Where is God? For that matter, where is Jeremiah?!
We know from verse 6 of chapter 40 that Jeremiah was living in Mizpah with Gedaliah. But in our whole text, neither God nor Jeremiah shows up.
Sometimes God is silent. Sometimes God allows all sorts of awful things to happen. And sometimes he does not tell us why! Sometimes you have to wait!
Last time we heard about the fall of Jerusalem very briefly – with almost no detail, and certainly no emotion!
Now the narrative slows down. We hear a very detailed account of events that would appear far more trivial. For two chapters Jeremiah disappears. This is narrative history – not prophetic oracle!
Not only does the narrative slow down – the narrative shrinks! In the book of Chronicles the size of the armies are gigantic. Tens or hundreds of thousands of men are waging war with each other. Here in Jeremiah the size of the armies are miniscule. Ishmael defeats Gedaliah with 10 men. He escapes with 8 men.
Talk about “micro-history”!
And all through our text place matters. So we’ll pay attention to our geography as we go through the text. Because our text is setting us up for Israel return to Egypt in chapters 42-43.
God had told Israel that they should never return to Egypt. And yet, the relentless burden of this section of the book of Jeremiah is to show how intent the remnant of Judah is to return to Egypt.
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