Jeremiah 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Jeremiah to announce a message in Jerusalem: he remembers Israel's early loyalty to him, and he asks what fault their ancestors found in him that made them leave him for worthless idols. He charges the priests, the experts in the law, the rulers, and the prophets with abandoning him, and he says they have left him, the spring of living water, to dig cracked tanks that hold none, and compares the nation to a rotten vine and an animal in heat. He points to the ruin already come on the land, rejects the people's claim that they are innocent, and says their dealings with Egypt and Assyria will fail them.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
   • The word of the LORD came to him with a message to speak.
2. 2:2
   • The LORD told him to go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem.
   • The proclamation was introduced as the words of the LORD.
   • The LORD said he remembers the loyal devotion of Jerusalem's youth.
   • The LORD said he remembers her love as a bride.
   • The LORD said she went after him in the wilderness.
   • The LORD said she followed him in a land that was not sown.
3. 2:3
   • Israel was holy to the LORD.
   • Israel was the firstfruits of the LORD's harvest.
   • All who devoured Israel became guilty.
   • Disaster came upon those who devoured Israel.
   • This is declared by the LORD.
4. 2:4
   • The house of Jacob is commanded to hear the word of the LORD.
   • All the families of the house of Israel are commanded to hear the word of the LORD.
5. 2:5
   • This is what the LORD says.
   • The LORD asks what wrong their fathers found in him.
   • The fathers went far away from the LORD.
   • The fathers walked after worthlessness.
   • The fathers became worthless themselves.
6. 2:6
   • They did not ask where the LORD is.
   • The LORD is the one who brought them up out of the land of Egypt.
   • The LORD is the one who led them through the wilderness.
   • The land they were led through was a land of deserts and pits.
   • The land was a land of drought and deep darkness.
   • It was a land through which no one passed.
   • It was a land where no person dwelt.
7. 2:7
   • The LORD brought them into a fertile land.
   • He brought them there to eat its fruit and its good things.
   • When they entered, they defiled the LORD's land.
   • They made the LORD's inheritance an abomination.
8. 2:8
   • The priests did not ask where the LORD is.
   • Those who handle the law did not know the LORD.
   • The shepherds rebelled against the LORD.
   • The prophets prophesied by Baal.
   • They walked after things that do not profit.
9. 2:9
   • Therefore the LORD will still contend with them.
   • This is declared by the LORD.
   • The LORD will contend with their children's children.
10. 2:10
    • They are told to cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look.
    • They are told to send to Kedar and consider carefully.
    • They are told to see whether anything like this has happened.
11. 2:11
    • The question is asked whether a nation has ever exchanged its gods.
    • Those gods are not gods at all.
    • The LORD's people have exchanged their glory for what does not profit.
12. 2:12
    • The heavens are commanded to be appalled at this.
    • The heavens are commanded to shudder and be utterly desolate.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
13. 2:13
    • The LORD's people have committed two evils.
    • They have forsaken the LORD.
    • The LORD is a fountain of living waters.
    • They have hewn out cisterns for themselves.
    • Those cisterns are broken.
    • Those cisterns cannot hold water.
14. 2:14
    • The question is asked whether Israel is a slave.
    • The question is asked whether he is a slave born in the house.
    • The question is asked why he has become plunder.
15. 2:15
    • Young lions roared at him.
    • They gave out their voice.
    • They made his land a desolation.
    • His cities are burned, with no inhabitant.
16. 2:16
    • The men of Noph and Tahpanhes have broken the crown of your head.
17. 2:17
    • The question is asked whether she has not brought this on herself.
    • She has forsaken the LORD her God.
    • She did this at the time he was leading her in the way.
18. 2:18
    • She is asked what she gains by going the way of Egypt to drink the waters of the Nile.
    • She is asked what she gains by going the way of Assyria to drink the waters of the River.
19. 2:19
    • Her own wickedness will discipline her.
    • Her own backslidings will rebuke her.
    • She is told to know and see that forsaking the LORD her God is evil and bitter.
    • The LORD says the fear of him is not in her.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD of hosts.
20. 2:20
    • Long ago the LORD broke her yoke.
    • The LORD burst her bonds.
    • She said she would not transgress.
    • On every high hill she plays the harlot.
    • Under every green tree she plays the harlot.
    • She bows down as a prostitute.
21. 2:21
    • The LORD planted her as a noble vine.
    • She was wholly a true seed.
    • The LORD asks how she turned into the degenerate shoots of a foreign vine toward him.
22. 2:22
    • Though she washes herself with lye, her guilt remains.
    • Though she uses much soap, her guilt remains.
    • Her iniquity is stained before the LORD.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD.
23. 2:23
    • The LORD asks how she can say she is not defiled.
    • She claims she has not gone after the Baals.
    • She is told to look at her way in the valley.
    • She is told to know what she has done.
    • She is a swift young camel running about on her ways.
24. 2:24
    • She is a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness.
    • In the craving of her desire she sniffs the wind.
    • The question is asked who can turn back her lust.
    • None who seek her will weary themselves.
    • In her month they will find her.
25. 2:25
    • She is told to keep her foot from being unshod.
    • She is told to keep her throat from thirst.
    • She said it is hopeless.
    • She said she has loved strangers.
    • She said she will go after them.
26. 2:26
    • A thief is ashamed when he is caught.
    • In the same way the house of Israel is ashamed.
    • Those ashamed include their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets.
27. 2:27
    • They say to a tree, You are my father.
    • They say to a stone, You gave me birth.
    • They have turned their back to the LORD and not their face.
    • In the time of their trouble they will say, Arise and save us.
28. 2:28
    • The LORD asks where are the gods they made for themselves.
    • He says let those gods arise if they can save them in the time of their trouble.
    • Judah's gods are as many as Judah's cities.
29. 2:29
    • The LORD asks why they contend with him.
    • All of them have rebelled against the LORD.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
30. 2:30
    • The LORD struck their children in vain.
    • The children accepted no correction.
    • Their own sword devoured their prophets.
    • The sword devoured like a destroying lion.
31. 2:31
    • The generation is told to see the word of the LORD.
    • The LORD asks whether he has been a wilderness to Israel.
    • The LORD asks whether he has been a land of thick darkness.
    • The LORD asks why his people say they are lords, or roam free.
    • His people say they will come to him no more.
32. 2:32
    • The question is asked whether a maiden can forget her ornaments.
    • The question is asked whether a bride can forget her attire.
    • The LORD's people have forgotten him for days without number.
33. 2:33
    • She is asked why she makes her way good to seek love.
    • Therefore she has also taught wicked women her ways.
34. 2:34
    • On her skirts is found the blood of the lives of the innocent poor.
    • The LORD did not find it by breaking in, or: they were not caught breaking in.
    • The finding is upon all these things.
35. 2:35
    • She says she is innocent.
    • She says surely his anger has turned from her.
    • The LORD says he will bring judgment on her.
    • The judgment is because she says she has not sinned.
36. 2:36
    • She is asked why she goes about so lightly to change her way.
    • She will be put to shame by Egypt.
    • She was put to shame by Assyria.
37. 2:37
    • She will go out from that place with her hands on her head.
    • The LORD has rejected those in whom she trusts.
    • She will not prosper through them.

Words Worth Explaining

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

2:1

"The LORD" in small capitals stands where the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers came to say "the Lord" aloud instead of pronouncing it, and English Bibles mark the substitution by using capitals.

2:2

Prophets regularly describe the bond between the LORD and Israel as a marriage: the desert years after the escape from Egypt are the honeymoon, and worship of other gods is adultery. That figure of speech runs through this whole chapter. "A land that was not sown" means uncultivated country, nobody farms there, so there is no food but what is provided.

2:3

Under Israelite law the first portion of any harvest belonged to God and was handed over to the sanctuary. It was holy, meaning reserved and off-limits, and an outsider who ate it was guilty of theft from God and owed restitution. The picture is that nations who attacked Israel were treated like men caught eating the firstfruits.

2:4

Jacob was renamed Israel; "house of Jacob" and "house of Israel" are the same people, the descendants of his twelve sons. "Families" here means clans, the subdivisions of a tribe.

2:5

The word behind "vanity" and "vain" is a Hebrew noun meaning a breath or a puff of vapor, something with no substance. It was a standard sneering term for other gods. The line turns on the repetition: they chased after emptiness and became empty themselves.

2:6

"The shadow of death" translates one Hebrew word that most likely means simply deep or total darkness; the King James spelling reflects an old attempt to hear "death" inside it. The whole verse recites the standard summary of the escape from Egypt and the desert crossing.

2:7

"Mine heritage" is the land as property handed down: Israelite thinking treats Canaan as the LORD's own land, held by the people as tenants. "Abomination" is the vocabulary of ritual purity, something so unclean it must be kept away from anything holy.

2:8

Three professions are named. "They that handle the law" are the priests and scribes whose job was to teach and give rulings from the law of Moses. "Pastors" in 1611 English means shepherds, and in Hebrew idiom shepherds are kings and officials, not clergy. Baal, meaning "lord" or "master," was the Canaanite storm and fertility god, worshiped widely in Israel; prophesying "by Baal" means delivering oracles in his name.

2:9

"Plead" here is courtroom language, not begging. The Hebrew word covers bringing a lawsuit and pressing charges. Much of this chapter is shaped as a legal case brought by the LORD against Israel for breaking a treaty, complete with witnesses, accusations, and the defendant's denials.

2:10

Chittim (Kittim) is Cyprus, and by extension the coasts and islands to the far west; Kedar was a confederation of Arab tribes in the desert to the east. Naming both is a way of saying "look in every direction, from one end of the known world to the other."

2:11

Ancient peoples kept their ancestral gods permanently; changing gods was almost unheard of, which is why the question expects the answer "no." "Their glory" is a title for the LORD himself. Some ancient Jewish scribal notes record that the line originally read "my glory," softened out of reverence.

2:12

In treaty documents of this period the sky and the earth were listed as witnesses who would testify if the agreement was broken. Calling on the heavens here continues the courtroom framing of verse 9.

2:13

A spring of "living water" means water that flows of itself, constantly renewed. A cistern is a pit cut into rock and sealed with plaster to catch and store rainwater; it holds only what is poured into it, and if the plaster cracks the water drains away. In a dry country the difference between the two was a matter of survival.

2:14

A slave born in the master's household was property for life and had no family outside to protect or ransom him; a free person who was robbed had kinsmen who would take up his cause. The question is: since Israel is in neither position, why has no one come to his defense?

2:15

Lions are a standing image for invading armies. The reference is to the Assyrian campaigns that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and devastated the countryside of Judah in the century before Jeremiah.

2:16

Noph is Memphis, the old capital of Egypt; Tahapanes (Tahpanhes) was a fortress town on Egypt's north-eastern frontier, the first Egyptian city a traveler from Judah would reach. The Hebrew verb is uncertain: it can mean to shave the head, a mark of disgrace or of being made a slave, or to break or graze the skull.

2:18

Sihor is a name for the Nile or one of its eastern branches; "the river" without further description always means the Euphrates. Drinking a country's water means depending on it, and specifically making an alliance with it. Judah's kings spent these decades switching allegiance between Egypt and the empires of Mesopotamia.

2:19

"My fear" means reverence and awe of God, the ordinary word for religion as an attitude, not being frightened. "The LORD of hosts" means the LORD who commands armies, heavenly ones, and Israel's.

2:20

A yoke is the wooden beam strapped across an ox's neck to harness it to a plow, and the bands are the ties that hold it on; breaking them is the image for setting a slave free. The King James "I will not transgress" and the modern "I will not serve" differ only over the vowels supplied to the Hebrew consonants, which the earliest manuscripts did not write down. Hilltops and large shady trees were the usual sites of local open-air shrines, and "playing the harlot" is the chapter's running figure for worshiping other gods, though some of these cults did also involve sexual rites.

2:21

The word for "noble vine" names a particular prized variety of grape, grown from selected stock. Wild vines revert to sour, useless fruit, the standard disappointment of any vineyard owner.

2:22

"Nitre" is natron, a naturally occurring mineral soda used in the ancient world for washing, not the saltpetre the word later came to mean. The soap was lye made from plant ashes. Both are the strongest cleaners available, and neither works on this stain.

2:23

Baalim is simply the plural of Baal: the many local versions of the god, each with its own shrine. "The valley" is most likely the Valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem, where children were burned as offerings (see verse 34). A dromedary is a one-humped camel; the picture is of a young female running in circles with no rider in control.

2:24

Wild donkeys were proverbial for being untameable. During the mating season the female's scent draws males to her without any effort on their part, so the male donkeys "do not weary themselves": she comes to them.

2:25

Worn-out shoes and a parched throat are the marks of someone who has walked a long way. The warning is against exhausting yourself running from shrine to shrine, or, in the political sense running through this chapter, trailing back and forth to foreign capitals. "Strangers" means foreigners, here the foreign gods.

2:26

"Princes" in 1611 English means officials of the royal court, not sons of the king. The list (king, court, priests, prophets) names the whole governing class of the nation.

2:27

A "stock" is a tree trunk, here a carved wooden pole set up beside an altar, the standard symbol of the goddess Asherah; the stone is a standing pillar representing a male god. The Hebrew reverses what a hearer would expect, calling the wooden object (grammatically feminine) "father" and the stone (masculine) the one who gave birth, part of the mockery.

2:28

Each town had its own local shrine and its own version of the god; the taunt is that Judah's gods have multiplied to the point of one per town, and not one of them can be found when needed.

2:30

"Smitten" means struck, in the sense of a father's corrective beating. Killing a prophet who brought an unwelcome message was a real hazard, not a figure of speech; Jeremiah's own book records the prophet Uriah being hunted down and executed.

2:31

The Hebrew word rendered "we are lords" occurs almost nowhere else and its meaning is disputed. It has been read as "we rule ourselves," "we roam free," and "we have broken loose"; all convey independence, but the exact image is uncertain.

2:32

A bride's jewelry and sash were often her own property, given at betrothal, and were the most valuable things she owned, the last items anyone would mislay. "Days without number" is an expression for a stretch of time too long to count.

2:34

"Skirts" means the loose hem of a robe, where evidence of a crime would show. The second half of the verse in Hebrew reads literally "not at breaking in I found them," which points to a rule in the law of Moses: a householder who killed a burglar tunnelling in at night bore no bloodguilt. The sense would then be that these victims were not caught in any crime, the killing was plain murder. The King James translators instead took the line to mean the blood was found openly rather than by searching. Both readings are defensible from the consonants of the text.

2:36

"Gaddest about" means running restlessly from one place to another. Judah's foreign policy in these years swung between the Mesopotamian empires and Egypt as each looked stronger. "Ashamed of" here means let down or disappointed by, being publicly proved to have trusted the wrong ally.

2:37

Hands placed on the head was a recognized gesture of grief and humiliation, used by mourners and by prisoners being led away. "Thy confidences" means the powers you were relying on.