A Fountain Traded for Cracked Stone

Chapters 2 to 6 are widely thought to preserve Jeremiah’s early preaching, perhaps as he dictated it a second time to Baruch after King Jehoiakim cut up and burned the first scroll, when “there were added besides unto them many like words” (36:32). The formula marks the start of the first message.

“Kindness” is chesed, covenant loyalty, and here, unusually, it is Israel’s loyalty to God that is remembered rather than God’s to Israel. The memory is generous: the wilderness years in Exodus and Numbers were full of complaint. Hosea had pictured the same season: “she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth” (Hosea 2:15).

“Holiness unto the LORD” is the inscription engraved on the gold plate of the high priest’s turban (Exodus 28:36), and the whole nation wears that label. The firstfruits of a harvest belonged to God, and an outsider who ate a holy portion incurred guilt (Leviticus 22:10). “Shall offend” is asham, to become guilty: Israel’s attackers are trespassers on sacred food.

Jeremiah speaks in Jerusalem, yet he addresses “all the families of the house of Israel”, including the northern tribes carried off by Assyria about a century earlier, in 722 BC. The whole people, not only surviving Judah, is summoned as defendant. Chapter 3 will turn to the north directly.

“Iniquity” here is avel, injustice or crooked dealing, as if the ancestors were customers who found God had cheated them. “Vanity” is hevel, breath, the word of Ecclesiastes; they chased a breath and turned into one. The same verdict is passed on the northern kingdom in 2 Kings 17:15: “they followed vanity, and became vain.”

“Where is the LORD?” is the question Elisha asked when he struck the Jordan with Elijah’s mantle (2 Kings 2:14), a cry that expects God to act. No one asked it. “Shadow of death” is tsalmavet, the deep darkness of Psalm 23:4, and the whole description recalls “that great and terrible wilderness” of Deuteronomy 8:15.

“A plentiful country” is literally “the land of the Carmel”, the garden land, using the word that named Mount Carmel for its orchards. “Defiled” echoes the warning of Numbers 35:34, “Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell.” The land is called “my heritage”: Israel were tenants on God’s own estate.

“Handle” is taphas, the verb of Genesis 4:21, where Jubal was father of all who “handle the harp and organ”: these men were practised with the law as with an instrument. “Things that do not profit”, lo yoilu, is a sound-play on Baal, and the chapter repeats it in verse 11.

“Plead” is riv, to bring a lawsuit, the legal frame of Micah 6:2, “the LORD hath a controversy with his people”. Naming “your children’s children” stretches the case over three generations, echoing the Decalogue’s “third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5). Jeremiah’s hearers inherit both the charge and the litigation.

Chittim is Kition on Cyprus, standing for the Mediterranean west, and Kedar is the Arab tribes of the Syrian desert, standing for the east. The search is to cover the whole horizon, from the coasts to the tents. “Consider diligently” is the work of an investigator gathering evidence.

Psalm 106:20 describes the golden calf in the same words: “they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.” Jewish scribal tradition lists this verse among places where an original “my glory” was softened to “their glory” out of reverence. Paul echoes the charge in Romans 1:23.

The heavens are summoned because Moses made them witnesses to the covenant: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The Hebrew sounds its own alarm, shommu shamayim, “be appalled, heavens”, and “be horribly afraid” means to bristle, the hair rising in horror.

Cisterns were bottle-shaped chambers cut into limestone and sealed with lime plaster; once the plaster cracked, the winter rains simply drained away. Joseph was thrown into one that held “no water” (Genesis 37:24), and Jeremiah himself would be let down into one with “no water, but mire” (38:6). The fountain title returns in 17:13.

A “homeborn slave”, yelid bayit, was born to a slave mother in the household and belonged to the master for life (Genesis 17:12). Israel was nothing of the kind: “Israel is my son, even my firstborn” (Exodus 4:22). The question asks why a son is being treated as plunder.

The lion was the emblem Assyria chose for itself, and Nahum 2:11–12 mocks Nineveh as a den of lions. The waste described here probably looks back to Assyrian campaigns: Sennacherib’s own annals boast of taking forty-six walled towns of Judah in 701 BC. Jeremiah will use the lion again of the next invader (4:7).

Noph is Memphis, Egypt’s old capital, and Tahapanes is Daphnae, a frontier fortress in the eastern Delta; Jeremiah himself would end up there against his will (43:7–9). “Broken the crown of thy head” may point to Pharaoh Necho’s killing of King Josiah at Megiddo in 609 BC (2 Kings 23:29), or to Egypt’s later grip on Judah.

“Procured” is simply “done”: the question is whether Judah did this to itself. The last phrase, “when he led thee by the way”, is absent from the Greek, but in Hebrew it sets up the next verse, where “the way of Egypt” and “the way of Assyria” are the roads Judah took instead of the one it was being led along.

Sihor, “the black”, is a name for the Nile or its easternmost branch, from its dark silt-laden water (Joshua 13:3). “The river” is the Euphrates. Drinking from a foreign river stands for alliance, and Judah’s court swung between an Egyptian party and a Mesopotamian one. Either way it is river water fetched from far off, after a fountain close at hand.

“Correct” is the verb for a father’s discipline and “reprove” the verb for a verdict in court, so wrongdoing acts as both parent and judge. “Evil and bitter” keeps the water image going: mar, bitter, is the word of Marah, the undrinkable spring of Exodus 15:23. Judah went abroad for water and found it bitter.

The Hebrew letters behind “I will not transgress” can also be read “I will not serve”, a difference of one similar-looking letter; the written text has “serve”, which turns a vow into defiance. “Upon every high hill and under every green tree” is the phrase Deuteronomy 12:2 uses of the places where the nations worshipped their gods.

“Noble vine” is sorek, a choice red grape that gave its name to the valley of Sorek, where Delilah lived (Judges 16:4); Isaiah 5:2 uses the same word for the vine the beloved planted. “Wholly a right seed” is literally “seed of truth”, true stock. In Isaiah the vine yielded wild grapes; here the vine itself has turned into another plant.

“Nitre” is natron, a mineral soda gathered from Egyptian lake beds, and “soap” is borit, lye leached from plant ash, the “fullers’ soap” of Malachi 3:2. Both were the strongest cleaners there were. “Marked” is a rare verb for a stain set into the cloth, the kind that survives every washing.

“The valley” is almost certainly the valley of Hinnom below Jerusalem, where children were burned at Topheth (7:31). “Baalim” is plural: not one god but the many local Baals of different shrines. The young she-camel is one not yet trained, criss-crossing her tracks this way and that.

The wild ass, pere, is the animal Genesis 16:12 uses for Ishmael’s untameable independence. Snuffing the wind is a female in heat catching the scent of a male. “In her occasion” means in her season, and “in her month” is the mating time, when the males need not chase at all.

The advice is practical: stop running before your sandals are worn through and your throat is parched, the thirst being one more link in the chapter’s water imagery. “There is no hope” is noash, “it is no use”, and Judah says it again in 18:12: “There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices.”

A thief caught in the act had to restore sevenfold and give up “all the substance of his house” (Proverbs 6:31), so the shame of discovery was also ruin. The list of the ashamed echoes the opponents named at Jeremiah’s call in 1:18, with one addition: the prophets now stand among them.

The wooden pole was the asherah, emblem of a goddess, and the standing stone the pillar of a male god, yet the tree is called “father” and the stone is said to have given birth. The genders are swapped, perhaps in mockery. The line about back and face is repeated almost word for word in 32:33.

The taunt borrows from the Song of Moses: “Where are their gods... let them rise up and help you, and be your protection” (Deuteronomy 32:37–38). The count of gods matching cities returns in 11:13, which adds that Jerusalem had as many altars to Baal as it had streets.

In verse 9 God brought the lawsuit; now the people try to bring one against him, with the same verb, riv. The reply dismisses the counter-suit in a line: all of you have rebelled against me. “Transgressed” is pasha, the word used when Edom revolted from Judah’s rule (2 Kings 8:20).

The book later records one such killing: the prophet Urijah fled to Egypt, was brought back, and Jehoiakim “slew him with the sword” (26:20–23). Manasseh before him “shed innocent blood very much” (2 Kings 21:16), which later tradition connected with prophets. “Correction” is musar, the discipline a son accepts from his father.

“See ye the word” is odd, and deliberate: the word is set before them like evidence on a table. “A land of darkness” uses a rare word for deep gloom. “We are lords” is better read “we roam at will”: the verb rud describes breaking loose, the claim of the animals of verses 23 and 24.

“Attire” is kishshurim, the sashes a bride tied on, the bridal binding Isaiah 49:18 pictures. After the golden calf the Israelites took off their ornaments at Horeb in mourning (Exodus 33:4–6); a bride never would. “Days without number” is the arithmetic of a lifetime, set against the one wedding day she never forgets.

“Trimmest” means to make good or skilful: Judah has become expert at the search. “The wicked ones” is feminine in Hebrew, most naturally wicked women; the sense is that even practised harlots could take lessons from Jerusalem. Ezekiel 16:47 brings the same charge against the city.

“Secret search” translates bamachteret, “at breaking in”, the term of Exodus 22:2: a burglar killed in the act brought no bloodguilt on the householder. These dead were not caught breaking in; there was no such excuse. “Skirts” are the hem of the robe, where the blood is plain to see.

“I am innocent” is a verdict word, niqqeti, “I am acquitted”: Judah pronounces its own acquittal before the case is heard. The attitude is the one Proverbs 30:20 gives the adulterous woman, who “eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness”. The denial itself becomes a count in the charge.

“Gaddest about” may mean making light of one’s way, treating allegiance as cheap. The shame from Assyria began with King Ahaz, who bought Assyrian help with temple silver and got a master instead: Tiglath-pileser “distressed him, but strengthened him not” (2 Chronicles 28:20). Egypt will prove no better.

Hands on the head was the posture of public grief and disgrace, the gesture of Tamar going away weeping after Amnon’s outrage (2 Samuel 13:19). “Thy confidences” are the powers Judah trusted, and the book will state the principle outright: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man” (17:5).