The segment of Jeremiah’s prophecy in today’s first reading was written after the destruction of Israel and Judah. Jerusalem had been leveled and the Temple, together with the Arc of the Covenant, destroyed.
Jeremiah had warned the people to repent their sinful ways if they wished to avoid God’s punishment. They did not repent. Their punishment came at the hands of the Chaldaean army. Most of the people of Israel and Judah had been dragged off into exile. In the midst of this depressing desolation that hung, a heavy pall over God’s people, Jeremiah preaches the dawn of a new age for them.
The future will be given to what various prophets called “a remnant.” A small group of people who had been faithful to the Lord and who were faithful to him still, will come back to Jerusalem. Shepherds after God’s own heart will be given to them.
This small remnant will not rebuild the Arc of the Covenant, which was destroyed in the general destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. This was one of the mistakes their forebears had made: for them the Arc and the Temple were amulets or talismans that would ward of all evil, no matter how the people of Judah lived their lives. They should have entrusted themselves to God himself rather than to the Arc and the Temple and they should have lived exclusively by God’s word.
