people’s hearts. They will not even promise to change. More than that, they set themselves against the judgments of God and say, in effect, “We will keep following our own plans, and God may do what he will. We will take the risk.”

God then rebukes them for the shocking foolishness of their stubbornness and their hatred of reform (Jeremiah 18:13). Never were people guilty of such absurdity, and never did people who claim to have reason act so unreasonably. He tells them to ask among the nations, even among those who had no divine revelation, no prophets, and no special light like Judah and Jerusalem had. Even there, who has ever heard of such a thing? When Nineveh was warned, it turned from its evil ways.

Even some of the worst people, when confronted with their faults, especially when they begin to suffer for them, will at least promise to do better. But the virgin of Israel, a name for God’s people as one set apart to him, defies repentance. She has resolved to go on stubbornly, no matter what conscience and providence say. In doing this, she has done a horrible thing. She should have kept herself pure for God, who had joined himself to her in covenant, but she has turned away from him and refuses to come back.

It is a terrible thing, enough to make one tremble, when people make their condition worse by sin and then make it hopeless by refusing to reform. Wilful refusal to repent is the cruelest kind of self-destruction, and we should shrink from even the thought of it.

God also shows their foolishness in the very nature of the sin itself. They abandoned God for idols, and that was the most horrible exchange possible, because they deceived themselves in the process (Jeremiah 18:14-15). Will a thirsty traveler leave the clear snow water that runs down from Lebanon’s mountains, crosses the rocky field, and flows in clean, cool streams, and instead choose muddy puddle water? Or will anyone in the heat of summer turn away from cold, flowing water from elsewhere? Of course not. When people are thirsty, they use refreshing water, not turn from it.

The margin gives the picture another way. It asks whether a traveler would leave level ground for a rough rock, or leave the snow of Lebanon, which lies in great drifts and blocks the road, for better ground. Would anyone forsake flowing water for strange cold water? No. In such matters people know where they are better off, and they stay with what is sure. They do not leave certainty for uncertainty. But God’s people forgot him and left a fountain of living water for broken cisterns. They burned incense to idols that were as empty as emptiness itself, things that were not what they claimed to be and could not do what was expected of them.

They had less sense than travelers on the road, and even their leaders led them astray, while they were willing to be misled. They left the ancient paths, the way appointed by God’s law and walked by all the saints. That was the right road to their destination, a safe road, and, because many had already traveled it, it was easy to find and easy to follow. Yet when they were told to keep to the good old way, they plainly said they would not (Jeremiah 6:16).

Instead, they chose side paths. They walked in a way that had not been cleared or raised up, not in the highway, the king’s highway, where they could travel safely and be sure of reaching the right end. They chose a dirty, rough road where stumbling was unavoidable. That is the way of idolatry, and it is the way of all sin, a false path full of stumbling blocks. Yet this was the road they chose for themselves and led others into as well.

Their folly also showed itself in the harmful results of this sin. Even if the thing itself had been bad, they might have excused it if it had brought them some good. But it pointed straight toward the ruin of their land and, with it, their own misery, since the people must suffer when their country is laid waste. It would make both them and their land a permanent object of scorn. Those who receive fair warning and still refuse it deserve to be mocked.

Everyone who passes by their land will notice it and be astonished. Some will shake their heads in wonder, some in pity, and some in triumph at the fall of a land once famous above all others. They will wag their heads in scorn, blaming them for their own folly in abandoning God and duty, and so bringing this misery on themselves.

Those who turn away from God will rightly become a joke to everyone around them. Since they have shamed the Lord, they will themselves be shamed. When their land is left empty as part of their ruin, God says, “I will scatter them like an east wind” (Jeremiah 18:17). An east wind is strong and harsh, and it pictures how they will be driven all over by their enemies with no safe way out.

They will not simply flee before the enemy, which might still allow an orderly retreat. Instead, they will be broken apart and sent in different directions. Their misery is made complete by what God adds: “I will show them my back, not my face, in the day of their disaster.” Our troubles are easier to bear if God looks on us with favor while we suffer, and if he supports us by his presence. But if he turns away, if he is displeased, if he seems to ignore our prayers and withhold help, then we are ruined.

If God hides his face, who can endure it? (Job 34:29). In this, God would deal with them as they had dealt with him, since they had turned their backs to him and not their faces (Jeremiah 2:27). It is right for God to act distant toward those who were disrespectful and disobedient to him when they were prosperous. This will be fully carried out on the day when God says to those who claimed to be godly but practiced evil, “Depart from me, I do not know you,” yes, “I never knew you.”