Jeremiah 47 is another one of those really short chapters. I am not sure why he wrote these little snippets like chapters 45 and 47, but know that if they are in God’s Word they are in for a reason and I need to pay attention and find out what the truth is. Jeremiah gets God’s word about the Philistines just before Pharaoh attacked. Things are not going to be pretty. Scripture tells us people will be washed away and paralyzed in fear. “God will finish off the Philistines”. As prophesied earlier – their day is here and it won’t be pretty. Interesting what God has Jeremiah write here: “Gaza will be shaved bald as an egg, Ashkelon struck dumb as a post”. It is going to be a rough time for the folks who have been mocking God in disobedience in the land of the Philistines. God is not mocked. Things are going to be taken away. People will die. Life will be very different for the few that remain.
One thing that is very obvious as we read the word of God through Jeremiah – God is in control and will make sure that the score gets settled. His people were disobedient and shared a lot of pain and suffering for that. But other peoples that disobeyed and were part of the punishment are really put in place by God’s hand. God absolutely is in control. He will drive things until people “return” to Him. The question is raised “can’t you call it quits” in this chapter. And the answer is “no” because God has a mission to straighten things out, to restore people and to clean house. None of us like to be pruned by God. No one wants to go through the pain of learning lessons the hard way. But over and over we see in scripture that when a nation continues down a path of disobedience, God acts. He has to, it is His nature of holiness that requires it. So we need to realize that when our own nation treads down a path of disobedience to the Father, there will be a price to pay. Lord help us to understand the need for obedience and alignment with His Word.
