What does Jeremias Chapter 7 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Good conduct and neighbor justice contrast with lying temple trust. Silo, unheeded calling and family idolatry precede rejected prayer. The edition distinguishes obedience from sacrifices without obedience.

Chapter breakdown

Jeremias 7 commissions proclamation at the house's gate to Juda's worshippers. Good ways and doings, judgment between neighbors, no oppression of stranger, fatherless or widow, no innocent blood and no strange gods accompany promised divine dwelling. Repeated temple words cannot profit those stealing, murdering, committing adultery, swearing falsely and offering to Baalim, then claiming deliverance in the house. The Lord questions a den of robbers and says he has seen.

Silo's fate for Israel's wickedness supplies the comparison for this house and land after unanswered speaking and calling. Ephraim's seed supplies the comparison for casting away. Jeremias must not pray, praise, supplicate or withstand. Children gather wood, fathers kindle and women knead cakes for the queen of heaven with strange libations. The edition identifies that queen with the worshipped moon. The worshippers provoke their own confusion; wrath burns against men, beasts, field trees and fruits.

Sacrificial flesh is to be eaten. The statement about not commanding sacrifice at departure from Egypt is followed by an edition explanation: offerings without obedience were not commanded and obedience was principal. Hearing, walking and covenant belonging contrast with backward movement and unheeded prophets. Jeremias is warned of unanswered words; faith has left the nation's mouth. Cut hair and high lament accompany polluted house and Topheth's burning of sons and daughters, not commanded or thought by God. The valley is renamed slaughter, with burial in Topheth for lack of place. Carcasses feed birds and beasts without anyone driving them away; joy and bridal voices cease. No permanent duration or incense-specific Baal offering is added.

The story inside

Opening: Good conduct and neighbor justice contrast with lying temple trust. Development: Silo, unheeded calling and family idolatry precede rejected prayer. Conclusion: The edition distinguishes obedience from sacrifices without obedience.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Good conduct and neighbor justice contrast with lying temple trust.
2
Silo, unheeded calling and family idolatry precede rejected prayer.
3
The edition distinguishes obedience from sacrifices without obedience.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 84700–84711
7:3. Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Make your ways and your doings good: and I will dwell with you in this place. 7:4. Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord. 7:5. For if you will order well your ways, and your doings: if you will execute judgment between a man and his neighbour, 7:6. If you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and walk not after strange gods to your own hurt,
Lines 84770–84781
7:22. For I spoke not to your fathers, and I commanded them not, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the matter of burnt offerings and sacrifices. I commanded them not.... Viz., such sacrifices as the Jews at this time offered, without obedience; which was the thing principally commanded: so that in comparison with it, the offering of the holocausts and sacrifices was of small account. 7:23. But this thing I commanded them, saying: Hearken to my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people: and walk ye in all the way that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.