Jeremiah 7:14

The lying words were the people’s own refrain at the Temple gate: “The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these” (Jeremiah 7:4). They repeated it as if the Temple’s standing in Jerusalem guaranteed God’s protection whatever they did, and verse 8 calls that confidence a lie. Jeremiah spoke these words in a sermon at the gate of the LORD’s house (Jeremiah 7:1–15), most likely early in the reign of King Jehoiakim (609–598 BC). It was a time of political danger, oppression of the weak and the worship of other gods, and the people kept up the outward forms of worship all the same. Jerusalem held the Temple, and they were sure God would never let his chosen dwelling be destroyed, so they felt safe in their sins.

“Behold” (hinnēh) opens the verse with a call to look. The verb for trust, bâṭach, means to be confident, secure or sure, to lean on something for safety. Judah’s confidence was real, and it rested on words. The word for lying, sheqer, means falsehood, a lie or a sham, and it also carries the sense of something vain that ends in disappointment. These words were empty whether they came from false prophets, from the people’s own self-deception or from tradition with God’s truth drained out of it. The prophets of the day were crying “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14), while the whole of Jeremiah 6 warns of an invader coming for an unrepentant people. Earlier still, Jeremiah had said that the priests had stopped asking where the LORD was, and that the prophets “walked after things that do not profit” (Jeremiah 2:8).

“Cannot profit” uses the verb yâʻal, which properly means to go up and figuratively to be of value or use. With the negative it says these words bring nothing to those who rely on them. They were powerless to win God’s favour, to hold back his judgment or to save anyone. Proverbs says the same of ill-gotten wealth: “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death” (Proverbs 10:2). Isaiah describes the idol-maker caught in the same trap: “a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isaiah 44:20).

Verse 9 lists what the people were doing while they trusted in the Temple: “Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not”. The question opens here and runs on to its question mark at the end of verse 10. Will you do all this, God asks, and then come and stand before me? It needs no answer, because it states their guilt.

The list follows the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). Stealing breaks the eighth commandment (Exodus 20:15), murder the sixth and adultery the seventh. The verb for steal, gânab, means to thieve and by extension to deceive, so it covers dishonest dealing of every kind and the loss of trust between neighbours that comes with it. To swear falsely is to break an oath taken in God’s name, and it belongs with the ninth commandment’s ban on false witness (Exodus 20:16). It corrupts justice in the courts and in daily dealings, and it drags God’s own name into a lie.

Then the list turns from wrongs against neighbours to wrongs against God. Burning incense was an act of worship, and offering it to Baal broke the first two commandments (Exodus 20:3–6), which give the LORD alone the right to Israel’s worship. Baʻal was the chief god of the Phoenicians, a Canaanite god of fertility, storms and kingship. Many in Judah mixed his worship with the worship of the LORD, and they slid back into it after the reforms of King Josiah (2 Kings 22). Scripture treats this as spiritual adultery, unfaithfulness to the God who had made Israel his own.

“Walk after” (hâlak ʼachar) describes a way of life, following these gods as a settled habit and allegiance. “Other gods whom ye know not” uses yâdaʻ, a verb that covers seeing, recognizing and close acquaintance. These gods were strangers to Israel, with whom they shared neither history nor covenant, while the LORD had made himself known to them. There is a bitter irony in a people given that knowledge running after gods who were strangers to them.

Setting theft and murder beside incense to Baal shows that worship and conduct stand or fall together. Through Isaiah, God refused the sacrifices of a people whose hands were full of blood and called them to justice and to the help of the oppressed (Isaiah 1:10–17). Through Hosea he said, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). Jesus said the same of the scribes and Pharisees, who were like whited sepulchres, fair outside and full of uncleanness within (Matthew 23:27–28).

They meant that standing in God’s house made them safe, so they could go back out and carry on as before. Verse 10 finishes the question begun in verse 9: will you do all these things, “And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?”

The word for house, bayith, is the ordinary word for a dwelling, and it also means a household or family. Here it is the Temple in Jerusalem, built by Solomon, where God made his presence known among his people. “Called by my name” marks it as his. He owned it and had joined his name to it, which is what made their conduct there so grave.

The verb nâtsal means to rescue, to snatch someone away from danger. The people are the ones delivered, and they speak as if their rescue were already settled, from enemies in the past and from the results of their present sins. Their confidence had a history behind it. God had defended Jerusalem against the Assyrian king Sennacherib (Isaiah 37, 2 Kings 19), and many took that rescue as a promise that the city would stand forever. This belief is often called “Zion theology”. It cut God’s protection loose from his covenant, which promised blessing for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28).

“To do all these abominations” shows what their words came to. The word tôwʻêbah means something utterly wrong and detestable, and it is also used of an idol. Scripture uses it of idolatry, sexual sin and other grave evils, and here it gathers up everything listed in verse 9. Their attitude amounted to saying that God had saved them so that they could keep doing what he hates, which turns his grace into a licence. Samuel had told Saul, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22). Paul meets the same thought among Christians: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1–2). God’s rescue is always a call to holiness.

Verse 11 asks, “Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” The word for den, mᵉʻârâh, is a cave, which Strong’s glosses as “a cavern”. The word for robbers, pᵉrîyts, comes from a root meaning to break out, and it describes a violent, lawless man who preys on others. A robbers’ cave is where a gang goes back after a raid, to hide and feel safe until the next one. That is what Judah had made of the Temple. They robbed, killed and lied, came to the house of God for a sense of safety and for ritual cleansing, and then went back out to do it again.

“In your eyes” asks how they themselves regarded the house. Any honest look should have shown them what they had made of it. Then God gives his own answer: “Behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD.” Again comes the call to look, and “even I” puts the weight on God as the witness. He sees everything, including what people do between their visits to his house, and his testimony settles the matter. “Saith the LORD” translates nᵉʼum Yᵉhôvâh, the phrase that marks a prophet’s message as the LORD’s own word, spoken under his covenant name.

The prophets say this more than once. Through Amos God says he hates the feasts of a people who trample justice, and asks, “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:21–24). David knew that “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:16–17).

God sends them to Shiloh because it was the first place where he set his name, and it lay in ruins because of the wickedness of his people. If he dealt so with his first dwelling, he would deal the same way with the Temple in Jerusalem. “Go” is yâlak, the common verb to walk, used here as a command. They could make the journey and look at the place, or at least face what everyone knew had happened there. “See what I did to it” is a second command to look and to understand.

Shîylôh was the town where Joshua set up the tabernacle (Joshua 18:1), the dwelling God had commanded so that he could live among his people (Exodus 25:8), with the ark of the covenant inside it (Exodus 25:10). Through the time of the judges it was Israel’s central sanctuary, the place where God set his name “at the first”, long before Solomon built the Temple. “My place which was in Shiloh” speaks of a dwelling that had once been his and was his no longer.

In Eli’s day his sons Hophni and Phinehas treated the LORD’s offerings with contempt (1 Samuel 2:12–17) and lay with the women who served at the door of the tabernacle (1 Samuel 2:22), while the people around them drifted from God. The Philistines defeated Israel, captured the ark and killed Eli’s sons (1 Samuel 4:10–11), and the whole of 1 Samuel 4 tells of that dark day. Psalm 78 remembers it as God’s own act: “So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men” (Psalm 78:58–64). The whole of Psalm 78 traces the same pattern of rebellion and judgment through Israel’s history.

“Wickedness” is raʻ, the common word for bad or evil, covering both moral evil and the adversity that follows it. God calls the wrongdoers “my people Israel”. The wickedness belonged to the people he had chosen, and so the ruin fell on his own sanctuary. “What I did to it” puts the act in God’s hands. Shiloh fell by his deliberate judgment, at a time when he was fully able to protect it. Years after this sermon, Ezekiel saw the glory of the LORD depart from the threshold of the Temple in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 10:18).

Verse 13 gives the reason for the judgment and shows how patient God had been. “And now, because ye have done all these works” uses maʻăseh, a deed or work, and “all these works” are the deeds of verse 9. “Saith the LORD” is again nᵉʼum Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD’s own word.

“I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking” uses the verb shâkam, to rise early. It comes from the picture of loading a pack animal’s back before a day’s journey, and by extension it means to persist. Joined to dâbar, the ordinary verb to speak, it pictures God starting early and keeping on, like a master who rises before dawn to instruct his household or a parent who warns a child again and again. The phrase describes God’s diligence in human terms. He sent prophet after prophet, warned of judgment and called his people home, because he wanted their repentance far above their ruin.

“But ye heard not” uses shâmaʻ, to hear with attention, which often includes understanding and obeying. To “hear not” was to refuse to listen and refuse to obey. “I called you, but ye answered not” uses qârâʼ, to call, summon or invite, and ʻânâh, to answer or respond. God summoned them as their covenant Lord and invited them back, and they gave him silence. The two halves say the same thing twice, and the repetition makes the people’s refusal complete.

Scripture describes this refusal elsewhere in nearly the same words. Wisdom says, “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded” (Proverbs 1:24–33). Through Isaiah God says, “when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear” (Isaiah 65:12). Hosea grieves that God’s people are bent on backsliding, and though they are called to the Most High, none will exalt him (Hosea 11:7). Jeremiah had already called Judah a foolish people with ears that hear not (Jeremiah 5:21). God’s patience is great, and it has an end. In this verse it reaches that end, and “And now” leads straight into the sentence of verse 14.

Verse 15 completes the sentence: “And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim.” The verb shâlak means to cast, throw or hurl something with some speed, often with a sense of rejection. God himself does the throwing. The word for sight, pânîym, means face. It is plural in form and always used as a singular, and from the face it extends to presence. To be cast out of God’s sight is to be put out of his presence, away from his favour and protection, and away from the land and the Temple where his presence was known. For Judah this meant exile in Babylon.

“All your brethren” are the other tribes of Israel, the people of the northern kingdom. ʼEphrayim, a name meaning “double fruit”, was a son of Joseph, and the name also covers the tribe descended from him and its territory. After the kingdom split following Solomon’s reign, Ephraim became the leading tribe of the north, and the prophets use its name for the whole northern kingdom. “The whole seed” (zeraʻ, offspring) shows that the judgment took the whole people. Assyria conquered the north and carried its people away in 722 BC (2 Kings 17:6), more than a century before Jeremiah spoke. Kings gives the reason in the same terms as this verse: “Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only” (2 Kings 17:18–23). Hosea had warned Ephraim that they would lose their place in the LORD’s land (Hosea 9:3).

Judah watched all of this happen and kept on with mixed worship, child sacrifice and oppression, sure that their standing as God’s people and their Temple would spare them. Verse 15 tells them that God judges his people by one standard. The curses the covenant set out for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15) would fall on Judah as they had fallen on Ephraim. The Babylonians later destroyed the Temple and carried Judah into exile, and Jeremiah foretold seventy years of captivity (Jeremiah 25).

The Temple Jeremiah warned about was destroyed, and so was the Temple of Jesus’ day. Jesus spoke of a temple that would rise again: “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). In him God dwells among people, for the Word who was with God became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Through his blood the way into God’s presence is open (Hebrews 10:19–22), under a better covenant founded on better promises (Hebrews 8:6). Believers are living stones built up into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5), and the believer’s body is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). True worship is “in spirit and in truth”, and no single place holds it (John 4:23–24).

Christ is also the truth set against the lying words of verse 8. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), and Peter said, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Paul counted everything he had once called gain as loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:7–8), who is the profit that the lying words could never give.

The sins of verse 9 are answered in him as well. Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jeremiah himself foretold the new covenant in which God writes his law on his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and Ezekiel the new heart and new spirit that God would give (Ezekiel 36:26–27). In Christ the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3–4). Judah said “We are delivered to do all these abominations”, but Christ bore our sins “that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). The worship that pleases God now is the sacrifice of praise joined to doing good and sharing with others (Hebrews 13:15–16).

God’s early and persistent speaking reached its height in his Son. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and like Jeremiah he met refusal: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). Still the call goes out, and whoever confesses Jesus as Lord and believes that God raised him from the dead is saved (Romans 10:9–10).

Being cast out of God’s sight, the sentence on Ephraim and Judah, is what Jesus bore on the cross when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of his person (Hebrews 1:3), and through him those who were far away are brought into God’s presence: “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). He died to gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad (John 11:52).

These verses show us who God is. He is holy, and his house is holy, and he will have no part in worship that shelters cruelty and lies. He sees everything, and he says so plainly: “Behold, even I have seen it.” He keeps his word in judgment, as Shiloh and Ephraim showed, and he judges his own people by the same standard as everyone else.

He is also patient beyond anything Judah deserved. Before a single stone of the Temple fell, he rose up early and spoke, sent his prophets and called his people by name. Jeremiah stood at the gate with that call, and it cost him nearly his life. The judgment in these verses came only after years of warning that went unheard.

The deliverance Judah claimed falsely is real in Christ. God gives it freely to those who trust him, and it delivers them from sin itself, so that they can live as people who bear his name. The God who cast Judah out of his sight has opened the way into his presence through his Son, and he still speaks to those who will hear.