A Warning Refused at Every Hearing

Benjamin is Jeremiah’s own tribe (1:1), and the escape route runs south, away from the northern invader. Tekoa, Amos’s home town, lies ten miles south of Jerusalem, and “blow the trumpet in Tekoa” is a pun, tiqu beTeqoa. Beth-haccerem, “house of the vineyard”, was a hilltop near Bethlehem. A letter found at Lachish from these very years speaks of watching for such fire signals.

The verb damiti can mean “I have likened” or “I will cut off”, and “comely” can be read as naveh, a pasture. On the second reading the verse says: I will destroy the daughter of Zion, that lovely meadow, which leads straight into the shepherds of verse 3. “Delicate” is the word Deuteronomy 28:56 uses for the pampered woman reduced by siege.

The shepherds are enemy commanders and their flocks are troops, a figure Jeremiah returns to in 12:10: “Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot.” “Every one in his place” means each grazes his own allotted strip, the way an army divides a besieged city’s surroundings among its units.

“Prepare ye war” is literally “sanctify war”: armies opened a campaign with sacrifice, as Saul offered before battle (1 Samuel 13:9). Attacking at noon, in the heat when armies normally rested, shows impatience. The besiegers’ own voices say “Woe unto us!” as the evening shadows lengthen, grudging every hour of daylight lost.

Having missed the daylight, the attackers refuse to wait for morning. “Palaces” are armonot, the fortified mansions of the wealthy, the buildings Amos had condemned: “I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem” (Amos 2:5). Jeremiah 52:13 records that every great house was burned.

A siege mound was an earth-and-timber ramp built up against the wall so that battering rams could reach it; Sennacherib’s ramp at Lachish still survives. Deuteronomy 20:19–20 restrained Israel from felling fruit trees for siege works. Here God himself orders the trees cut down against his own city. “Visited” means marked for reckoning.

The word for “fountain” here is bor, a well, and the verb means to keep water fresh and cool: as a well keeps its water fresh, so the city keeps its wickedness fresh, a supply that never runs stale. “Violence and spoil” is the cry Jeremiah will say he is forced to shout every time he speaks (20:8).

“Depart” is the verb yaqa, to be wrenched out of joint, used when the hollow of Jacob’s thigh “was out of joint” as he wrestled (Genesis 32:25); Ezekiel uses it of love turning away in disgust (Ezekiel 23:18). God’s bond with the city is pictured as a joint about to dislocate. “Be thou instructed” means accept correction.

The Law told Israel not to go back over a vineyard but to leave the gleanings “for the poor and stranger” (Leviticus 19:10). This gleaning ignores that mercy. Obadiah 5 asks, “if the grapegatherers came to thee, would they not leave some grapes?”, and 49:9 repeats it. The word rendered “baskets” more likely means the vine’s tendrils.

“A reproach” is cherpah, a thing to sneer at, and “delight” is chaphets, to want and enjoy. Jeremiah describes the opposite experience in 15:16: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.” The word that feeds the prophet repels his hearers.

The list runs through every stage of life: children playing in the street, young men gathered in their circle, married couples, the old, and the very old, “full of days”. “I am weary with holding in” pictures the prophet as a vessel under pressure; 20:9 uses the same verb for the word he “could not stay”.

“I will stretch out my hand” is the language of the plagues, “when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt” (Exodus 7:5); Judah now stands where Pharaoh stood. Verses 12 to 15 are repeated almost word for word in 8:10–12, one of several passages this book says twice. Houses, fields and wives passing to others is the curse of Deuteronomy 28:30.

“From the least of them even unto the greatest of them” returns in the new covenant promise of 31:34, “they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them”. The phrase that here measures universal greed will there measure universal knowledge of God. “Covetousness” is betsa, a cut, the slice of profit taken dishonestly.

“Slightly” is literally “lightly”, from qalal, the root of the careless “lightness” of 3:9 and the swaying hills of 4:24; the wound is treated as a light matter. Ezekiel pictures the same prophets as men who, when someone builds a flimsy wall, smear it with whitewash and cry “Peace” (Ezekiel 13:10).

“Fall among them that fall” means to die in the general slaughter, one more body among the rest. “Cast down” is kashal, to stumble, the root of the “stumblingblocks” God lays in verse 21. “Blush” is kalam, the face burning with disgrace; these faces no longer burn.

Jesus quotes the promise in Matthew 11:29, “ye shall find rest unto your souls”, offering his own yoke as the good way. The scene is a crossroads, where a traveller stops to ask directions. “Old paths” is netivot olam, the ancient tracks, olam being the same word as the “everlasting” of God’s covenants.

The watchmen are the prophets, the office Ezekiel is given: “I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel” (Ezekiel 3:17). Amos had assumed no city could ignore the alarm: “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid?” (Amos 3:6). Judah manages it, and says so aloud.

The Hebrew of the second half is obscure, and “what is among them” may mean what will befall them. “Congregation”, edah, normally names Israel’s own assembly, but here it seems to be a gathering of the nations, summoned to watch as witnesses do in court. Judah’s neighbours become the jury.

“Hear, O earth” opens Isaiah’s book too, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth” (Isaiah 1:2), calling creation to witness a covenant broken. “The fruit of their thoughts” is Proverbs’ principle that the simple “shall eat of the fruit of their own way” (Proverbs 1:31): the evil is their own schemes coming home.

“Incense” is levonah, frankincense, the resin of trees in south Arabia carried north by caravan. “Sweet cane” is calamus, one of the ingredients of the holy anointing oil (Exodus 30:23), probably brought from as far as India. “Acceptable” is ratson, favour, the word the sacrificial laws use for an offering God receives.

“Stumblingblocks” recalls Isaiah 8:14, where the LORD himself becomes “a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel”. Here the obstacles bring down every relationship at once: father with son, neighbour with friend, falling over the same stones.

Verses 22 to 24 are recycled almost word for word in 50:41–43, where the people “from the north” is turned against Babylon and the victim becomes “O daughter of Babylon”. The invader is later invaded in the same words. “The sides of the earth” are its farthest recesses, the edge of the known world.

“Spear” is kidon, the javelin Goliath carried slung between his shoulders (1 Samuel 17:6, where the King James calls it a “target”). “Set in array as men for war” is literally “arrayed as one man”: the army moves as a single body. Isaiah 5:30 had heard the invader “roar against them like the roaring of the sea”.

The terror once promised to Israel’s enemies now seizes Israel. The Song of the Sea sang that at the exodus “sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina” and “trembling shall take hold upon them” (Exodus 15:14–15). “Our hands wax feeble” means the hands drop, too weak to grip a weapon.

“Fear on every side” is magor missaviv, which became almost Jeremiah’s nickname. He renamed the priest who put him in the stocks Magor-missabib (20:3), and his enemies later whispered the phrase back at him (20:10). It recurs against Egypt (46:5) and Kedar (49:29).

Amos had used the same measure for the day of the LORD: “I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day” (Amos 8:10). “Wallow thyself in ashes” means roll in them, the deepest form of mourning, as Micah 1:10 says, “roll thyself in the dust”. The spoiler comes “suddenly”, with no time to prepare.

“Tower” is bachon, from bachan, to assay metal, so the word more likely means an assayer, one who tests ore; the King James read it as a watchtower. The closing “try” is the same verb. It is God’s own work in 17:10, “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins”, lent here to the prophet.

“Walking with slanders” is the exact phrase of Leviticus 19:16, “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people”, rakil being the peddler of gossip. “Grievous revolters” is literally “rebels of rebels”, the superlative of sorer, the stubborn son of 5:23. Brass and iron are the base metals left when no silver appears.

Silver was refined by cupellation: the ore was melted with lead, and bellows drove air across it until the lead oxidised and carried the impurities off, leaving pure silver behind. Here the bellows blow, the lead is used up, and nothing separates out. Ezekiel 22:18–22 builds the same image into a whole oracle: Israel “is become dross”.

Isaiah had used the same image with a hopeful ending: “Thy silver is become dross”, yet God would “purely purge away thy dross” and restore the city (Isaiah 1:22–26). Here the refining is tried and fails. “Men shall call them” makes the verdict public: the name is given by onlookers who see what the furnace produced.