Babylon and Jerusalem (Jer. 51:59-52:34)

Does God sometimes seem irrelevant to history? To your life?

It is true that we have a habit of thinking of God as a “god of the gaps” – filling in the unexplained corners of our lives.

It’s why we speak of the marvelous and the wonderful events as “providential” – forgetting that God’s providence extends to every event!

When you discover a $20 bill in your pocket just at the moment that you need it, you say “how providential!” But it is just as providential for you to fall $20 short! Indeed, the fact that you just took a breath is providential! And when the day comes that you stop breathing – that will be providential as well!

Chapter 52 is a curious way for the book of Jeremiah to end. Jeremiah 52 consists largely of excerpts from 2 Kings 24-25 – but it is not simply a cut and paste. Certain material is taken verbatim – other parts are adapted – and others are omitted entirely.

Jeremiah 52 says very little about God’s particular purposes and actions. It might appear that God is distant or irrelevant to the action of Jeremiah 52. But that is why we are including the end of chapter 51 as well.

As Walter Brueggemann puts it: “This is an awesome reminder that God, who seems so irrelevant, has taken a profound decision that eventually and inevitably will prevail.” (Brueggemann, 486).

Chapter 51 ends with a symbolic actions – where the scroll of Jeremiah’s oracles against Babylon is thrown into Euphrates River...