This section of text is highly autobiographical. It contains, among other things, most of Jeremiah's so-called "confessions"(15:10-12, 15-21; 17:9-11, 14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-18). This section can be a great help and encouragement to modern servants of the Lord.
This pericope contains two instances in which Jeremiah faced crushing discouragement in his ministry (vv. 10-14, 15-21). He confessed his frustration to the Lord, and the Lord responded with encouragement.
15:10 Jeremiah addressed his mother and mourned that she had born him (cf. 20:14-18; Job 3:3-10). It is normal for a single man like Jeremiah to think of his mother when he gets lonely and discouraged. Since the Lord's call of him antedated his birth (1:5), cursing his birth was tantamount to rejecting God's call on his life. His ministry had produced much strife and contention, both for him and his people (cf. 11:18-20). He sounds like a lawyer who was tired of bringing accusations against his countrymen. He felt that everyone cursed him. Their disagreements with him did not spring from borrowing and lending, a common cause of animosity, but from his preaching. Today we would say that Jeremiah felt burned out.
15:11 The Lord told Jeremiah that He would set him free (of his own frustrations) so that he would be a force for good in the coming national crisis.248The enemy of Judah would even ask him for help in the coming distress (cf. 21:1-7; 37:1-10; 38:14-18; 42:1-6). Jeremiah would emerge from this catastrophe as a tower of strength.
15:12 The enemy from the north would be impossible to defeat, as strong as iron or bronze. What Jeremiah had been preaching would indeed come to pass.
15:13 Furthermore, the Lord would hand over the wealth of Judah to the enemy freely, as war booty, because of all her sins. The Lord knew what He would do and what was coming even if Jeremiah seemed to stand alone in a sea of unbelievers of God's Word.
15:14 The enemy would indeed carry Judah's wealth off to a distant land with which the Judahites were unfamiliar because Yahweh was angry with His people.
This passage is similar to the immediately preceding one in that they both contain Jeremiah's confessions of complaint (vv. 10, 15-18) followed by the Lord's response (vv. 12-14, 19-21). However, this passage reveals a more serious crisis that Jeremiah faced.
15:15 Jeremiah asked Yahweh, who knows all things, to remember him and to punish his persecutors. He requested that the Lord not allow him to die because he had endured reproach for the Lord's sake.
"There is a boldness about such words which only those in a very close relationship with Yahweh may show."249
15:16 When the priests discovered God's Word in the temple during Josiah's reign (2 Kings 22:13; 23:2), Jeremiah had consumed it. He may have had a deep appreciation for God's Word even before that event. Whenever Jeremiah began to relish God's Word, it had become his delight and a joy to his soul (cf. Ezek. 2:8-3:3; Rev. 10:9-10), in contrast to the majority of people who despised it (8:9). The Lord's words included his messages to the prophet as well as His written Word. Jeremiah's love for the Word was a result of God's initiative because Almighty Yahweh had called him to Himself (cf. 1:4-10).
One of the greatest blessings God can give His servants is a hunger for His Word. If you do not have it, ask Him to give it to you. Then cultivate a taste for it (cf. 1 Pet. 2:2).
15:17 Jeremiah had not spent his time with the people who disregarded God's messages to repent. Rather he felt indignation at their hard hearts and separated himself from them (cf. Ps. 1:1; 26:4-5). Their attitude repulsed him, and he felt under divine constraint to behave with integrity, in harmony with his preaching. Jeremiah felt that he had become a social leper (cf. Lev. 13:46).
"Every true servant of God is likely to experience tensions of this kind, especially if, like Jeremiah, his foes are his relatives (cf. Mt. 10:36)."250
15:18 The prophet asked God why his broken heart refused to heal (cf. 6:14). The Lord promised refreshment to His people, even Himself (2:13), but this had not been Jeremiah's personal experience. God seemed like an unreliable wadi (stream bed) to Jeremiah. It promised water but was completely dry for most of the year (cf. Job 6:15-20).
"The prophet Jeremiah found himself in a situation of conflict, conflict with his people and conflict with his God. He was at conflict with his people because of the message of judgment he proclaimed to them. He was at conflict with his God because he considered it unjust that he should suffer as a result of proclaiming God's message. He consequently complained to the Lord about his situation."251
15:19 The Lord replied that if Jeremiah would turn to Him he would find restoration and renewed strength to stand for his God. Jeremiah had been calling the people to repent, but he needed to repent of his self-pitying attitude (vv. 15-18). If he would purify himself inwardly (undergo a refining process), the Lord would continue to use him. Some of the people might turn to follow Jeremiah, but he must not turn to follow them. He must lift them and not allow them to drag him down.
"Perhaps God was telling the prophet that he had been overconcerned about what people thought and said about him when his one concern should have been to heed God's word and proclaim it."252
15:20-21 If Jeremiah repented, the Lord would make him as indestructible as a bronze wall (cf. v. 12; 1:18-19). No one would be able to destroy him because the Lord would be with him and deliver him from his adversaries. He would rescue him from the wicked who would try to kill him and would free him from the grasp of those who would handle him violently.
"The antidote for the prophet's earlier Woe is me' [v. 10] was the Lord's I am with thee' (15:20). No better word could ever be given by God to one of His servants, anywhere or anytime! [cf. Matt. 28:20]."253
This passage probably reflects Jeremiah's lowest point emotionally in his ministry.
Sometimes God used the events in the lives of His prophets to speak to the people as well as their messages.
"Hosea's unhappy marriage (Hos. 1-3), Isaiah's family (Isa. 7-8), the death of Ezekiel's wife (Ezek. 24:15-27), and Jeremiah's call to remain unmarried are all examples of the proclamation of the word through family events."254
16:1-2 The Lord commanded His prophet never (Heb. lo') to marry and rear children.255The Israelites and ancient Near Easterners in general regarded the unmarried state and childlessness as divine curses (cf. Matt. 24:19; 1 Cor. 7:26), but here God overruled what was normal (cf. Gen. 1:28; 2:18; Deut. 7:14) for a special reason. Bachelors were so rare in Israel that there is no word for bachelor in the Old Testament. As an unmarried man, Jeremiah would have been the object of much derision and scorn.
16:3-4 The reason for this command was that the people living in Judah then were soon going to die horrible deaths; the exile was imminent.
"Jeremiah married no one, signifying the end of the relationship between the people and the Lord, and had no children, signifying the resulting destitution."256
Perhaps the Lord also wanted to spare Jeremiah the sorrow of seeing his wife and children die this way. The sorrow connected with the Babylonian invasion would be much greater than the joys of family life if he were to marry and father children.
16:5 The Lord also instructed Jeremiah not to visit those who were mourning over the death of a loved one.257He was not to comfort them because the Lord had withdrawn his lovingkindness and compassion from His people. Jeremiah's life was to remind the people of God's withdrawal from them.
"Not to show grief was abnormal and was cause for criticism."258
16:6-7 In the coming invasion, all classes of people would die and no one would bury them or lament their passing in traditional ways.259One of these ways was the meal that friends of the mourners provided after the funeral (cf. 2 Sam. 3:35; Ezek. 24:17; Hos. 9:4).260
"A consoling cup in later Judaism was a special cup of wine drunk by the chief mourner. This practice is not mentioned elsewhere in Scripture."261
16:8 Neither was Jeremiah to attend joyful celebrations or eat and drink with merrymakers. This is probably a reference to participating in wedding celebrations (cf. 7:34; 25:10; 33:11). Jeremiah's failure to fulfill social obligations, such as attending weddings and funerals, would have made him even more an object of social disgrace.
16:9 The reason for this antisocial behavior, Almighty Yahweh, Israel's God explained, was that He would soon end all rejoicing in the land. Jeremiah was to reflect the attitudes of His God in all these situations. His withdrawal from village life pictured Yahweh's withdrawal from His people.
"It is one thing to grow eloquent over a dire prospect for a wicked nation; quite another thing to taste the medicine itself. To ask this of Jeremiah, denying him the cherished gift of wife and children (an almost unthinkable vocation at the time), and then to isolate him from sharing the occasions of sorrow and joy around him (5, 8), was the measure of God's intense concern to get the message across."262
16:10 The Lord prepared Jeremiah for questions that the people would ask him. They would wonder what they had done to deserve the great calamity that the prophet predicted. They had become blind to the sinfulness of their ways (cf. Mal. 1:6-7; 2:17; 3:7-8, 13).
16:11 He was to explain that the coming judgment was due to the accumulated sins of their forefathers in forsaking the Lord and His covenant and in practicing idolatry. Sin has a cumulative effect in that it results in conditions that affect the behavior of others, including later generations.
16:12 The punishment was also for their own sins, which were worse than those of their forefathers. They had been stubborn in their hearts and had not responded to the Lord's Word.
16:13 Therefore the Lord would hurl (Heb. tul) them out of the land and into a land that they and their forefathers had not known before.263There they would have their fill of idolatry, and the Lord would show them no mercy.
The following three pericopes bracket assurance of imminent judgment for Judah with promises of distant blessing for Israel and the nations. This passage promises deliverance from the captivity for the Israelites. It appears again later in Jeremiah almost verbatim (23:7-8).
16:14 The Lord announced that the time would come when the chosen people would no longer look back on the Exodus as the great demonstration of His preservation and deliverance.
16:15 Instead they would look back on their second Exodus, from Babylon and all the other countries to which He had banished them. The Lord promised to bring His people back into the Promised Land that He had given their fathers after He had disciplined them there (cf. Gen. 12:7; Isa. 43:16-20; 48:20-21; 51:9-11).
The returns from Babylonian exile, therefore, were only part of the fulfillment of this promise. There must yet be a return of the Chosen People to the Promised Land "which I gave to their fathers"from all over the world. This will be a return after the Jews have repented (cf. Isa. 2:2-4; 18:7; 19:19-25; Zech. 8:20-23; 14:16; Mal. 1:11).264Therefore the present return of multitudes of Jews from all over the world to Palestine does not exhaust what God promised.
Even though there would be deliverance for Israel in the distant future, she could count on thorough judgment in the near future (vv. 16-18).
16:16 The Lord was going to summon fishermen (cf. Ezek. 12:13; 29:4-5; Amos 4:2; Hab. 1:14-17) and hunters (cf. Amos 9:1-4) to round up His people and take them as prey, even those who were in hiding. These agents would be the Babylonian invaders.
"When Jesus used the metaphor of fishermen to describe the mission of his disciples (see Mark 1:17; Matt 4:19), he was reversing its meaning from that intended by Jeremiah. Jeremiah's fishers caught men for judgment; Jesus' fishers caught them for salvation."265
16:17 The Lord saw everyone and everything. His people were not able to hide from Him even though many of them tried to do so.
16:18 Yahweh would pay them back double for polluting His land (cf. Isa. 40:2), which He had given them as an inheritance, with their iniquities and sins and with the dead bodies of their idols and abominable objects of worship.266
The next pericope returns to the note of hope in the distant future (vv. 14-15), but it promises blessing for the nations as well as Israel then (vv. 19-21).
16:19 Jeremiah composed a song to the Lord. He addressed Him as his strength, stronghold, and refuge in a time of distress (cf. Ps. 18:2). He foretold that the nations would come to the Lord from the ends of the earth confessing the futility of their lives and the lives of their forefathers (cf. 4:2; Gen. 12:1-3; Ps. 2; Isa. 2:1-3; 42:4; 49:6; Zech. 8:20-23; 14:16-17).
16:20 Rhetorically the prophet asked if humans can make gods for themselves. They can, but what they make are not really gods, because there is only one God.
16:21 The Lord announced that in the future, when the nations sought Him out, He would convince them of His power and might, that they might know that Yahweh is the only true God (cf. Ezek. 36:22-23). He did not explain how He would do that here, but later revelation tells us that Messiah's second advent will involve such a demonstration of power that multitudes of people will turn to the Lord (Zech. 12:10).
The next five sections (vv. 1-4, 5-8, 9-11, 12-13, and 14-18) continue the theme of Judah's guilt from the previous chapter. These pericopes have obvious connections with one another, but they were evidently originally separate prophecies. Verses 1-4 are particularly ironic.
17:1 The indictment against Judah for her deeply ingrained sins was written permanently on the people's hearts (cf. Job 19:24). It stood etched there and, also figuratively, on their most prominent places of worship, the pagan altars throughout the land. Sins engraved on the heart pictures the chief characteristic that marked the inner life of the people, which was indelible sin. When Yahweh had given Israel the covenant at Mount Sinai, He inscribed it on tablets of stone (Exod. 24:12; 31:18). But now what was authoritative for the people was sin that they had inscribed on tablets of flesh.
Rather than blood on the horns of the brazen altar in the temple courtyard testifying to the people's commitment to Him, the Lord saw their sins marking the horns of their pagan altars (cf. 7:21-26; Amos 4:4-5). The brazen altar was a place of sacrifice where their sins could be removed, but the horns of their altars had become places of sacrilege where their sins stood recorded.
". . . the people's heart has guilt not only written all over it but etched into it, engraved . . . beyond erasure."267
In the future God promised to write His law on His people's hearts (31:31-34), but until then their sins were what marked their hearts. Then He would remember their sins no more, but now they remained recorded and unforgiven.
17:2 The people of Judah thought of their idols as frequently and as lovingly as they thought of their children.268They mixed the worship of pagan deities with their worship of Yahweh and even gave those gods credit for what belonged to the Lord. Instead of worshipping on high hills where pagan altars stood, the Judahites were to worship on the holy hill where the temple stood.
17:3 Jerusalem stood like a mountain surrounded by countryside. Normally a city on such a site would be secure from invaders. But Yahweh would turn over His people's wealth and treasures, and their pagan places of worship (really sin), to their enemy (cf. 15:13). The idolaters thought the places where their shrines stood belonged to the gods they worshipped there, but Yahweh really owned them and would turn them over to Judah's invader.
17:4 The Judeans would voluntarily let the inheritance that God had given them, namely, their land, drop into their enemy's hands (cf. 15:14; 2 Kings 25:13-17). They would serve this enemy in a strange land because they had aroused the Lord's anger by their sin.
"The irony is clear: Judah has forsaken or abandoned her covenantal inheritance. Therefore Yahweh will abandon Judah to her enemies, and she will find herself exiled from her inheritance in a land that she had not known."269
Verses 5-8 seem to be proverbs that the writer placed together to make his own point. They contrast the wickedness of trusting man with the blessedness of trusting God.
17:5 Yahweh announced a curse on anyone who trusts in flesh (humanity in its frailty) rather than in Him (cf. 2:18; Isa. 31:3). While this announcement has universal scope, in this context Jeremiah applied it to the covenant people especially. Judah had trusted in people rather than in Yahweh. Turning away from Him (abandoning His covenant) brought His curse.
17:6 The person who would trust in man rather than in God would experience a dry, unproductive, and lonely existence (cf. Ps. 1:4), like the dwarf juniper of the desert. Salty land lacked fertility and life, as is observable to this day around the Dead Sea. Of course, such people may flourish for a season (cf. 12:1-2), but over a lifetime they normally wither.
17:7 The Lord also announced a blessing on anyone who trusts in Him, namely, all who acknowledge Him as their Lord and surrender to Him.
17:8 Such a person would experience a constantly growing and fruitful life. He would enjoy stability, confidence, mental health, freedom from anxiety even in trying times, and a consistently radiant testimony before others (cf. Ps. 1:3). An essential difference between a bush and a tree is its root system. A tree can outlast a drought and continue to bear fruit whereas a bush cannot (cf. Matt. 13:6, 21).
"These verses are a reflection of Jeremiah's own experience. He had known the drought experience when Yahweh seemed to him like a deceitful brook, like waters that failed when sought by a thirsty man (15:18). . . . In 17:5-8 we see a man who has repented from foolish thoughts of despair and consternation before the powerful pressure of public opinion. He had learned to trust Yahweh rather than the opinions of men. The present passage is to be understood as his personal affirmation that he has survived his dry period. Indeed these verses constitute a response to Yahweh's call to repentance in 15:19-21."270
Verses 9-11 also appear to have been well-known proverbs that Jeremiah used for his own purposes. Many scholars classify this passage as one of Jeremiah's "confessions."
"If there is such blessing in trusting God, then why do people so generally depend on their fellow humans? Why is it that the blessed are not more numerous than the cursed? The answer lies in the innate depravity of the human heart (v. 9)."271
17:9 The Old Testament frequently uses "heart"(Heb. leb) to identify the source of a person's thinking and acting. It describes the root of unconscious as well as conscious motivation.
The human heart is deceptive; we may think we know why we do something, but really we may be doing it for another reason. It is naturally sick, really totally depraved, and in need of healing. No one really understands his or her own heart, nor do we understand why our hearts behave as they do.
"Unregenerate human nature is in a desperate condition without divine grace . . ."272
17:10 Even though we cannot understand out hearts, the Lord searches them and knows our inner thoughts and motives.273He gives to each person what he or she really deserves. He judges on the basis of works because what we do reflects what we really value, the condition of our hearts.
17:11 It is possible to earn a fortune unjustly, like a partridge (or grouse, Heb. qore') that incubates the eggs of another bird.274But such a fortune is fleeting (cf. Prov. 23:4-5), and such a person is really a fool. The adopted baby bird will fly away when it eventually learns that it is different from its foster parent. Similarly ill-gotten wealth normally leaves the one who does not earn it, and the person who tries to claim that he did earn it ends up looking like a fool (cf. Luke 12:20-21).
Dwelling on the sinfulness of people and the deceitfulness of the heart needs balancing with even greater attention to the glory of God Himself. Jeremiah changed his perspective and so avoided more discouragement.
17:12 The true place of worship for God's people since Solomon had always been the temple in Jerusalem. The ancients regarded this temple as Yahweh's throne on earth.
17:13 This had been true because Yahweh Himself was the hope of His people (cf. 14:8; 50:7). Consequently all who break covenant and forsake Him, the fountain of living water (2:13), will suffer humiliation and will become the objects of His judgment. The Lord keeps a record of those who turn away from Him (cf. v. 1).
Verses 14-18 are another of Jeremiah's "confessions."The guilt of Judah is prominent in the first part of this chapter, but now the innocence of Jeremiah presents a contrast.
17:14 The prophet prayed to Yahweh, the one he praised, for healing and deliverance. Earlier he had spoken of his pain that refused healing (15:18).
17:15 The Judahites kept asking Jeremiah for evidence that what he was predicting would happen. They implied that because his prophecies had not yet materialized they would not.
17:16 Jeremiah vindicated himself by citing three things. He knew that the Lord understood that he was not eager to escape his calling, he did not enjoy announcing judgment, and his messages had not come from his own mind but from the Lord (cf. 2 Pet. 1:21).
17:17 Since Yahweh was Jeremiah's refuge from criticism and discouragement, the prophet asked Him not to frighten him (by appearing to desert him). Jeremiah was not always so trusting (cf. 20:7-12).
17:18 He prayed for God to humiliate his persecutors but not to humiliate him (cf. 1:17). He asked that the Lord would punish them severely for their apostasy (cf. v. 4; 16:18; 20:12; Ps. 17:1-8).
This section contains one of Jeremiah's sermons. Notice its introduction, proclamation of the law, promise of blessing for the obedient, and threat of judgment for the disobedient.
17:19-20 The Lord commanded Jeremiah to station himself at the gates of Jerusalem, where the king and the people passed by. It seems impossible to determine which of the gates of Jerusalem was the so-called public gate. He was to call the kings and people to listen to the Lord's message that he had for them.
17:21-22 The Lord commanded His people to observe the Sabbath Day as the Mosaic Covenant specified. They were to refrain from carrying loads in and out of their houses or the city or doing any work (Exod. 20:8-11; 23:15; 31:13-17; Deut. 5:12-15; Neh. 13:15-22; Amos 8:5).
17:23 The Judahites forefathers had not obeyed this commandment but had become obstinate and refused to listen to the Lord and to take correction. The Pharisees of Jesus' day went to the other extreme and permitted almost no activity on the Sabbath Day, for which He rebuked them.
17:24-25 The Lord promised that if the people of Jeremiah's day obeyed He would give them more Davidic kings and officials who would inhabit Jerusalem and be strong leaders of the people. The city would then enjoy inhabitants forever rather than experiencing total abandonment by the Lord (cf. Isa. 58:1-14; Zech. 2:2-12; 8:3, 15; 14:11). Security depended on obedience, and repentance was still possible.
17:26 The Judahites would then return to Jerusalem from all parts of the country. They would bring many different sacrifices to offer to the Lord at the temple.
17:27 However, if the people did not observe the Sabbath Day to keep it holy (different from the other days), the Lord would consume Jerusalem with unquenchable fire. Notice the prominence in these promises and threats of the throne of David, the temple, and the city of Jerusalem. These comprised the basic elements of the national and religious life of the covenant people.
It was not just the fourth commandment that the people were responsible to keep, of course. Jeremiah might have chosen to preach on any of the other nine commandments, and he may have done so at other times. This message is probably representative of many similar sermons that the prophet delivered calling the people back to obedience to the covenant. It was repentance that would postpone judgment, not just obedience to the fourth commandment. Yet the fourth commandment had special significant. Sabbath observance recognized Yahweh as Creator and Redeemer, and so witnessed against idolatry. It guaranteed God's people rest, which they could not obtain from idols. And it was one of the unique features of Israel's religion since it marked the special covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel.
There are indications in this message that God might yet avert judgment (vv. 7-8, 11), so Jeremiah evidently delivered it before the Babylonians invaded Judah.
18:1-2 The Lord told Jeremiah to go to the potter's house where He would give him further instructions.
18:3-4 The prophet observed the potter making a vessel on his wheel. As he worked the vessel became damaged, so he made it into a different vessel. Ancient potter's wheels consisted to two disc-like stones with a connecting vertical axle. The potter spun the one below by kicking it with his feet, and the stone on top served as a rotating table on which he formed his art (cf. Eccles. 38:29-30).275
18:5-6 The Lord's message to Jeremiah for the nation was that He had the right to deal with Judah as the potter dealt with his clay (cf. Rom. 9:20-21). Judah was like clay in Yahweh's hands. Yahweh was also like a potter (Heb. yoser) in that He created and shaped (Heb. yasar) His people.
18:7-8 The Lord might purpose to destroy Judah, but if the people changed by repenting He could change His mind concerning how He would deal with it.276
18:9-10 Conversely if He purposed to bless a nation and then it did evil and was disobedient to Him, He could change His mind and not bless it.277The character of the clay determined to some extent what the potter would do with it. People who broke the covenant and rejected Yahweh's sovereignty over them were not material through which He would fulfill His purposes.
"The principle is simply the working out of covenant stipulations. Treaties and covenants regularly included conditions for the covenant. For the keeping of covenant, the lord promises blessings on the vassal; but for breaking covenant, the lord promises punishment for the vassal. What was true in the political arena was also true for God and his relationship with his creation. The closest biblical parallel to a working out of this principle is the case of the Ninevites in the Book of Jonah."278
"This is a statement of first-class importance for our understanding of all prophecy, removing it entirely from the realm of fatalism. However stark the prediction (except where God has expressly declared it irreversible), it is always open to revision . . ."279
18:11 The Lord told Jeremiah to tell the people that He was planning to bring calamity on them and that they should repent.
18:12 However, the people would respond that repentance would not bring any change. The situation was hopeless from their viewpoint. Really they did not want to change.
"Here is a sad reflection on the end result of evil-doing and of continuous breach of covenant. A state is reached where all desire and hope of repentance is lost and men are content to follow the uninhibited promptings of their own rebellious and wicked hearts. At this point judgment is inevitable."280
In this message Jeremiah contrasted the unnatural apostasy of the people with the constancy of nature (cf. 2:10-13).
18:13 Yahweh indicted the people of Judah through His prophet asking if any other nation had ever done what Israel had done. As a virgin she had done something appalling. She had polluted herself with the practices of pagan religion including sexual immorality. She had played the harlot.
18:14 Israel's conduct was unnatural, contrary to nature. Jeremiah cited examples of how nature behaves. The snow perpetually covered the Lebanon mountains to Israel's north. For there to be no snow would be unnatural. And cold water ceaselessly flowed from those same mountains (cf. 2:13; 15:18).281The headwaters of the Jordan River are four springs that well up near the base of Mount Hermon, which is in the Lebanon range, and they never run dry.
18:15 Israel had abandoned Yahweh and had worshipped worthless idols instead. His people had stumbled off the safe, well-established highway of God's will that she had been traveling and had turned aside to walk in pathways that were no roads (cf. 6:16).
18:16 This action would result in their land becoming desolate. Onlookers and passersby would whistle to themselves in amazement over its terrible condition and shake their heads in astonishment at what had happened to it because of Israel's stupidity.
18:17 Yahweh would scatter His people from their land before the enemy as when the strong east wind (the sirocco, cf. 4:11; 13:34) blew in the windy months. Their enemy would also come from the east, specifically Babylon, though the soldiers would descend on them from the north. Yahweh would turn His back on His people when this calamity fell; He would offer them no help or favor (cf. 2:27; Num. 6:24-26).
This is another section that contains one of Jeremiah's "confessions."Evidently there were several separate plots against the prophet's life (cf. 11:18-23; 12:1-6). People hated him because he brought bad news and called them to repent and to return to Yahweh and His covenant, which most of the people did not want to do. But really the people were rejecting Yahweh (cf. 1 Sam. 8:7).
18:18 Some of the Judahites plotted to kill Jeremiah. They justified their action by noting that even if they killed him, the Mosaic Law and the counsel of other wise men and other prophets would still remain. Thus they rationalized their sin.
"The proverb suggests that nothing can shut up a prophet--he always has a word (the last word?)."282
They did not believe that their lives would change radically because of their failure to repent. They did not really believe that they were heading for exile. They believed Jeremiah's prophecies were false.
"To disturb a complacent leadership or a misguided populace was only to invite serious repercussions. Human society in every age bears eloquent testimony to the fact."283
18:19 Jeremiah became aware of the plot and went to the Lord in prayer about it. He asked God to listen to him and to what his opponents were saying (cf. 11:18-20).
18:20 Would Yahweh allow evil to come to him since he had done good to these opponents but telling them what was good for them? He had urged them to repent with the promise that they could avoid calamity by turning back to the Lord.
18:21-22 The prophet asked the Lord to bring calamity on them for calamity they planned to bring on him. Since they refused to repent and had tried to kill Yahweh's messenger, let the invasion and all its horrors overtake them. Jeremiah was not requesting some special visitation of judgment on the people. He was asking the Lord to allow the threatened judgment, which he had been urging the people to avoid by repenting, to descend. They refused to repent. His strong request did not spring from wounded pride as much as from his identification with Yahweh and the demands of the covenant (cf. Lev. 26; Deut. 28). The Judahites had rejected God, and for this they deserved judgment.
18:23 The Lord knew all that they were planning. Jeremiah believed that He should not forgive them but allow them to experience God's anger in the coming invasion.
What Scripture commands us elsewhere regarding loving and blessing our neighbors rather than cursing them does not contradict Jeremiah's practice here (cf. Prov. 25:21-22; Matt. 5:44; Rom. 12:20). While his motivation may have been wrong--we cannot evaluate that--what he said was appropriate. He was really asking God to fulfill His promise to curse those who departed from His covenant in the ways the Lord had said He would.
This message to the people involved another symbolic act (cf. 13:1-11). This incident may have occurred between 609 and 605 B.C.
19:1 Yahweh told Jeremiah to take some of Judah's elders and senior priests and to go and purchase a potter's earthenware water jar (Heb. baqbuq).284These jars, which archaeologists have found in abundance, range in size from four to 10 inches in height, and they have very slim necks.285Perhaps these leaders were willing to accompany Jeremiah, even though he was very unpopular (cf. 20:1-2, 10; et al.), because they wanted to gather incriminating evidence against him.
19:2 The prophet was then to go to the section of the Hinnom Valley just south of Jerusalem that was near the Potsherd Gate and deliver the message that the Lord would give him. The Potsherd Gate seems to have been another name for the Dung Gate, which was one of the southern gates to the city leading into the Hinnom Valley below (cf. Neh. 2:13; 3:13-14; 12:31). Evidently people disposed of their broken pottery and other refuse outside this gate.
19:3 The prophet was to call everyone in Jerusalem to hear the Lord's message, from the kings to the ordinary citizens. Israel's God, Almighty Yahweh, was about to bring a calamity of unheard of severity on Jerusalem (cf. 1 Sam. 3:11; 2 Kings 21:12).
19:4-5 The calamity would come because the people had forsaken Yahweh and had turned the valley of Hinnom, and all Jerusalem (cf. 2 Kings 21:12), into a place of heathen worship, including child sacrifice (cf. 7:31). Their forefathers did not do this, and Yahweh had never commanded these atrocities.
19:6 Because of these sins, the Lord predicted that the place would receive a new name: the valley of Slaughter. It's previous names were the valley of the Son of Hinnom and Topheth (lit. fireplace or hearth; cf. 7:31-32; Isa. 30:33). A change of name in the Old Testament frequently signified a change of function (cf. Gen. 17:5, 15; et al.).
19:7 The Lord would also turn the wise advice of the people of Judah and Jerusalem into foolishness. As they had worshipped nothings there, so their wisdom would come to nothing. Their enemy would also defeat and slaughter them there, as they had slaughtered their innocent children. No one would bury their dead bodies, but they would become food for carrion birds and wild beasts since they had slain similar animals to worship the idols (cf. 7:33; 16:4; 34:20; Deut. 28:26).
19:8 Yahweh would also destroy Jerusalem so that everyone who passed its ruins would whistle in amazement because of the devastation (cf. 18:16; 1 Kings 9:8; Lam. 2:15-16; Ezek. 27:36; Zeph. 2:15).
19:9 The siege of Jerusalem would be so bad that the residents would eat their own children and one another rather than die of starvation (cf. 11:1-8; Lev. 26:29; Deut. 28:53-57; 2 Kings 6:26-29; Lam. 2:20; 4:10). This was compensation for their having taken human life to worship pagan idols. Being consumed by cannibals was a typical curse for treaty-breakers in the ancient Near East, as was lack of burial (v. 7).286
19:10-11 Jeremiah was to break his jar in the sight of his hearers as a symbolic act and was to announce that just so the Lord would destroy the people and the city. They would not be able to recover from this catastrophe any more than one could repair a shattered earthenware jar. The only burial places would be in Topheth. The "fireplace"would become a cemetery.
Earlier the Lord implied that He would reshape the nation if the people repented, as a potter reshapes a vessel under construction on the wheel (18:1-2). But now Judah was a hardened vessel incapable of changing. All the Lord could do with it now was break it.
"If there is nothing so workable as a clay pot in the making, there is nothing so unalterable as the finished article."287
19:12-13 Yahweh would make Jerusalem a place of fire and its people a sacrifice, too, because all the people, from the ordinary citizens to the kings, had turned their houses into altars to pagan gods. The presence of corpses would make the city unclean. The people had offered burnt offerings and poured out drink offerings on their flat rooftops to astral deities and other idols (cf. 7:16-20; 32:29; Zeph. 1:5). Archaeologists have discovered cuneiform texts at Ras Shamra (east of Cyprus near the west coast of Syria) that contain instructions for offering sacrifices to astral gods on flat rooftops.288
19:14-15 Jeremiah then returned from Topheth in the valley of Hinnom to the temple courtyard. There he preached to the people that the Lord was about to bring this calamity on Jerusalem and the towns of Judah because they had stubbornly refused to repent (cf. Acts 7:51).
20:1-2 When Pashhur, who was the leading priest responsible for the oversight of the temple, heard Jeremiah's words, he ordered him beaten and imprisoned in stocks that stood near the Benjamin Gate. This gate was evidently the new gate into the inner temple courtyard that King Jotham had constructed (cf. 2 Kings 15:35). It provided an entrance from the north, in which direction lay the tribal territory of Benjamin. Consequently many people would have seen Jeremiah there.
"The stocks,' where the prophet was confined, were intended not only for restraint but also for torture. The stocks, which were used for false prophets (cf. 2 Chron 16:10), held the feet, hands, and neck so that the body was almost doubled up (cf. 29:26). The Hebrew word for stocks' (mahpeketh) means causing distortion.'"289
Ironically, this overseer in God's temple, evidently the man in charge of preserving order in the courtyard, was taking action against God's overseer of the nations, Jeremiah (cf. 1:10). This is the first recorded act of violence done to Jeremiah. It reminds us of the captain of the temple guard who, years later, similarly imprisoned Peter and John (Acts 4:1-3).
20:3 Jeremiah's confinement only lasted one day. Following his release, the prophet gave Pashhur a new name that had prophetic significance: Magomassabib, meaning "terror on every side"(cf. 6:25; Ps. 31:13).290
20:4 The Lord announced through Jeremiah that Pashhur would become a terror to others, his friends, and even himself, and he would feel terror when he saw the coming invader slaughter his loved ones. The Lord promised to deliver all Judah over to the Babylonian king who would take many of the people captive to Babylon and slay them with the sword. This is the first explicit reference to the place of exile in the book (cf. 1:13; 15:14).
20:5 Likewise the enemy would take all the wealth and even the royal treasures of Jerusalem to Babylon. In other words, the enemy would plunder the temple and the royal palaces.
20:6 Pashhur himself, as well as his loved ones, would end up in Babylon as exiles. Evidently he went into captivity in 597 B.C. since another man, Zephaniah, occupied his office after that date (cf. 29:24, 26, 29). He and all who had gathered around him as his disciples would die and be buried there because he had prophesied falsely concerning the coming invasion. Like Jeremiah, Pashhur was both a priest and a prophet.291
"Pashhur, who would terrorize Jeremiah for the message he proclaimed, will be terrorized and will become a terror for all to witness, as will all Judah (vv 4-5). Just as the people of Jerusalem and Judah would die at the hands of their enemies (19:7), so Pashhur would die. Only he would die and be buried in a foreign land."292
This section is another of Jeremiah's autobiographical "confessions."In literary form it is another individual lament, like many of the psalms (cf. Ps. 6). It is one of Jeremiah's most significant self-disclosures. The section has two parts: God the antagonist (vv. 7-10), and God the protagonist (vv. 11-13).
20:7 The prophet complained that the Lord had deceived him (cf. Exod. 22:16; 1 Kings 22:20-22) and had overcome him. He had made Jeremiah a laughingstock and an object of constant mockery by his people. Evidently Jeremiah assumed that the people would repent at his preaching, and when they did not he felt betrayed by the Lord.
20:8 Jeremiah felt that he was always shouting messages of impending disaster, and these announcements had resulted in people criticizing and ridiculing him constantly.
20:9 When Jeremiah became so tired of the opposition he faced that he decided to stop delivering his messages, the Lord's word burned within him as a fire. Finally he could contain himself no longer and spoke again.293
20:10 The prophet knew that the people were complaining that all he ever talked about was coming terror. He had become a "Magomassabib"of sorts himself (cf. v. 3), and the people may well have applied this nickname to him. They felt someone should denounce him for speaking so pessimistically and harshly about their nation. Even his trusted friends had turned against him and were hoping that he would make some mistake so they could discredit him for his words. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered similar opposition (cf. Mark 3:2; 14:58; Luke 6:7; 14:1; 20:20).
20:11 Yet Jeremiah was confident that the Lord would remain with him and defend him like a powerful bodyguard (cf. 1:18; 15:20). Consequently his persecutors among the people of Judah would not succeed. They were the ones who would stumble, feel ashamed, and experience everlasting disgrace, not him (cf. v. 10).
20:12 The prophet asked the Lord to allow him to witness the humiliation of his critics since he was entrusting vengeance to Him and not taking it himself. Yahweh knew the hearts and minds of both Jeremiah and his persecutors, so the Lord knew who was right and who was wrong.
20:13 The prophet closed this lament with a call to praise the Lord in song because He had delivered Jeremiah from those who wanted to do him evil.
This is another autobiographical "confession."It is a personal lament or curse poem concerning the sorrow Jeremiah had experienced for most of his life because of the calling that the Lord had laid on him.
"In these verses Jeremiah plumbed the depths of bitterness and despair, revealing a depth of misery and agony surpassing any other cry of anguish recorded among his lamentations."294
20:14 Again Jeremiah cursed the day of his birth; he felt bitterly sorry that he had ever been born (cf. 15:10; Job 3:3-6).295He meant that his birth occurred on a day that God had cursed, and that accounted for his misfortune.
20:15 Jeremiah felt that it would have been better if his father had never received the news that he had a baby boy. Normally the birth of a male child was the best news a man could receive since the birth of a boy guaranteed the perpetuation of his family line. Jeremiah was similar to that messenger in that he thought he was bringing good news of escape from divine deliverance to the nation, but it turned out to be bad news of distress and battle cries.296
20:16-17 The messenger of Jeremiah's birth would have been better off, from the prophet's perspective, if he had been slain by the Lord, as when the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19). He would have been well-advised to run for cover on that day. The messenger was the object of Jeremiah's curse because the prophet wished the Lord had slain him in his mother's womb rather than bringing him to birth.
20:18 Jeremiah bewailed the fact that he ever came out of his mother's womb since his life had been so full of trouble, sorrow, and shame.297
"What these curses convey . . . is a state of mind, not a prosaic plea. The heightened language is not there to be analysed [sic]: it is there to bowl us over. Together with other tortured cries from him and his fellow sufferers, these raw wounds in Scripture remain lest we forget the sharpness of the age-long struggle, or the frailty of the finest overcomers."298
"Jeremiah was discouraged because he was a man standing against a flood. And I want to say to you that nobody who is fighting the battle in our own generation can float on a Beauty Rest mattress. If you love God and love men and have compassion for them, you will pay a real price psychologically. . . .
"But what does God expect of Jeremiah? What does God expect of every man who preaches into a lost age like ours? I'll tell you what God expects. He simply expects a man to go right on. He doesn't scold a man for being tired, but neither does He expect him to stop his message because people are against him."299
