Why does the Lord say he will make the temple like Shiloh if the people do not listen to him?

 This account of the incident gives only a summary of Jeremiah’s sermon. The account in Jeremiah 7:1–34 gives a fuller version. The focus here in chapter 26 is on the response to the message. But the summary given here in Jeremiah 26:4–6 makes it very clear what the Lord was saying to the people of Judah. If the people of Judah will not listen to the Lord and walk in my law that I have set before you, then I will make this house like Shiloh. This is the language of the covenant. To walk in my law is to be faithful to the Lord as described in the covenant. Failure to do this would bring the curses of the covenant which included the removal of the Lord’s presence with them, symbolized by the temple, and the blessings of the land.

Shiloh was the place where the Ark of the covenant was kept in about 1050 BC, before the temple had been built by Solomon (1 Samuel 1:1–4:22). Shiloh and the Ark therefore represented the Lord’s presence with Israel at that stage. Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines and the ark was taken. This happened because the Lord was judging Israel for her covenant unfaithfulness then already. Shiloh was still in ruins in Jeremiah’s day (see Jeremiah 7:12) and is a graphic picture from Israel’s history of what the Lord is about to do to the temple if Judah continues in her stubborn disobedience.

Jeremiah’s message that the Lord would make the temple like Shiloh struck at the very heart of what the majority of the religious and political leadership in Judah believed and were telling the people. They rejected the idea that the Lord was going to judge Judah by bringing disaster on it. The presence of the temple would in fact guarantee the Lord’s protection and the continuation of peace in the land.

It is not as if Jeremiah’s message had no hope of protection and peace. The Lord tells Jeremiah to deliver this very unpopular sermon because maybe they will listen and repent of their disobedience. If that happens then the Lord will relent of the disaster that he intends to bring to them. There is a glimmer of hope in the sermon, but the fact that the Lord also says that he sends his prophets urgently, though you have not listened, strongly suggests that there is very little chance of the people listening to Jeremiah now. The same adverb is used in Jeremiah 25:3 (translated there as persistently) to describe Jeremiah’s twenty-three years of preaching. Several passages in the book describe the Lord as speaking persistently to the people of Judah (Jeremiah 7:13; Jeremiah 11:7; Jeremiah 32:33; Jeremiah 35:14). This gives a depressing picture of sustained rejection of the Lord’s words of warning over a long period of time.¹ . In fact, this pattern stretched all the way back throughout Israel’s history, so there is very little reason to think that those listening to Jeremiah will respond with repentance.