1) Fishers And Hunters
Jeremiah 16
The greatest day in Israel’s history was
their deliverance from Egyptian bondage by the hand of Moses. Of this their
Passover is an unfailing reminder, when they say: “The Lord liveth, that
brought up the children of Israel out of the land of
Egypt.”
Jeremiah 16: 14, 15 foretells the coming of
another day of deliverance which will utterly dwarf that ancient experience.
Instead, they will say: “...The Lord liveth, that brought up the children
of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had
driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their
fathers” (v. 15).
This promise certainly did not find its
fulfilment in the return from Babylon, for in no respect did that
restoration compare with the deliverance from Egypt — and here Jeremiah
foretells something considerably greater than that. Also, it is to be noted that
the same promise is repeated in Jeremiah 23: 7, 8, where it is specified as the
work of Messiah, the Lord our Righteousness. So, without any possibility of
doubt, here is a prophecy of the Last Days. The rest of the chapter shows how
the fulfilment is to come about.
FISHERS —
“Behold, I will send for many fishers,
saith the Lord, and they shall fish them” (v. 16). Since the twentieth
century came in, these words have found ample fulfilment. In many different ways
God has, so to speak, dangled bait before His ancient people to lure them back
to Himself and back to the Land. The Balfour Declaration in World War I was
almost an incitement to Jews to get busy on re-colonization of Palestine. And
circumstances were every way propitious—the Turks had been driven out, the
Land was almost empty of population, the few Arabs there were tolerably friendly
and willing to sell large areas of land at give-away prices, and the mandate was
in the hands of Britain. The barometer was set at
“Fair.”
— AND HUNTERS
But at first the Zionist Movement was slow to
gather momentum. Nearly everywhere the Jews were tolerably comfortable, and
pogroms seemed to be a thing of the past. So God tried a more radical method:
“And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from
every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.”
Thus there arose, to the utter astonishment of the entire world, a fanatical
German demagogue who attracted power to himself as a magnet. This man was
possessed with an insane hatred of Jews and everything Jewish. Before World War
II began, and especially during it, Jews were hunted with a calculating
resolution and inhumanity without parallel in world history. Both before and
after the war, this hunting of God’s people meant a great swelling of the
stream of immigrants to Palestine. Increasing Arab hostility cleared out the
Jewish communities in all the lands of Islam, and the new State of Israel
throve. But it throve in godlessness! An overwhelming proportion of its three
million people are without effective religion. Such religious conviction as
exists is of negligible power, for it is basically a zeal for arid rabbinic
tradition. Repentance and faith towards God are almost unknown. Jewish
Christians in Jerusalem are only a tiny handful. The great lesson of
self-mistrust and of faith in the God of Abraham has still to be
learned.
Accordingly, the Jeremiah prophecy proceeds:
“For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face,
neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes. And first I will recompense their
iniquity and their sin double; because they have defiled my land” (vv. 17,
18a).
Israel is God’s firstborn, endowed in time
past with double blessing (see Deuteronomy 21: 17), but bearing also double
responsibility. The present generation has certainly developed God’s Land
with unmatched skill and industry, not to God’s glory however, but out of
their own pride and for their own selfish ends. Therefore, first, before the
divine blessing can be given them there must come recompense and a consequent
change of heart.
When this transpires, the fullness of God’s
kingdom will flood in: “The Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of
the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and
things wherein there is no profit ... I will cause them (Israel, or the
Gentiles?) to know mine hand and my might: and they shall know that my name is
Jehovah” (vv. 19, 21).
