What is written on your heart?
King Hezekiah tried to turn around a centuries-long slide of the people of God from being a beacon for the nations into being no better and at times worse than the rest. In the years leading up to Israel’s great correction in the first exile, God said this the people of Judah (southern kingdom of Israel) through the prophet Jeremiah:
“I will make them an object of horror among all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.”
Jeremiah 15:4 NASB
What did King Manasseh do? We read in 2Kings 21 that Heaven faulted King Manasseh (southern kingdom ruler 687–642 B.C.) for rebuilding the pagan worship centers that his father King Hezekiah destroyed. Manesseh’s son Amon ruled likewise and was deposed in favor of his son Josiah, who as a boy led reforms that restored the Temple and found the book of the Law.
Jeremiah was called as a herald to the kingdom of Judah that life as they knew it would soon come to an end. (This was foretold in the Torah reading בְּהַר Behar / בְּחֻקֹּתַי Bechukotai, “on the mountain” / “in My statutes,” Leviticus 25–27.) God instructs Jeremiah not to marry or have children as a sign that the nation would face a time when wedding joy would cease and children would fall victim to the siege of Jerusalem. (Jeremiah 16)
“The sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus; With a diamond point it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart And on the horns of their altars….”
Jeremiah 17:1 NASB
The sin of Manasseh is engraving the names of other deities on the heart, rather than living the Shema (Deut. 6:4f; “write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates”).
As we studied a while back in 2Cor. 3:1–18, the Apostle Paul contrasted the “tablets of human hearts” and the “tablets of stone.” This indictment of the engraving false sources of hope onto the human heart finds is remedy in the New Covenant prophecy:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31–34 NASB
Heaven help us when we are freed from our inheritance
“And you will, even of yourself, let go of your inheritance That I gave you; And I will make you serve your enemies In the land which you do not know; For you have kindled a fire in My anger Which will burn forever.”
Jeremiah 17:4 NASB
The word translated as “let go” in the NASB is the Hebrew word שָׁמַט shāmaṭ (Strong’s lexicon No. H8058), which means to “release, let drop, let loose, let rest.”1Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament It’s related to the Hebrew word שְׁמִטָּה shemittah (“release”), the common term for the sabbatical year.
The word translated as “inheritance” is the Hebrew word נַחֲלָה nachalah (Strong’s H5159), which means “inheritance, heritage, or possession.”2Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
The Scriptures tell us that Israel is the LORD’s nachalah and that the the Land is Israel’s nachalah (Gen. 12:7; Deut. 12:9; 32:8f; Ex. 15:17; 32:13), and her menuchah (“resting place”). But one of the conditions of this inheritance is that the people of Israel were not supposed to follow the practices of the nations around them, particularly in their treatment of the poor, the widows and orphans, but follow Him.
Because Israel didn’t want to shamat her oppression and instead turned to other nations (specifically Mitzraim/Egypt) for help when she was oppressed, then the LORD would release Israel from her inheritance until the time that the “fishers of men” would gather the exiles from the lands of the nations’ inheritance (Jer. 16:16).
In Jer. 34:8–22 the prophet berates the Kingdom of Judah for keeping slaves beyond their contract of service, for not trusting God during the years of release. (See more on this: hallel.info/mishpatim-2021)
When facing destruction, Judah briefly banned slavery then re-enslaved their slaves. Because of this heinous about face,
Jeremiah warned that Jerusalem thus will be enslaved for 10 times seven years — judgment of the missed mercy during the Shemittah years.
The heart of the matter in Leviticus
“If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out….”
Leviticus 26:3 NASB
The LORD’s instructions aren’t just for study. They’re to become how we think, respond and live. Yeshua chastised His students for not staying alert, rousing themselves from sleepiness, because they were not watchful when He was anguishing in prayer over going forward with His mission (Matt. 26:36–45). God tells us to guard the LORD’s instructions, because our lives — and the world Heaven has assigned us to help save — depend on them.
This “heart transplant” for the world is a key mission for Israel and all whom Heaven has adopted into that family via Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus).
Summary: Tammy