Jeremiah 33:6

The message comes while Jeremiah is “yet shut up in the court of the prison.” This is the final Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, around 588–586 BC, when famine and disease filled the city and its fall was near. King Zedekiah had confined Jeremiah in the court of the prison, “which was in the king of Judah’s house,” because he kept prophesying that the city would be given into the hand of Babylon (Jeremiah 32:2–3). Jeremiah urged surrender, and the king’s men took that as treason that weakened the people’s will to fight. Prophets often suffered for unwelcome messages, and Jeremiah’s imprisonment was the direct cost of speaking God’s word faithfully. The verb ʻâtsâr means to restrain or hold back, and here it means confined. The prison is the maṭṭârâʼ, a guard-house, and the châtsêr is its enclosed court within the palace grounds.

“The second time” (shênîy, second) ties this message to the one before it. In Jeremiah 32 God told Jeremiah, in the same place, to buy a field at Anathoth (Jeremiah 32:6–15). Buying land with an enemy army camped on it looked like folly, and God made it a sign that fields would be bought in the land again (Jeremiah 32:44). Now God speaks again and fills out that sign. The whole of Jeremiah 33 is a message of hope: the healing of the city, a righteous Branch from David’s line, and unbreakable covenants with David’s house and the Levitical priests (Jeremiah 33:14–26). These four chapters are often called the Book of Consolation (Jeremiah 30–33), because after long chapters of judgment they turn to the return from exile, the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34) and the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

“The word of the LORD” uses dâbâr, which means a word or speech and also a matter or thing. The LORD is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s own name. The prophet’s name, Yirmᵉyâh, is explained in Strong’s as “Jah will rise”. The closing “saying” is ʼâmar, the everyday verb for speaking, and it opens the message that fills the rest of the chapter.

The king could hold the prophet, and God’s word reached him there all the same. Paul, writing from his own chains, said “the word of God is not bound” (2 Timothy 2:9). The word God sends accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11), and it is living and powerful (Hebrews 4:12). God keeps speaking to a people under judgment, as he does through Hosea when he promises to heal and to love the people who turned from him (Hosea 14:4).

Before he makes a single promise, God tells Jeremiah who is speaking. “The LORD” stands three times in verse 2: “Thus saith the LORD the maker thereof, the LORD that formed it, to establish it; the LORD is his name.” The repeated name makes the speaker himself the ground of everything that follows, and it gives the whole verse a solemn weight.

Three verbs describe him. “Maker” is from ʻâsâh, the broadest Hebrew word for doing or making. “Formed” is yâtsar, to mould or shape, the word for a potter working clay, and Isaiah uses that very picture of God and the people he made (Isaiah 45:9). “To establish” is kûwn, to set up, to make firm and sure. God shapes with a purpose, and what he means to establish he makes stable and lasting. To a nation whose kings, walls and temple were about to fall, this was the word it most needed. Isaiah speaks of the LORD in the same way, as the one who formed the earth and established it (Isaiah 45:18), and the psalmist says that the heavens were made by the word of the LORD (Psalm 33:6–9).

“The LORD is his name” points to Yᵉhôvâh, the personal name God made known to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), which is linked with the verb “to be”, hayah. The name (shêm) speaks of the self-existent, eternal God who bound himself to Israel by covenant at Sinai. The nations around Israel credited creation and their fortunes to many gods. Judah is reminded that one God made all things and holds its future, the everlasting God whose power and wisdom stand for ever (Isaiah 40:28).

Verse 3 is the best-known verse of the chapter, and it rests on verse 2. The God who made and formed and establishes now invites his prophet to call. The verb qârâʼ means to call out to, to cry unto, to address someone by name. It is an earnest, personal cry to God, and God binds himself to respond. To answer, ʻânâh, is to respond to what has been said, and here God’s answer is to show.

What he shows is “great and mighty things”. “Great” is gâdôwl, great in any sense, in size, importance or power. “Mighty things” comes from bâtsar, a root meaning to cut off, and so to be inaccessible, as a place fortified or set on a height is out of reach. Some translations render the phrase “great and unsearchable things.” They are things fenced off from human knowledge until God opens them, and “which thou knowest not” says exactly that. In this chapter they are the promises that follow: health for a dying city, the return of the captives, the cleansing of sin, the voices of weddings in empty streets, and a righteous Branch from David (Jeremiah 33:15–16). To a people facing exile, all of it was past every human expectation.

Scripture repeats this promise often. “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him” (Psalm 91:15), and “call upon me in the day of trouble” (Psalm 50:15). Moses told Israel that even in their scattering they would find the LORD if they sought him with all their heart and soul (Deuteronomy 4:29). Isaiah records God showing his people new things (Isaiah 48:6), and Jesus promised that those who ask receive and those who seek find (Matthew 7:7). Paul praises the God who is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). Jeremiah himself had sent the exiles God’s word that his thoughts toward them were thoughts of peace, to give them an expected end (Jeremiah 29:11).

Verses 4 and 5 look straight at the present. “Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel” speaks “concerning the houses of this city, and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah.” The word bayith, house, covers anything from a family home to a palace or the temple, and “houses” stands twice in verse 4, once for the ordinary homes of Jerusalem and once for the royal houses. The judgment reaches every level of society, the king’s household along with everyone else.

These houses “are thrown down” (nâthats, to tear down, pull down, break down) “by the mounts, and by the sword.” The mounts, çôlᵉlâh (plural solelot), are siege ramps, great banks of earth and timber that an attacking army built against a city wall so that battering rams and soldiers could reach the top. The sword is the assault itself, with its slaughter and plunder. Moses had warned that if Israel forsook the LORD, a fierce nation from far away would come and besiege their cities (Deuteronomy 28:49–52), and Jeremiah had foretold this very invasion and the captivity that would follow (Jeremiah 25:9–11). Isaiah had said that “many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant” (Isaiah 5:9), and after the fall Lamentations mourned that the Lord had “swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob” (Lamentations 2:2).

“Behold” in verse 6 turns from the dead in the houses to what God will do: “I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them.” “It” is the city, wounded by judgment, and “them” are its people. Earlier the LORD had called Judah’s wound incurable (Jeremiah 30:12–15). Now he promises to heal it himself.

Health is ʼărûwkâh, wholeness or soundness restored, used of a wound closing or a breach repaired. To cure is râphâʼ, to mend, cure or heal, a word used of God’s healing and also of human physicians. The English word “cure” comes twice in verse 6, and the repetition presses home how sure and thorough the healing will be. Israel understood health as the wellbeing of the whole person and the whole nation, body, society, safety and faith together, and God’s promise reaches every part of it.

He will also “reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.” To reveal, gâlâh, is to uncover what was hidden. Abundance is ʻăthereth, copiousness, an overflowing measure. Peace is shâlôwm (shalom), a state of completeness, soundness, welfare, peace and safety. Truth is emet, stability, certainty and truth, and it carries the faithfulness and reliability of God himself. A people that had fallen through deceit and unfaithfulness will be given peace and truth in full. Isaiah speaks of perfect peace for the one whose mind is stayed on God (Isaiah 26:3), and Jesus said that the truth makes his people free (John 8:32). The same hope runs through God’s promise of a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) and of a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27), and it ends in the day when God wipes away every tear (Revelation 21:4).

Verse 7 widens the promise: “And I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first.” Captivity, shᵉbûwth, is exile, the state of a people carried off as prisoners. To return is shûwb, to turn back or come back, and God is its subject: “I will cause.” The restoration is his work from start to finish.

Both kingdoms are named. Judah, in the south, was about to go into exile in Babylon. Israel, the northern kingdom, had been carried off by Assyria in 722 BC, more than 130 years earlier, and its return looked impossible. God promises to bring back both and so to reunite his divided people, as Ezekiel also foretold when he spoke of the two kingdoms becoming one nation again (Ezekiel 37:21–22).

To build, bânâh, is used of houses, cities and the temple, and also of building up a family or a nation. God will rebuild the people themselves, their life together and their walk with him, along with their walls. “As at the first,” riʼshôwn, points back to the people’s former state of blessing before their long decline, perhaps the days of the united kingdom under David and Solomon. Verse 11 repeats the promise with the same words. The mercies of the LORD are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23), and here they promise a new beginning.

Verse 8 reaches the root of the whole disaster: “And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me.” Healing and rebuilding rest on this. The people could come home to stay only when God had dealt with the sin that sent them away.

To cleanse, ṭâhêr, is to make clean or pure. Israel’s law used it for cleansing after ritual defilement, and it is used of moral purity too. Israel had many rites of purification, and here God himself removes the defilement of a sin that had brought a whole nation to ruin. Iniquity, ʻâvôn, comes from a root meaning to bend or twist, and so it names perversity, the guilt it brings, and even the punishment that follows. To sin, châṭâʼ, is to miss the mark or go astray, and to transgress, pâshaʻ, is to rebel, to break away from rightful authority. The verse names every kind of wrong, from failure to open revolt. To pardon, çâlach, is to forgive or spare, and in the Old Testament it is used almost only of God forgiving sin. His pardon releases the guilty from the charge against them and restores them to favour.

The repetition carries the meaning. “All” stands twice in verse 8, and so does “against me”. Every sin is included, and every sin was first an offence against God himself. Yet the one who was sinned against is the one who promises to cleanse and pardon. This is the heart of the new covenant Jeremiah had already announced: “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). Under the old covenant sin had brought judgment and exile. Under the new, God writes his law on the heart and forgives.

Scripture speaks of this forgiveness in many ways: sins removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), scarlet sins made white as snow (Isaiah 1:18), clean water sprinkled on the people (Ezekiel 36:25). It reaches even the sin Jeremiah named early in his book, a people who forsook the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13).

Verse 9 shows where all this leads: “And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth.” “It” is the restored city. A name, shêm, carries reputation, honour and character as well as what someone is called. Jerusalem healed and forgiven will bring God joy, praise and honour, a living witness to who he is.

The nations “shall hear all the good that I do unto them.” Good is ṭôwb, the same word the worshippers sing in verse 11, “the LORD is good,” and it covers favour, blessing, wellbeing and beauty. “Prosperity” in this verse is shâlôwm, the word translated peace in verse 6. In those days a conquered nation was taken as proof that its god was weak, and the fall of Jerusalem would look to the nations like the LORD’s defeat. Its restoration would show his power and goodness to the very nations that had scorned him. Isaiah sees the nations coming to Zion’s light (Isaiah 60:3), Zechariah sees people of every nation seeking God among his people (Zechariah 8:23), and in Psalm 126 the heathen say of the returned captives, “The LORD hath done great things for them” (Psalm 126:2).

“Thus saith the LORD” opens a new paragraph at verse 10. The people had a verdict on their land: “this place, which ye say shall be desolate without man and without beast.” God takes their own words and answers them. “Desolate” comes twice in verse 10, and the second time the description grows: “the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast.” The word chârêb means dried up, parched, laid waste. Man is ʼâdâm, a human being, and the inhabitant is from yâshab, to sit down and dwell in a place. In a land of farms and flocks, a place empty of people and animals had come to the end of all ordinary life. The law had warned that disobedience would scatter the people and lay the land waste (Leviticus 26:33).

Into that silence God says, “Again there shall be heard.” Jeremiah had told the exiles that after seventy years God would bring them back (Jeremiah 29:10), and at the opening of the Book of Consolation God promised to bring again the captivity of his people (Jeremiah 30:3). Isaiah promises the land a new name in place of Desolate (Isaiah 62:4), and Ezekiel says the waste cities will be rebuilt and inhabited (Ezekiel 36:33–36).

Verse 12 again starts from the ruin: “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Again in this place, which is desolate without man and without beast, and in all the cities thereof.” The title LORD of hosts, Yᵉhôvâh Sabaoth, names God as commander of armies and of all the hosts of heaven and earth, and so as fully able to do what he promises (Psalm 24:10). “Desolate” is chârêb, the same word as in verse 10.

The promise is a pastoral one: “an habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down.” The habitation, nâveh, is a dwelling or abode, and also a pasture where a flock is kept. To lie down, râbats, is to crouch or stretch out, here of animals at rest. Flocks lie down when they are fed and safe, so the picture is one of quiet, plenty and security in fields where armies had marched. In Israel thriving flocks and their shepherds were a primary sign of peace and good order. Scripture pictures the LORD as the shepherd of his people (Psalm 23), and the prophets look ahead to a covenant of peace and security for the flock (Ezekiel 34:25–28), to the blessings of the new heavens and new earth (Isaiah 65:21–23), and to the renewal of God’s covenant with his people (Hosea 2:18–20).

Verse 13 maps the promise across the whole country: “In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the vale, and in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah.” The list moves through the hill country, the valleys, the south (the dry Negeb), the land of Benjamin, which took in parts of Jerusalem, the places round the capital, and the towns of Judah. Every region that had been stripped bare will share in the renewal, from the heights to the heartland.

“There shall the flocks pass again under the hands of him that telleth them.” The flock, tsôʼn, is a flock of sheep and goats, the main wealth and food of the land. To pass, ʻâbar, is to cross over or pass by. “Telleth” is old English for counting, and mânâh means to count or number. A shepherd counted his flock as the animals passed under his hand one by one. The counting showed that the flock was his and in good order, and that there were sheep enough to count, a picture of ownership, care and plenty after war had scattered the herds. God speaks elsewhere of seeking out and gathering his scattered sheep (Ezekiel 34:11–16) and of feeding his flock like a shepherd (Isaiah 40:11). The passage ends as it began, on God’s own word: “saith the LORD.”

The promises of this chapter reach their fullest answer in Jesus Christ, and the chapter itself goes on to name him as the righteous Branch from David’s line (Jeremiah 33:15).

The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah in prison became flesh in Jesus (John 1:14). He came to preach deliverance to the captives (Luke 4:18) and gave sight to the blind (John 9:6). Men bound him, tried him, killed him and laid him in a tomb, and he rose, because God’s word in Christ could be held by no prison, death included. The LORD who made and formed all things did so through the Son, for all things were made by him (John 1:3) and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:16–17). The one who establishes is the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom is everlasting (Isaiah 9:6–7), and he established the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20), a better covenant on better promises, in which God remembers his people’s sins no more (Hebrews 8:6–13).

The great things God shows are shown in full in the gospel, the mystery hidden for ages and now made known, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26–27), and the Spirit searches the deep things of God and reveals them to believers (1 Corinthians 2:10–16).

The judgment of verses 4 and 5 points to the cross. Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19–21). The wrath that sin deserved fell on him, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Through his blood we are saved from wrath and reconciled to God (Romans 5:9–10), and we draw near by a new and living way (Hebrews 10:19–22) to a God whose face is turned toward us in grace. In him believers are living stones built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4–5), and their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).

The healing of verse 6 is the healing of his wounds, by which we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). He gives a peace the world cannot give (John 14:27), and he is himself the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). The cleansing of verse 8 is his work, for “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22), and we are justified freely by his grace (Romans 3:23–24), made new and reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:17–19). Those who were dead in sins he has made alive (Ephesians 2:1–5).

The nations of verse 9 hear the good God has done as the gospel is preached (Romans 10:14–17), and they receive every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3–7), until a great multitude from all nations stands before the throne and the Lamb (Revelation 7:9–10). The bridegroom of verse 11 is Christ, as John the Baptist said (John 3:29), and the church is the bride he loved and gave himself for (Ephesians 5:25–27), delivered from the power of darkness into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14). The shepherds of verses 12 and 13 point to the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and gathers his other sheep into one fold (John 10:11–16). And the restored city looks ahead to the new Jerusalem, where God dwells with his people and makes all things new (Revelation 21:1–5).

This passage gives us a God who speaks to his servant in prison and who is ready to answer when his people call. He names sin truly and judges it, and he hides his face from a city that has rejected him. In the same message he promises health, return, cleansing and pardon, and he gives the reason in the song of the restored city: the LORD is good, and his mercy endures for ever.

What he promised Jerusalem he has given in fuller measure in Christ, who bore the wrath, cleanses from all iniquity and gathers his flock from every nation. The invitation of verse 3 still stands: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee.” The places people write off as desolate are in the hands of the God who made and formed them, and he means to fill them again with joy and praise.