This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths: ‘Where is the good way?’ Then walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it!’”
The invitation is quoted constantly. The sentence it ends on, where they refuse, almost never is.
Today's reflection
The first half of this verse is on a great many church walls. The second half is not.
Stand at the crossroads. Look. Ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. It is a generous offer, and it is phrased as an invitation rather than a command to obey blindly. God tells them to look around, ask questions and choose.
Then: but they said, we will not walk in it.
That refusal is part of the verse. It is not an unfortunate detail from a neighbouring passage. Jeremiah puts it in the same sentence, and then does it again in the next verse with watchmen who are also ignored, and again after that. Chapter 6 is an oracle about an army coming from the north. The appeals are being catalogued precisely because they were turned down.
Which changes what the verse is for. Read with the ending attached, it stops being a comfortable endorsement of old ways and becomes a question about what we do with an invitation we have already received.
There is also something worth noticing in what is offered. Not excitement. Rest for your souls. The same phrase turns up on the lips of Jesus in Matthew 11, which is unlikely to be accidental.
And note that the ancient paths have to be asked after. They are not obvious, not automatically inherited, and not the same thing as whatever happened to be normal when you were young. Finding them takes standing still at a junction and enquiring, which is slower than most of us prefer.
Why this passage
Context checked: Jeremiah 6 is an oracle of imminent invasion against Judah, and this verse is one of a series of rejected appeals. Verse 17 repeats the pattern with watchmen who are also ignored, and verse 19 announces disaster. Usually quoted as a warm call back to tradition with the refusal removed, which turns a judgment oracle into a slogan.
Scripture in English is from the Berean Standard Bible, which its publisher placed in the public domain on 30 April 2023.