Jeremiah 6:19 says that Yahweh is bringing disaster upon the people, but Jeremiah is quick to add that this is the fruit of their one schemes (פְּרִי מַחְשְׁבוֹתָם).

Hear, oh land! Look! I am bringing disaster to this people, the fruit of their thoughts! For they have not paid attention to my words and my Torah; they rejected it. (Jeremiah 6:19)

This is yet another text that makes an organic connection between people’s actions and their experience of decreative consequences. So often people view divine judgment as though it is an arbitrary imposition from the outside, disconnected from the actual things people do: People “break the rules” and then God hits them as punishment. That is not how the biblical authors think.

Jeremiah emphasizes that the way God actively brings disaster upon people is by allowing the fruit of their own thoughts (פְּרִי מַחְשְׁבוֹתָם) to play out. God designed creation and he superintends it. He is active, and the active language has the purpose of highlighting his control. Yahweh can save from decreation (See After Decreation in Joel). But, as we see in Jeremiah 6:19, people’s experience of God’s active judgment is organically connected to what they have done. It’s the fruit of their thoughts.

The way Jeremiah talks about judgment is directly connected to the language of Genesis 6:5.

And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humanity was abundant on the land and that every formation of the thoughts of their heart was only evil every day. (Genesis 6:5)

Genesis 6 is the archetypical explanation of how judgment works, a dynamic I’ve written about here: The Organic Connection between Rebellion, Decreation, and Divine Judgment. In that previous post I made a connection between judgment in Genesis 6 and Jeremiah 4. Jeremiah 6:19 is yet another passage that indicates divine judgment is not an arbitrary imposition of punishment.

God actively judges by letting people do what they want and letting them experience the organically connected decreative consequences. Creation is designed in such a way that when people move away from God and his life-giving words, they move into decreation and brokenness. In fact, “brokenness” or “breaking” (שֶׁבֶר) is one of Jeremiah’s favorite words to describe the the condition of people living in unrepentant sin (Jer 6:14; 8:11) and judgment itself (Jer 4:6, 20; 6:1). The connection between disobedience and judgment is highlighted in Jeremiah’s choice of one lexeme to describe both.

In addition to the previous posts linked above, I’ve written more on God’s judgment in terms of allowing people’s actions to lead them into decreation in these posts:

• The Rhythm of Scripture in Deuteronomy 9–10
• The Judges Autopsy