Listen To My Voice

All these terrible things happened to you because you have burned incense to idols and sinned against the Lord. You have refused to obey him and have not followed his instructions, his decrees, and his laws.”  Jeremiah 44:23 NLT

These words were spoken by Jeremiah to the Judean people who had seen the Temple burned and Jerusalem destroyed, who had then killed the governor the Babylonians had appointed, and who had now fled to Egypt in fear. Why have all these terrible things happened? They had happened because the have not “obeyed.” That is the word used here and in virtually all other English translations. But the Hebrew actually says “You have not listened to his voice.”

“Obeys” is not a mistranslation of the phrase, because that is certainly its connotation. However, the word “obey” cannot convey the full “flavor” of the metaphor. “Obey” suggests the required response of an underling to the bare command of an overlord.  But “listen to my voice” which is what lies behind many of the occurrences of “obey” in English translations of the Old Testament, conveys much more of personal relationship, and of a parent-child connection.

God is not demanding that we do what he requires, or he will smash us. Rather, as a loving father, he says to us that he made us to live in certain ways, and that if we fail to live in those ways we are going to get hurt. So he says, “Honey, don’t play in the street.” If the child does not listen to what his Daddy says, and takes his toys into the street to play with them, he is in deep trouble.

This is the way we need to look at the “instructions,” (much better than “laws”) of the Old Testament. They are not the demands of a Tyrant; they are the directions of our Heavenly Father for a fulfilling and productive life. Listen to his voice and you will find life. Ignore his voice and it is going to hurt, now and evermore.