Jeremiah 30:2

Verse 1 is the heading over everything that follows. “The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD” is the prophets’ usual way of marking a message from God, found in Ezekiel, Hosea and Joel as well. It tells us where the message begins. God speaks first, at his own initiative, and Jeremiah is the one who receives what God has chosen to say.

The word for “word”, dâbâr, means a word or speech, and it also has the separate sense of a matter, an affair or a thing. Here it is the message itself, the whole of what God is about to say. The same noun stands behind “the words” in verses 2 and 4.

“From the LORD” names the source. The LORD is Yᵉhôvâh, the personal name by which God made himself known to Israel (Exodus 3:14), the self-existent and eternal One. It is the covenant name of the God of Israel, and it is fitting that a message of comfort to a broken people comes under this name, because it belongs to the God who bound himself to them and remembers his promises even while he disciplines them. Jeremiah’s own name, Yirmᵉyâh, means “Jah will rise”. “Saying” is ʼâmar, the ordinary verb to say, which can also mean to tell or to command. The weight of what follows lies in the one who says it.

Because the message comes from God, the hope in these chapters rests on him, and his promises are as sure as he is. Amos says that God reveals his plans to the prophets (Amos 3:7), and Peter says that prophecy came as men were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20–21). Isaiah says that God’s word accomplishes the purpose for which he sends it (Isaiah 55:11), and Hebrews calls the word of God quick and powerful (Hebrews 4:12).

Much of Jeremiah before this point warns of judgment. Judah had turned to idols, broken faith with the covenant and oppressed the weak, and Jeremiah announced that Babylon would carry the people away. His Temple Sermon in Jeremiah 7 stood against false worship and oppression, Jeremiah 25 foretold seventy years of captivity, and Jeremiah 29 is his letter to those already taken to Babylon. With chapter 30 the message turns to healing, return from exile, the renewal of the covenant and God’s righteous rule. The judgment was real, and God’s purpose for his people reached beyond it.

Jeremiah prophesied through the last decades of the kingdom of Judah, from about 627 to 586 BC, in the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. Babylon took captives from Judah in 605 and 597 BC, and in 586 BC it destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, and Jeremiah saw it happen. The northern kingdom, Israel, had fallen to Assyria in 722 BC, more than a century earlier, and its people were scattered in Assyria and the cities of the Medes. The exact time this word came is left unsaid, and it reached a people who were about to lose everything or had already lost it. For them captivity meant defeat, the loss of their land and their life as a nation, and the fear that God had abandoned them. Into that fear God speaks of a future.

Verse 2 opens with the full title “the LORD God of Israel”. God is ʼĕlôhîym, and Israel, Yisrâʼêl, is the name given to Jacob (“he will rule as God”, in Strong’s) and then to his descendants. The title ties the speaker to the people he is about to speak about, and it marks him as the God who rules their history. “Speaketh” and “saying” both translate ʼâmar, the same verb as “saying” in verse 1.

Then comes the command: “Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.” The verb kâthab at its root means to engrave, and by implication to write, record or inscribe. The book, çêpher, is a piece of writing or a document, which in Jeremiah’s day was a scroll. “I have spoken” is dâbar, to speak, tell or mention, the verb to which the noun dâbâr is related. The words are God’s, already given to Jeremiah, and he is to write all of them, the warnings along with the promises.

Writing gave the message a life beyond the day it was spoken. Spoken words reach those who hear them, and they can be forgotten or changed as they pass from one person to another. A written record lasts, and people who never heard Jeremiah can read it again and again. In Israel, writing was the trusted way to keep laws, history and the words of God. God told Moses to write the words of the covenant (Exodus 34:27) and to write a song for Israel as a witness against their future unfaithfulness (Deuteronomy 31:19). He told Isaiah to write on a tablet and in a book, that it might be for the time to come for ever and ever (Isaiah 30:8), and Habakkuk to write the vision plainly on tablets so that it could be read (Habakkuk 2:2).

The exile makes this command a kindness. A scroll could be carried into a foreign land, studied there and handed down to children born far from home. It kept God’s promise in front of his people through the long years before the return, assuring them that their suffering was a stage on the way to what he had planned. Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles had already spoken of God’s plans of hope and a future for them (Jeremiah 29:10–14), and this book set down the fuller promise in writing.

Verse 3 gives the reason for the book. “For, lo, the days come” calls for attention (“lo” is “behold”) and points to a time God has appointed. “Days” is yôwm, a day or a span of time, and “the days come” speaks of a time ahead that will surely arrive because God has set it. “Come” is bôwʼ, the common verb to come or go.

“Saith the LORD” comes twice in this verse, setting God’s own seal on the promise at its start and again at its centre. The two share the English word “saith”. The first is nᵉʼum, a word for an oracle, the solemn utterance of God, and the second is ʼâmar, the ordinary verb to say.

“I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah.” The verb is shûwb, to turn back or return, and “captivity” is shᵉbûwth, which means exile or the captives themselves, and figuratively a former state of prosperity. Together they speak of God turning back the exile and restoring his people’s fortunes. The verb behind “bring again” is also the verb behind “I will cause them to return” later in the verse, so the restoring of their fortunes and the journey home are told with one verb. “My people” is ʻam, a people gathered as one, and God calls both kingdoms his own, Israel in the north and Judah, Yᵉhûwdâh, in the south. He calls them “my people” while they are scattered and in chains.

God does all of this himself. “I will bring again” and “I will cause them to return” make him the one who acts, and the return will come by his power whatever the politics of the day.

“To the land that I gave to their fathers” goes back to God’s promise of the land to Abraham (Genesis 12:7), repeated to Isaac and Jacob and throughout the books of Moses. “Land” is ʼerets, the earth or a particular land. “Gave” is nâthan, the ordinary verb to give, and “fathers” is ʼâb, father, which also reaches back to forefathers, here the patriarchs. The land was God’s gift, and he will give it again. Moses had foretold that God would bring his scattered people back from exile and restore them (Deuteronomy 30:1–5).

“And they shall possess it.” The verb yârash means to occupy a land by driving out those who held it and taking their place, and by implication to seize or to inherit. Israel would hold the land again as its inheritance and live in it securely. The other prophets carry the same hope. Ezekiel foretells God gathering his people into their own land and giving them a new heart (Ezekiel 36:24–28), Amos sees them planted in their land to dwell there for good (Amos 9:14–15), and Isaiah hears God promise to gather his scattered people (Isaiah 43:5–7).

Verse 4 repeats the heading and names the people the words concern: “concerning Israel and concerning Judah”. “Words” is dâbâr again, and “spake” is dâbar, the same verb as “I have spoken” in verse 2. Israel here is the northern kingdom, scattered by Assyria more than a century before, and Judah is the southern kingdom, facing or enduring exile in Babylon.

By naming both, God shows that his promise reaches all twelve tribes, including those who had been gone the longest, and he looks ahead to the day when the two kingdoms are one people again. Ezekiel later pictures this with two sticks joined into one, Israel and Judah made one nation (Ezekiel 37:15–28). The same chapters of Jeremiah go on to promise a new covenant with both houses, Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

The word that came to Jeremiah points ahead to the Word who became flesh. John says that the Word was with God and was God (John 1:1), and that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). God, who spoke in times past by the prophets, has now spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), the true prophet, greater than Jeremiah, through whom God has given his final word of hope.

The new covenant promised in these chapters is the covenant Jesus made in his blood, when he gave the cup as the new testament in his blood (Luke 22:20). Hebrews calls him the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6–13), and all the promises of God are yea and amen in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Christ also brings his people home from a captivity deeper than Babylon, the captivity of sin and death. He is the good shepherd (John 10:11) who gathers his sheep from every nation into one flock (John 10:16), and Isaiah foretold the Servant who would be a light to the Gentiles, bringing God’s salvation to the end of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). In Christ, Jew and Gentile are made one new people and reconciled to God (Ephesians 2:14–16), so the joining of Israel and Judah has its fullest answer in him. Those who belong to Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29). They have an inheritance in him (Ephesians 1:11–14), and like the patriarchs they look for a better country (Hebrews 11:16).

These verses show us a God who speaks to his people in their darkest hour, and who tells them their future before it comes. He named the people who had been scattered longest along with those about to go, so that none of them was forgotten. He had his promise written down so that it would outlast the prophet, the siege and the exile, and the scroll went with his people wherever they were taken.

The comfort of these chapters came to Israel and Judah in a book, and God’s word comes to us in the same way, in the Scriptures he gave. The God who told Jeremiah to write still stands behind what he wrote. His discipline of his people was severe, and his last word over them was restoration.