Replies

From: Jeremiah 7:23-28

The People’s Obstinacy (Continuation)

(Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel,) [23] “But this command I gave
them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and
walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ [24] But
they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the
stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. [25] From
the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persis-
tently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; [26] yet they did
not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than
their fathers.

[27] “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you.
You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. [28] And you shall say to
them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and
did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.”

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Commentary:

7:21-8:3. Jeremiah called on the people to admit their sins and mend their ways,
but his preaching fell on deaf ears (7:21-28). This leads him to intone a lament
(v. 29), bemoaning the desolation that will be Judah (7:34). A day will come
when the bones of those who practised idolatry will be disinterred and exposed
to the elements that they worshipped in their lifetime. When that day comes,
people will prefer death to life (7:30-8:3).

Topheth (7:31), which in Hebrew means “place of burning”, was a “high place”,
that is, a slightly higher piece of ground used for idolatrous rites involving the
sacrifice of children in honor of Baal-Molech (cf. 2 Kings 23:10). It was in the
valley of Hinnom (also called “Gehenna”, according to a Greek transcription),
ravine to the south of Jerusalem which, much later on, and with an eye on pas-
sages in Jeremiah (cf. 19:1-15; 32:35), became synonymous with a place of
torment (cf. Is 66:24; Mt 5:22, 29-30; 18:9; Mk 9:43; etc.).

The prophet’s failure can be put down to the people’s hardheartedness, that is,
the insensitivity that prevents them from examining their consciences in a de-
sire to change where necessary and thus be able to hear the voice of God. Holy
Scripture calls this obstinacy “hardness of heart” or “stubbornness of heart” (7:
24; cf. Ps 81:12; Mk 3:5). It is a kind of inner resistance, an imperviousness to
the voice of conscience, but it can be traced back to free choices that people
have made. “In our own time this attitude of mind and heart is perhaps reflected
in the loss of the sense of sin, to which the Apostolic Exhortation “Reconciliatio
Et Paenitentia”, 18 devotes many pages. Pope Pius XII had already declared
that ‘the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin’ (”Radio Message”, 26
October 1946), and this loss goes hand in hand with the ‘loss of the sense of
God’. In the Exhortation just mentioned we read: ‘In fact, God is the origin and
the supreme end of man, and man carries in himself a divine seed. Hence it is
the reality of God that reveals and illustrates the mystery of man. It is therefore
vain to hope that there will take root a sense of sin against man and against hu-
man values, if there is no sense of offense against God, namely the true sense
of sin’ (no. 18) Hence the Church constantly implores from God the grace that
integrity of human consciences will not be lost, that their healthy sensitivity with
regard to good and evil will not be blunted” (Bl. John Paul II, “Dominum Et Vivifi-
cantem”, 47).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.