Jeremiah 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Jeremiah that even Moses and Samuel could not change his mind about Judah, and he lists the deaths and exile coming on the people because of what King Manasseh did in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is pictured as a mother who loses her children, with no one left to comfort her. Jeremiah then complains that he was born into constant conflict and that God has failed him, and God answers with a condition: if Jeremiah returns, he will be restored and made a bronze wall against the people who fight him.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • The LORD spoke to Jeremiah.
   • The LORD said that even if Moses and Samuel stood before him, his heart would not go out to this people.
   • The LORD commanded that this people be sent away from his presence.
   • The LORD commanded that they be let go.
2. 15:2
   • The LORD said that the people will ask Jeremiah where they should go.
   • Jeremiah is to answer them with what the LORD says.
   • Those appointed for death go to death.
   • Those appointed for the sword go to the sword.
   • Those appointed for famine go to famine.
   • Those appointed for captivity go to captivity.
3. 15:3
   • The LORD will appoint four kinds of agents over them.
   • This is the declaration of the LORD.
   • The sword is appointed to kill.
   • The dogs are appointed to drag away.
   • The birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth are appointed to devour and destroy.
4. 15:4
   • The LORD will make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
   • This is because of Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah.
   • It is because of what Manasseh did in Jerusalem.
5. 15:5
   • The LORD asks who will have pity on Jerusalem.
   • The LORD asks who will mourn for her.
   • The LORD asks who will turn aside to ask about her welfare.
6. 15:6
   • Jerusalem has forsaken the LORD.
   • This is the declaration of the LORD.
   • Jerusalem keeps going backward.
   • The LORD stretched out his hand against her.
   • The LORD destroyed her.
   • The LORD is weary of relenting.
7. 15:7
   • The LORD winnowed them with a winnowing fork at the gates of the land.
   • The LORD bereaved his people of children.
   • The LORD destroyed his people.
   • They did not turn back from their ways.
8. 15:8
   • Their widows became more numerous to the LORD than the sand of the seas.
   • The LORD brought a destroyer at noon against the mother of a young man.
   • The LORD made anguish and terrors fall upon her suddenly.
   • It is unclear whether what fell suddenly was terror upon the city or anguish and dismay.
9. 15:9
   • The woman who bore seven children grows faint.
   • She has breathed out her life.
   • Her sun set while it was still day.
   • She has been shamed and disgraced.
   • The LORD will give the remnant of them to the sword before their enemies.
   • This is the declaration of the LORD.
10. 15:10
    • Jeremiah cries woe upon himself.
    • Jeremiah addresses his mother.
    • Jeremiah says his mother bore him as a man of strife and contention to the whole land.
    • Jeremiah has not lent at interest.
    • No one has lent to Jeremiah at interest.
    • Everyone curses him.
11. 15:11
    • The LORD spoke.
    • The LORD affirms with an oath that it will go well for Jeremiah, though the wording leaves it unclear whether the promise concerns his release, his remnant, or his good outcome.
    • The LORD affirms with an oath that he will intervene with the enemy on Jeremiah's behalf.
    • This intervention is in the time of evil and in the time of distress.
12. 15:12
    • The LORD asks whether iron can break iron from the north.
    • The LORD asks whether iron can break bronze.
13. 15:13
    • The LORD will give their wealth and treasures as plunder.
    • It will be given without price.
    • This is for all their sins.
    • This applies throughout all their borders.
14. 15:14
    • The LORD will make them pass over with their enemies into a land they do not know.
    • A fire has been kindled in the LORD's anger.
    • That fire will burn against them.
15. 15:15
    • Jeremiah says the LORD knows.
    • Jeremiah asks the LORD to remember him.
    • Jeremiah asks the LORD to attend to him.
    • Jeremiah asks the LORD to avenge him on his persecutors.
    • Jeremiah asks the LORD not to take him away through his slowness to anger.
    • Jeremiah asks the LORD to know that he bears reproach for the LORD's sake.
16. 15:16
    • The LORD's words were found.
    • Jeremiah ate them.
    • The LORD's words became joy and gladness of Jeremiah's heart.
    • Jeremiah is called by the LORD's name.
    • Jeremiah addresses the LORD as God of hosts.
17. 15:17
    • Jeremiah did not sit in the company of merrymakers.
    • Jeremiah did not rejoice with them.
    • Because of the LORD's hand, Jeremiah sat alone.
    • The LORD filled Jeremiah with indignation.
18. 15:18
    • Jeremiah asks why his pain is unending.
    • Jeremiah asks why his wound is incurable.
    • His wound refuses to be healed.
    • Jeremiah asks whether the LORD will be to him like a stream that deceives.
    • Jeremiah asks whether the LORD will be like waters that cannot be relied on.
19. 15:19
    • Therefore the LORD says the following.
    • If Jeremiah returns, the LORD will restore him.
    • Jeremiah will then stand before the LORD.
    • If Jeremiah brings out what is precious from what is worthless, he will be as the LORD's mouth.
    • The people are to return to Jeremiah.
    • Jeremiah is not to return to the people.
20. 15:20
    • The LORD will make Jeremiah a fortified wall of bronze to this people.
    • They will fight against Jeremiah.
    • They will not prevail against him.
    • The LORD is with Jeremiah to save him and to deliver him.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD.
21. 15:21
    • The LORD will deliver Jeremiah from the hand of the wicked.
    • The LORD will redeem Jeremiah from the grasp of the ruthless.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

15:1

"Stood before me" is court language: to stand before a king is to plead a case. Moses and Samuel were both remembered as men whose pleading had once turned God's anger away from Israel, so they are named here as the strongest imaginable advocates. Also, where the King James prints LORD in capitals it is standing in for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; "Lord" in ordinary letters translates a different word meaning master.

15:2

The word behind "death" here is literally "death," but in Jeremiah it regularly names deadly epidemic disease, which is why modern versions render it "plague" or "disease." The four-part list (disease, war, hunger, deportation) is a stock formula in Jeremiah for the whole range of ways a besieged nation dies.

15:3

Dogs in this world were not pets but half-wild scavengers around the edges of a town. To be left for dogs and carrion birds instead of being buried was the deepest disgrace an ancient reader could imagine, worse than the death itself.

15:4

Manasseh reigned in Jerusalem for about fifty years, roughly a century before Jeremiah spoke, and was remembered as the king who filled the city with foreign worship and with innocent blood. The point of naming him is that the debt being collected is generations old.

15:5

The last question is literally "turn aside to ask about your peace", the ordinary courtesy of stopping a traveler to ask after their welfare. Jerusalem is pictured as someone lying by the road whom nobody will even greet.

15:6

"I am weary with repenting" does not mean God repents of sin. In older English "repent" simply meant to change one's mind or relent, and the line means God is tired of relenting, of drawing back from a punishment already announced.

15:7

A winnowing fork tossed threshed grain into the wind so the light chaff blew away and the heavy grain fell back. It is an image of sorting and scattering at once. "The gates of the land" are the fortified entry points of the country, the places where an invading army comes in.

15:8

Raids normally came at dawn. A destroyer arriving at noon, in full daylight, means an enemy so confident he does not bother with surprise. "The mother of the young men" is deliberately open in the Hebrew: it can mean mothers who lose their grown sons, or a young man's own mother, and translations differ.

15:9

Seven sons was the proverbial mark of a completely blessed woman, so "she that hath borne seven" is the last person anyone expects to be left desolate. "Given up the ghost" is older English for breathed her last, died. A sun setting at midday is an idiom for a life or a fortune cut off long before its time.

15:10

"Usury" in 1611 meant lending at interest of any kind, not the extortionate rates the word suggests today. Money-lending was the classic source of village quarrels, so Jeremiah is saying he has given nobody the ordinary reason to hate him, and is hated anyway. "The whole earth" here means the whole land, his own country.

15:11

This verse is one of the most damaged in the book; the Hebrew is uncertain word by word, and ancient copies disagree. The first line has been read as "I will set you free," "I will strengthen you," and "your remnant will be well." In the second line "entreat thee well" is old English that can mean either that the enemy will treat Jeremiah well or that the enemy will come begging to him.

15:12

A riddle, left unexplained in the Hebrew. Ordinary iron cannot break the harder iron that came from the north, and "the north" is also the direction from which Babylon's armies invade throughout this book. What the King James calls "steel" is bronze, an alloy of copper and tin.

15:13

"Without price" means God gets nothing for it: the nation's wealth is not sold but simply handed over, with no payment and no ransom taken in exchange.

15:14

The Hebrew here differs by one letter between copies, giving either "I will make you pass over into a land you do not know" (that is, deport you) or "I will make you serve your enemies in a land you do not know." The nearly identical line at Jeremiah 17:4 has the second reading.

15:15

"Visit me" means come to my aid, take notice of my case, not pay a social call. "Revenge me" is older English for avenge me, give me justice against them. "Take me not away in thy longsuffering" is a complaint about God's patience with Jeremiah's enemies: if God waits too long to act, Jeremiah will be dead before help arrives.

15:16

Eating a written message is a prophet's image for taking it entirely into himself, so that the words are no longer external instructions but part of him; Ezekiel is told to eat a scroll in the same way. To be "called by your name" means to belong to someone, the way a household or a wife bore the name of its head. "God of hosts" means commander of armies.

15:17

"The assembly of the mockers" translates a phrase meaning the circle of people making merry, the ordinary drinking and joking of village life, which the King James word makes sound more malicious than it is. "Thy hand was upon me" is standard prophetic language for the pressure of God's message on a prophet, which here has cut him off from normal company.

15:18

In this country most streams ran only after the rains and vanished in summer heat, so a traveler who counted on one could arrive to find dry stones. To call God "as waters that fail" is to accuse him of being that kind of stream: there in the season you did not need it, gone in the season you did.

15:19

"Take forth the precious from the vile" is a metalworker's image, separating valuable metal from the worthless dross burned off with it, applied here to speech, so that it means saying what is of value and not what is worthless. "Be as my mouth" means serve as God's spokesman. The last line reverses the ordinary pressure on a prophet to fall in with popular opinion.

15:20

What the King James calls "brass" is bronze; brass as we know it did not yet exist. "Fenced" means fortified. A bronze-faced city wall is the strongest thing in the ancient imagination, and Jeremiah is told he will be that wall, not sheltered behind one.

15:21

"Redeem" is a family and market word before it is a religious one: it means buying a relative back out of slavery or debt by paying what is owed. "The terrible" in older English means the terrifying, the ones who inspire dread, not people of poor quality.