Jeremiah 17:16

The chapter has been dark up to this point. Judah’s sin is “written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond” on their hearts and altars (Jeremiah 17:1–4). The man who trusts in man is like a shrub in the desert, while the man who trusts in the LORD is like a tree planted by water (Jeremiah 17:5–8). The human heart is deceitful, and only the LORD searches it (Jeremiah 17:9–11). Out of all this human failure Jeremiah turns, almost in a burst of praise, to the one thing that has stood firm all along: “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.”

The throne, kiççêʼ, is a seat of authority, the place from which God rules his creation and judges it. It is glorious, kâbôwd, a word for glory, honour and splendor. It is high, mârôwm, lifted far above every earthly power, as Isaiah saw when he was shown the Lord on his throne (Isaiah 6:1). And it has been so “from the beginning”, riʼshôwn. God’s reign did not start with any event in history, and it does not wait on anyone’s recognition. His throne is established of old (Psalm 93:2), and he is God from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 90:2). Kingdoms rise and fall beneath a throne that stays where it has always been.

Verse 13 turns from describing God to addressing him: “O LORD, the hope of Israel.” LORD is the covenant name, Yᵉhôvâh, the self-existent and eternal God who keeps his promises. The word for hope here, miqveh, means something waited for, the ground of a person’s confidence. The same Hebrew word can also mean a collection of water, a pond, which suits a verse that ends by calling God a fountain.

Against this stands the act of forsaking. The verb ʻâzab means to loosen, to relinquish, to leave, and here it describes a deliberate walking away from the covenant. Those who do it “shall be ashamed”, bûwsh, which is the disgrace and disappointment of people whose trust has failed them in public. The reason is given at the end of the verse: “because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.”

A fountain, mâqôwr, is a source of water, a spring. In the dry land of Judah a spring of fresh, flowing water meant life itself, and it kept giving when cisterns ran low. God is that kind of source for his people, always giving and never running dry. Jeremiah had used the same picture at the start of his book, where the people leave the fountain and hew out “broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). To leave him is as senseless as walking away from a spring in a desert. The picture of life-giving water runs through Scripture, from the river that went out of Eden (Genesis 2:10) to the river Ezekiel saw flowing from the temple (Ezekiel 47), and David says to God, “with thee is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9).

With verse 14 the prayer becomes personal. Jeremiah had suffered mockery and opposition for his preaching, and he had already poured out his complaint to God (Jeremiah 15:10–21). He now does what the chapter has been urging. Having heard the blessing on the man who trusts in the LORD, he trusts him with his own wounds.

The verb for heal, râphâʼ, means to mend or to cure. Scripture uses it for the healing of bodies and also for the restoring of a people, as when God promises to heal the land of those who humble themselves and pray (2 Chronicles 7:14). Jeremiah’s hurt was of both kinds. He carried the weight of a hard message, the hatred of his own countrymen, and the sickness of a nation heading for judgment, so his prayer reaches as wide as his need: body, heart and spirit. The verb for save, yâshaʻ, means to set free, to deliver, to rescue. He needed rescue from his enemies and from the despair that came with a lonely ministry.

Each request is followed at once by its result: “and I shall be healed”, “and I shall be saved”. Jeremiah is saying that when God heals, the healing is real, and when God saves, the saving is complete. He is acted upon in both phrases, and God alone is the one acting. This is the opposite of the man earlier in the chapter who makes flesh his arm.

The prayer rests on its last words, “for thou art my praise”. The word tᵉhillâh means praise, or a hymn of praise. Jeremiah calls God himself his praise, the one his worship and his testimony are about. The “for” gives the ground of his confidence, and it also tells where the answer will lead, since the God who heals and saves is the God who will be praised for it. David prays the same way: “O LORD my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me” (Psalm 30:2). He blesses the LORD who forgives all his iniquities and heals all his diseases (Psalm 103:2–3), and he waits on God alone for his salvation (Psalm 62:1). Isaiah sings, “Behold, God is my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2).

Verse 15 shows what Jeremiah needed saving from. “Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? let it come now.” The verb ʼâmar is the ordinary word for saying, and the scorn lies in what they say. Their question is a taunt. Jeremiah had long announced judgment and exile, the judgment had not yet arrived, and they took the waiting as proof that his preaching was empty.

The “word”, dâbâr, means a word or speech and also a matter or thing. Here it is everything God had announced through Jeremiah. The verb bôwʼ, to go or to come, is used for that word coming to pass. “Let it come now” is a dare. The people of Judah lived in the last decades before the Babylonian exile, deep in idolatry and sure that the temple and the covenant would shield them. False prophets were promising them peace (Jeremiah 14:13–16), so a prophet of disaster whose disaster had not come was easy to dismiss.

They misread God’s patience. The delay was time given for repentance, and they spent it mocking. God’s word keeps his own timetable. “For the vision is yet for an appointed time,” says Habakkuk, and it will surely come (Habakkuk 2:3). The word that goes out of God’s mouth accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11). When Babylon came and Jerusalem fell, the question “Where is the word of the LORD?” was answered. Peter says that scoffers will ask the same thing about the Lord’s return, “Where is the promise of his coming?”, and that the Lord’s apparent slowness is his patience, giving people time to repent (2 Peter 3:3–9).

Verses 14 to 18 belong with the prayers often called Jeremiah’s confessions, where he pours out to God what his calling has cost him (Jeremiah 11:18–23, 18:18–23, 20:7–10). In verse 16 he answers the mockers by turning to God and saying three things about himself.

First, he stayed at his post. “I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee.” The KJV’s “pastor” is the Hebrew ro’eh, a shepherd, a common picture in Israel for leaders who guide, feed and guard a people. Jeremiah shepherded Judah by giving them God’s word. The verb ʼûwts means to press, to hurry or to withdraw, and he says he never hurried away from the work, hard and unwelcome as it was.

Second, he took no pleasure in what he preached. “Neither have I desired the woeful day.” The verb ʼâvâh means to wish for or to long after, and the day (yôwm) he calls woeful (ʼânash) is the day of judgment he had to announce. His warnings came from obedience and grief. This is the prophet who wished his head were waters and his eyes a fountain of tears, so that he might weep for his people (Jeremiah 9:1). That grief sets him apart from the false prophets, who told the people what they wanted to hear.

Third, everything he said lay open before God. “That which came out of my lips was right before thee.” The word the KJV renders “right”, nôkach, means in front of or opposite, and “before thee” is the word for the face or presence, pânîym. Jeremiah’s preaching was done in front of God’s face, where God could see every word of it. He had spoken what God gave him and kept nothing hidden.

Between the second and third claims stand two words, “thou knowest”. The crowd judged him wrongly, so he appeals to the one who has searched him and knows his thoughts and his every word (Psalm 139:1–4). His duty was the watchman’s duty Ezekiel describes, to give the warning whether or not it is heeded (Ezekiel 3:17–21), and Paul gives Timothy the same charge, to preach the word in season and out of season when people will turn from sound teaching (2 Timothy 4:2–5).

“Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.” The word for terror, mᵉchittâh, means a dissolution, a ruin, or consternation. Jeremiah knew better than anyone in Judah that God was about to bring ruin. He had preached that the LORD is a consuming fire to those who rebel (Deuteronomy 4:24), and he asks that the judgment falling on the nation would pass over God’s own servant. He wants God to be to him what he is to those who trust him.

The second half says what that is. “Hope” in this verse shares the English word with verse 13, but the Hebrew is a different word, machăçeh, which means a shelter or place of refuge. “Evil” is raʻ, a broad word for what is bad, covering calamity and distress as well as wickedness. The “day of evil” is the time of disaster that was coming on Judah: the invasion, the fall of Jerusalem and the seventy years under Babylon (Jeremiah 25:8–11). For Jeremiah it also meant the persecution he was already living through.

God is able to be a shelter in such a day because he stays the same when every human support gives way. Jeremiah’s hope is a settled trust in God’s character and power, held in full view of the trouble. The Psalms say it often. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1). He is a refuge for the oppressed in times of trouble (Psalm 9:9–10), and Nahum, another prophet of judgment, says, “The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble” (Nahum 1:7).

Verse 18 is an imprecation, a prayer asking God to judge the wicked. Jeremiah asks for a reversal. The shame and fear his enemies meant for him are to fall on them: “Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed.”

“Confounded” is bûwsh, the same Hebrew word as “ashamed” in verse 13, so Jeremiah is asking God to do what verse 13 says he will do to those who forsake him. In Israel honour and shame were public matters, and a prophet whose word failed would be disgraced before everyone. Jeremiah asks that the disgrace would land on those who mocked the word. “Dismayed” is châthath, to break down, whether by violence or by confusion and fear. He asks to be kept steady while his persecutors lose their nerve.

Then he asks for the very thing they had dared to come. “Bring upon them the day of evil”, the day (yôwm) of calamity (raʻ) from which he has just asked to be sheltered. “Double destruction” joins mishneh, a double, to shibrôwn, a breaking or ruin, from the root shâbar, to burst. “Double” is a Hebrew way of speaking of full measure, so the phrase asks for a complete and decisive ruin, and it need not mean two separate blows. Isaiah uses the double in the other direction when he promises God’s people a double portion in place of their shame (Isaiah 61:7).

The throne and sanctuary of verse 12 find their fullness in Jesus. He was in the beginning with God and was God (John 1:1), and when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The temple foreshadowed God’s dwelling with his people, and Christ is that dwelling in person. By his blood he has opened a new and living way into the holiest (Hebrews 10:19–20), he lives for ever to intercede for those who come to God through him (Hebrews 7:25), and so we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16).

He is also the fountain. To the woman at the well Jesus offers living water that becomes a spring within the one who drinks (John 4:10–14). At the feast he calls the thirsty to come to him and drink, and promises rivers of living water (John 7:37–38). At the end of Scripture he gives freely of the fountain of the water of life (Revelation 21:6). Names written in the earth are wiped away, while those who belong to him are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21:27), and whoever believes on him shall not be ashamed (Romans 10:11).

Jeremiah’s cry for healing and saving is answered in the physician who came for the sick (Matthew 9:12), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners, and we are saved by his life (Romans 5:8–10). In him we meet God as our healer and saviour, for he is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). He is our praise as well. God has given him the name above every name, to the glory of the Father (Philippians 2:9–11), and in all things he has the first place (Colossians 1:15–20).

The mockery of verse 15 fell on Jesus too. He is the Word of the LORD made flesh, and people demanded signs from him (Matthew 12:38–39) and dared him at the cross to come down if he were the Son of God (Matthew 27:40). As the exile proved Jeremiah’s word, the resurrection declared Jesus to be the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4), and all the promises of God are yea and Amen in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Jeremiah the faithful shepherd points to the good shepherd, who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11). Jesus set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). He wept over the city whose ruin he foretold (Luke 19:41–44). In Gethsemane he asked that the cup might pass and then yielded to his Father’s will (Matthew 26:39). The words he spoke were the Father’s own (John 14:10).

And the prayer of verse 17 is answered at the cross. God’s holy presence made the whole camp tremble at Sinai (Exodus 19:16–19). Jesus, despised and rejected of men (Isaiah 53:3), was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and bore the terror of God’s judgment in our place, so that God is a Father to those who believe. We have received the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15) and a living hope through the resurrection (1 Peter 1:3). Christ has overcome the world (John 16:33) and gives everlasting life to all who believe in him (John 3:16). The day of evil that Jeremiah left in God’s hands comes to its end at the great white throne, where every wrong is judged (Revelation 20:11–15).

This passage gives us a prayer that begins with God before it comes to the one praying. Jeremiah sees the throne first, and only then speaks of his wounds, his mockers and his fear. The trouble is real in every verse, and the throne is above all of it, as it has been from the beginning. Whatever we lean on in this world can be taken away, as the temple was. The God who reigns is still there afterwards, and he calls himself our sanctuary.

It also shows how honest a believer may be with God. Jeremiah tells him that he is hurt, that he is afraid of being ruined, and that he wants justice done to those who have wronged him. He brings all of it to the one who knows him, and “thou knowest” is comfort enough when nobody else will believe the truth about us. God has lost none of his patience when his word waits. The same patience that the mockers took for weakness is the mercy that gives sinners time to turn to him, and everything he has said will come.

Most of all, the passage shows us who God is to those who trust him: a spring that keeps flowing, a healer whose healing holds, a shelter when the day of evil arrives. Because of Christ, we who come to this throne find it a throne of grace.