This section provides an explanation for God's judgment on His people: the Judahites broke the Mosaic Covenant. It also contains two laments that portray the tragedy of the situation and the Lord's reluctance to send judgment. The final sub-section contains a symbolic action that pictures the horror of the people's sin.
This passage consists of five short parts (vv. 1-5, 6-8, 9-10, 11-14, and 15-17). Most scholars believe it dates from the reign of Josiah, perhaps after the discovery of the Law but before he initiated his reforms (about 621 B.C.; cf. 2 Chron. 34:8-33).
11:1-2 The Lord's word again came to Jeremiah. The prophet was to listen to the words of the Mosaic Covenant and then address the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
11:3-4 Yahweh, Israel's God, announced a curse on any of His people who did not obey the covenant that He gave their forefathers when He liberated them from their Egyptian hardships (cf. Deut. 4:20; 11:28; 27:26; 28:15-19; 29:20-21; 1 Kings 8:51; Isa. 48:10). At that time the Lord had commanded the Israelites to listen to His voice and to be completely obedient (cf. Exod. 19:5-6). By promising to do so they entered into covenant relationship with Yahweh; they became His special people and He became their God (cf. 7:23; 24:7; 32:38).
"Ancient Near Eastern international treaties normally contained a section of benedictions and maledictions which were expected to occur according to whether or not the covenant was horoured."214
11:5 The Mosaic Covenant was to be the means by which God would fulfill His earlier promises to Abraham concerning the Promised Land (Gen. 12:7). Jeremiah replied, "So be it, Yahweh,"a standard response to a covenant (cf. Exod. 19:8; 24:7; Deut. 27:15-26). He promised to do what God had just told him to do.
11:6 Again the Lord instructed his prophet to bear a similar message to the same audience. Since the expression "in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem"was proverbial for the length and breadth of the country, Jeremiah may not have carried on an itinerant preaching ministry.215The people were to listen to and obey the Mosaic Covenant as Jeremiah proclaimed it.
11:7 The importance of doing so was clear in that the Lord had commanded his people to hear and obey the covenant when He first gave it and ever since.
11:8 Nevertheless the Israelites had failed to listen and obey. Consequently the Lord had brought all the curses warned of in the covenant on them. The root of the problem was Israel's stubborn and evil heart.
"We are prone to hope that God will be like the modern indulgent parent and that there will be no reckoning if we, also, disobey Him. It is a vain hope. Judgment is sure to come. As God punished Israel, so will He punish allwhose hearts are confirmed in disobedience toward Him."216
11:9 Another word from the Lord informed Jeremiah of a conspiracy among his people.
11:10 They had returned (Heb. shub) to the sins of their forefathers who had rejected Yahweh's words and had pursued idols. This constituted breaking the covenant. Both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms were guilty, and the Northern Kingdom had already gone into captivity for its failure.
11:11 The result of this conduct would be disaster for them all. The Lord would bring this on them, and all their appeals to Him for relief would be of no avail. People who do not listen are not heard.
11:12 Receiving no relief from the Lord, the people would appeal to their idols, but they would not save them either.
11:13 The Judahites had worshipped multitudes of idols described hyperbolically as numbering as many as Jerusalem's streets and Judah's cities (cf. 2:28).
11:14 The Lord instructed Jeremiah again (cf. 7:16; 11:14) not to pray that He would withhold judgment from his people. Their sin was so great that the Lord would not defer judgment even though the prophet or his people cried out to Him for mercy (cf. v. 11). Genuine repentance was the only thing that would affect His punishment.
11:15 The Judahites, even though they were beloved by the Lord, had no right to come into His temple to worship Him because they had committed so many sins and had not repented. Their sacrifices alone could not make things right with Him. Judgment was inevitable.
11:16 Even though the Lord had compared His nation to a beautiful and fruitful green olive tree, He would burn it up in a great tumult because it had proved worthless as far as fulfilling His purpose for it (cf. 21:14; Ps. 52:8; 80:16; Isa. 27:11; Rom. 11:17-24). He would destroy the nation as He might destroy a tree by striking it with lightning.
"The olive [tree] was the source of oil for light, cooking, medicine, anointing for the body, and many other uses. It became the symbol of prosperity and divine blessing, of beauty and strength.' Thus it is here an apt picture of the Hebrew people, blessed by God, but now rejected."217
11:17 Even though Almighty Yahweh had planted Israel, He would bring evil (Heb ra'ah) on her because she had done evil (ra'ah) by provoking Him by worshipping Baal.
"There is nothing in this oracle that does not appear in earlier oracles except that there is here a certain sense of the imminence of coming doom. Such language would certainly provoke the kind of reaction we find in 11:18-12:6, where we are told of a plot against Jeremiah's life in his own village."218
This pericope contains one of Jeremiah's "confessions,"a self-revelation of the prophet's own struggles to cope with God's actions (cf. 10:23-24; 15:10-12, 15-21; 17:9-11, 14-18; 18:18-23; and 20:7-18).219The heart of this one is 12:1-6.
11:18 Jeremiah announced that the Lord had revealed the fate of the Judahites to him and had given him insight into his people's deeds.
11:19 He had preached to the people without realizing that some of them were plotting his death. He was as unaware of their intention as a lamb going to its slaughter (cf. Isa. 53:7; Acts 8:32; 1 Pet. 2:21). They planned to get rid of him, the tree, as well as his messages, the fruit, so all memory of Jeremiah would end. This would be a tragedy since the existence of descendants demonstrated God's blessings on one's life under the Old Covenant.
"It will be recalled that Anathoth was the home of the priestly house of Abiathar, a friend of David. The house was deposed by Solomon, who supplanted it with the house of Zadok. Anathothites resented Jeremiah's favoring the deposition of the sanctuaries other than Jerusalem. This seemed to them like siding with Zadok against their own ancestor Abiathar. Furthermore, being priests, they doubtless hated his castigation of empty priestly ritual."220
11:20 The prophet prayed to Almighty Yahweh, who evaluates people's affections and intents, to judge them for their evil plans (cf. Ps. 17:13-14; 99:8; 149:7; Isa. 34:8; 35:4). He would not take vengeance himself, but he trusted the Lord to take vengeance for him.
11:21 Men from Jeremiah's hometown had warned him to stop prophesying in Yahweh's name or they would kill him.
11:22-23 The Almighty Lord promised to punish those men with disaster. The young men of military age would die violently, and others would die by famine, evidently during the siege of Jerusalem. The Lord would not leave them any descendants, so the memory of them would end. This would be fitting since they purposed to cut off all memory of Jeremiah (cf. v. 19).221
12:1 Jeremiah wanted some answers from righteous Yahweh, and he approached the Lord in prayer as though he were in court. He wanted to know why God allowed the wicked to prosper and the treacherous to live in ease (cf. Job 21:7; Ps. 37; 73:3-5, 12; 94:3; Hab. 1:12-17). It appeared to the prophet that the Lord, as well as Israel, had broken covenant (cf. Ps. 1:3-4).
"The problem of the prosperity of the wicked in the light of God's righteousness is not directly solved here or elsewhere in Scripture. The only final answer is faith in the sovereign wisdom and righteousness of God."222
12:2 The Lord had been responsible for these wicked people coming into existence, growing, and flourishing, like trees. This was a result of His "common grace"(cf. Matt. 5:45; Luke 6:35). They spoke freely about Yahweh, but they did not take Him into consideration.
12:3 The Lord knew that Jeremiah's attitude toward Him was entirely different than those hypocrites. He prayed that the Lord would drag them off to punishment like sheep going to the slaughter (cf. 11:19). He prayed that He would reserve them for particular destruction, as He had set Jeremiah apart for his ministry (1:5).
12:4 The prophet continued to ask the Lord how long the promised judgment on the land would last. He knew it would come because of the people's wickedness in thinking that they could hide their sins from the Lord.
12:5 The Lord replied by asking Jeremiah how he expected to be able to endure the rigors of coming antagonism if the present hostility he was experiencing wore him out (cf. 11:19, 21; 23:21). If he fell in a relatively peaceful environment, how could he get though the turbulence to come, which resembled the violent, overflowing Jordan River in the spring. The Jordan Valley was a sub-tropical jungle inhabited by lions that was hard to penetrate at any season of the year (cf. 49:19; 50:44; 2 Kings 6:2).
12:6 Even Jeremiah's near relatives had been hypocritical with him and had spoken out against him, though they said nice things to his face (cf. Matt. 10:36).
"The plot against him [Jeremiah] and the injustice this represented was tied inextricably to the suffering and sin of the people. He was called to announce judgment upon the people. Being one of them caused him to suffer with them because of the Lord's judgment. As God's messenger, he suffered as a result of his prophetic ministry."223
"The world today needs more Jeremiahs who, in the midst of opposition, are true to the standards of the Bible, patient in the proclamation of the gospel, gentle in the hands of persecutors, committed to the protective care of the Chief Shepherd, and burdened for the souls of lost men and women."224
Most scholars believe this lament dates from the time when Jehoiakim revolted against Babylon after three years of submission (about 602 B.C.; cf. 2 Kings 24:1-2).225
"The second part of God's reply is remarkable, saying in effect, Your tragedy is a miniature of mine.'"226
12:7 Yahweh mourned that He had forsaken the nation and abandoned His people to their captors (cf. Deut. 9:29; Joel 2:17; 3:2).227He had turned over the nation He loved, as a husband loves his wife, to others who were her enemies.
12:8 Judah had become like a lion roaring in defiance against Yahweh rather than as a noble leader of the Israelites (cf. Gen. 49:8-10). Judah opposed and turned against Him, and for this He had grown to hate (i.e., reject) "the beloved of my soul"(v. 7; cf. 9:1-10).
12:9 Judah was like a different, colorful bird among birds of prey gathered all around her to attack her.228The Lord instructed His servants (the angels?) to assemble all the wild beasts that surrounded Judah to come and devour this bird.
12:10-11 Many of the foreign kings had ruined the Lord's people, like unfaithful shepherds sometimes ruined a vineyard. They had trodden the people down so that they had become as unproductive as a wilderness, completely desolate. Furthermore, Judeans did not express enough concern to do something about the situation; they failed to repent.
12:12 The Lord would bring destroyers on His people from the wilderness who would act as His sword and devour them. The whole land would experience war.
12:13 Because of the invasion the harvest that the Judahites would sow would turn out to be nothing but thorns (cf. Lev. 26:16; Deut. 28:38; Hos. 8:7; Mic. 6:15). All their labors to bring something profitable to fruition would come to nothing because their angry Lord would bring judgment on them.
This prophecy about Israel's neighbors anticipates chapters 46-51, which contain oracles against Gentile nations.
12:14 The Lord promised to judge Judah's neighbor nations that had robbed His people of what the Lord had given them. Many of these neighboring people would go into captivity as well as the people of Judah. Among these were the Egyptians, Assyrians, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Arameans, and even the Babylonians.
"Numerous ancient Near Eastern texts include the threat of exile among the lists of curses designed for evildoers, especially treaty-breakers."229
12:15 The Lord would have compassion on these neighbors of Judah's as well as on Judah and would bring some of them back to the land at the end of the captivity along with the Judahites (cf. 48:47; 49:6).
12:16 If these neighbors came to trust and worship Yahweh (cf. Gen. 31:51-53), as they had formerly taught the Judahites to trust in Baal, the Lord would accept them (cf. Ruth).
"At the same time, there is no concession to the old ways or the old gods--in our modern terms, to religious pluralism"230
Verses 15 and 16 will find fulfillment in the Millennium (cf. Gen. 12:1-3; Zech. 14:16; Rom. 11:15).
12:17 But if they would not respond to the Lord positively, the Lord promised to destroy these nations again (cf. v. 14; Zech. 14:9, 16-19).
"This passage gives us a rare glimpse into the consternation and anguish that evil causes God. The anguish is especially acute for him when his own people are responsible for it. In these verses the Lord expresses both love and hate for his people, emotions we usually consider mutually exclusive, at least for God. When the Lord opened himself up to his people in love, he also opened himself to the possibility of hurt."231
This is the first of several symbolic acts that Jeremiah performed to communicate divine messages (cf. 16:1-4; 18:1-12; 19:1-2, 10-11; 27:1-28:17; 32:1-15; 43:8-13; 51:59-64). Other prophets did the same thing (cf. Isa. 20:2-6; Ezek. 4:1-13; 5:1-4). This acted sermon confronted the Judahites with the polluting effect of their associations and the consequences.
13:1-2 The Lord instructed Jeremiah to purchase a linen waistband (or sash, Heb. ezor) and to wear it without first washing it, which he did. Washing it would wear it out to some extent.
13:3-5 Sometime later the Lord told Jeremiah to take his waistband and go to perathahand hide it in a crevice in the rock there, which he did.
The Hebrew word perathdescribes the Euphrates River elsewhere in the Old Testament, and that may be its meaning here (cf. 46:2, 6; 51:63; Gen. 2:14; 15:18; Deut. 1:7; 11:24; 2 Kings 23:29; 24:7). If so, Jeremiah traveled at least 500 miles each way four times. Such a destination is understandable since the Euphrates was the source of the coming invasion of Judah and the destination of the Judahite exiles.
However, several commentators have suggested that the Hebrew word should be read differently, as parah, which refers to a site just four miles northeast of Anathoth, Jeremiah's hometown (cf. Josh. 18:23).232Since Jeremiah's action was symbolic, he may not have made the long trip to the Euphrates to bury his waistband but may have hidden it in a closer place in the general direction of Babylon.
A third view is that this was a vision and Jeremiah never really went anywhere, except in his mind. But there are no clues in the text that this was a vision.
Regardless of where Jeremiah went, the meaning of the prophet's action is clear; it does not depend on our identifying his destination.
13:6-7 Again the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after some time telling him to return to the same site and to retrieve the waistband that he had hidden there. When he did this he discovered that the waistband had become ruined and was of no more use.
13:8-9 Then the Lord told Jeremiah that He would destroy the pride of Judah and Jerusalem as the waistband had been destroyed.
13:10 The people of Judah, pure and untarnished at the time of their call (2:2-3), would be just as worthless as Jeremiah's ruined waistband because they had refused to listen to the Lord. They had been stubborn in their hearts (cf. Deut. 26:17-19) and had pursued idols by serving and worshipping them.
13:11 The Lord had purposed for His chosen people to cling closely to Him and to be an ornament of glory to Him, like a waistband served its wearer. But they did not listen to Him. They had become tarnished and spoiled by contact with polluting influences. Linen was a priestly material (Lev. 16:4), and similarly Israel was to be a priestly nation that was to cling to Yahweh (Exod. 19:6).
This parable stressed the destructive effects of Yahweh's judgment that were coming on them because of their self-indulgence and complacency.
13:12 Yahweh, Israel's God, also told Jeremiah to instruct the people to fill all their jugs with wine. He could expect them to reply that they knew that this was the purpose of jugs. The prophets words may have been a common cry among the local people who wanted more wine to drink.
13:13 Then the prophet was to explain that the jugs represented all the people of Jerusalem--the Davidic kings, the priests, the prophets, and the ordinary citizens. As the people filled their jugs with wine, the Lord would fill His people with the wine of His wrath. They had become intoxicated with idolatry and probably with real wine. As drunkards, they would be unable to defend themselves in the critical hour of the coming invasion.
"Drunkenness was one of the major social problems in the ancient Near East, where the range of available beverages was considerably narrower than at present."233
13:14 The Lord would destroy His people, like jugs when they collided with one another and like drunkards when they stumbled into each other. He would not show pity on them. All generations of His people, from the oldest to the youngest, would suffer when He brought this destruction on them.234
13:15 Jeremiah called the people to pay attention and not to disregard what he would tell them because they thought it was unimportant. Yahweh had a message for them.
13:16 They were to give glory to Yahweh before the darkness of God's judgment overwhelmed them and they stumbled in their walk, as people descending a mountain at twilight. Presently there was some light for the people to walk in, and they were hoping for more light, but deep darkness was about to overtake them. Giving glory to the Lord is an idiom for confessing sins (cf. Josh. 7:19; John 9:24).
The historical background for this oracle may be the deportation of Jehoiachin in 597 B.C., which was as twilight compared to the darkness of 586 B.C. when Jerusalem fell and Judah lost her independence.235
13:17 If the people would not listen to the Lord's word, Jeremiah would weep profusely for them because their failure to listen would indicate that the people, like a flock of sheep, would be taken captive by an enemy.
"Let no one think that the good news of Jesus Christ is to be communicated in a cold take it or leave it' manner. Evangelical preaching and Christian witnessing must not be limited merely to a correct interpretation of the doctrines of the Word. We must have a love for sinners, so great a love that we will be driven urgently to unfold to them the way of salvation, whatever the cost."236
13:18 Jeremiah was to tell the king and the queen mother of Judah to humble themselves because the Lord had removed their authority or would remove it soon. Pride was a besetting sin of royalty. The individuals in view are probably young King Jehoiachin and his mother Nehushta (cf. 22:26; 2 Kings 24:8-17). They were taken to Babylon as captives in 597 B.C.237
The queen mother was an important official throughout Israel's monarchy, evidently as a counselor to the king, as was common in the ancient Near East (cf. 1 Kings 2:19; 15:13; 2 Kings 10:13). Queen mothers assumed unusual prominence because of the widespread practice of polygamy among the kings.
13:19 All the people of Judah had been or would be carried into exile, even those who lived in the Negev towns to the far south in Judah. That is, most of the people from all over Judah were involved. There were still some who did not leave the land in 586 B.C. (2 Kings 25:22). Jeremiah's statement in this verse is somewhat hyperbolic.
13:20 The Lord called Jerusalem to look north and she would see people coming.238The city was about to lose the flock of special people over whom the Lord had made her responsible, namely, His people of Judah.
13:21 What would the city say when the Lord appointed other rulers over her whom the leaders of Jerusalem had cultivated, namely, the Mesopotamians? This may be a reference to King Ahaz's earlier request for Assyrian help against Israel and Aramea (2 Kings 16:7; Isa. 8:5-8).239However, there were many times when Judah had relied on and courted Mesopotamian powers in the past (cf. 4:30). Jerusalem would be in agony over this situation, like a woman in labor pains.
13:22 If the people of the city asked themselves why such a state of affairs had overtaken them, they should remember that it was due to the greatness of their sins. The Lord would humiliate the city because it had humiliated Him. Lifting the skirt is a euphemism for sexual attack (cf. Lev. 18:6-19; 20:17; Deut. 22:30; 27:20; Isa. 47:3; Nah. 3:5), and exposing the heels seems to have been another one (cf. Deut. 28:57; 1 Sam. 24:3; Isa. 6:2).
13:23 The Jerusalemites were so steeped in evil that it was impossible for them to change. They could no more change then than the dark Ethiopian could change the color of his skin or the leopard his spots. They had passed the point of no return; repentance was now impossible for them (cf. Heb. 6:4-6).
"Here is a classic example of loss of freedom of the will through persistent sinning. Sin becomes natural. Jeremiah is speaking of the force of habit, not denying freedom of choice (cf. John 8:34)."240
13:24 Because of their inveterate sinning the Lord would scatter the people from their land, like straw blown by the wind. Like the straw, they would end up in desert lands, namely, Babylonia.
13:25 This was the fate that Yahweh assigned the capital of Judah because she had forsaken Him and trusted in false gods.
13:26 Yahweh Himself would be the one responsible for Jerusalem's humiliation (cf. v. 22).
13:27 Her citizens had behaved like adulterers and like copulating horses (cf. 5:8). The Lord had seen their unfaithful, lewd behavior toward Him when they worshipped idols and practiced sacred prostitution in the open-air shrines across the land. Jerusalem was in big trouble. How long would she continue in her wicked ways and remain unclean?! The question expresses frustration more than it is a request for information.
