Jeremiah 21:6-7 – Accountability at Every Level


 6 I will strike the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast; they shall die of a great pestilence. 7 And afterward,” says the Lord, “I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, his servants and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence and the sword and the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those who seek their life; and he shall strike them with the edge of the sword. He shall not spare them, or have pity or mercy.” ’

In Witness, Whittaker Chambers writes of exposed Communist Alger Hiss and the impact of his downfall on his influential set, "His roots could not be disturbed without disturbing all roots on all sides of them."

The same comprehensive phenomenon is described in Jeremiah 21:6-7. The society's roots, Jeremiah laments, are nestled in the wrong place. Communally, the people he has been ministering among no longer rely on the Lord. Their uprooting from this unholy status quo will impact every aspect of normal they have known.

Jeremiah 21:6-7 describes a realization similar to that which Jonah's Gospel reluctantly brought to Nineveh, although Jeremiah's audience will not respond to this upheaval with repentance. As the dictate of Nineveh's ruler clothes both man and beast in sackcloth, so the dictate of the King of Heaven is that His unleashed pestilence will affect the inhabitants of the city and its livestock.

The scope of his sovereignty is not something for only the great to consider in the leisure allowed them because they are free of daily chores and have time for contemplation. The everyman on the street owes God a debt unpaid. His interactions with his very cattle could have been acts of worship. Instead, undertaken with the wrong heart, they were acts of idolatry because they did not acknowledge Him from Whom livestock and the continuing health thereof came.

As with Nineveh, as with Egypt, the status quo uprooted has consequences all the way up to society's palaces usually insulated from the shock of need. Zedekiah in the context into which he was born is a man of influence. This very prophecy comes in response to his delegated behest.

Yet, it will be God's exercised prerogative to remove Zedekiah from the social assumptions which allow his words and actions to influence others. Except for belated desperation to seek a Word and reprieve from Jeremiah, he hasn't used his authority to turn the people Godward. Now he will lose it. Any cohesion between ruler and ruled, any social grease of mutual assumptions will be lost in the new normal the Lord commands.

We are presented in this text with how little socioeconomic status means in the eyes of the Lord. The great and the small are responsible before Him and will give account. His perfect Law warned as much against class antagonism, against either favoring the poor or the rich. Neither's representatives can buy his next breath. Neither can hedge himself against the great day of judgment the Lord says is coming, or any sufficiently intense birth pangs that foreshadow that ultimate day of reckoning by loosening societal assumptions.

The impetus to apply God's judgment to other people with different options than those before us is a strong one. Those richer are more flagrantly profligate with their influence and their goods. Those poorer that we are don't often enough with their heads above their daily dealings and the consolations to which they perhaps unwisely resort.

Yet, when judgment comes, it comes for all. If the Zedekiah of our society is a remote figure we are in the habit of giving either our reverence or our resentment from our meager social station, he still is no help compared to the edict of the King of Kings. If the Zedekiah of our society is a neighbor we count among our swanky set, if his is social capital we have assiduously cultivated, this is no help when the King of Kings demands Zedekiah's crown.

Knowing, then, the temporary nature of the veneer of identity within which the various classes operate, we would plead to see as God sees, toward the ultimate day of accountability rather than fixated on the assumptions of one culture. Acknowledging the ultimate authority of the one true King Whom none will unsettle, we can undertake this day's dealings, whether with cattle or with courtiers, by faith.

We can acknowledge Him in all we do. Rooted even now in Him, we can store up the fruit of faith-building experience which will deepen the intimate trust in Him which will be our standard as we rule in Glory.

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