Jeremiah 8:1 - Meaning and Application

These verses could just as well have been placed at the end of the previous chapter, because they further describe the terrible ruin the Chaldean army would bring on the land. Death itself would be changed in a strange way, and for the worse. It would no longer be the resting place of the dead, and even the grave would lose its peace.

Job spoke of the grave as a place of rest, where he hoped to lie down with kings and counselors of the earth. But here the ashes of the dead, even kings and princes, would be disturbed, and their bones scattered at the mouth of the grave (Psalm 141:7). The previous chapter said the slain would lie unburied, which might happen through neglect. But here the enemy would purposely and cruelly open graves that had already been carefully filled. They would do it either out of greed, hoping to find treasure, or out of hatred for the nation. They would drag out the bones of the kings of Judah and the princes.

Their honorable tombs could not protect them, and in fact made them a bigger target. It was cruel and shameful to trample on royal remains like that. We may hope that the bones of good Josiah, the godly king of Judah, were not disturbed, since he had once protected the bones of the man of God when he burned the bones of the idolatrous priests (2 Kings 23:18). The bones of priests and prophets were also dug up and thrown around. Some think this refers to the false prophets and idol-priests, and that God was putting a mark of shame on them. But if these were God’s true prophets and priests, then this was one more proof of enemy violence, as the psalmist laments (Psalm 79:1-2).

Even those spiteful Chaldeans who could not reach the graves of princes and priests would not stop there. They would pull up the bones of ordinary people from Jerusalem’s graves. Such barbaric nations sometimes did these absurd and inhuman things to the people they had conquered. God allowed it here as a sign of his anger against this guilty generation, and as a warning to those who survived. The bones, once dug up, would be spread across the ground in open contempt, so the disgrace would last and spread further. They would be laid out to dry, perhaps to carry around in triumph, perhaps to use as fuel, or perhaps for some superstitious purpose.

They would be spread out before the sun, moon, and stars, all the host of heaven, before those they had made into idols (Jeremiah 8:2). By mentioning these heavenly bodies, which would look on without concern, the prophet reminds us how the people had worshiped them. They had given to these creatures the honor that belonged to God alone. And this shows how little benefit comes from worshiping anything created, because the things they had worshiped saw their misery but gave no help. Worse, those creatures would seem to watch their shame with no pity at all.

The prophet then lists their devotion to these idols, to show how we ought to behave toward our God. First, they loved them. They treated them as lovely beings and generous helpers, and that led to all the rest. Second, they served them. They did whatever they thought would honor them and thought nothing was too much. Third, they walked after them. They tried to imitate them and live by the patterns they believed these idols set, which helped spread much of the wickedness of the nations. Fourth, they sought them. They consulted them as if they were oracles, appealed to them as judges, asked for their favor, and prayed to them as their helpers. Fifth, they worshiped them, giving them divine honor and treating them as rulers over their lives.

Before these same lights of heaven, the very things they had courted, their dead bodies would be cast out and left to rot like dung on the ground. The sun shining on them would only make the stench worse. Whatever we make into a god besides the true God will do us no good on the other side of death and the grave, neither for the body nor for the soul.

Death would also become something it had never been before, the choice of the living. This would not be because death looked pleasant. In fact, it would appear in its most terrible form, because they could not expect a peaceful death or a human burial. Yet life itself would become so bitter, and every outlook so dark, that people would choose death rather than life (Jeremiah 8:3). This would not be a believing hope of blessing in the next life, but a complete despair of finding any relief in this one.

The nation would be reduced to a mere family, so few would be left. And even those survivors would still be an evil family, just as stubborn and sinful as before, with hearts still unbroken and desires still unchanged. They would remain alive only in the places where God’s judgments had driven them, some as prisoners in the land of their enemies, others as beggars in a neighboring land, and others as wanderers both there and in their own country. Those who died died miserably, but those who lived on and were driven away would suffer even more. They would choose death rather than life, and wish again and again that they had fallen with those who were killed by the sword.

Let this teach us not to cling too tightly to life. A time may come when life becomes such a burden and terror that a person is tempted to choose death instead.