Jeremiah 44
Febuary 20, 2024 2:26 PM
Solitary Man
solitaryman.substack.com
20240220
Jer 44:1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros, saying,
Jeremiah 43:7 stated that this disobedient remnant disregarded the clear command of the Lord and all fled to Egypt, to Tahpanhes. From there, they had separated themselves into 4 distinct places.
Some stayed at Tahpanhes, where the king’s court and palace was located (Jer 43:9). Others went to Migdol. The name meant tower, and is found in Ex 14:2 and Num 33:7. Noph (Jer 2:16) was Memphis, now Cairo. Pathros (Is 11:11) was a region in upper Egypt, and may also be known as Thebias.
Wherever these places were, Jeremiah was given yet another word of the Lord. He either travelled to each site and gave this word, or perhaps they were all gathered at Pathros, since verse 15 states the people gave a response there to this prophecy.
What I find amazing is God’s boundless mercy and forbearance. How many times had these Jews rejected the word of the Lord, yet here once again, God is willing to try once more to reach their hearts. This is a very hopeful thought. While this first verse may communicate some hope, the rest of the chapter will paint a different picture.
In some ways this is the most terrifying, yet heartbreaking chapter in the entire book.
Jer 44:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Ye have seen all the evil (rab) that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation (waste place), and no man dwelleth therein,
God brought rah (evil) upon Jerusalem. God is bringing rah (evil) upon us. Different time, different place. Same story.
Here is an example where us fundamentalists should not become hyper literal. Of course there were still some human beings living in the land of Judah. God is allowed to use figures of speech, just as we are. This is a hyperbolic statement, in similar fashion to when he tells Abraham that he will multiply his descendants as the sand of the sea. Of course, no one believes that there will be as many people born from his bloodline as all the grains of sand. It’s just a way to express a lot. This is a way to express a little.
Jer 44:3 Because of their wickedness (rah) which they have committed to provoke me to anger (rage, wrath), in that they went to burn incense, and to serve other gods (elohim), whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers.
God does not send evil because he has nothing better to do. Man continually provokes God. He speaks of burning incense, a tangible act of inclining one’s heart towards a false god. Their works showed what was in their hearts. It was obvious for all to see. This was something that was never a part of their history. They were not brought up in this. Neither they, nor anyone around them, nor their ancestors grew up in the lands of these false gods. They went out of their way to adopt other nation’s gods.
I wonder what practices we partake in that God considers going after other nation’s gods? Things like transcendental meditation, yoga, prayer beads, etc. Are we adopting the practices that worshippers of other gods practice?
The main point is not so much the practice, but the belief system that we are embracing. When we give our hearts to something besides Jesus, why are we doing that? Why is Jesus not our chief joy? Everyone understands that we have to devote a certain amount of time to sleeping, eating, raising a family, working, and daily chores. Yet when all compulsory tasks are done, why do most go straight to their cell phones and not to their prayer closet? Why do we choose something else rather than Jesus as our first choice when it comes to our free time?
Jer 44:4 Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable (morally disgusting, loathsome) thing (daw-bawr – word, matter) that I hate (find to be odious).
God did not leave them to guess what his feelings were on this situation. He told them early, he told them often, he used every servant at this disposal to warn them again and again. God is the ultimate watchman, he cries out the warning in such a manner that all have an opportunity to be warned and take appropriate action.
I think we still do not really, really appreciate how these warnings against idol worship apply to us today. Sure, we talk about anything that takes a more important place in our hearts than God, but I wonder if we subconsciously not take heed as we should, simply because we don’t have a statue in our house and are burning incense to it and bowing down in front of it (unless you’re a serious traditional catholic!). So perhaps the modern day impact is lost.
We are seeing in our repaganized society today public spectacles at places such as the Olympics and other events where actual pagan statues are brought out and dancers cavort all about it. Yet what was this ancient practice all about? Was it not looking to some other source to meet all your needs? Why did the Jew worship Baal and others? Was it to be like their neighbours? That may of been part of it. The main thing was that they had lost confidence in Yehovah supplying their needs. He was an invisible God, that had no physical representation on the earth. You were expected to serve this invisible God day in and day out.
Then someone came along and showed you something you could see, something you could handle with your hands. You could do something tangible. You could make a personal heroic sacrifice, like throwing your first born in the fire to a real statue, not just kill a goat on an altar. If sacrificing a lamb for an invisible god was supposed to work, how much more if you sacrificed your own child to a visible god? Your pride in your own heroism and self effort would of been a strong incentive to engage in this. You could see and feel this worship. Not only that, but immorality often accompanied the worship, making it much more enticing.
So today you clutch your personal device. You bow down to it. It is all consuming. It actually talks to you and gives you continuous feedback. It is a source of regular pleasure. Whether its being liked and subscribed to and thumbs upped, or viewing porn or playing video games, it is all about some sort of physical pleasure being consumed on a regular basis. It becomes your life. Soon you don’t even know that there is any other way to live. Thus your heart is given to another. Then anyone who comes and tries to take away your God is seen as an enemy, and to be fought against at all costs. We shall see this pattern in this remnant, when they respond to Jeremiah’s latest word. Even though they are a people without technology, they have been ensnared by the same process, with the tools of distraction that the devil had made available at the time.
Jer 44:5 But they hearkened (shama) not, nor inclined their ear to turn (shoob) from their wickedness (rah), to burn no incense unto other (strange) gods (elohim).
No shama leads to no shoobing. No shoobing leads to more of the same rah in one’s life. The result is going after strange things. They went after other spirits out there. We’ve gone after pride flags, transgenderism, carbon taxes and criminalizing nitrogen. We worship criminals and criminalize true worshippers. We give free borrowed money to strangers at the border, but burn and poison our own citizens out of their homes, and give them nothing in return. We burn down our own forests and prevent people from actually putting out the fires. Nothing but strange things in our society today.
Jer 44:6 Wherefore my fury (white hot rage) and mine anger (af – smoke coming out of my nostrils) was poured forth (rage so hot as to liquefy), and was kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they are wasted (decayed, destroyed) and desolate (ruined and an astonishment), as at this day.
What more can God say? He has described what he had to do in the face of such continual unrepentance more than once. My own people were the ones who kindled my wrath. It is interesting that we mostly look at the wicked in our governments and around the world, but God’s anger is said to be aroused far more by those who should know better than those who do not know him. This leads to an interesting point. At one time, our governments acknowledged God fully. They took oaths to serve him and obey his laws. Now they do everything they can to repudiate the most high. Does God still hold them accountable like he did the apostate rulers of Judah? I would tend to think so. Thought we can never claim the same kind of everlasting covenant that Israel had, since we initiated the covenants with God, vs God initiating the covenants with Israel, God holds people to their oaths. He kept speaking of Israel as if they were still a viable nation, even though they had been destroyed over 100 years ago. So too, Canada and America had sworn oaths to Yehovah that these lands were to be governed for his glory. Just because we have satanists at the highest levels of government does not mean that God has forgotten those original oaths, no more than when Manasseh filled the temple with idols. He was still accountable as the leader of God’s people.
Yet I do allow that if one chooses to argue that the church state separation is more pronounced in the church age than in Israel’s age, a case can be made for that point of view. Nevertheless, we can look to the church itself instead of our governments as parallel examples of where we have wholly abandoned the word of the Lord, and have continually turned away from his commandments.
The point of this verse is that God’s anger is kindled by God’s people, not the devil’s.
Jer 44:7 Therefore now thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel; Wherefore commit ye this great evil (rah) against your souls (neh-fesh), to cut off (kaw-rath – to cut a covenant) from you man and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, to leave you none to remain;
Jer 44:8 In that ye provoke me unto wrath (vex me, trouble me) with the works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye be gone to dwell, that ye might cut yourselves off (kaw-rath), and that ye might be a curse and a reproach (disgrace) among all the nations (goy) of the earth?
Why are you so resolute to continue down this deh-rek – this path, this road, that is guaranteed to lead you to total annihilation? You are now few in number, yet you refuse to repent, as if challenging me to do away with the rest of you. How come after my great judgments where I have destroyed most of you, there is still no heart change? Why are you still engaging in the same abominable practices?
Their behavior in resolutely pursuing evil is likened to cutting a covenant. We always think of this practice in a positive manner. Either God or a man, or 2 or more men, slaughter an animal and walk between the pieces to bind themselves to do what they say. Here it is used to describe the behavior of this remnant. It is as if they have bound themselves by the most solemn of oaths to continue to provoke God by their abominable behaviors.
What they are doing is guaranteeing that their bloodlines will be wiped off the face of the earth. Depopulation is always one of the most grievous curses that God can lay upon a people. All the western nations have been placed under this curse since 2021. Regardless of the mechanism, God has brought this rah upon us, because we refuse to live the way God demands.
Two groups come to mind that would take issue with the last sentence. The hyper Calvinists would see this as some sort of heretical works type Christianity, which sends them into a foaming rage at any mention of works or behavior (gasp!). The other group would be the word of faith nuts who think they can confess their way into creating their own reality, like the little gods that they think they are.
I would ask this question. In the last 40 years, have we not had more sermons on faith than at any other time in church history? If faith was the primary and sole key to a victorious Christian life, one that was the most pleasing to God, then why are we in such a terminally ill situation in the west today? Why is the fruit that was produced by word of faith and hyper grace so rotten? Maybe because the doctrines were rotten? I don’t have to suggest it, I know it. And anyone who has stuck with this teaching this far knows it too, otherwise you would have fled these pages long ago!
Don’t forget that God is not giving them a history lesson in verse 8. He is saying that they are continuing their abominations in the land of Egypt, where they have fled for sanctuary. Because they know not repentance, their place of sanctuary will become their grave, and their bloodline will be extinguished. Your wickedness is so severe, that all the Gentiles of the earth will shudder in disgust and revulsion at you. Not just because of the severity of the judgments you have experienced, but because of your behaviors.
America is now becoming an object of abject loathing in the rest of the world because of their lack of morality. What was once the most virtuous nation on earth has now become the most vile. Endless sexual depravity, creating poisonous death jabs and calling it medicine, and fomenting endless wars. That is what America is known for today. At one time, the muslims would falsely accuse America of all sorts of crimes. They were motivated by hatred of Israel, and America who was their ally. Sadly, now a lot of their accusations are true. We are truly degenerate. We do cause wars and escalate them, and prevent them from ending. We are an immoral people. Yes, our governments are now a law unto themselves. We cannot touch them. However, God holds all of us accountable. We let them get this way. Now it is too late.
Something has been put on my heart the last day or two and I want to share it here, before I forget. Before 2020, most of us had a hard time relating to books such as Jeremiah, because we couldn’t understand how they could persist in such overtly evil behavior, especially when judgment after judgment fell upon them. We will see in this chapter what I believe is their absolute low point in their history, when we read the people’s response to Jeremiah’s latest word.
Since 2020, the veil has been taken off our eyes. Our leaders are far more sinister than we imagined. Our churches are far more apostate than we cared to admit. We saw most submit to the covid scam, and all the trampling of rights and freedoms. We saw God abandon us, and our land. We saw real judgments begin in fall in our land, just as Judah experienced in this book. And we have seen little or no repentance. Rather, the wicked have hardened their hearts and keep doubling down. The church still is not speaking of repenting and falling on our faces continually and looking to God, and God alone, for any and all help.
So now we begin to understand and relate to Judah at this deadly time. We are behaving the same way. Looking for help in man, making unholy alliances, desperately trying to find something to preserve our way of life. Even Christians trying to team up with anybody out there, regardless of their personal beliefs, in trying to fight for our constitutional rights. Having to then compromise the message of Jesus at times in order to work with them. Seeing the apostasy continue and even deepen.
What makes us even worse, though, than Judah, is that our own government is trying to kill its own citizens. We have nothing but pure narcissistic, money driven traitors at all levels of government. They are actively trying to poison us and kill us. Our situation would of caused all the Judeans to recoil in horror at the very idea. Yet we have fallen so low that we can add treachery as a universal prerequisite to be employed in any capacity that has any real power behind it. No government in the history of mankind would of had its main goal to exterminate most of its people. Sure, there were hard line communist regimes that murdered millions. But their intent was never depopulation, only total control. Our leaders are not merely satisfied with total control. They also want to kill off as many of us as possible, to satisfy the twisted goal of the antichrist, who is most likely even now pulling the strings through his many puppets in most nations of the world.
Jer 44:9 Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?
God is trying to get them to recall the detestable things that their predecessors did in Judah. They are what caused you to be exiled out of your own land. Why are you continuing to do the exact same things that are guaranteed to produce the exact same calamitous results?
We are now introduced to a new crucial aspect of the reason for Judah’s downfall. The women. We need to recall that idolatry was introduced into the Davidic line by the pagan wives of Solomon (1 Ki 11:4). Also in the reigns of Asa (1 Ki 15:13 and Ahaziah (2 Chr 22:2), women were central in the propagation of idol worship. We are not even mentioning the greatest wicked woman of all time, Jezebel, because she was a wife of a northern king of Israel, which God is not mentioning here.
Here God is indicting the wives of the kings of Judah, as well as the remnants’ wives, of whom God remembers their abominable deeds they performed while they were yet in the land. We will be given more detail about their practices later on in the chapter.
This is a good time to recount the women of Genesis. While reading the book of Genesis at this time for my daily devotions, God brought to my attention the crucial role that the patriarch’s wives played in the events of their time, and they were not good.
First there was Sarah. She gets frustrated at her shame of barrenness, so she makes Abraham have sex with her slave. Then she gets mad at her smug slave, so she gets Abraham to agree to kick her out. Then when she comes back, once she gets her own kid, she gets Abraham to agree to disinherit him and really kick him out for good. The result is Ishmael, the eternal enemy of the Jew.
Next Rebekah decides that her son Jacob is more important than what her husband wants. She chooses her son over her husband in deceiving Isaac to get him to bless Jacob. She then covers up her deception by whining to Isaac how Esau’s pagan wives are driving her nuts and manipulates Isaac to send Jacob away to get a wife elsewhere, just so he stays out of reach of murderous Esau, who has been cheated out of his blessing. The result is the Edomites, another perpetual enemy of the Jew.
Then we get to Leah and Rachel. Marrying 2 women – big mistake. Marrying 2 sisters – even bigger mistake. Rachel is barren, so she blames Jacob. She then tells Jacob to have sex with her slave. Leah, not to be outdone, gets Jacob to have sex with her slave. Then she pulls off some sort of magic trick with some mandrakes to get Jacob back in her bed. All the while God is seen shutting up, then reopening the wombs of these scheming females. The result is 12 tribes. We get the lineage of the Messiah, and also of the priesthood, and of the firstborn. Yet we also get Reuben, who had sex with this father’s concubine. We get Simeon and Levi, who slaughter a whole town of innocent men, for the indiscretion of one man. We get Benjamin, who is almost totally wiped out because they protected the vile murderous sodomites in their midst. We get Dan, known for cruelty when they wiped out the peaceful town of Lachish, and also for serious idol worship, cutting themself out of some biblical lists when the 12 tribes are listed.
These men let their women manipulate them. Men just want peace when they come home. A woman knows how to wear a man down. These men abdicated their responsibility time and time again, listening to their women instead of seeking God for themselves. As a result, they brought much chaos and grief into their lives, into Israel’s history, and into the world itself.
Yet the amazing thing is that God still chose to work with this morally suspect group. He knew exactly what they were going to do, and he still managed to produce the messiah out of all this mess! How great is our God! I think he allowed history to be written this way to really show us how that only by grace, and grace alone, can any redemption ever be accomplished. It is certainly not because of what man does, but in spite of what man does, God still chooses to save his own.
Jer 44:10 They are not humbled (daw-kaw – to crumble, bruise, beat to pieces, from a root meaning to be contrite) even unto this day, neither have they feared (yaw-ray – to revere, be in dread of), nor walked in my law (torah), nor in my statutes (ordinances), that I set before you (before your face) and before your fathers (and before the face of your fathers).
Here is the terrifying tragic truth that trembles: ‘After the most severe of judgments and punishments that God could of unleashed without destroying them all, it was like nothing at all had occurred, as far as having any effect on their hardened hearts’. How could this be? What more can God do? What other tools can God pull out of his toolbox to cause repentance? If the sword, famine and pestilence does not do it, then there really is nothing left to try.
This is a perfect picture of the depravity of man. No matter the consequence, they choose sin. They choose self will. They choose to go their own way. Just like their father satan. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can make them change their mind. He had tried to reach their ancestors, he has tried his best to reach the current generation. There is no more that he can do.
Jer 44:11 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will set my face against you for evil (rah), and to cut off (kaw-rath) all Judah.
Here it comes. The final verdict. The last decree. After he has pronounced increasingly severe judgments, all the while to get them to repent, now the judgments change into their other purpose. Judgments are to first get people to repent by chastising them for their sins, and to punish. Should man choose to continue to defy God, then judgment shifts to annihilate that which is worthless, to destroy it completely out of God’s sight, and to give an object lesson for the people on the earth. Noah’s flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were not meant to save anything. They were meant to wipe out. So now even the remnant, who should of been so grateful that they were spared when everyone else wasn’t, instead will suffer the same fate. God is so serious about this that he uses the language of cutting a covenant to show the unchangeability of this pronouncement.
Jer 44:12 And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed (spent, be all gone), and fall (naw-fal) in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be an execration (curse), and an astonishment (ruin, waste), and a curse (be vilified), and a reproach (disgrace, be exposed).
God speaks of the sword and famine being sufficient to finish off this lot. Next verse he throws in pestilence as well. What God will do to these people will make them infamous. I wonder if a part of this curse is the eternal hatred of the Jew that we now see springing up once again in our world, especially since Oct 7, 20023? What was so eye opening about that event was not so much the utter inhumanity and atrocity of the muslim, but how the whole world has turned on the Jew for daring to have the gall to actually defend themself. They paint the picture that thousands of completely innocent civilians are dying in retaliation for a single act of barbarism. When in fact it’s been 1400 years of mass murder after mass murder by the muslim towards the infidel, and in particular the Jew and Christian. Israel had been attacked thousands of times since their rebirth in 1948. I wonder how long it would take America to attack Canada should we fire dozens of rockets daily into their territory, over a period of several decades? Of course, now that the cabal controls both nations, who knows what terrors they will unleash that will go unpunished? But you get my point. According to the rest of the world, Israel is the only country in the world that does not have a right to defend itself.
Jer 44:13 For I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence:
Getting back to the main point, God reiterates his judgment. He throws in pestilence for good measure, almost as if he forget to mention it the first time, but you should just assume it by now, having experienced it so often at my hand. Just because they have changed addresses, they have not changed their heart condition so guess what? Same result, regardless of where they call home.
Jer 44:14 So that none of the remnant of Judah, which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that they should return (shoob) into the land of Judah, to the which they have a desire to return (shoob) to dwell there: for none shall return (shoob) but such as shall escape.
Don’t you love the promises of God? How we love to quote things such as my God shall supply all your needs in Christ Jesus. I don’t hear too many quote promises such as this one. That the rebellious and obstinate shall in no wise escape.
We shall see that in the next verse that not every single person is implied in this idol worship that they are continuing in, but certainly the majority are guilty. In this verse we see God speaking about a remnant from the remnant shall escape. Instead of thinking in terms of a big revival in the end times, I believe we should be thinking of a subset of the remnant of the last days making it to the end. Or, perhaps this says that only a remnant of the end time remnant will be hid as the day of the Lord falls upon us. There are other scriptures that hint of this (Zeph 2:3, Lk 21:36).
In other words, I am not looking for an expanding remnant as the day of the Lord progresses. I am looking for a shrinking, as the fires in the crucible of persecution become hotter and hotter, exposing more and more dross, with only the truly pure in heart surviving the process.
You may desire to shoob back to God, but if you refuse to put away your idols, God will block any shoobing that you may desire to do.
Jer 44:15 Then all the men which knew (yah-dah) that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying,
Here we get a direct insight into what the people think about all this. Verses 15 to 19 will tell us the outrageous things that were said by this evil bunch. The rest of the chapter is Jeremiah’s, even God’s, rebuttal.
The words imply that most of the exiles in Egypt that earlier were mentioned as having scattered all over the country, were gathered together here at Pathros for one reason or another. They heard this strong word, and now they respond. Note that it does not say that all the exiles burned incense to other gods, nor does it say that every woman who did this was known by her husband. The response will come probably by some spokesperson, who represented the common consensus of the people, who were identified as the husbands of the idolatrous wives, the idolatrous women in general, and the rest of whatever crowd had gathered there, which was sizable.
Some commentators try to state that these women had just taken up the incense burning once they entered Egypt, seeing the prosperity of the native Egyptians. That is incorrect, as the following verses state that this was a long standing practice of the people when they were back in Judah.
Jer 44:16 As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee.
Remember Johanan accused Jeremiah of speaking falsely, ie, that God did not say such things (Jer 43:2). Now the rebellion reaches new heights. They acknowledge what God said, but they brazenly and outrageously publicly declare that we will not obey. This was the kind of wilful sin in which there was no prescribed sacrifice in the temple. The penalty for such behavior was always instant death. This is what they had decreed for themselves. This was the mishpat they had just placed on their own heads.
How is this possible? How can a man’s heart be so hardened? These next 4 verses are some of the most terrifying verses in the entire bible. The reason I say this is they give us a deep dive into a man’s heart that has gone beyond any hope of redemption.
Think of the situation. Try to picture it in your minds. For 19 years, they have been under threat of attack, and actual attack, by this powerful Babylonian army, that is trying to conquer all the known world. They have seen what happened to their northern cousins over 100 years ago by the Assyrians. They have lived through 2 deportations in 605 and 597. They have seen loved ones die. They have seen other loved ones dragged off in chains to Babylon. Twice. They have seen their king deposed.
Then, they experience siege. For 18 long months, as they slowly starve, disease and despair overwhelm Jerusalem. Finally, the city is taken. More of their loved ones killed or taken captive. The city burned. The temple burned. The place where their God resided is now gone.
Through all this there has been one man who was consistently told them the truth, at great personal cost. He has survived, and is still among the people. In the months following the final slaughter of 586, rival political factions foment rebellion via assassination, and they are forced to leave what little has not been destroyed and taken by the Babylonians and go to Egypt.
So now here they are. Strangers in a foreign land. A tiny number, compared to the population just 20 years ago. They have experienced horrific calamity. Extreme judgments. You think that now would be the time to consider their ways, would it not? Wouldn’t you be on your face day and night, on the verge of utter extinction?
So what do we see? Not even a pretense of obedience. Utter contempt for God. The following words are words of such defiance and rebellion, it literally makes the ears tingle.
Jer 44:17 But we will certainly do (aw-saw aw-saw – bring forth, bring forth) whatsoever thing (daw-bawr – word) goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen (mel-eh-keth) of heaven (shaw-mah-yim – the sky), and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals (lekh-em – bread), and were well, and saw no evil (rah).
Jer 44:18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted (lacked) all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
Jer 44:19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?
We will deal with all 3 of these verses together, since they are so full of dark import.
First, what sort of heart could utter these things after all their life experience that I listed above? What causes people to be like this? We see many, many people behaving exactly like this today. Deadly jabs that have killed millions? Bring on another booster! Open borders that have allowed millions of invaders to overrun our land? Keep it open and pour it on! Drag queen freaks that gyrate their genitals in the faces of our 5 year old children? Give them a standing ovation! And on, and on, and on.
How can this be?
The doctrine (truth) of the depravity of man. That’s all that doctrine is. A formal statement of some truth. Now that we are living in an openly satanic world, do we now finally see why we need Jesus? Why we need him so desperately? Are we starting to catch on just how sick, how perverted, how abominable, how totally ugly, each and every one of our hearts truly are? This idea of how Canadians are just such nice people, is completely absurd. We are totally depraved without Him.
All these people here in Egypt, and the walking abominations all around us today, are us. We are all capable of sinking this low. Without Jesus, there is no bottom. Just like the love of God is incalculable, so is the wickedness of the devil. Those that serve him whole heartedly are capable of incomprehensible evil. But the true believer is capable of incomprehensible acts of love, if we would only serve Jesus with the same whole heartedness as these Hebrews were serving their queen of heaven. Maybe they thought that their behavior was actually ok, as hadn’t they survived thus far, when everyone else had perished?
The queen of heaven is mostly associated with the worship of Ashtoreth, or sun worship. Others think the queen of heaven was the moon, the sun being the king. Whatever or whichever fallen one they were worshipping, they were darn proud of it, just like the alphabet people are so proud of their abominations. Of course, we naturally think of Mary worship by the old school catholics. Mary worship was the central focal point of so much of catholic thought and culture when it was the only church in the world. North American catholicism is about the least heretical catholicism that has existed for the last 1500 years, yet in most places it’s still pretty bad. However this would definitely be a secondary meaning. These Judeans loved their idol worship. So much idol worship has to have some sort of female deity, as illicit sexual practices invariably was their favorite part of these religions that their modern, enlightened, progressive neighbors practised. They were so proud of their tolerance. Tolerant of any and every thing, but not the true word of the Lord. If we don’t kill the prophet, then lock him up. If we don’t lock him up, accuse him of lying. If we let him speak, then tell him to sod off as we will continue to do as we please.
Tolerance for anything and everything except the word of the Lord.
Note also how they invoked the practices of the national leadership. Not only the princes, but the king himself participated in these rituals. Else how could they know the king and the princes worshipped the queen of heaven unless they had made a public display of it? After all, they were only obeying their rulers. Does not the word teach us to obey all those in authority? If the king thinks it’s ok, then who are we to contradict God’s man on the throne?
These vile women who seem to be the spiritual leaders of their households, being the brazen ones to flaunt their sin, now hide behind their men. In effect, they’re saying that our husbands, who are our heads, know and approve of what we’re doing, so who are you to defy them? They instigate and perform the deed. The spineless sissies of men do nothing, as religion is the domain of women. Then when the women are confronted, they try and say that their men are really the ones who are responsible. Sort of like a reversal of the Genesis story. Adam ensured the woman took her share of the blame. Here, it’s the other way around.
Men, why do you delegate what is not yours to delegate? You have no right to delegate spiritual things to your women. It is a shame and a disgrace and extremely dangerous. Whenever you decide to do any thing your own way and not God’s, you are asking for devils to gain a foothold in your life. Stop screwing around and get serious with God. Quit trying to ride on your wife’s coattails. That is sinful, rebellious, and just plain lazy. And women, if your man decides to act like a man and take charge of the spiritual affairs of the house, you better get out of this way and let him. You may think you know far more than him and maybe you do. You may not make as many mistakes. You must allow him to grow into the role. You are the helpmate, not the boss. Rejoice if God has blessed you with a real man. Pray and continue to seek God if he has not.
Isn’t it tragic how the devil can make the people believe the stupidest things? Here is the classic trap that most of mankind falls in. Because God fails to punish immediately, we don’t see the consequence of our actions. So we try something else and whether by the devil or by coincidence, we think our evil act produced something good. Thus we are deceived into believing the wrong thing.
They had probably been prevented from offering food and drink to this demon deity because of the famine. Or perhaps a last minute show of insincere piety by Zedekiah discouraged the populace from doing so. They probably decided to try and serve Yehovah, and see what happens. Because God didn’t instantly answer their prayers, they assume he can’t hear, or doesn’t care, ir is not real, or has no real power, or they’ve offended the queen of heaven. Their memory becomes very selective. Like the alcoholic, who remembers the pleasant buzz at the beginning of a bender, and forgets the blackouts and the arrests and the fights and the poverty, so they remember the times when they still had food, and they were worshipping idols at that time. They thought cause and effect was immediate.
This is how the devil wins so many souls. People try Jesus. They pray once or twice, nothing happens. They conclude it’s all a fairy tale. So they quit and try something else. Another soul eternally lost.
You do not ‘try’ God. You give him your life, body and soul, without reservation, once for all time. God will not be mocked. You don’t give an altar call and urge people to try Jesus. You convince them of how utterly lost and wicked they are, and let the Holy Ghost convict them of their true spiritual state. If you have done your job properly and they are truly being pursued by the Holy Spirit, then should be running to the altar, not making a tentative purchase with some sort of money back guarantee. We have treated the holy things of God so lightly. Now we reap the whirlwind.
Jer 44:20 Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying,
Jeremiah chooses to respond, not God. God will pronounce his verdict after Jeremiah is done.
Jer 44:21 The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the LORD remember (mark) them, and came it not into his mind (labe – heart, the center of his being)?
Did you actually think that God did not know what you were doing? That somehow your abominations slipped his mind? Jeremiah acknowledges that this heart sickness had infected the entire land. It was not just the really wicked, or a small percentage of leaders, it was by and large everyone. It was mainstream. It had been completely normalized.
Jer 44:22 So that the LORD could no longer bear (accept, pardon, forgive), because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day.
The Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the bible) is filled with instances of immediate cause and effect. Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire, and are killed. Korah, Dathan and Abiram rebel, and are swallowed up. Miriam complains about Moses wife, and she gets leprosy. All to give initial examples to the Hebrews, and to all mankind, that the wages of sin is death. Sin always has consequences.
Yet God could not punish every sin instantly like he did in these few demonstrative cases, or very soon there would be no men left alive. So the consequences were delayed. Often, they were delayed until the afterlife. Not always, but in sufficient enough cases that several men of God wondered when the wicked would be dealt with, or if they ever would be. Men would forget the lessons of history. They would become impatient. Their eyes would wander. They would see other ways, other roads. Perhaps worshipping this other god would provide more immediate results. Sometimes they would seem to be blessed. Because our hearts love to sin, we would remember the good times in our idol worship and conveniently forget the bad. Our pagan priests would tell us we didn’t do the ritual correctly, or our offering was not large enough. Kind of like the private jet collecting, mansion loving, lascivious living looters of the little man’s filthy lucre, lining their pockets continually with ill gotten gain.
Should you choose to continue to disregard the plain teaching of scripture and do what is right in your own eyes, there comes a day when God simply has had enough of your choices. He then chooses to stop extending any more grace.
Jer 44:23 Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned against the LORD, and have not obeyed (shama) the voice of the LORD, nor walked in his law (torah), nor in his statutes (customs, appointed ordinances), nor in his testimonies (nor as a witness); therefore this evil is happened unto you, as at this day.
Jeremiah corrects their man made theology. There is only one god. This queen of heaven did not bless you, it was simply God’s patience, hoping you’d repent, that caused you to still prosper for a season when you had turned away from him. Eventually, that had to stop, when God could not bear your wickedness any longer. Your sin finally caught up with you. When the bad things started to happen, you may of insincerely partially turned back to him. But the judgments got worse. You were now experiencing the consequences more and more. It had nothing to do with the fact that you stopped worshipping the queen of heaven as fervently as you had been in the past. Stop thinking that the world operates by immediate cause and effect. Maybe in the natural that is sometimes the case, but it does not generally hold in the spiritual. When you turn back to the Lord, it takes time to build up a true relationship with him. Your past sinful life may have many consequences that will yet have to play out. You must come to the place of genuine repentance, where your future behavior does not depend one bit on immediate blessing, but just because it is the right thing to do.
Not only are we to obey his commandments, but he has ordinances, customs, appointed times, and expectations of us to be his witness. We are to learn all we can learn about being true representatives of his glory on earth.
Jer 44:24 Moreover Jeremiah said unto all the people, and to all the women, Hear the word of the LORD, all Judah that are in the land of Egypt:
Now God gets to speak to them one final time. This will be the last word to these apostates from the mouth of Jeremiah, at least the last word that is recorded in this book.
Jer 44:25 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying; Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and fulfilled with your hand, saying, We will surely perform our vows (promises) that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows.
God rarely speaks to the women like he does here. In this case though, they had usurped the authority not meant for them, so they would bear the brunt of the judgments. Women were supposed to be shielded and protected by their men. When they chose to defy all divine order, then they had to face the consequences.
God is saying that yes, as you have spoken, as you have acted, so you will go all the way and complete what you have purposed in your heart. You will continue to worship this false god.
Jer 44:26 Therefore hear ye the word of the LORD, all Judah that dwell in the land of Egypt; Behold, I have sworn by my great name (shame or shem – honor, character), saith the LORD, that my name (shem) shall no more be named (called out or spoken) in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, The Lord GOD liveth.
You have chosen what you will do, so now hear one more final time what I have chosen to do, says the Lord. He specifically addresses this small remnant that has disobeyed him by fleeing to a place that he said not to flee. Whether you will shama or not, you will at least hear this final curse.
I am going to ensure that my name will not be found on any man’s lips who reside in Egypt. You have so dishonoured and besmirched my character and the essence of who I am, that I am not going to allow you to use my name anymore.
Jer 44:27 Behold, I will watch over them for evil (rah), and not for good: and all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them (a finishing, a clean riddance).
How will I primarily accomplish this? By killing most of you. This remnant will be whittled down to almost nothing. Sometimes we love to retain the image of angels watching over us, especially our children. We get a sense of safety and security, knowing the hosts of heaven surround us. Well how would you like to have God watching over you to ensure that only evil comes your way, and he intentionally keeps away the good? Just keep rebelling and rebelling, and this scenario can be yours.
Jer 44:28 Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return (shoob) out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose words shall stand, mine, or theirs.
God lays down the gauntlet. Whose word shall stand, yours or mine? Who will be proven a liar? You may of vowed and swore that we will go to Egypt and prosper there. It matters not. All that matters is what I decide. You have chosen to defy the living God one time too many. You have managed to live through my mishpat. Instead of shoobing back to me, you shoobed away even further from me.
Thus my final judgment through my servant Jeremiah, who has spoken to you these 22 years, is this: You thought that you were going to experience a revival in Egypt. We had survived the worst, now doesn’t the word promise restoration? Isn’t the latter rain going to be greater than the former? Aren’t we almost guaranteed a great reversal and victory, especially since we’re in a place where the sword of Babylon has not yet reached?
God has got news for them. Instead of the remnant increasing into a mighty army, it will decrease into a remnant of a remnant. You thought you were few, I am going to make you positively minuscule in comparison. As in the day of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the son of man. Josiah was your great latter rain, yet you refused to shoob and shama. So now you are haram – devoted to destruction.
You have preached great revival in this your end of days. I have preached the whittling down of the remnant to a number you can literally count.
Choose you this day whose word you wish to believe.
Jer 44:29 And this shall be a sign (oth – flag, beacon, monument, signal, beacon, omen, evidence) unto you, saith the LORD, that I will punish you in this place, that ye may know that my words shall surely stand against you for evil (rah):
Do you need proof that this is what I will do? Well, read the final verse of this chapter and I will tell you what to look for.
I don’t know how many more irrefutable signs God needs to send us in North America and the west that he is done with western civilization. How many more defeats, how many more rights and freedoms need to be trampled upon? How many more people need to be destroyed? How many more need to die suddenly? How many more times will we tempt God by not acknowledging our utter hopelessness, and our need for total repentance, if we hope to save even a remnant of a remnant?
I wish the bible had better news for us, I really do. I did not write it, and neither did you. Neither did all the pastors and preachers of fairy tales out there. Will you embrace the words of Jeremiah, or will you change the channel and go back to the purveyors of foolish fantasy and make believe?
Jer 44:30 Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give Pharaohhophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.
You already have Zedekiah as an example of proof that I have pronounced total judgment against you. Now, this latest Pharaoh, will be given over to some personal enemy. I did not say that Nebuchadnezzar will kill him, or even capture him. He will be given over to some personal enemy.
History records what happened to this man, who some called Apries. His predecessor was called Pharaoh nechoh (2 Ki 23:29), but I digress.
Apries’ subjects rebelled. He sent Amasis, one of his generals to quell the rebellion. The mob proclaimed him king. He accepted and Apries had to flee to upper Egypt. The weakened nation was easily overcome by Nebuchadnezzar, who left Amasis as his governor. After Nebuchadnezzar’s departure, Apries marched against Amasis, but, being defeated at Memphis, was taken prisoner, carried to Sais, and strangled in his own palace; thus verifying this prophecy.
So we see that true prophecy gets fulfilled to a ‘T’. There is no having to twist and try to make the word fit the actual event. What is written, is written, and cannot be changed.
I leave with the words found in one of the Terminator movies. Judgment day cannot be stopped, only postponed. You are not meant to stop judgment day, only to survive it.
Will we open God’s instruction book, take the instructions to heart, and learn what we need to learn to survive judgment day? Of will be like these foolish Judeans, continuing to believe and do things their own way, right to the bitter end?
Solitary Man
https://solitaryman.substack.com/
Photos courtesy Depositphotos
