The Wound Beneath the Promise of Peace

Josiah had done exactly this to the priests of the Bethel shrine: he “took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar” (2 Kings 23:16). Now Judah’s own dead receive the treatment its reforming king gave to idolaters. Invading armies also broke open royal tombs in search of the treasure buried with kings.

“Dung upon the face of the earth” is the fate pronounced on Jezebel, whose carcase was to be “as dung upon the face of the field” (2 Kings 9:37); it recurs in 9:22, 16:4 and 25:33. Star worship had royal backing: Manasseh built altars “for all the host of heaven” in the temple courts (2 Kings 21:5), and Josiah burned “the chariots of the sun” (2 Kings 23:11).

The verse turns Moses’ great appeal inside out: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The survivors will make the opposite choice, not from defiance but from misery. “This evil family” uses mishpachah, clan, as though the whole nation were one bad household.

The second question uses shuv in both halves, “if one turns away, does he not turn back?”, the word-play that ran through chapter 3. Amos had sung a dirge over the north: “The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise” (Amos 5:2). Jeremiah’s questions still assume that getting up is the normal thing to do.

“Hold fast” is hechezik, to grip tight, the verb Proverbs 4:13 uses for the opposite: “Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go.” Judah clings with the same tenacity, but to tarmit, deceit. “Refuse to return” repeats 5:3 exactly; by now the refusal is a settled policy.

God is pictured as a listener at the door, with the same pair of verbs as Malachi 3:16, where “the LORD hearkened, and heard” those who feared him. The horse charging into battle is the war horse of Job 39:21–25, which “mocketh at fear” and “swalloweth the ground with fierceness”: magnificent, and incapable of stopping to think.

The stork is chasidah in Hebrew, “the loyal one”, named from chesed, the covenant loyalty that 2:2 remembered from Israel’s youth; the bird has kept it and the people have not. The land lies on one of the world’s great migration routes, and in spring and autumn storks pass over by the hundred thousand. The crane and swallow are less certainly identified.

Scribes were a real profession at Josiah’s court: Shaphan the scribe read the rediscovered book of the law to the king (2 Kings 22:8–10), and his son Ahikam later protected Jeremiah (26:24). “Pen” is et, a reed or stylus; 17:1 speaks of sin written “with a pen of iron” on the heart. Jeremiah’s own scribe, Baruch, appears in chapter 36.

“Taken” is lakad, the verb for capturing a city or catching an animal in a snare: the wise are caught like game. The book returns to the theme within a chapter: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom” (9:23). Isaiah had warned an earlier court that “the wisdom of their wise men shall perish” (Isaiah 29:14).

Verses 10 to 12 repeat 6:12–15 with small changes, and the Greek version leaves most of them out. “Them that shall inherit them” is yoreshim, dispossessors, from yarash, the verb used when Israel took possession of Canaan (Deuteronomy 1:8); the conquerors’ verb is now turned on the conquerors’ descendants.

“Hurt” is shever, a fracture; to heal it “slightly” is to bandage a broken bone without setting it. The line repeats 6:14 with one change: there it was “the hurt of my people”, here “the hurt of the daughter of my people”, the tender phrase that returns three more times before the chapter ends.

“The time of their visitation” is pequddah, a day of inspection and reckoning, the noun of Isaiah 10:3, “what will ye do in the day of visitation?”, and of Hosea 9:7, “The days of visitation are come”. The phrase returns in 10:15 against the idols themselves: “in the time of their visitation they shall perish.”

“I will surely consume them” is a pun in Hebrew, asoph asiphem, which sounds like “I will surely gather them”, the word for bringing in the harvest; the harvest God gathers is the people. Zephaniah opens with the same doubled verb, “I will utterly consume all things” (Zephaniah 1:2). Then the orchard itself stands empty: no grapes, no figs.

“Water of gall” is mei rosh, water laced with a bitter, poisonous plant; Deuteronomy 29:18 warns of “a root that beareth gall and wormwood”, and the drink is served again in 9:15 and 23:15. “Let us be silent there” uses damam, which can mean both to be still and to perish: the silence of the fortress is the silence of the dead.

The same complaint is repeated almost word for word in 14:19, in a prayer during drought. “A time of health” is marpe, a cure, the physician’s word, and verse 22 will ask why no cure has come. “Trouble” is beatah, sudden terror, the panic of people who expected the opposite.

“Strong ones” is abbirim, a poetic word for stallions, as in the Song of Deborah, “the prancings of their mighty ones” (Judges 5:22). Jacob’s blessing had called Dan “a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels” (Genesis 49:17); here horses come from Dan, and serpents follow in the next verse.

“I will send serpents among you” repeats the wilderness plague, when “the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people” (Numbers 21:6); then Moses lifted up a bronze serpent, but here no remedy is offered. Snake charming was a known trade, and Psalm 58:4–5 speaks of the adder “which will not hearken to the voice of charmers”.

The opening word, mavligiti, occurs nowhere else, and translators guess: the King James “when I would comfort myself”, modern versions “my joy is gone”. What follows is clear enough: “my heart is faint in me”, sick at its root. The first person has changed; the voice now is Jeremiah’s own.

“From a far country” may instead mean “from the length and breadth of the land”, the cry rising everywhere. The people ask whether their king is still in Zion, trusting his presence as they trusted the temple in 7:4. God answers with a question of his own, and “strange vanities” are havlei nekhar, foreign breaths: the hevel of 2:5, imported from abroad.

The Hebrew year had two gathering seasons: the grain harvest in late spring and qayits, the summer fruit of figs and grapes, at the end of summer. When both have passed and the stores are empty, there is nothing left to hope for until the next year. The line has the ring of a proverb, perhaps one already in circulation.

One root is repeated: “for the breaking of the daughter of my people I am broken”, shever and shubbarti. The prophet’s own body carries the fracture the false prophets bandaged “slightly” in verse 11. “Astonishment” is shammah, appalled horror, which “hath taken hold” like the pangs of labour in 6:24.

Balm, tsori, was an aromatic resin traded out of Gilead east of the Jordan; the caravan that bought Joseph was carrying it down to Egypt (Genesis 37:25). In 46:11 Jeremiah mocks Egypt with the same remedy: “Go up into Gilead, and take balm... in vain shalt thou use many medicines.” The spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead” was written as an answer to this question.