What Hast Thou To Do There?

Jeremiah 2:18
“And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?”

There are few things more baffling than the heart of a redeemed man in pursuit of what once enslaved him. And yet here is the indictment: not merely that Israel sinned, but that she strayed. Not in ignorance, but with memory intact. Not from lack, but in the face of abundance.

The image is almost pathetic in its poetry…God, having delivered His people by His own hand, turns and finds them on a familiar road: Egypt again. Assyria again. The old alliances. The old dependencies. The very places of bondage now courted as sources of refreshment. And so the Lord, with piercing restraint, asks: What have you to do there? What are you doing back on that road? Why do you drink from rivers that once drowned you?

The question is not one of curiosity. It is an exposure. For Israel knew where those roads led. She knew the taste of Sihor’s water—brackish, brown, mingled with the silt of idolatry and foreign gods. She had been rescued from it. And yet here she is again, cup in hand, as though God had never quenched her thirst.

And here we are, too. Ours may not be Egypt or Assyria, but we know the paths. We know the substitute wells….pleasure, performance, human approval, distraction, self-will. They have never nourished us, but they are familiar. And in moments of drift, familiarity masquerades as comfort. We return not because they satisfy, but because they are known.

What makes the indictment so grievous is not simply that we wander, but that we wander from Him. The living fountain. The God who satisfies. The Lord who does not ration His mercy, who gives Himself without withholding. And yet we forsake Him. Not for better, but for less.

This is the madness of sin: that we trade what is living for what is dead, what is pure for what is polluted. That we grow restless with holiness and nostalgic for bondage. We forget that the waters of Egypt come with chains. That the refreshment of Assyria is laced with compromise.

But God does not simply observe our turning. He questions it. He interrupts it. Not because He is unsure of what we’re doing, but because we are. His questions are a kind of mercy: a spiritual arrest. What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt? It is not rhetorical. It is diagnostic. It invites us to remember who we are.

For this is not a warning to pagans. It is a rebuke to the beloved. You, who were bought. You, who were washed. You, who know Me. What have you to do with them? There is a violence in such forgetfulness: a desecration of grace. The world may drink from Sihor, unaware. But we drink knowing better. We drink having tasted better.

And that is what makes this return not only grievous, but absurd.

The only answer, then, is repentance. Not a flailing, guilt-ridden panic, but a deliberate turning. A laying down of the cup. A refusal to walk the old road. Not because we finally hate Egypt enough, but because we remember that God is better.

We are not meant to be connoisseurs of broken cisterns. We are not spiritual nomads searching for lesser waters. We have been claimed, called, and made new. The one who walks with Christ has no business tracing the routes of his former captivity.

So hear the question for what it is: not a condemnation, but a call. A God who still bothers to ask, who still names you as His own, who still offers the living water that Egypt never could.

You may have wandered. You may have drunk again from old wells. But you are not forgotten.

So then, beloved… what have you to do with them?