People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, 'Why has the LORD done such a thing to this great city?' – Jeremiah 22:8

Today's Scripture Reading (July 4, 2023): Jeremiah 22

Pripyat was founded on February 4, 1970, as a bedroom community for workers at a nearby nuclear plant. The new city was on the border between Ukraine and Belarus. In just nine years of existence, the new settlement was declared a city, and the city's population grew to just short of 50,000 people by April 26, 1986. And then it happened. On April 27, 1986, the sixteen-year-old city found itself under a mandatory evacuation order, and in a mere two days, the population of Pripyat dropped from almost 50,000 people to zero. What happened? The nearby Chornobyl nuclear plant had an accident in Reactor number 4 and created an exclusion zone around the nuclear plant that included the city of Pripyat. Today, the radiation exposure in the city has dropped significantly from where it was on April 27, 1986, but the city is still a ghost town reminding nearby residents of what it once was.

Today, you can pay a tourist company to take you to Pripyat for a tour of the city. But no one lives there anymore. The buildings still stand, and a motionless Ferris Wheel looks over the silent city, but human inhabitants are limited to a few tourists who brave the radiation danger and come to see the empty city. And every one of those visitors understands why the city is silent and remembers back to a nuclear disaster that happened almost forty years ago.

The destruction of Jerusalem would be very different from how Pripyat disappeared from history. The city would be destroyed in a way that Pripyat was not. On the day of the disaster, the Babylonians would go off like a bomb in Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem would be leveled. Buildings would be torn down, the Temple would be removed from its foundation, and the city's walls would be flattened. And while it is doubtful that there would be tours to the destroyed city in the aftermath of the city's destruction, as there are for Pripyat, the well-worn trade route from Africa to Europe and Asia would still go through Canaan, and that would mean that there would be still people who would pass by the ruins of the city. And Jeremiah argues that the question on their lips would be, "Why would God destroy such a great city."

The answer to the question might not be as apparent as it was for Pripyat. Many would argue that Judah's God was just not as strong as the God of Babylon. And that was one of the reasons why some of the prophets believed that God would not let the city be destroyed. But God's message to Jeremiah is that he has decided this must happen, regardless of what people think. The city would be destroyed so that one day the faith of the Jews could be reconstructed, along with the ruined city.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 23

Happy Independence Day!