Force of Habit

“I have listened and heard, they have spoken what is not right; no man repented of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his course,

like a horse charging into the battle. Jeremiah 8:6 NASB

Charging – Have you ridden a horse? The first thing you notice is that this animal is much more powerful than you are. A thousand plus pounds of potential fury can be lethal to horse and rider if it isn’t controlled. That’s why you have to learn to ride. Both horse and rider practice how to control this energy. But when it comes to battle, when the animal smells the excitement, the adrenaline takes over, the power is released and you better hang on or you’re going to be swept aside in the onslaught.

Jeremiah’s word from YHVH uses this familiar experience to highlight the power of addictive compulsion. The horse snorts. The wind carries the enticement. And before you have a chance to rein in the beast, the explosion of desire overwhelms and you are lost to the chase. “Jeremiah laments the evil of his contemporaries, for whom this defect is like a plague. They turn a blind eye to their own actions, without taking heed to determine whether they should be engaged in or abandoned. He says about these men (8:6), ‘No one regrets his wrongdoing . . . Each pursues his course like a horse charging into battle.’ He means that they act out of impulse and habit, without leaving themselves time to evaluate their actions and ways, and, as a result, fall into evil without noticing.”[1]

Luzzatto calls for watchfulness. He does not mean forcing your life to follow the rules. By the time you are occupied with the rules of riding, it’s too late. He is pleading to consider the possible consequences long before you get on the animal. He wants you to notice the smallest details. The tightness of the cinch. The breathing of the horse. The feel of its coat. The time of the day. The humidity in the air. Before you mount! Because once you are in the saddle, things can change very quickly. Project, anticipate, pay attention! According to Jeremiah, Israel was like the mounted rider who discovers too late that he cannot turn the horse in full charge. “Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.” And you and I are numbers 397 and 398. Momentum. There is no getting out of the rush once it starts.

Jeremiah’s warning is a wake up call to those who have ridden into the valley of death more than a few times. “Don’t you remember what happened? Doesn’t this look like the same sort of thing?” Tiny details. Your mood on the last phone call. The frustration you experienced in line at the bank. Traffic. The fact that your spouse didn’t really hear what you wanted to say. Someone’s caustic reply. All of the sudden your horse is charging. Sometimes it’s better not to get on at all.

The Hebrew verb, shatsaf, isn’t actually about horses. It’s about water, so much water that we get caught in the flood and are carried away. “Overflowing torrent” is the imagery. It shows up in two important contexts: the first is God’s torrential judgment (charging into the valley of death) and the second, fortunately, is the idea of washing the blood off of you. What matters is the direction of the flow. We can let God wash or judge. But it’s nice to know that He is so anxious to wash that He would use the same torrential verb for that action as He does for charging off to destruction.

Topical Index: charging, Jeremiah 8:6, Moses Luzzatto

[1] Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Path of the Just, 2, cited in Binyamin Lau, Jeremiah: The Fate of a Prophet, p. 52.

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