Do you see all the promises? God is telling Israel everything that WILL happen, once they get back home. It seems to be a fulfillment of the long-ago promise God made to Abraham:
“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Genesis 12:2-3
Yet along with those promises for the future, God is also telling them the things they must do NOW, which are pretty simple: speak truth, judge truthfully, put away evil plots and lies, because God hates those things. We haven’t seen that word “hate” used by God very often; but the prophet Jeremiah also warned about God’s hatred:
“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says:
You saw the great disaster I brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah.
Today they lie deserted and in ruins because of the evil they have done.
They aroused my anger by burning incense to and worshiping other gods
that neither they, nor you, nor your ancestors ever knew.
Again and again I sent my servants, the prophets, who said,
‘Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!’
But they did not listen or pay attention….”
Jeremiah 44:2-5
Why don’t I listen? Why don’t I heed the warnings? How can I claim His promises while engaging in the things He hates? All my own selfish priorities of the day are the idols which I make to supersede the God of all creation. So this day, I choose to lean into the promises and lean onto the faithful, unshakeable God who loves me.