Jeremiah 4:3

These verses carry on from the end of chapter 3, where the LORD has pleaded with his unfaithful people again and again to come back to him (Jeremiah 3:12–22). He has also said that Judah’s turning in the days of King Josiah’s reforms was largely pretence (Jeremiah 3:10). The nation had a long history of idols behind it. King Manasseh had brought in the worship of Baal and the Asherah, burned his own son as an offering and set up altars in the LORD’s house (2 Kings 21:1–9). God had already announced judgment from the north for this (Jeremiah 1:15–16), and the northern kingdom of Israel had already been carried off by the Assyrians. Into that danger God speaks an invitation, and the warnings of invasion that fill the rest of the chapter come only after it (Jeremiah 4:5–31).

“Return” stands twice in this verse, and both times it is shûwb, the verb for turning back or returning. The same verb can describe something that passes or subsides, such as anger turning away, so its sense comes from what it is joined to. Here it is joined to “unto me”: God names himself as the one to come back to. The doubled word makes the plea urgent and personal. “Saith the LORD” is nᵉʼum, the word for an oracle, so the invitation comes with the authority of Yᵉhôvâh, the self-existent, eternal God. The one addressed is Yisrâʼêl, the covenant people, and here the name includes Judah, who are spoken to by name in verse 3.

Returning to God meant coming back to the allegiance the people had pledged at Sinai to the LORD alone (Exodus 19). The other prophets give the same call. Isaiah tells the wicked to seek the LORD while he may be found and to return to him, for he will abundantly pardon (Isaiah 55:6–7). Through Ezekiel God says he has no pleasure in the death of the one who dies, and urges his people to turn and live (Ezekiel 18:30–32). Joel calls them to return to the LORD with all their heart (Joel 2:12–13).

Verse 2 carries on from the “if” of verse 1 and says what a true return would look like in the life of the nation. The verb for swearing, shâbaʻ, Strong’s ties to the word for seven, and it means to bind oneself by an oath. Oaths were common in Israel, sworn in the LORD’s name to confirm the truth or to seal an agreement. Judah still swore, but their oaths were false, and many swore by gods that were no gods (Jeremiah 5:7).

“The LORD liveth”, Yᵉhôvâh chay, was the ordinary form of such an oath. The word chay means alive. To swear by the living LORD is to confess him as the one true and living God, set against the lifeless idols Judah had taken up. The same oath that had become an empty habit becomes a real confession of allegiance when it is sworn this way.

The three words that follow say how the oath must be sworn. ʼEmeth, truth, carries the ideas of stability, certainty and trustworthiness, so the oath must be honest and something a person stands by. Mishpâṭ, judgment, is properly a verdict given in court, and here it stands for justice and fair dealing between people. Tsᵉdâqâh, righteousness, is rightness in conduct, upright living before God and neighbour. These three are the character of God himself, who is true, just and righteous, and he asks his people to reflect him. The prophets join the worship of God to this kind of life again and again, as when Amos calls for judgment to run down as waters (Amos 5:24) and Micah sums up what the LORD requires: “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8). The call is the same one God has just given in chapter 3, “Return, ye backsliding children” (Jeremiah 3:22), now spelled out in a whole way of life.

The second half of verse 2 looks past Judah to the whole world. The nations, gôwy, are the foreign peoples outside Israel. They “shall bless themselves in him”, and the verb, bârak, means to bless, with a root that Strong’s gives as to kneel. The nations will find their own blessing by joining themselves to the God of Israel and owning him as the source of all good. “In him shall they glory” uses hâlal, a verb that Strong’s traces to being clear and shining, then to making a show and boasting, and so to praising. The nations will boast in the LORD and give him the honour due to his name.

This is the promise God made to Abraham, that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Isaiah sees the nations streaming to the mountain of the LORD’s house to learn his ways (Isaiah 2:2–4), and Zechariah sees many peoples coming to seek the LORD in Jerusalem (Zechariah 8:20–23).

Judah’s faithfulness and the blessing of the nations are linked in this verse. When God’s people live by his truth, justice and righteousness, their lives show the world who the living God is, and others are drawn to him. Jesus says the same to his disciples: let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father (Matthew 5:16). Judah’s unfaithfulness was keeping that blessing from the world, and the rest of the chapter shows the ruin that followed when they would not return.

Verse 3 opens a fresh word, “For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem.” The whole nation is addressed, and Jerusalem is named because the capital, with its temple and its leaders, stood at the centre of the turning away. God now speaks in a picture every farmer in Judah would understand.

“Break up” and “fallow ground” are a verb and a noun from one root, nîyr. Strong’s links the verb to the gleam of a fresh furrow and gives its sense as to till or break up the soil, and the noun means plowing, ground for plowing. The command is to plow the plowland. A field that has lain untilled grows hard and overgrown, and nothing sown on it will take root until the plow breaks it open. Judah’s heart had grown hard in the same way through generations of unfaithfulness, and God’s word could find no way in.

“Sow not among thorns” adds a second warning. To sow is zâraʻ, and the thorn, qôwts, is named from its pricking. A farmer who scatters seed into a thorny patch loses his crop, because the thorns grow up and choke it. Religious duties laid over an unchanged heart are seed thrown among thorns, and Isaiah condemns the same thing when he calls Judah’s sacrifices and feasts a burden to God while their hands are full of wrong (Isaiah 1:10–17). Hosea gives the same call to break up the fallow ground (Hosea 10:12).

Jesus uses this picture in the parable of the sower, where some seed falls among thorns and the thorns spring up and choke it (Matthew 13:1–23, Luke 8:4–15). He explains that the sower sows the word (Mark 4:14). The thorns are the cares and desires that grow up beside it. Verse 3 asks for the ground to be made ready, so that when God’s word is sown it can grow and bear fruit.

Verse 4 makes the same call in a second picture. Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, given to every male in Israel (Genesis 17:9–14). Over the centuries many in Judah had come to treat it as a badge of belonging while their hearts were far from God. The LORD now says that the cut he wants is on the heart.

The verb mûwl means to circumcise, and Strong’s adds to cut short or curtail. The command “circumcise yourselves to the LORD” is laid on the people themselves, and “to the LORD” says whom it is for: the heart is to be set apart for him. The foreskin, ʻorlâh, stands here for whatever covers and closes the heart against God, its dullness, stubbornness and resistance to his word. The heart, lêbâb, is the innermost part of a person, the seat of thought, will and feeling. “Take away” is çûwr, the same verb as “put away” in verse 1. The idols are to be put away from before God’s face, and the foreskins taken away from the heart, so that the outward clearing and the inward one go together.

Moses had said the same in the law: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked” (Deuteronomy 10:16), and he speaks of the circumcised heart again in Deuteronomy 30:6, where it goes with loving the LORD. Jeremiah is calling Judah back to what their covenant had always meant.

The call ends in a warning: “lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it.” The word for fury, chêmâh, means heat, rage or poison, and here it is God’s hot anger. Fire, ʼêsh, is one of Scripture’s common pictures of his judgment, consuming all that stands against his holiness. To quench is kâbâh, to put out a fire, a light, or anger, and once this fire is lit no one will be able to put it out.

The cause is named plainly: “because of the evil of your doings.” The word for evil, rôaʻ, means badness, what spoils and mars, and doings, maʻălâl, are a people’s acts and works. God’s anger answers what Judah had done, and his judgment is just. The fire came in the Babylonian invasion that the rest of the chapter describes (Jeremiah 4:5–31). The picture also points beyond any earthly judgment, as Isaiah’s closing words speak of a fire that shall not be quenched (Isaiah 66:24). The warning comes with the word “lest”, and that small word holds out mercy. God tells his people what is coming so that they may turn before it falls.

Jesus began his preaching with the same summons: “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He lived the return to God that Israel failed to make, in perfect obedience. The idols and evil that Judah was told to put away are, at bottom, sin itself, and Christ’s blood cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). The promise “then shalt thou not remove” finds its fullest answer in the living hope he gives, an inheritance kept in heaven for those who are kept by God’s power (1 Peter 1:3–5).

The truth, judgment and righteousness of verse 2 are found perfectly in him. He is the truth (John 14:6), the Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), and in him we are made the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Through him the promise to Abraham reaches the nations. He sends his disciples to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19–20), and John sees a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and tongue standing before the throne and giving salvation to God and to the Lamb (Revelation 7:9–10).

The hard ground and the thorns of verse 3 are dealt with in him as well. On the cross he triumphed over sin and every power against us (Colossians 2:13–15), and those who abide in him, the true vine, bear much fruit (John 15:5). The fire of verse 4 is real, and God in his love gave his Son so that all who believe in him have everlasting life (John 3:16).

These four verses come at the edge of disaster, and the first thing in them is an invitation. The LORD has seen generations of idols and broken oaths, and he still says “return unto me”, and he still promises a home to those who do. He asks for the whole person: idols cleared from before his face, an oath that is true and just, hearts plowed open and circumcised to him. His holiness and his mercy stand side by side here. His fury is as real as his patience, and he names it so that his people may come back in time. The call he gives here is the call he makes good in Christ, who gives the new heart this passage asks for and opens the blessing of Abraham to every nation.