Jeremiah 2:1 - Meaning and Application

Jeremiah was told to go and carry God’s message to the people of Jerusalem. He had already been given a general call to speak to them (Jeremiah 1:17), but now he received this specific message. Ministers should compare what they are about to say with God’s word and make sure it fits. Then they can speak with confidence, not only saying, “The Lord sent me,” but, “He sent me to say this.”

Jeremiah had to leave Anathoth, where he lived quietly, and go into busy Jerusalem. There he was to cry out clearly, so no one could claim they had not heard. He had to speak like a man who meant to be heard, even to those who had shut their ears. The message itself was a rebuke for their shameful ingratitude. They had turned away from a God who had once shown them great kindness, and this warning could either humble them or show that God was right to judge them.

God first reminded them of the favors he had given them when they were first formed into a people (Jeremiah 2:2). He says, in effect, “I remember for your sake, and I want you to remember it too.” He speaks of “the kindness of your youth” and “the love of your marriage,” meaning either their early devotion to him or his early kindness to them. In either case, God brings up those early days because they had begun well, but had not stayed faithful.

If this refers to their love for God, it was still real enough for God to mention kindly, even though many of them later proved unsteady. They trusted the Lord and Moses, sang praise at the Red Sea, and promised at Mount Sinai, “All that the Lord says we will do” and “we will obey.” At that time, God said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not lie.” Those who start with promise but do not keep going will rightly be reminded of their early hopes. It is good for us to remember our first zeal for God, so we may see where we have fallen and return to our first love (Revelation 2:4-5; Galatians 4:15).

Their early kindness showed itself in two main ways. First, they followed the pillar of cloud and fire through the wilderness. They sometimes spoke about going back to Egypt or pushing on to Canaan, but they did not turn aside. For forty years they followed God through a land where nothing was planted, trusting him to provide. God remembered that faithfulness long afterward. In the same way, Christ praised his disciples, at the end, for staying with him through his trials (Luke 22:28). It takes strong love to follow God through a wilderness with full trust and complete surrender.

Second, they welcomed God’s worship among them. They set up the tabernacle and attended its service. Israel was then holy to the Lord, set apart to belong to him as his covenant people. They began in the Spirit, and God reminds them of that so they may be ashamed of ending in the flesh.

This can also mean God’s kindness to them. He says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him” (Hosea 11:1). He took that people to himself with the same affection a young man has when he marries a virgin (Isaiah 62:5), for it was a time of love (Ezekiel 16:8). God made them his own. Though they were sinful, they were still holy to the Lord because of the covenant and the worship he established among them. They were the first-fruits of his increase, the first people he openly formed as his church in the world. As first-fruits belonged to God, so Israel belonged to him. It was their honor to be set apart for him. All believers share that honor, for they are called the first-fruits of his creatures (James 1:18).

Since God had chosen them, he also defended them. He took their cause as his own and became an enemy to their enemies (Exodus 23:22). Those who harmed them sinned against what was holy to the Lord, like people who wrongly took what belonged to God for themselves (Leviticus 5:15). Anyone who injured God’s people did so at his own peril. God was ready to defend them, and he told the strongest kings, “Do not touch my anointed ones” (Psalm 105:14-15; Exodus 17:14). He especially opposed anyone who tried to corrupt them and draw them away from holiness to the Lord, as he did in his conflict with the Midianites over Peor (Numbers 25:17-18).

God also brought them out of Egypt with great power and fear (Deuteronomy 4:34), yet he led them with tenderness through a wide and terrible wilderness (Jeremiah 2:6). It was a land of deserts and pits, a barren place fit for burial rather than life. It offered no food, because it was dry and lifeless, and it held every danger, like the shadow of death. For forty years they walked through that dark valley, but God was with them. His rod and staff comforted them, as Psalm 23 says, and even there he prepared food and drink for them, giving bread from the clouds and water from the rocks (Psalm 23:4-5).

It was also a land where no one settled and no one passed through. It was not a road and not a home. God led his people through lonely places so they would learn to walk paths others had not walked, to live apart, and to be a people set apart.

The hardships of the journey are stressed here to show God’s power and goodness in bringing them safely to the end. All God’s spiritual Israel, all who truly belong to him, must admit their debt to him for carrying them through the wilderness of this world. That world is no less dangerous to the soul than the wilderness was to the body.

At last, God settled them in Canaan (Jeremiah 2:7). He brought them into a rich and fertile land, which would have seemed even sweeter after so many years in a dry land. They ate its fruit and enjoyed its goodness, and they were allowed to do so. He brought them into a land of Carmel, meaning a place of great fruitfulness. Canaan was like one large fruitful field (Deuteronomy 8:7).

God also gave them the means of knowledge, grace, and fellowship with himself, which is implied in Jeremiah 2:8. They had priests who handled the law, read it, and explained it to them, which was part of their duty (Deuteronomy 33:8). They had pastors, or leaders, to guide them and care for their affairs, along with magistrates and judges. They also had prophets to seek God for them and make his will known to them.

God then rebukes them for their shocking ingratitude and for the bad return they made for all these gifts. He calls all of them to answer this charge (Jeremiah 2:4). The charge is brought in God’s name against all the families of the house of Israel, because none of them can plead innocence.

He challenges them to point to any wrong or unkindness in him. Even if he had given them favors in some things, they could still have some excuse if he had treated them unjustly in other things. So he puts the matter plainly before them: what fault had their fathers found in him, or they themselves? Had they found God a harsh master? Had his commands burdened them with anything unfair, improper, or unreasonable? Had his promises deceived them or raised hopes he did not fulfill? Those who rejected God’s covenant could not honestly say it was a bad bargain, one they could not live under. Those who abandoned God’s ordinances could not say they left because his service was tiring or gave no profit. No, their losses came from themselves, not from God. His yoke is easy, and keeping his commandments brings great reward.

People who turn away from God cannot honestly say that he ever gave them a reason to do so. This is something we can safely put to the conscience of every sinner. The lazy servant who tried such an excuse was silenced by his own words (Luke 19:22). Even when God afflicts us, we cannot say there is any wrong in him. He does us no injustice. The Lord’s ways are right, and all the wrong is in our ways.

Yet they had been unjust and unkind to him. They had left his service, and not only left it, but moved as far from him as they could. They worked to put distance between themselves and God, and between themselves and their duty. They pushed themselves out of reach of his commands and out of reach of their own consciences. Those who abandon religion often go further from it and oppose it more strongly than those who never knew it.

They had also left him for the service of idols, which made their sin much worse. They went away from God, not to improve themselves, but to ruin themselves. They walked after vanity, meaning idolatry, because an idol is a vain thing, nothing at all in the world (1 Corinthians 8:4; Deuteronomy 32:21; Jeremiah 14:22). Idolatrous worship is empty and worthless (Acts 14:15). Idolaters themselves are empty people, because those who make idols become like them (Psalm 115:8), as useless as the stocks and stones they worship.

By their idolatry, they also brought every kind of wickedness into the land. When they entered the good land God gave them, they polluted it (Jeremiah 2:7) by polluting themselves and making themselves unfit for God’s service. The land belonged to God. They were only his tenants there, living there as strangers (Leviticus 25:23). It was his heritage, a holy land, Immanuel’s land. Yet they turned it into something hateful, even to God himself, who was angry and deeply disgusted with Israel.

After leaving God, they quickly found they had chosen badly, but they did not think of turning back. Neither the people nor the priests even asked after him or worried about their duty to him. They showed no desire to win back his favor. The people did not say, “Where is the Lord?” (Jeremiah 2:6). They had been brought up to know him as their God, and they had often been told that he brought them out of Egypt to be his own special people. Yet they never sought him or wanted to learn his ways.

The priests also did not say, “Where is the Lord?” (Jeremiah 2:8). Those whose work was to stand nearest to God took no care to know him or honor him. Those who should have taught the people to know God did not try to know him themselves. The scribes, who handled the law, did not know God or his will, and so they could not explain the Scriptures rightly, if at all. The pastors, who should have kept the flock from sin, were themselves leaders in sin: they had transgressed against God.

The men who claimed to be prophets prophesied by Baal, speaking in his name and for his honor. They were backed by wicked kings who set them up to oppose the Lord’s prophets. Baal’s prophets joined with Baal’s priests, and they walked after things that do not profit, after idols that can never help their worshipers. See how even the best titles can be seized by the wrong people, and how easily the best offices can be corrupted. Do not be surprised at a people’s sin and ruin when the blind lead the blind.