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\(^{1b}\)Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?

Jeremiah can’t understand why the wicked prosper. Furthermore, he’s baffled because he knows God is all powerful and has - in some sense - brought this state into being:

\(^{2}\)You plant them, and they take root; they grow and produce fruit; you are near in their mouth and far from their heart.

Like Jonah, Jeremiah wants to see God punish the wicked

\(^{3b}\)Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.

Later in the chapter he laments how honest hard working people sometimes seem to get nothing for their hard work.

\(^{13}\)They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns; they have tired themselves out but profit nothing.

Jeremiah isn’t alone in the biblical writers to complain about injustice, to acknowledge its prevalence or to blame God.

God’s response has a lot of similarity with what he says to Jonah. God is ready to punish, but he’s eager to have compassion on the repentant

\(^{14b}\)Behold, I will pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. \(^{15}\)And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again each to his heritage and each to his land. \(^{16}\)And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, ‘As the LORD lives,’ even as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people. \(^{17}\)But if any nation will not listen, then I will utterly pluck it up and destroy it, declares the LORD.”

Another way in which this passage resembles what is said in Jonah is that it is about redemption for people outside Israel. It is different in that it isn’t merely focused on a single city like how Jonah was sent to Nineveh, but it concerns, at the very least “all my evil neighbours” (v14).