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Jeremiah Complains to God

You will be in the right, O L ord,

when I lay charges against you;

but let me put my case to you.

Why does the way of the guilty prosper?

Why do all who are treacherous thrive?

You plant them, and they take root;

they grow and bring forth fruit;

you are near in their mouths

yet far from their hearts.

But you, O L ord, know me;

You see me and test me—my heart is with you.

Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter,

and set them apart for the day of slaughter.

How long will the land mourn,

and the grass of every field wither?

For the wickedness of those who live in it

the animals and the birds are swept away,

and because people said, “He is blind to our ways.”

God Replies to Jeremiah

If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you,

how will you compete with horses?

And if in a safe land you fall down,

how will you fare in the thickets of the Jordan?

For even your kinsfolk and your own family,

even they have dealt treacherously with you;

they are in full cry after you;

do not believe them,

though they speak friendly words to you.

I have forsaken my house,

I have abandoned my heritage;

I have given the beloved of my heart

into the hands of her enemies.

My heritage has become to me

like a lion in the forest;

she has lifted up her voice against me—

therefore I hate her.

Is the hyena greedy for my heritage at my command?

Are the birds of prey all around her?

Go, assemble all the wild animals;

bring them to devour her.

Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard,

they have trampled down my portion,

they have made my pleasant portion

a desolate wilderness.

They have made it a desolation;

desolate, it mourns to me.

The whole land is made desolate,

but no one lays it to heart.

Upon all the bare heights in the desert

spoilers have come;

for the sword of the L ord devours

from one end of the land to the other;

no one shall be safe.

They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns,

they have tired themselves out but profit nothing.

They shall be ashamed of their harvests

because of the fierce anger of the L ord.

¹⁴ Thus says the L ord concerning all my evil neighbors who touch the heritage that I have given my people Israel to inherit: I am about to pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. ¹⁵And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again to their heritage and to their land, every one of them. ¹⁶And then, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, “As the L ord lives,” as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people. ¹⁷But if any nation will not listen, then I will completely uproot it and destroy it, says the L ord.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

There is a change of number in the verb שם shem; but there is no obscurity: for the Prophet means, that the Jews would be exposed to the outrage of all, so that every one would plunder and lay waste the land. He does not then speak only of all their enemies or of the whole army; but he also declares that every one would be their master, so as to vex, scatter, devour, and wholly to destroy them at his pleasure: in short, he sets forth the atrocity of their punishment, — that the whole land would not only be spoiled by the united army, but also by every individual in it. ⁶⁴⁶⁴     The Septuagint and Arabic render the verb as passive in the singular number, “It has been set a desolation.” We may take שמה as a passive participle, the ו being omitted, with ה, it, affixed. Then the verse would run thus, —
   11. Set it is an utter desolation; It has mourned before me (or, to me) being utterly desolate: Desolate has been the whole land, Though no man lays it to heart.
   “Utter desolation” is the meaning, for it is a reduplicate noun. Both the Vulgate and the Targum connect “being utterly desolate” with the next line, though not rightly: but both, as well as the Syriac, render the first verb, as though it were שמוה “They have set it.” Venema and Houbigant render עלי, in the second line, a preposition, and render the line thus, —
   It has mourned on account of desolation.
    — Ed.

He then adds that the land was in mourning before him. The Prophet seems to me to touch here the torpor of his own nation, because there was no one who had any regard for God; nay, they laughed at the judgments which were nigh at hand, and of which he had often spoken. Hence God says, that they would at length come to him when calamities oppressed them and caused them to mourn. “As then in peaceable times,” he says, “they are unwining to come to me, but are so refractory and untameable, that I can effect nothing by so many warnings, they shall come,” he says, “but in another state of mind, even in extreme mourning.”

He afterwards adds, No one lays on the heart What this means we have elsewhere explained. But the particle כי, ki, which is properly a causative, may be here rendered as an adversative. If we take it in its first and most proper sense, then a reason is here given why the Jews would be brought to a most grievous mourning, even because they had despised all the prophets, and wholly disregarded as a fable what they had so often heard from God’s mouth: and this is the view taken by most interpreters. But it may be also taken as an adversative, as in many other places, — “Though no one lays on the heart;” and thus it will be a complaint as to their perverse stupor, inasmuch as, when smitten by God’s hand, they did not perceive that they were punished for their sins, not that they were wholly insensible as to their evils. But what avails it to cry and to howl, as God’s Spirit speaks elsewhere, except, the hand of the smiter be perceived? The Jews then ought, had a spark of wisdom been in them, to have considered their sins, to have prayed for forgiveness, and to have repented, and also to have embraced the favor promised to them. But when they perversely added sins to sins, God justly expostulated with them, because they did not attend to the signs of his wrath, by which they ought not only to have been taught, but also subdued. It follows —

⁶⁴ The Septuagint and Arabic render the verb as passive in the singular number, “It has been set a desolation.” We may take שמה as a passive participle, the ו being omitted, with ה, it, affixed. Then the verse would run thus, — 11. Set it is an utter desolation; It has mourned before me (or, to me) being utterly desolate: Desolate has been the whole land, Though no man lays it to heart. “Utter desolation” is the meaning, for it is a reduplicate noun. Both the Vulgate and the Targum connect “being utterly desolate” with the next line, though not rightly: but both, as well as the Syriac, render the first verb, as though it were שמוה “They have set it.” Venema and Houbigant render עלי, in the second line, a preposition, and render the line thus, — It has mourned on account of desolation. — Ed.