For Teaching

Jeremiah 23: What the Passage Says

154 claims across 40 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 23 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD condemns the leaders of Judah for scattering his people, and promises to gather the survivors himself, set good shepherds over them, and raise up for David a righteous Branch who will rule with justice. The chapter then turns to the prophets of Jerusalem, who commit adultery, prophesy by their own dreams, and tell the people no harm will come to them, though the LORD never sent them. God says his word is like fire and like a hammer, and that he fills the heavens and the earth so no one can hide. It closes with a ruling about the phrase "the burden of the LORD," which the people are told to stop using, on pain of being cast out.

Claim by Claim

23:1
- A woe is pronounced against shepherds.
- Those shepherds destroy the sheep of the LORD's pasture.
- Those shepherds scatter the sheep of the LORD's pasture.
- The LORD declares this.
23:2
- The LORD, the God of Israel, speaks against the shepherds who shepherd his people.
- The LORD says to them: you have scattered my flock.
- The LORD says to them: you have driven my flock away.
- The LORD says to them: you have not attended to my flock.
- The LORD says he will attend to them for the evil of their deeds.
- The LORD declares this.
23:3
- The LORD says he himself will gather the remnant of his flock.
- He will gather them out of all the lands to which he drove them.
- He says he is the one who drove them there.
- He will bring them back to their pasture.
- They will be fruitful and multiply.
23:4
- The LORD will raise up shepherds over them.
- Those shepherds will shepherd them.
- The people will no longer be afraid.
- The people will not be dismayed.
- None of them will be missing.
- The LORD declares this.
23:5
- Days are coming, declares the LORD.
- The LORD will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a shoot from his line.
- A king will reign.
- That king will act with wisdom and success.
- That king will carry out justice and righteousness in the land.
23:6
- In his days Judah will be saved.
- Israel will dwell in security.
- This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.
23:7
- Days are coming, declares the LORD.
- People will no longer say, 'As the LORD lives, who brought the children of Israel up out of the land of Egypt.'
23:8
- Instead they will say, 'As the LORD lives, who brought up and led the seed of the house of Israel out of the land of the north and out of all the lands to which he had driven them.'
- The LORD says he had driven them to those lands.
- They will dwell on their own soil.
23:9
- Concerning the prophets: the speaker's heart is broken within him.
- All his bones shake.
- He has become like a drunken man.
- He is like a man overcome by wine.
- This is because of the LORD.
- This is because of the LORD's holy words.
23:10
- The land is full of adulterers.
- Because of a curse the land mourns.
- The pastures of the wilderness have dried up.
- Their course of life is evil.
- Their might is used wrongly.
23:11
- Both prophet and priest are godless.
- The LORD has found their wickedness even in his own house.
- The LORD declares this.
23:12
- Therefore their way will become for them like slippery ground in the darkness.
- They will be thrust down.
- They will fall on it.
- The LORD will bring disaster upon them.
- That disaster is the year of their punishment.
- The LORD declares this.
23:13
- The LORD saw something unseemly in the prophets of Samaria.
- They prophesied by Baal.
- They led the LORD's people Israel astray.
23:14
- The LORD has seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem.
- They commit adultery.
- They walk in falsehood.
- They strengthen the hands of evildoers.
- The result is that no one turns back from his wickedness.
- They have all become to the LORD like Sodom.
- Jerusalem's inhabitants have become to the LORD like Gomorrah.
23:15
- The LORD of hosts speaks concerning the prophets.
- He will feed them wormwood.
- He will make them drink poisoned water.
- Godlessness has gone out into all the land from the prophets of Jerusalem.
23:16
- The LORD of hosts says: do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you.
- Those prophets fill the hearers with emptiness.
- Those prophets speak a vision from their own heart.
- What they speak is not from the mouth of the LORD.
23:17
- They keep saying to those who despise the LORD, 'The LORD has said, you shall have peace.'
- They say to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, 'No evil will come upon you.'
23:18
- The question is asked: who has stood in the council of the LORD?
- The question is asked: who has seen and heard his word?
- The question is asked: who has given heed to his word and heard it?
23:19
- A storm of the LORD has gone forth in fury.
- It is a whirling tempest.
- It will whirl down upon the head of the wicked.
23:20
- The anger of the LORD will not turn back.
- It will not turn back until he has carried out the purposes of his heart.
- It will not turn back until he has established the purposes of his heart.
- In the latter days you will understand it clearly.
23:21
- The LORD did not send these prophets.
- They ran anyway.
- The LORD did not speak to them.
- They prophesied anyway.
23:22
- If they had stood in the LORD's council, they would have made his people hear his words.
- If they had stood in his council, they would have turned the people from their evil way.
- If they had stood in his council, they would have turned the people from the evil of their deeds.
23:23
- The LORD asks whether he is a God who is near.
- The LORD asks whether he is not also a God who is far off.
- The LORD declares this.
23:24
- The LORD asks whether a man can hide himself in secret places so that the LORD will not see him.
- The LORD asks whether he does not fill the heavens and the earth.
- The LORD declares this.
23:25
- The LORD has heard what the prophets said.
- Those prophets prophesy lies in his name.
- They say, 'I have dreamed, I have dreamed.'
23:26
- The LORD asks how long this will go on.
- The question is asked whether this is in the heart of the prophets who prophesy falsehood.
- They are prophets of the deceit of their own heart.
23:27
- They intend to make the LORD's people forget his name.
- They intend to do this by their dreams.
- They tell those dreams to one another.
- Their fathers forgot the LORD's name for Baal.
23:28
- The prophet who has a dream should tell the dream.
- The one who has the LORD's word should speak the LORD's word faithfully.
- The question is asked what the straw has to do with the grain.
- The LORD declares this.
23:29
- The LORD asks whether his word is not like fire.
- The LORD asks whether his word is not like a hammer that shatters rock.
- The LORD declares this.
23:30
- The LORD is against the prophets.
- Those prophets steal his words, each from his neighbor.
- The LORD declares this.
23:31
- The LORD is against the prophets.
- Those prophets use their own tongues.
- They declare an utterance as though it were an oracle.
- The LORD declares this.
23:32
- The LORD is against those who prophesy false dreams.
- They tell those dreams.
- They lead the LORD's people astray by their lies.
- They lead them astray by their recklessness.
- The LORD did not send them.
- The LORD did not command them.
- They will bring this people no benefit at all.
- The LORD declares this.
23:33
- This people, or a prophet, or a priest may ask the hearer, 'What is the burden of the LORD?'
- The hearer is to answer them, 'What burden?'
- The LORD says he will forsake them.
- The LORD declares this.
23:34
- The prophet, the priest, or the people may say, 'The burden of the LORD.'
- The LORD will punish that man.
- The LORD will punish that man's household.
23:35
- Each is to say to his neighbor and to his brother, 'What has the LORD answered?'
- Each is to say, 'What has the LORD spoken?'
23:36
- They are to mention the burden of the LORD no more.
- Each man's own word becomes his burden.
- They have perverted the words of the living God.
- That God is the LORD of hosts, their God.
23:37
- The hearer is to say to the prophet, 'What has the LORD answered you?'
- The hearer is to say, 'What has the LORD spoken?'
23:38
- They say, 'The burden of the LORD.'
- Therefore the LORD speaks against them because they say this word, 'The burden of the LORD.'
- The LORD sent to them saying they were not to say, 'The burden of the LORD.'
23:39
- Therefore the LORD will utterly forget them.
- The LORD will forsake them.
- The LORD will forsake the city he gave to them and to their fathers.
- He will cast them out from his presence.
23:40
- The LORD will bring everlasting reproach upon them.
- The LORD will bring perpetual shame upon them.
- That shame will not be forgotten.

Words Worth Explaining

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

23:1: "Shepherd" was standard ancient Near Eastern language for a king or ruler; kings across the region called themselves shepherds of their people. The rulers being attacked here are Judah's last kings and officials, not religious teachers (the King James word "pastors" simply meant herdsmen). Also, where the text prints LORD in capital letters, it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written Yahweh; "Lord" in ordinary letters translates a different word meaning master.
23:2: There is a play on words here that English cannot easily keep: the same Hebrew verb means "to attend to" and "to deal with, punish." You did not attend to my flock, so I will attend to you.
23:3: The scattering is deportation. Beginning in 597 BC the Babylonians carried off Judah's king, officials and skilled men, and more followed; other Judeans fled to Egypt and elsewhere. "What is left of my flock" is the survivors of that dispersal.
23:5: "Branch" translates a Hebrew word for a green shoot sprouting from a stump or root, a living offshoot of a family tree that has been cut down. It was used as a title for a coming descendant of David, whose dynasty had ruled Jerusalem for four centuries and was about to be cut off.
23:6: The Hebrew name given here, Yahweh Tsidkenu, is close to a deliberate reversal of the name of the king reigning when Jeremiah spoke, Zedekiah (Tsidkiyahu), which means roughly "Yahweh is my righteousness." At this date "Judah" is the surviving southern kingdom around Jerusalem, and "Israel" the northern kingdom destroyed by Assyria a century earlier; naming both means the whole people reunited.
23:7: Swearing an oath meant staking your word on something unshakable, and Israelites swore "as surely as the LORD lives, who brought us out of Egypt", the escape from slavery in Egypt was the standard proof of what their God could do. The point is that a new rescue will replace it as the reference everyone reaches for.
23:8: "The land of the north" means Babylon. Babylon lay east of Judah, but armies and exiles traveled the arc of settled land around the desert and so always arrived from the north.
23:9: The prophet is not drunk; he is describing the physical effect on him of receiving the message that follows, shaking, unsteady, not in control of himself.
23:10: Two ambiguities sit in this verse. "Adulterers" can mean literal unfaithfulness in marriage, and prophets also used it for a people's unfaithfulness to their God, worshiping other gods; both senses are probably in play. And the Hebrew word rendered "the curse" can equally mean the swearing of false oaths, the King James translators took it that way, so the land is mourning either under a curse or because of perjury.
23:11: "My house" is the temple in Jerusalem, the one sanctuary where sacrifice was offered. The Hebrew word behind "have no respect for God" means polluted or defiled, and carries the sense of something that should be holy being made unfit for use.
23:12: "The year of their visitation" means the year the accounts get settled. It is the same Hebrew verb as in verse 2, used here in its harsher direction.
23:13: Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, wiped out by Assyria in 722 BC, for Jeremiah's hearers in Jerusalem it was a byword for a catastrophe that had already happened to somebody else. Baal was the Canaanite storm and fertility god, the chief rival for Israel's loyalty; "prophesied by Baal" means they delivered oracles in his name rather than the LORD's.
23:14: Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities destroyed by fire in the account in Genesis 19; by Jeremiah's day their names were shorthand for total wickedness followed by total destruction. "Strengthen the hands of" is an idiom meaning to back someone up or embolden them.
23:15: Wormwood is a shrub whose leaves are intensely bitter (the standard image for bitterness in Hebrew. The second word names a bitter, poisonous plant, possibly hemlock or a poppy; together they mean food and drink that sicken rather than nourish. "LORD of Hosts" means the LORD commanding the hosts, that is, armies) either the armies of Israel or the heavenly ones, and the phrase is a title of overwhelming power.
23:16: "They make you vain" uses "vain" in its older sense of empty or worthless, not conceited. The charge is that listening to these prophets leaves you holding nothing.
23:17: "Peace" here is the Hebrew word shalom, which covers much more than an absence of fighting: health, safety, prosperity, everything intact and going well. The false prophets are guaranteeing the nation that it will come through fine.
23:18: The picture is a royal court: a king's inner council is the small group admitted to hear decisions before they are announced. The claim being tested is whether these prophets have actually been admitted to God's council, which is what a genuine prophet was understood to be, a member of that inner circle who then reports outside.
23:20: "The days to come" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning the far end of things, the outcome, later rather than a specific end of the world. The sense is: when this has run its course you will see plainly what was going on.
23:21: "Yet they ran" pictures a courier sprinting off with a dispatch. The whole force of the line is that nobody handed these men anything to carry; they ran regardless.
23:22: This is the practical test being applied to a prophet: not whether he predicted correctly, but whether his message pushed people to change how they were living.
23:23: Gods in the ancient Near East were commonly tied to a territory, powerful at home and irrelevant abroad. The question can be read either way (as "am I only close at hand, and not also far off?" or as a challenge to those who assume God is safely distant) and the Hebrew leaves both open.
23:25: Dreams were a recognized, respectable channel for divine messages; the complaint is not that dreams are worthless but that these men are inventing them.
23:27: "Their fathers" means their ancestors, family who lived long before them.
23:28: After harvest, grain was threshed and tossed into the wind so the light straw and husks blew away and the heavy kernels fell back. The two look alike lying on the threshing floor; only one is food.
23:29: The hammer is the heavy sledge used for splitting stone in a quarry or bringing down a wall, not a carpenter's tool. Both images, fire and hammer, are about a force that consumes or breaks whatever it meets.
23:31: "Wag their own tongues" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning they take up their own tongues: they supply the words themselves. What they then attach is the fixed formula that opened a genuine oracle, roughly "the LORD's own utterance"; they are using the official stamp on private opinion.
23:33: Everything from here to the end of the chapter turns on one Hebrew word, massa, which means both "a load to be carried" and "a pronouncement, an oracle", the two senses of the English word "burden" in 1611. People were greeting Jeremiah with "what's the burden of the LORD today?", using the technical term for an oracle, but with a sneer in it, as though his messages were just so much weight. The reply plays the word back at them in its other sense: what burden? You are the burden, and I am putting you down.
23:34: "His household" means the whole extended family under one head (wife, children, dependants, servants) the unit that ancient law and punishment normally worked on.
23:36: The pun again: stop calling my message "the burden," because what each of you says on your own authority is the load you will have to carry.
23:39: The Hebrew here is disputed. The consonants can be read as "I will utterly forget you," which is how the King James and this rendering take it, or, with a very slight difference, as "I will surely lift you up", which would carry the burden pun through to the end: you called it a load, so I will pick you up like one and throw you away. Ancient translations divide between the two.
23:40: "Reproach" and "shame" here are public words. They are about how the nation will be spoken of by everyone around it, not about private guilt. Being permanently remembered as the people this happened to is itself the sentence.

Read Jeremiah 23