Twenty-Three Years of Warnings: Jeremiah's Long Game
Today I read Jeremiah chapters 23 through 25, and what stood out to me was the timeline. Jeremiah says he has been delivering messages from God for twenty-three years, and no one has listened. That number surprised me. I hadn’t realized just how long this was going on before things reached a breaking point.
Jeremiah 25:3 says, “For the past twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, until now—the Lord has been giving me his messages. I have faithfully passed them on to you, but you have not listened.”
The Ultimate Slow Burn
It’s not just that people weren’t paying attention—they were actively rejecting what he said. And yet, the warnings continued year after year. The patience here is kind of staggering. What does it mean to let something go on for twenty-three years before acting on it? And what does that suggest about what we mean when we talk about fairness or justice?
The part that caught me was how long people had to change course. This wasn’t a snap judgment. It wasn’t an overreaction. It was a slow burn. Jeremiah kept showing up, kept speaking, and kept being ignored. If this were a relationship, most people would have walked away a long time ago.
Warning Signs with a Snooze Button
It makes me wonder about patterns that persist for years before we notice the consequences. When do we reach the point where something has to give? Jeremiah seems to suggest that moment eventually comes, even if it takes decades. That makes me think not only about historical or political situations, but also about personal ones—habits, dynamics, warning signs we dismiss. Maybe the message isn’t always clear the first time. Or maybe we just don’t want to hear it.
Later in the chapter, there’s an image of a cup filled with the "wine of the Lord’s anger," which Jeremiah is told to give to all the nations. The language is intense, but the idea feels like an emotional overflow—like something that’s been building for a very long time. The cup gets passed around not because of one decision, but because of a history of decisions piled up over time.
The Clock Was Always Ticking
That’s the thread I keep coming back to: time. Twenty-three years of speaking. Twenty-three years of ignoring. And then something shifts. It’s not a quick turnaround or a dramatic moment of revelation. It’s the result of years of buildup, and it unfolds slowly and heavily.
There’s something very human in that. We don’t always respond to problems right away. Sometimes we wait too long. And sometimes we don’t realize we’ve waited too long until the consequences are already in motion.