What the Heart Holds and the Gates Reveal

An iron pen was a stylus for cutting stone, as in Job 19:24. “Table” is luach, the word for the tablets of the law (Exodus 31:18), and the horns of the altar were where sin-offering blood was smeared (Leviticus 4:7). Verses 1–4 are absent from the Greek Septuagint.

“Groves” is asherim, wooden poles set up for the goddess Asherah, not stands of trees. “By the green trees upon the high hills” is the phrase of Deuteronomy 12:2, which ordered such places destroyed, and it has been Jeremiah’s shorthand for rival worship since 2:20 and 3:6.

The words largely repeat 15:13, with one change: the treasures given to the spoil are now joined by “thy high places for sin”. The mountain in the field is Jerusalem, a height rising from open country, as 21:13 calls her “rock of the plain”.

“Discontinue” translates shamat, the verb for the release of the seventh year, when land lay fallow and debts were let go (Exodus 23:11; Deuteronomy 15:2). Judah will “release” its heritage. 2 Chronicles 36:21 later reads the exile as the land keeping its missed sabbaths.

“Arm” means strength. Hezekiah had used the same contrast facing Assyria: “With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD” (2 Chronicles 32:8). “Cursed be the man” is the form of the twelve curses spoken from Mount Ebal in Deuteronomy 27:15–26.

The “heath” is arar, a stunted desert shrub, perhaps a juniper; the word sounds like the Hebrew for stripped or destitute. The “salt land” evokes the country around the Dead Sea, which Deuteronomy 29:23 describes as brimstone and salt where nothing grows.

Trust is said twice in the Hebrew: the man who trusts (batach) in the LORD, and whose trust (mivtach) the LORD is. The second clause makes God not only the object of the trust but its content. “Blessed” here is baruk, the same word used for blessing God himself.

The picture is close to Psalm 1:3, the tree planted by rivers of water whose leaf does not wither. “Careful” in 1611 meant full of care, anxious; the Hebrew da’ag is the word for worry. The tree does not fret in a dry year, which is a different thing from never meeting one.

“Deceitful” is aqov, the root of Jacob’s name, whom Esau called a supplanter (Genesis 27:36); 9:4 used it of brothers who “utterly supplant”. “Desperately wicked” is anush, incurable, the word Jeremiah used in 15:18 for his own wound. The heart is crooked and sick.

“Who can know it?” is answered at once and in the first person: “I the LORD”. “Reins” are the kidneys, thought of as the seat of feeling. The last phrase returns word for word in Jeremiah’s prayer at 32:19, “according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings”.

The partridge, qore’, is named for its call; David compares himself to one hunted on the mountains (1 Samuel 26:20). “Fool” is nabal, which calls to mind the rich man of that name in 1 Samuel 25, who hoarded his wealth and was dead within ten days.

The Hebrew has no verb, only a string of titles: throne of glory, on high from the first, place of our sanctuary. The people had pleaded with the “throne of thy glory” in 14:21. The temple, not the palace, is the throne in view.

Mid-sentence the voice shifts from “thee” to “me”, so the prophet slides into speaking as God. To be “written in the earth” is to have a name traced in dust, gone with the next wind, the opposite of the sin engraved with iron in verse 1.

The doubled verbs, heal and be healed, save and be saved, insist that only this source makes the cure real. God had promised “I will heal your backslidings” (3:22), and Jeremiah asked in 8:22 whether there was any balm in Gilead. “My praise” borrows the words of Deuteronomy 10:21, “He is thy praise”.

“Where is the word of the LORD?” has a legal edge. Deuteronomy 18:22 says a word that does not come to pass was not spoken by the LORD, so the mockers are applying the test for a false prophet. Isaiah 5:19 records the same taunt, “let him make speed”.

“Pastor” in 1611 meant shepherd, the Latin word; the Hebrew is ro’eh. Jeremiah claims he did not run from his post as a shepherd following God. “The woeful day” is literally the incurable day, the same word anush as verse 9, so he has not wished for the disaster he announces.

“Terror” is mechittah, from the root of 1:17, where God warned “be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them”. Jeremiah now asks that God himself not become the dismay. “Hope” here is machseh, a shelter, a different word from the hope of verse 13.

The two pairs mirror each other exactly: let them, not me; let them, not me. The verbs are those of 1:17 again, confounded and dismayed. “Double destruction” is literally a second breaking, shever, the same word as the breach of the daughter of my people in 14:17.

The “gate of the children of the people” is otherwise unknown. The same phrase, bene ha’am, names the common people’s graves in 26:23, so it may be the gate the lay population used. That kings also passed through it sets rulers and ordinary folk in one doorway.

Kings are again plural, as in 13:13, addressing the line of David rather than one man. The audience is defined by movement: those “that enter in by these gates”. Jeremiah preaches to the traffic of the city as it passes.

“Take heed to yourselves” is literally guard yourselves in your souls, as you value your lives. A century and a half later Nehemiah shut Jerusalem’s gates on the sabbath against merchants from Tyre carrying loads into the city (Nehemiah 13:15–22), the same offence at the same place.

“Hallow the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers” echoes the wording of the commandment in Deuteronomy 5:12, “as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee”. Carrying burdens “out of your houses” brings private domestic work under the same rule as the city gates.

“Receive instruction” is musar, correction or discipline, the word for a father’s training in Proverbs 1:8. The whole line nearly repeats 7:26 and 7:28, where the nation “receiveth not correction”. The sentence has four refusals in a row.

“Diligently hearken” is a doubled verb in Hebrew, hearkening you hearken, the construction of Deuteronomy 28:1, “if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD”. The condition is laid out in the same form as the covenant blessings.

The same royal procession of chariots and horses is promised again in 22:4, there on condition of justice for the oppressed. “Remain for ever” is literally shall be inhabited for ever. The gates that carried loads could instead carry kings.

Six districts are named: the towns of Judah, the villages round Jerusalem, Benjamin, the plain (the Shephelah, the low western hills), the mountains and the Negev. The same map is drawn in 32:44 and 33:13. “Meat offerings” are grain offerings, meat meaning food in 1611; “sacrifices of praise” are thank offerings.

The last line takes up Amos 2:5 almost exactly: “I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem.” The Book of Jeremiah records the fulfilment in 52:13, when Nebuzar-adan burned the temple, the palace and every great house.