Глава 7

“Do not trust in... the false words that say to you, The church of the Lord” (Jer. 7:4), that is, those who say: “You are His church,” by which they want to assure you that you will never be abandoned by God, for just as He has decided to preserve the church that is pleasing to Him, so He will preserve His servants, even if they are wicked. No, don’t rely on words that please you. If you do not correct your deeds, then you are not the church of God, and God will not save you for the holiness of His church, which you desecrate, and for the many sacrifices, which, because of the wickedness of those who offer, His soul is turned away. “And you steal and kill and commit fornication... and stray before me in this house... and you said to nature: save us, who have done all this abomination. Eating a den of robbers is this house?” (Jer.7:9-11). You hoped that this house would be a refuge for robbers, but your prayer, in which you ask for safety and peace, can it be heard when so much bad has been done by you, and is it possible that I will give what you ask for and deliver you from danger? “For this reason, go to My place, which is in Shiloh... and see what wickedness I have done to it for the sake of My people” (Jer. 7:12). In the city of Shiloh I set up My tabernacle, and it stood there for three hundred years, then, due to the apostasy of the Ephraimites, to whom it had been entrusted before, I transferred it to the church, which is now with you, the Jews, and, finally, I expelled and scattered the apostates themselves. Therefore, as obvious witnesses of this judgment, judge whether Me, when you have become even more wicked than the Ephraimites, should spare and love you only because My church is with you? No no! If you do not repent, I will deliver both the church and the people to the Chaldeans, and they will destroy the church with fire, and they will drive the people out of the land. “Have you not seen what these people are doing in the cities of Judah and on the roads of Jerusalem?” (Jer.7:17). “Their sons gather wood, and their fathers kindle the fire, and their wives knead flour, that they may make unleavened bread for the host of heaven” (Jer. 7:18). God says this to the prophet, showing by this that the wickedness of the lawless Jews exceeds the punishment determined for them. The Lord depicts the apostasy of an entire people with the words that men and wives of all ages rushed to idolatry, and there is no person who would be clean from it, and what is said here about serving the heavenly army is explained by what is written in the Fourth Book of Kings: during the reign of Manasseh, the Jews worshiped “all the power of heaven” (2 Kings 21:3), that is, all the adornment of heaven, the moon and other luminaries. And the martyr Stephen clearly says that the Israelites in former times especially worshiped the star of their god Remphan (Acts 7:43). “This says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: They added their burnt offerings to their sacrifices, and the waste of their flesh, because they did not speak to their fathers, nor command them in the day that they were brought out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Jer. 7:21-22). For two reasons, the Jews hoped and thought that they would get rid of the punishments determined by the truth of God, and they laughed at Jeremiah, who predicted for them the grave defeats predetermined for them on the day of wrath. The first reason was that, as they thought, the Lord would not despise His sanctuary, would not allow foreign nations to desecrate the church and trample on the ark of His covenant. The second reason was the idea that by their sacrifices they could earn God’s favor and cleansing from sins. For they knew that their fathers used burnt offerings to get rid of the obvious dangers that confronted them. Therefore, the prophet Jeremiah, having eradicated in the minds of the lost the vain hope for the church of God, wisely eradicates the hope that they placed in their sacrifices offered to God, and testifies that not the sacrifices made, but the law of God should serve as the basis for their salvation. For the law was written by the finger of God on tablets and handed down to the people of Israel, but other sacred actions, rites and burnt offerings are unimportant in the eyes of God, and God did not include them in the commandments and did not put them at the head of His law during the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. And they themselves did not observe them during the forty years of their wandering in the desert. For Moses, according to the word of God, subsequently established these rites only because of the weakness and hardness of the people, so that the Jews would not despise the law revealed to them and would not cleave to the idols of other nations, seeing that their service was decorated with attractive and magnificent rites (statutes). Since it turned out that this medicine did not heal the sick, and the Jews, as they were accustomed at first, and subsequently madly indulged in idolatry, the prophet proclaims that it will not avert the heavy blows that they brought upon themselves by transgressing the law of God. The prophets Isaiah and Hosea repeat the same thing to the children of Israel many times in their books (Is. 1:1, Hos. 8:13). The meat mentioned here means that which in the peace offerings, according to the law, was eaten with the priests and those who offered them, and which the prophet mentions further, saying: “The holy meat (sacrifices) will be taken away from you, because your wickedness has become strong” (Jer. 11:15), that is, they will take away the consecrated meat of animals that the priests slaughtered as a sacrifice, called in Scripture a sacrifice for sin. “Cut your hair and mark it off.” The prophet's word is addressed to Jerusalem. The Prophet shows the grave sorrows that will greatly oppress its inhabitants, commands the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cut their hair, according to the general and ancient custom of people exposed to grave disasters. Therefore, the righteous Job, at the beginning of the temptation that befell him, cut off his hair. The prophet also reveals the cause of grief, saying: “The Lord... was wrathful and rejected it... let us mourn in the paths” (Jer. 7:29). The prophet shows the habit of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to idolatry, and says: “Look around you, is there any help for you from your gods, has hope and salvation shone for you from the disasters that befall you?” “And having built a church in Tapheth (in Tophet), who is in the vale of the son of Hinnom, let them burn their sons and their daughters with fire, which I did not command them, lower than the thought of my heart” (Jer. 7:31). God especially highlights this terrible sacrifice, wanting to make it obvious to everyone that the Jews did not leave the law because of the difficulty of fulfilling it, for the severity of the sacrifice - to burn their sons and daughters - exceeds the difficulty of God's commandments. And therefore, it was not the Lawgiver who caused the Jews to turn away from Him to vain idols, but because of their own malice they fell into such madness. They became foolish (mad) when they abandoned the commandments of the Lord, full of love and sweet “more than honey and honeycomb” (Ps. 18:11), and following the cruel pagan customs they began to wander and become lascivious, serving idols and sacrificing their sons to them. “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and they will not say to anyone, The church of Tapheth, and the vale of the son of Hinnom, but the vale of those who were slain: and they will be buried in Tapheth, for there is no place beyond it” (Jer. 7:32). The prophet foretells the days when Jerusalem will be besieged by enemies for three years, and says that at this time many Jews will fall by the sword, and due to lack of space, the corpses of the slain will be thrown into the valley lying outside the walls of the city, where they will become prey for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. Jeremiah repeats this about Jerusalem and further, and Ezekiel predicts the same in the book of his prophecies. And such punishment for the sins of the Jews was fair. So the truth of God, in His judgment, determined that in the very place where they dishonored, retribution for their wickedness would be revealed, and for the fact that they burned their sons and daughters, their own corpses became the prey of birds and beasts. You might be interested in: