Jeremiah 17: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God says Judah's sin is cut deep into their hearts and altars, so the land and its wealth will be handed over and the people will serve their enemies in a foreign land. A pair of sayings contrasts the person who trusts in people, who is like a desert bush, with the person who trusts in the LORD, who is like a tree by water; the LORD searches the heart and repays each person for what he does. Jeremiah then prays for healing and for judgment on those who mock him for the message he brings. Last, God sends him to stand in the gates of Jerusalem and warn that keeping the Sabbath will keep the city standing, while breaking it will bring an unquenchable fire on the city's gates.

Claim by Claim

1. 17:1
   • The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus.
   • The sin of Judah is engraved with a point of hard stone.
   • The sin of Judah is engraved on the tablet of their heart.
   • The sin of Judah is engraved on the horns of your altars.
2. 17:2
   • Their children remember their altars.
   • Their children remember their Asherah poles.
   • The altars and Asherah poles are by green trees.
   • The altars and Asherah poles are on the high hills.
3. 17:3
   • God addresses a mountain in the open country as his own.
   • God will give the addressed one's wealth as plunder.
   • God will give all the addressed one's treasures as plunder.
   • God will give the addressed one's high places over as plunder because of sin.
   • This applies throughout all the addressed one's borders.
4. 17:4
   • The addressed one will let go of the inheritance God gave him.
   • God gave that inheritance to him.
   • God will make him serve his enemies.
   • That servitude will be in a land he does not know.
   • They have kindled a fire in God's anger.
   • That fire will burn forever.
5. 17:5
   • The LORD speaks these words.
   • Cursed is the man who trusts in man.
   • Cursed is the man who makes flesh his strength.
   • Cursed is the man whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6. 17:6
   • Such a man will be like a desert shrub in the wasteland.
   • He will not see when good comes.
   • He will dwell in parched places in the wilderness.
   • He will dwell in a salt land.
   • That land is not inhabited.
7. 17:7
   • Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD.
   • Blessed is the man whose confidence is the LORD.
8. 17:8
   • Such a man will be like a tree planted by waters.
   • That tree sends out its roots by the stream.
   • It will not fear when heat comes; the text can also be read as 'it will not see when heat comes'.
   • Its leaf will stay green.
   • It will not be anxious in the year of drought.
   • It will not cease from yielding fruit.
9. 17:9
   • The heart is more deceitful than anything else.
   • The heart is desperately sick.
   • No one can know the heart.
10. 17:10
    • The LORD searches the heart.
    • The LORD tests the inmost parts.
    • The LORD gives to every man according to his ways.
    • The LORD gives to every man according to the fruit of his deeds.
11. 17:11
    • A partridge sits on eggs it did not lay.
    • So is the man who gains riches unjustly.
    • He will leave those riches in the middle of his days.
    • At his end he will be a fool.
12. 17:12
    • A throne of glory, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.
13. 17:13
    • The LORD is the hope of Israel.
    • All who forsake the LORD will be put to shame.
    • Those who turn away from him will be written in the earth.
    • They have forsaken the LORD.
    • The LORD is the fountain of living waters.
14. 17:14
    • The speaker asks the LORD to heal him.
    • If the LORD heals him he will be healed.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to save him.
    • If the LORD saves him he will be saved.
    • The LORD is the speaker's praise.
15. 17:15
    • They say to the speaker, 'Where is the word of the LORD?'
    • They say, 'Let it come now.'
16. 17:16
    • The speaker has not hurried away from following God as a shepherd.
    • The speaker has not desired the day of disaster.
    • God knows this.
    • What came out of the speaker's lips was before God's face.
17. 17:17
    • The speaker asks God not to be a terror to him.
    • God is the speaker's refuge in the day of evil.
18. 17:18
    • The speaker asks that his persecutors be put to shame.
    • The speaker asks that he himself not be put to shame.
    • The speaker asks that they be dismayed.
    • The speaker asks that he himself not be dismayed.
    • The speaker asks God to bring on them the day of evil.
    • The speaker asks God to shatter them with double destruction.
19. 17:19
    • The LORD said this to the speaker.
    • The LORD told him to go and stand in the gate of the children of the people.
    • The kings of Judah come in by that gate.
    • The kings of Judah go out by that gate.
    • The LORD told him to stand also in all the gates of Jerusalem.
20. 17:20
    • He is to say to them, 'Hear the word of the LORD.'
    • The address is to the kings of Judah.
    • The address is to all Judah.
    • The address is to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
    • The address is to those who enter by these gates.
21. 17:21
    • The LORD speaks these words.
    • They are to take heed to their lives.
    • They are not to carry a burden on the sabbath day.
    • They are not to bring a burden in by the gates of Jerusalem.
22. 17:22
    • They are not to carry a burden out of their houses on the sabbath day.
    • They are not to do any work on the sabbath.
    • They are to keep the sabbath day holy.
    • God commanded their fathers this.
23. 17:23
    • They did not obey.
    • They did not incline their ear.
    • They stiffened their neck.
    • They did this so as not to hear.
    • They did this so as not to receive instruction.
24. 17:24
    • It will come to pass if they diligently listen to God.
    • The LORD declares this.
    • The condition is bringing no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day.
    • The condition is keeping the sabbath day holy.
    • The condition is doing no work on it.
25. 17:25
    • Then kings and princes will enter through the gates of this city.
    • They will sit on the throne of David.
    • They will ride in chariots and on horses.
    • They and their officials will come.
    • The men of Judah will come.
    • The inhabitants of Jerusalem will come.
    • This city will be inhabited forever.
26. 17:26
    • People will come from the cities of Judah.
    • People will come from the places around Jerusalem.
    • People will come from the land of Benjamin.
    • People will come from the lowland.
    • People will come from the hill country.
    • People will come from the Negev.
    • They will bring burnt offerings.
    • They will bring sacrifices.
    • They will bring grain offerings.
    • They will bring frankincense.
    • They will bring thank offerings to the house of the LORD.
27. 17:27
    • If they will not listen to God to keep the sabbath day holy, judgment follows.
    • The condition includes not carrying a burden and entering the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day.
    • Then God will kindle a fire in her gates.
    • That fire will devour the palaces of Jerusalem.
    • That fire will not be quenched.

Words Worth Explaining

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

17:1

An iron pen and a diamond (or flint) point were the tools used to cut letters into stone or metal, the image is of a record that cannot be rubbed out. The "horns" of an altar (rendered here as corners) were four projections, one at each upper corner, which stood for the altar's power: sacrificial blood was smeared on them, and a fugitive could grab them to claim sanctuary. "Tablets of their hearts" plays on the stone tablets of the law; in Hebrew the heart means the mind and will, the place where a person decides things.

17:2

Asherah was a Canaanite mother goddess; the "poles" were wooden objects, carved posts or living trees, set up beside an altar to represent her. Worship at open-air sites under leafy trees and on hilltops was normal practice throughout the region, and Israel's own law repeatedly forbade it.

17:3

"My mountain out in the open country" is obscure in Hebrew; it is usually taken as Jerusalem with its temple hill, or as the hill country of Judah as a whole. The "worship sites" (traditionally "high places") were local shrines, often on hilltops, with an altar and sacred pole, where people sacrificed outside the Jerusalem temple.

17:4

The land was held as a family inheritance passed down permanently through the generations, not as property to be bought and sold at will. To lose it was to lose the standing that made a family Israelite at all. Being made to "serve your enemies in a country you do not know" describes deportation, being marched off to a foreign empire as forced labor.

17:5

"Maketh flesh his arm" is Hebrew idiom. "Flesh" means human beings considered as physically weak and temporary, and "arm" means strength or power. The line is about relying on human muscle, armies and alliances, rather than on God.

17:6

The Hebrew word for the plant is uncertain, some kind of stunted desert shrub or juniper. A "salt land" is ground crusted with salt, like the flats around the Dead Sea, where nothing grows and no one settles.

17:7

Blessed means God takes care of him and things go well.

17:8

In the King James, "shall not be careful" does not mean cautious. In 1611 "careful" meant full of care, that is, anxious. The tree does not worry, because its roots reach water that a drought does not touch.

17:9

"Heart" in Hebrew is not the seat of emotion as in modern English; it is the inner self that thinks, decides and plans. The verse is about the mind's capacity to deceive its owner.

17:10

The King James "reins" means the kidneys. Hebrew located the deepest, least visible feelings and motives in the kidneys, and conscious thought in the heart; together the two words mean a person's whole inner life, right down to what they hide from themselves.

17:11

The proverb draws on a popular belief that the partridge sits on eggs it did not lay, and loses the chicks when they hatch and run to their real parent. The point is wealth that was never really the man's and does not stay with him.

17:12

"The place of our sanctuary" is the temple in Jerusalem, spoken of as God's throne on earth. "From the beginning" contrasts it with the shrines of verses 2 and 3.

17:13

Names written in dust are gone with the first wind or footstep (the opposite of the sin engraved with an iron pen in verse 1. The image may also be of names struck off a register of citizens. "Living water" is a fixed Hebrew term for water that flows) a spring or stream, as opposed to still water stored in a cistern, which goes stale.

17:15

Jeremiah had been announcing disaster for years and it had not yet arrived. "Where is the word of the LORD?" is a taunt: let the thing you keep predicting actually happen.

17:16

The Hebrew of this line is disputed. It can mean "I have not run away from being a shepherd following you" (shepherd being a standard term for a leader responsible for a community), or, with a small change of vowels, "I have not pressed you to send disaster." Either way Jeremiah is denying that he wanted the doom he was made to announce.

17:17

In the King James, "evil" often means disaster or calamity rather than moral wickedness. "The day of evil" is the day the catastrophe lands, not a day of sinning.

17:18

"A double blow" uses the idiom of a double share, the portion an eldest son inherited. Here it means destruction in full measure, not exactly twice a fixed amount.

17:19

Which gate this was is not known; the Hebrew calls it the gate of "the sons of the people," perhaps a main public entrance. City gates were the place where business was done, courts sat and public announcements were made, so standing in one was the way to address the whole population.

17:21

The Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, on which all work stopped. "Carrying a load" here means hauling goods (produce coming to market, merchandise going out of houses), so the command is aimed at trade carrying on as usual through the city gates on the rest day.

17:22

The people who lived before you means their grandparents and great-grandparents.

17:23

"They stiffened their necks" is an image from farming: an ox that braces its neck against the yoke and refuses to be guided.

17:25

"David's throne" means the royal line descended from David, which had ruled in Jerusalem for some four hundred years. Kings and officials riding in through the gates in chariots is the picture of a dynasty still functioning and a city still intact.

17:26

The places listed ring Jerusalem: Benjamin is the territory just north, the "low hills" are the foothills between the mountains and the coastal plain (the Shephelah), the hill country is the central ridge, and the "dry south" is the Negev. The offerings are the standard temple ones: a burnt offering was an animal burned whole; "sacrifices" were animals of which parts were burned and the rest eaten; a grain offering was flour and oil; incense was aromatic resin burned to produce smoke; a thank offering was brought voluntarily in acknowledgment of something received.

17:27

The "strong buildings" are the fortified towers and palace complexes of the city, the structures a defender would rely on. Fire that "no one will put out" is a standard phrase for destruction that runs its full course.