Day 10: Sour Grapes

We can fill our lives with excuses or we can take ownership of our own mistakes. We can have a realistic, truthful view of ourselves and our walk with God or we can always find someone else to blame for where we are in our lives in regard to Him. The prophet Jeremiah and Ezekiel lived around the same time in ancient Israel’s history, the Babylonian Captivity. This was a time when people were looking for answers as to why calamity had come upon them. Apparently, for some the answer had nothing to do with themselves, but they blamed the generation before them.

There was a distinct cause and effect for what happened to them. Nebuchadnezzar came into Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. He took thousands of captives back into Babylon as slaves. This was an unprecedented time in the history of this chosen nation. The cause of this time in their history was of a spiritual nature. The affect was enacted by God on a visible, natural level. 

In the captives view, they believed that this was happening because of the generations before them and not their current generation. In other words, somehow the fathers had eaten “sour grapes” or had done something to themselves that was going to give them displeasure and discomfort. In this case, the sour grapes represent their unfaithfulness to God. However, instead of their actions taking affect on themselves, it took effect on the next generation. The use of the words “the children’s teeth are set on edge” means that the children or next generation has a stomach ache from what the previous generation had eaten. When you have a serious stomach ache, grinding of the teeth shows your extreme displeasure.

However, through His prophets God is saying you will not be able to say this ever again. In other words, don’t blame the generation before you for the failings of the current generation. This is something that people still like to do today. Instead of taking ownership of their decisions it is easier to just blame someone else. Many times we need to deal with our emotional baggage that we have from our parents or someone else and realize it is not an excuse for what we are doing right now.