Jeremiah 15:5-9

For who will have pity on you, Jerusalem?
Who will mourn you?
Who will come to ask of your welfare?
You have rejected me,” says Yahweh.
“You have gone backward.
Therefore I have stretched out my hand against you
and destroyed you.
I am weary of showing compassion.
I have winnowed them with a fan in the gates of the land.
I have bereaved them of children.
I have destroyed my people.
They didn’t return from their ways.
Their widows are increased more than the sand of the seas.
I have brought on them against the mother of the young men a destroyer at noonday.
I have caused anguish and terrors to fall on her suddenly.
She who has borne seven languishes.
She has given up the spirit.
Her sun has gone down while it was yet day.
She has been disappointed and confounded.
I will deliver their residue to the sword before their enemies,” says Yahweh.

Here, God asks Israel a very logical question once again. If God turns on them, who else is going to care? The obvious answer that we all know in our hearts is: “no one.” It’s amazing to me how often mankind’s avoidance of clearly logical issues demonstrates that our avoidance of God is irrational. This is obviously not just an Israeli problem. Opponents of Christianity often say that they believe in being rational, but their behavior makes it clear that they actually don’t. All God has to do is ask us a few questions and our bad thinking is exposed. Avoiding Christianity isn’t progressive. The fact is we “have gone backward” in our thinking.

Another thing that caught my attention in this passage is that God says: “I am weary of showing compassion.” That’s not something that I would have expected God to ever say. How can a God with all power ever get tired? Not only that, how can a God who is outside of time ever feel the effects of it? I believe that God is showing me my limits, not His. Even though God is outside of time, He can still exist in it as well. He can obviously feel the emotional pain of time. He can feel what it’s like to give to someone and have them take advantage of it. It also tells us that God won’t allow this to go on forever. When God is finally tired of showing compassion, it will stop. Obviously, it still takes God a long time to get tired emotionally.

God also says, here, that Jerusalem’s “sun has gone down while it was yet day.” I understand that to mean that God is causing them to die an unnatural death. God describes the details of it here as well, but a reason for this is given, and it is: “They didn’t return from their ways.” The Bible is very clear. When evil goes on and on, it’s not a sign that God is “OK” with it. It’s a sign of God’s compassion, but that kind of compassion will eventually be over.