Jeremiah 5 - We are dealing here with what the writer insists is universal corruption. God just looks for one righteous man.  It isn’t a matter of not “knowing” what they are supposed to do—God could forgive not knowing.  But even those you expect to know, “the great ones”—they too have “[broken] the yoke, torn off the harness” (5:5) Their faithlessness leaves them prey to the wolf, the lion and the leopard (5:6--images Dante uses in the Divine Comedy). They openly refuse to take God into account, and the prophets “have become wind . . . the word is not in them” (5:13). For these reasons, God tells Jeremiah, “I will make my words a fire in your mouth, and make this people wood. . .” (5:14).  God will bring a brave nation against them to reek devastation.  But He will not permit their total destruction—the point of the destruction will be for people to ask, “Why has the Lord done all these things to us?” (5:19) Like so much that is part of the life of Israel, the Lord sets it there so that people will be moved to ask probing questions, questions that will lead to knowledge of God or repentance.  The Lord is infinitely great and powerful—“should [we] not fear [Him]?” (5:22)

We modern people seem to feel it some kind of offense if something in God’s revelation to us implies that we should feel awe or fear before God--heaven forbid that we should tremble before the creator of the universe!—how absurd is that?

Jeremiah also bemoans the way the wicked seem to prosper. They have no fear of God, no respect for justice. “Monstrous, horrible things are happening in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests teach whatever they please.  And my people love it! [irony – they don’t challenge it]” (5:30-31).

1 Corinthians 10:1-13 – Paul expounds on the lessons Christians can learn from the OT narrative. As Christians enter into Christ through baptism, the Israelites were “baptized into Moses” in their water passage. Similarly they “ate the same spiritual bread and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them; and that rock was Christ himself” (10:3).  The rock that nourished the Jews in the wilderness was Christ typologically present in the water from the Rock, and in the manna.

This Christian lens through which all the Old Testament narrative is seen is so rich; it is the reason we must continue to keep the stories alive in the Church.