Day 55 - Destruction is coming from the North

• Isaiah 63:15-19 - a prayer of penitence - but from whom? Appropriate for a non-Jew? "Though Abraham was ignorant of us, And Israel does not acknowledge us. You, O LORD, are our Father; Our Redeemer from Everlasting is Your name."
• 65:17ff - the glorious new creation. Is this a description of heaven, or a world as God intended it to be from the beginning? Will there be a type of "heaven on earth" at some point in the future? I ask, because it talks about death, and it would seem that heaven would not have death. (vs20). The former earth won't come to mind.

Isaiah is completed. Let's jump right into Jeremiah and tackle the first nine chapters.

Now, where are we - the author of Jeremiah tells us that this occurs from the 13th year of king Josiah's reign in Jerusalem through king Jehoahaz (3 months) king Jehoiakim (who is ruler in Daniel 1:1, when Babylon begins carting off Judah into captivity a bit at a time), Jeconiah (3 months) then until the 11th year of king Zedekiah, when Babylon burns Jerusalem. Israel has been captive under the Assyrians for more than 100 years, and then presumably under Babylon as they conquer Assyria. Josiah was the last king to rule independently on the throne of Judah. His offspring were puppet kings under foreign control. Revisit II Kings starting about chapter 22, and II Chronicles 34.

Jeremiah is called by God and God puts His words into Jeremiah's mouth just after Josiah's first reform where he removes all the idols from the kingdom.

• Chapter 2 - apparently Judah has a pretty tight allied relationship with Egypt.
• Chapter 3 - some info on divorce. Israel was an example for Judah to see, but Judah didn't get it and will suffer the same consequence.
• 3:10 - "And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but in pretense,” - the attempt by Josiah to clear the land of idols was only surface deep.
• 3:18 - "In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given as an inheritance to your fathers. " - what does this mean? Does it mean that some of all the tribes will be reunited at some point? Is this when they return to Zion after 70 years in Babylon? It seems that I recall some of the tribes of Zebulun and Ephraim being talked about when we had some info about the return in Ezra and Nehemiah.
• 5:18,19 - “Nevertheless in those days,” says the LORD, “I will not make a complete end of you. And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the LORD our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.'"
• 7:11 - temple referred to as "den of thieves"
• I remember that Shiloh is the first place where they set up the "permanent" tent tabernacle. But what did God do to it? 7:14
• God's patience has run out.