Week 31 Jeremiah 30
I must punish you; I cannot let you go unpunished. That’s Jeremiah quoting the Lord.
For a reader who’s reading through the bible it’s impossible to miss this basic idea. There’s two types of actions: a) punishable actions and b) non-punishable actions. The two are treated differently.
A non-punishable action doesn’t require any punishment. It’s a ‘non’ and so by definition no punitive action is taken against it.
On the other hand a punishable action doesn’t get to go unpunished. Punishable acts have to be punished. It’s the way things are set up. It’s how things work.
In the regular world there are work-arounds for this where my punishable actions might not get punished. For instance here in the regular world my punishable can get reassigned – shifted over from the Penalty Column into the Non-Penalty Column just because we decide to. Penalty metamorphizes into Non-Penalty. Punishment is unnecessary. Jeremiah verse can now say: “I can let you go unpunished”.
In the regular world the system seems to be able to handle this kind of adjustment in the short-run. But over time there’s going to be degradation. One of the bibles repeater ideas is that punishables & nonpunishables are incompatible. Mixing them fouls the system.
So I can do something wrong and temporarily get-away with it. But eventually the I Cannot Let You Go Unpunished Rule will apply. It’s inevitable.
Note: quote from Jeremiah 30:11 (NLT). End-of-month reading report: 801 chapters. 67% of the bible read in 58% of the year.