Jeremiah 1-3, Psalm 110

During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. I thought that after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood. In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah‬ ‭3:6-10‬)

Jeremiah is a prophet to Judah, the God-chosen kingdom of the southern Holy Land. Here he has plenty to say about the kingdom of the northern Holy Land, namely, Israel. Israel had been overrun by the Assyrians in ~ 722 BCE. Jeremiah diagnoses the root of Israel’s problems in Israel’s idolatry, which he likens to adultery on the scale of humanity. Israel is “married” to the LORD. When Israel  worships other gods, then, the people adulterate their covenant relationship with God. That Israel and the LORD have divorced is confirmed in the prophet’s thinking by the evidence given in Assyrian conquest and occupation of Israel’s territory.

Judah, the southern kingdom, might have learned from Israel’s negative example. But during the reign of Josiah (~ 640-608 BCE) the worship of idols was widespread still, according to Jeremiah’s witness. The people of Judah had had opportunities to learn from experience and to grow in faithfulness to God, but they had not. They had kept up the pretense of faith without delivering on the practice of faith.

Does this story have application in my life and yours, reader? Have you and I learned from others’ negative experiences and our own? Are we growing in grace and faithfulness to God, or are we merely maintaining the pretense of doing so? What would God have us to be? What is God inviting us to do?