The Land Begins to Come Undone

“Thou shalt not remove” is lo tanud, “thou shalt not wander”, from the verb of Cain’s sentence to be “a vagabond” in Genesis 4:12: returning is the cure for exile. “Abominations” are shiqqutsim, detested idols, the word 2 Kings 23:13 uses of Milcom and Chemosh when Josiah defiled their shrines.

The oath “As the LORD liveth” was the ordinary form of solemn swearing (Judges 8:19; 1 Samuel 14:39). The second half turns the promise to Abraham, that the nations would bless themselves by his seed, into the result of Israel’s return. “Glory” is the verb of 9:24: “let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me.”

The command is quoted from Hosea 10:12, “Break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD.” Fallow here is nir, land left unbroken, hard and weedy, that must be ploughed before it will take seed. Jesus’ parable of the sower has seed fall “among thorns” that choke it (Mark 4:7).

Moses gave this command first in Deuteronomy 10:16, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked”, and Deuteronomy 30:6 promises that God himself will one day do it. The line about fire “that none can quench” recurs word for word at 21:12, spoken to the house of David.

“Cry, gather together” is literally “cry, fill”, shout at full voice. Villagers in open country fled into walled towns when an army approached; the Rechabites, tent-dwellers by vow, moved into Jerusalem “for fear of the army of the Chaldeans” (35:11). The shofar, the ram’s horn, was the alarm that sent them running.

The standard, nes, is a signal pole pointing refugees to safety in Zion. “Retire” means take your goods and household to shelter, and “stay not” forbids lingering to save more. “Great destruction” is shever gadol, a great fracture; shever becomes Jeremiah’s word for the broken nation in 8:21, “For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt.”

Lions lurked in the dense thickets along the Jordan, from which Jeremiah later pictures one coming up (49:19). “The destroyer” is mashchit, the word for the destroyer that passed over Israel’s doors at the first Passover (Exodus 12:23); this time no door is marked. “Is on his way” is literally “has pulled up his tent pegs”, breaking camp to march.

“Is not turned back from us” answers the boast of 2:35, “surely his anger shall turn from me”. Sackcloth was coarse goat-hair cloth tied round the waist next to the skin. “Lament” is the breast-beating of mourners, and “howl” the high wailing the prophets otherwise prescribed for foreign nations in their fall.

The book shows exactly this heart failing: King Zedekiah, consulting Jeremiah in secret, confesses “I am afraid of the Jews that are fallen to the Chaldeans” (38:19). The officials named at Jeremiah’s call in 1:18 appear again, now as men undone. “Astonished” is shamem, to be stunned into silence.

“Ah, Lord GOD” is the same cry of dismay Jeremiah uttered at his call (1:6). “Unto the soul” can be read “unto the throat”, since nefesh also means neck or throat: the blade is at the neck. The prophets who cry “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (6:14) are the voices that said “Ye shall have peace”.

The wind is the sirocco, the scorching east wind off the desert that withers crops in hours (Hosea 13:15). “The daughter of my people”, bat ammi, appears here for the first time in the book and becomes Jeremiah’s tenderest name for the nation, returning four times in chapter 8 and again in 9:1.

“A full wind” means one too strong for winnowing, blowing grain and chaff away together. “Shall come unto me” can be read “shall come for me”, at God’s bidding. “Give sentence” repeats the phrase of 1:16, “utter my judgments”: the verdict announced at Jeremiah’s call is now being handed down.

Habakkuk describes the Chaldean cavalry in the same terms, horses that “fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat” (Habakkuk 1:8), and Lamentations 4:19 looks back on the event: “Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven.” “Woe unto us! for we are spoiled” is the people’s own cry, cutting into the description.

Isaiah had made the same appeal a century earlier: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings” (Isaiah 1:16). “That thou mayest be saved” is the only offer of rescue in the whole alarm, set in the middle of it. “How long” comes again in verse 21, turned from God’s question into Jeremiah’s own.

Dan was the northernmost town of Israel, the Dan of “from Dan to Beersheba”, about a hundred miles from Jerusalem; Mount Ephraim is the hill country only a day’s walk north. The news is arriving by relay, each report nearer. In 8:16 the army itself is heard there: “The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan.”

“Watchers” are notsrim, those who keep watch, here the besiegers who seal a city so that nothing goes in or out; Isaiah 1:8 uses the same root for “a besieged city”. “Give out their voice” is the war cry of an army closing in. “A far country” is the threat of Deuteronomy 28:49, “a nation from far, from the end of the earth”.

Keepers of a field sat in rough shelters at the edges of the crops through harvest, turning to watch every approach; Isaiah 1:8 pictures one such hut left standing alone. Armies marched in the same season, “at the time when kings go forth to battle” (2 Samuel 11:1), so the harvest guards of this image are the enemy’s.

The verse answers 2:17 almost clause for clause, with the question there turned into a statement. “Reacheth unto thine heart” uses naga, to touch, the verb of verse 10, where the sword “reacheth unto the soul”: blade and bitterness both find their mark. The heart that would not be washed in verse 14 is where the wound lands.

“At my very heart” is literally “the walls of my heart”, the one wall in the chapter that is actually breaking; in 1:18 Jeremiah was promised he would be “brasen walls”. “I am pained” is the verb for writhing in labour, anticipating the woman in travail of verse 31. “My heart maketh a noise” describes a pounding like a drum.

“Destruction upon destruction” is shever al shever, fracture upon fracture, the great breaking of verse 6 now multiplying. The tent image returns in 10:20, where the land cries, “My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my children are gone forth of me.” Tent curtains were goat-hair panels that could be slashed down in seconds.

The standard of verse 6 pointed refugees to Zion; now it is only the sign that war goes on. The verse is a question without an answer, and God’s reply in the next verse leaves the “how long” aside and explains the “why”. The cry echoes the laments of the Psalms, such as Psalm 13:1.

“Sottish” meant dull or stupefied, as with drink, in 1611 English; the Hebrew sekhalim simply means fools. “My people is foolish” echoes the Song of Moses, “O foolish people and unwise” (Deuteronomy 32:6). Paul turns the last line inside out: “wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil” (Romans 16:19).

The first thing lost is the first thing made: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) is undone before anything else. The word for earth, erets, is the same word translated “land” in verse 27, so the vision moves between the whole world and the land of Judah without changing its vocabulary. “Heavens” is plural, as in Genesis 1:1.

“Trembled” is raash, the word for an earthquake, like the one in King Uzziah’s days by which Amos dates his prophecy (Amos 1:1). “Moved lightly” comes from qalal, to be light, the root of the “lightness” of Judah’s whoredom in 3:9: the hills now sway as carelessly as the people behaved.

“There was no man” removes the creature made last, on the sixth day. The vanished birds return in 9:10, “both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone”, and Zephaniah, preaching in the same years under Josiah, threatens to “consume the fowls of the heaven” (Zephaniah 1:3). A land without birdsong is a land that cannot feed them.

“The fruitful place” is hakarmel, the garden land into which God brought Israel in 2:7, and it becomes midbar, the wilderness he led them through in 2:6: the journey of the exodus runs backward. The fourth “I beheld” ends not with an army but with “the presence of the LORD” as the cause.

“I will not make a full end” becomes a refrain that interrupts judgment throughout the book, returning in 5:10, 5:18, 30:11 and 46:28. The Hebrew kalah means a finishing off, the destruction that leaves no remnant. Isaiah 6:13 had drawn the same limit with the stump of a felled oak: “the holy seed shall be the substance thereof”.

“Be black” is qadar, the word for mourners going about darkened and unwashed (Psalm 38:6, “I go mourning all the day long”); the sky itself puts on mourning. “I will not repent” stands against 18:8, where God says he will relent if a nation turns. Here the verb shuv is used of God: he will not turn back.

The people hide as Israel did from the Philistines under Saul, “in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks” (1 Samuel 13:6). The word for rocks here is kephim, related to the Aramaic Kepha, Cephas, the name Jesus gave Peter. “Horsemen and bowmen” are mounted archers, the arm that made Mesopotamian armies feared.

“Rentest thy face with painting” is literally “widen your eyes with kohl”, the black antimony used to enlarge the eyes; Jezebel “painted her face” with it before looking out on Jehu, who had her thrown down (2 Kings 9:30–33). “Lovers” is agavim, a word for lustful admirers, the word Ezekiel 23:5 uses for Samaria’s lovers.

“Bewaileth herself” is a rare verb for gasping, the short breaths of a woman in hard labour; a first birth is usually the longest. Lamentations 1:17 gives the same picture after the fall: “Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her.” “Wearied” means fainting, her strength gone before the killers.