I have often been told that the First and Second Commandments do not apply to pagans, and that the civil magistrate is not accountable for the enforcement of the first four commandments. These are supposedly only for the professing people of God. But is this what we see in Scripture?
"A sword against the Chaldeans, declares the Lord, and against the inhabitants of Babylon, and against her officials and against her wise men! A sword against the diviners, that they may become fools! A sword against her warriors, that they may be destroyed! A sword against her horses and against her chariots, and against all the foreign troops in her midst, that they may become women! A sword against her treasures, that they may be plundered! A drought against her waters, that they may dried up! For it is a land of images, and they are made over idols" (Jeremiah 50:35-38).
This is the time when the Babylonians are pillaging Judah, the Southern Kingdom, and we would expect God's judgment against her for her crimes against his covenant people. And, in fact, we see that in Jeremiah. Yet that is not the case in the stanza above. Babylon, her people, her leaders, her religious figures, even the mercenaries working for her, are judged, not for harming Judah, but for loving images and idols!
The Babylonians were a pagan people. They had never been in covenant with Jehovah. It is from that region that God had called Abraham out of the darkness of idolatry into the light of His covenant of grace (Genesis 11:31-12-2). God in His grace separated Abraham from the unbelief of his kin and neighbors. And now in Jeremiah, roughly fifteen centuries later, God in His justice would destroy the people left behind by Abraham.
Thus we see that no man, regardless of time or clime, is independent of the commandments of God.
