Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 64 · March 5
The Old Paths
“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”
"Ask for the old paths" gets quoted whenever a church changes its hymn book or moves its service time. Used that way, it makes Jeremiah the guardian of everybody's favourite decade, and it hands the verse to whoever wants nothing to change.
So read the whole sentence slowly and see what it actually says.
First, it tells you to ask. "Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein." There are many old paths, and the good way is one of them. You have to stand at the crossroads and ask which one it is. Israel's own history was full of old roads that God had spent centuries warning them away from.
Second, old here means more than whatever we happen to remember. Jeremiah lived in a country whose religion was ancient and busy and wrong. Two verses earlier he reports what its prophets and priests were telling the people: "They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace." The respected religious leaders of the day were the problem.
Third, the verse keeps going after the part we print on posters. It has one more clause: "But they said, We will not walk therein." The rest God offered was real, and they had the directions, yet they turned it down. Verse seventeen repeats the pattern. God set watchmen to sound the trumpet, "But they said, We will not hearken." Any use of this verse that stops before the refusal has cut the sentence in half.
One more thing changes where all of this leads. The words "ye shall find rest for your souls" come back in the mouth of Jesus, joined to a yoke: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." A yoke is the wooden frame that lets two animals walk and pull side by side. So the good old way Jeremiah pointed to turns out to be a Person you walk beside, and He promises rest to everyone who comes.
So stand still at your own crossroads today, and ask God which way is good before you pick your road. The rest He offered Israel has not been withdrawn, and Jesus promises it to everyone who comes to Him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 64 is Chosen Generation (1 Peter 2:9).