The religious leaders of Judah taught that God would never desert them. God was on their side in every conflict. They proclaimed security and safety from all their enemies as long as the Temple and its sacrifices and rituals continued. Jeremiah’s long boney finger pointing at them warned that this was false. He urged the people of Judah not to listen to the lies of these religious leaders. To drive his point home Jeremiah reminded the people of what happened to them at Shiloh. In Jeremiah 7:12, he says, “Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.” He allowed the Philistines to take the ark of the covenant from the Israelites. Psalm 78:60-62 recounts this episode. It says, “He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among mankind, and delivered his power to captivity, his glory to the hand of the foe. He gave his people over to the sword and vented his wrath on his heritage.”
Feinberg tells us the story in some detail. “At Shiloh, Israel went into idolatry (1 Sam 4:1–11); so the ark was captured by the Philistines at the Battle of Ebenezer. The Bible gives no historical account of the destruction of Shiloh. Jeremiah’s references to its destruction (cf. also 26:6, 9) have been confirmed by excavations of the site, which revealed a city destroyed by the Philistines about 1050 b.c., probably after the Battle of Ebenezer. The dig was carried out by the Danish Palestine Expedition. Their findings confirmed Psalm 78:60–64. Shiloh was to the judges what Jerusalem was to the kings. Jeremiah was a descendant of the Eli family; so the tragedy had personal implications for him. The destruction of Shiloh did not necessarily mean the demolition of the tabernacle, because it was still in existence at Gibeon in David’s time (cf. 1 Chronicles 21:29), at the commencement of Solomon’s reign. The sanctuary at Shiloh proved the falsity of the claim that the Lord was unalterably committed to an earthly temple and its preservation regardless of the moral state of the people.”[1]
Pointing out to the men of Judah the destruction that befell Shiloh in spite of the presence of the tabernacle had to have been offensive to the religious leaders of the Southern Kingdom that Jeremiah was addressing. By the time Jeremiah addresses the men of Judah, the Northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria, was destroyed by Syria years before. They were destroyed because they deserved it. Not us! It was the cry of the southern kingdom at the time of Jeremiah. But in connecting the fate of Shiloh with the future of Judah and the temple in Jerusalem, Jeremiah wanted to illustrate that “God is thus shown to be independent of any given locality and uncommitted to a specific cultic object. However valuable as an aid to spirituality such things might be, they can never be acceptable substitutes for implicit faith in the living God. This affirmation must have seemed the worst kind of heresy to Jeremiah’s superstitious hearers.”[2]
[1] Feinberg, Charles L. 1986. “Jeremiah.” In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, 6:429. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
[2] Harrison, R. K. 1973. Jeremiah and Lamentations: An Introduction and Commentary. Vol. 21. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.