Jeremiah 2:14

Jeremiah 2 is God’s case against his people, a charge laid out like a lawsuit (in Hebrew a rib). The chapter opens with the LORD remembering how Israel followed him in the wilderness with the devotion of a bride (Jeremiah 2:2–3), and then asks why their fathers went far from him after worthless things (Jeremiah 2:4–8). Just before this passage he sums up the charge as two evils: his people have forsaken him, “the fountain of living waters,” and dug out for themselves broken cisterns that hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13). The verses that follow show what those two evils cost.

Jeremiah’s ministry began around 627 BC, in the reign of Josiah, and ran through the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah to the Babylonian exile. Josiah led reforms, yet the nation slid back into the worship of Baal and Asherah and even the sacrifice of children. Abroad, the Assyrian empire was in decline, Babylon was rising, and Egypt was still strong. Judah was a small kingdom caught between them, and its kings kept looking to one power or another for safety.

The law of Moses had set out blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. In these verses Judah is living through those curses.

God opens with three questions: “Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled?” He asks them to make Judah face its own condition, and the answer comes in verse 17.

The name Yisrâʼêl joins śārāh, to prevail or have power, with ʼēl, God. Strong’s renders it “he will rule as God”, and it was first given to Jacob, who had power with God when he wrestled with him (Genesis 32:28). The name itself speaks of a people blessed by God and made his own.

“Servant” is ʻebed, from ʻābad, to work or serve, and it can mean a hired labourer or a bondservant. “Homeborn” joins yâlîyd, born, with bayith, house: a slave born within the master’s household, as against one bought or taken captive. Such a slave belonged to the house for life and was usually given more care and protection, sometimes being counted part of the wider family. “Spoiled” is baz, from bāzaz, to plunder, and means booty or prey.

The LORD had called Israel “my son, even my firstborn” (Exodus 4:22). So the questions cut deep. Israel was born into God’s own house and lived under his protection, and a master guards even a slave born in his household. Why, then, does Israel lie about like booty for any raider to carry off? The fault lies with Israel, for God is well able to protect his own. Israel had been called to serve God alone, and by turning to idols and foreign powers it had put itself under other masters, just as Paul says that we become the servants of whatever we obey (Romans 6:16). Isaiah’s song of the vineyard carries the same grief: God planted and tended his vine with care, it brought forth wild grapes, and it was laid waste (Isaiah 5:1–7).

Verse 15 shows the plundering: “The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant.” The word for young lion, kᵉphîyr, means a young male lion. Strong’s suggests, with a “perhaps”, that the name comes from the covering of its mane, and the same word can also mean a village. “Roared” is shâʼag, the deep, rumbling roar of a lion. Together they picture predators standing over their prey in triumph.

The lions are the invading armies God let loose on his people. The verse leaves them unnamed. Babylon, which would at last destroy Jerusalem, is chiefly in view, and behind it Assyria, which had ravaged the northern kingdom of Israel and remained a constant threat.

“Waste” is shammâh, desolation. Elsewhere the word can mean horror, and here it describes the land itself, ruined and empty. The cities are burned, and “without inhabitant” means that their people have been killed, carried off into exile or have fled, so that the places where Judah lived together stand deserted.

This is what the covenant had warned of. Moses spoke of a fierce nation brought from far away that would besiege Israel’s cities until the high walls they trusted came down (Deuteronomy 28:49–52), and the law of blessing and curse said, “I will make your cities waste” (Leviticus 26:31–33). Isaiah too saw God summon distant nations against his people (Isaiah 5:26–30). In leaving the LORD, Judah had left the protection that had kept it safe. The lions were instruments of his just judgment, and they went only as far as his hand allowed.

“Also the children of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head.” “Children of” is the Hebrew way of saying the people of a place. Nôph is Memphis, an ancient capital and a centre of religious and political power in Lower Egypt. Tahapanes is Daphnae, a frontier fortress where those entering Egypt often first arrived. After Jerusalem fell, Judeans fled there for refuge, to the town that Jeremiah 43 spells Tahpanhes (Jeremiah 43:7). By naming the two cities, God points to the whole of Egypt’s power.

The verb rendered “have broken” is râʻâh. Its usual sense is to tend a flock or to graze, and Strong’s lists “break” among its uses, along with devouring and wasting. The picture is of Egypt eating Judah’s strength away. qodqôd is the crown of the head, the top of the skull. In Israel what a person wore on the head marked rank and honour, from a king’s crown to a priest’s turban, so a broken crown pictures a nation shamed, its dignity and standing as God’s people stripped away.

The sting is that Egypt was the power Judah looked to. Many of Judah’s leaders wanted an alliance with Egypt as a safeguard against Babylon, and the prophets condemned it as a betrayal of the covenant. Isaiah pronounced woe on the “rebellious children” who went down to Egypt for strength (Isaiah 30:1–7). The helper Judah chose became the one that humbled it. A psalm gives the faithful answer: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). And the proverb holds for nations as for people: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

“Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way?” The ruin of verses 15 and 16 has a cause, and it lies with Judah.

“Procured” is ʻâsâh, the everyday verb for doing or making, used in the widest way, even of things that simply happen. The weight of the verse rests on the words around it, “unto thyself” and “in that thou hast forsaken”. The question expects the answer yes, and it leaves Judah to admit the blame. “This” gathers up everything falling on the nation: drought, famine, invasion, and at last exile.

The cause is that they had forsaken “the LORD thy God”, Yᵉhôvâh their ʼĕlôhîym. The verb ʻâzab means to loosen, let go or leave, and it can mean to leave someone destitute. It describes a people walking away from the God they were bound to by covenant and going after other gods, in open breach of the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). It was like a wife deserting her husband, or a servant walking out on his master.

“When he led thee by the way” makes it worse. “Led” is yâlak, to walk, here in the sense of carrying or leading someone along. The LORD had walked his people out of Egypt, through the wilderness and into the land, guiding them like a shepherd (Psalm 23). “The way” is derek, a road or path, and also a course of life, the path God had set before them for their good. They left him while he was still leading them.

Scripture says the same in many places. Moses set life and death before Israel and told them to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). Wisdom warns that those who refuse her “shall eat of the fruit of their own way” (Proverbs 1:31). Hosea says, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help” (Hosea 13:9), and Paul writes, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). The charge gathers up what God has already said in Jeremiah 2:5–13, where his people exchanged their glory for worthless idols, and it looks ahead to the seventy years of captivity Jeremiah would foretell (Jeremiah 25).

“And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?” The phrase “what hast thou to do” (in Hebrew mah lach) asks what business or right Judah has on these roads, and what it hopes to gain there. The answer God expects is “nothing”.

“Way” is derek again, the same word as in verse 17, and it stands twice in this verse. Judah had left the way the LORD led it in and set off down the road to Egypt and the road to Assyria. Here the road is a policy, a chosen course of alliances, military reliance and close dealings with those empires.

Sihor is the Nile, the lifeblood of Egypt and the source of its plenty and power. “The river” is the Euphrates, bound up with Assyria and later with Babylon. “Drink” is shâthâh, used both plainly and in figures, and “waters” is mayim. To drink a nation’s waters was to draw life, support and loyalty from it. Water in Scripture often pictures life and plenty, and that makes the picture sharp. God had just called himself “the fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 2:13), and his people were going off to drink from foreign rivers. The Nile and the Euphrates were the broken cisterns of verse 13 in the form of foreign policy.

The prophets speak with one voice on this. Isaiah says, “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help” (Isaiah 31:1), and Hosea tells how Ephraim saw its sickness and went to the Assyrian, who could neither heal it nor cure its wound (Hosea 5:13). The psalmist says, “Put not your trust in princes,” and calls happy the one who has the God of Jacob for his help (Psalm 146:3–5). God had promised to bless and protect his people as they obeyed him (Deuteronomy 28:1–14), so seeking safety elsewhere showed a failure of faith in him. Jeremiah soon describes Judah as an unfaithful wife (Jeremiah 3:1–5), and the same picture fits here. Going to other powers for what the LORD alone provides was spiritual adultery.

“Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.”

In this verse Judah’s sins become its teachers. “Wickedness” is raʻ, bad or evil, a word that also covers affliction, and it is the same word as “an evil thing” later in the verse. The evil Judah did becomes the evil it suffers. “Correct” is yâçar, to chastise or discipline, with words or with blows, and so also to instruct. It can describe a ruler’s harsh scourging as well as a father’s training, and here the lesson is painful. “Backslidings” is mᵉshûwbâh, a turning away, and the plural speaks of turning after turning. “Reprove” is yâkach, to rebuke, correct, convince or convict, a word at home in a court of law. Judah’s own record of turning away would stand as the evidence against it and show the judgment to be just.

“Know therefore and see” uses yâdaʻ, to know, and râʼâh, to see or perceive. Judah would learn by its own experience what God had told it: that leaving him is raʻ, evil, and mar, bitter.

The root of it all is in the last line: “my fear is not in thee.” The word for fear is pachdâh, alarm or awe. Judah had lost its awe of God, and with it the reverence that keeps a people near him. Scripture calls this fear the beginning: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), and “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). It is reverence and awe before God’s holiness and authority, and it bears fruit in humble obedience. Where it is missing, God’s commands are treated lightly and his people lose sight of the path to life.

“Saith the Lord GOD of hosts” seals the verse. “Saith” is nᵉʼum, an utterance or declaration, the word that marks a prophet’s message as spoken by God. “Lord GOD” joins ʼĂdônây, Lord, with Yᵉhôvih, the LORD’s own name, and “hosts” is tsâbâʼ, an army or host, including the host of heaven. The LORD of hosts rules over every army, those of Babylon and Egypt among them, and he is the one passing this judgment.

Everything Israel was called to be, Jesus is. At his baptism the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and he kept to the Father’s way to the end, becoming “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). He never forsook the Father, and he calls himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

He also bore what Judah brought on itself. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:4–6). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Judah’s crown was broken in shame, and the King of kings (Revelation 19:16) let soldiers press a crown of thorns on his head (Matthew 27:29), so that those who trust him receive a crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8) and a crown of life (Revelation 2:10). Through the blood of his cross he made peace (Colossians 1:20).

Israel in this passage is a plundered son. In Christ believers receive “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15), and are sealed with the Holy Spirit as the pledge of their inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14). The new covenant Jeremiah himself foretold, with God’s law written on the heart and sins remembered no more (Jeremiah 31:31–34), is the covenant in Christ’s blood (Luke 22:20). God promised a new heart and his own Spirit within his people, to make them walk in his ways (Ezekiel 36:26–27), and so the fear of the LORD that Judah lacked is planted in them.

The water Judah went looking for in the Nile and the Euphrates is given freely in Christ: “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst” (John 4:10–14). In him all fulness dwells (Colossians 1:19), and in him all the promises of God are yea and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20). The burned and empty cities of verse 15 give way at the last to the holy city, where God dwells with his people and sorrow and death are gone (Revelation 21:1–4).

These verses give us a God who leads his people and who tells them plainly where their trouble comes from. He asked Judah why it lay plundered, and he answered with the truth, painful as it was, because the truth was the way back to him. Even his sharpest correction here has a purpose: Judah was to know and see, and in seeing to return.

Hardship in a believer’s life can have many causes, and this passage speaks of one of them, the bitter fruit of leaving God. Where trouble does come from that, the same God who said “thou hast forsaken” is still the fountain of living waters, and the way back is open. He still leads by his word, “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105), and by his Spirit, who guides into all truth (John 16:13). Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24), and verse 18 puts the same question to every generation: what have we to do on the road to Egypt, when the living water is near?

The fear of the LORD that Judah lost is God’s gift to his people in Christ, and with it comes the wisdom to drink from the right spring.