My People Love to Have It So

Israel was God’s chosen nation through whom He would bring forth the Messiah. Yet, by the decade between 625 B.C. and 615 B. C. these people had become exceedingly wicked, so wicked in fact that in 606/605 B.C. God allowed the Babylonian Army to begin taking them into seventy long years of captivity. One of the reasons these people were considered wicked and worth punishment is found in the words of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 5:30-31 we read, “An astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule by their own power; And My people love to have it so.”

What was happening there? The prophets (preachers) were preaching falsehood, and the priests (those descendants of Aaron) were ruling by their means, not in the way which God had commanded them in His law. Can we learn something here? How does our town compare with ancient Judah?