For Teaching

Jeremiah 33: What the Passage Says

87 claims across 26 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 33 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

While Jeremiah is still shut up in the courtyard of the guard, the LORD's message comes to him a second time. The city whose houses are being torn down and filled with the dead is told it will be healed, forgiven, and rebuilt, with wedding songs and shepherds' flocks returning to towns now empty. The LORD promises a righteous Branch for David who will do what is just and right, and swears that his covenant with David's line and with the Levitical priests is as unbreakable as the fixed order of day and night. This answers people who say the LORD has thrown away the two families he chose.

Claim by Claim

33:1
- The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah a second time.
- Jeremiah was still shut up in the court of the guard when this word came.
33:2
- The LORD, who made it, speaks.
- The LORD formed it in order to establish it.
- What the LORD made and formed is not identified in the verse itself.
- The LORD is his name.
33:3
- The LORD tells Jeremiah to call to him.
- The LORD says he will answer him.
- The LORD says he will tell him great and inaccessible things.
- The LORD says these things are things Jeremiah does not know.
33:4
- The LORD, the God of Israel, speaks concerning the houses of this city.
- The LORD speaks concerning the houses of the kings of Judah.
- Those houses are torn down to meet the siege mounds and the sword.
33:5
- They come to fight against the Chaldeans.
- The result is to fill those houses with the corpses of men.
- The LORD says he struck those men in his anger and in his fury.
- The LORD says he hid his face from this city.
- The LORD hid his face because of all their wickedness.
33:6
- The LORD says he will bring the city healing and cure.
- The LORD says he will heal them.
- The LORD says he will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth.
33:7
- The LORD says he will restore the captivity of Judah.
- The LORD says he will restore the captivity of Israel.
- The LORD says he will build them as at the first.
33:8
- The LORD says he will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they sinned against him.
- The LORD says he will pardon all their iniquities by which they sinned against him.
- The LORD says he will pardon their iniquities by which they transgressed against him.
33:9
- The city shall be to the LORD a name of joy.
- The city shall be to the LORD a praise and an honor before all the nations of the earth.
- The nations shall hear all the good the LORD does to them.
- The nations shall fear and tremble because of all the goodness and all the peace the LORD provides for the city.
33:10
- Thus says the LORD.
- There shall again be heard something in this place.
- The people say this place is desolate, without man and without beast.
- This applies to the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem.
- Those cities and streets are desolate, without man, without inhabitant, and without beast.
33:11
- There shall be heard the voice of joy and the voice of gladness.
- There shall be heard the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.
- There shall be heard the voice of those who say, Give thanks to the LORD of hosts.
- Those who say it declare that the LORD is good.
- Those who say it declare that his covenant love endures forever.
- There shall be heard the voice of those bringing a thank offering into the house of the LORD.
- The LORD says he will restore the captivity of the land as at the first.
- The LORD says this.
33:12
- Thus says the LORD of hosts.
- This place is desolate, without man and without beast.
- In this place and in all its cities there shall again be a habitation of shepherds resting their flocks.
33:13
- This shall be in the cities of the hill country, the cities of the lowland, and the cities of the Negev.
- This shall be in the land of Benjamin and in the places around Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah.
- The flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them.
- The LORD says this.
33:14
- The LORD declares that days are coming.
- The LORD says he will fulfill the good word he spoke to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.
33:15
- In those days and at that time the LORD will cause a Branch of righteousness to sprout for David.
- That Branch shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
33:16
- In those days Judah shall be saved.
- Jerusalem shall dwell in safety.
- This is the name by which she shall be called: The LORD our righteousness.
33:17
- Thus says the LORD.
- David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.
33:18
- The priests the Levites shall never lack a man before the LORD.
- That man will offer burnt offerings.
- That man will burn grain offerings.
- That man will perform sacrifice continually.
33:19
- The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
33:20
- Thus says the LORD.
- The condition is that they break the LORD's covenant with the day and his covenant with the night.
- Breaking it would mean day and night no longer come at their appointed time.
33:21
- If that condition held, the LORD's covenant with David his servant could also be broken.
- That breaking would mean David would not have a son reigning on his throne.
- The LORD's covenant with the Levites the priests, his ministers, could also be broken.
33:22
- The host of heaven cannot be numbered.
- The sand of the sea cannot be measured.
- The LORD says he will multiply the seed of David his servant in that manner.
- The LORD says he will multiply the Levites who minister to him in that manner.
33:23
- The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
33:24
- The LORD asks Jeremiah whether he has not considered what this people have spoken.
- The people say the LORD has cast off the two families he had chosen.
- They despise the LORD's people.
- They hold that his people should be no more a nation before them.
33:25
- Thus says the LORD.
- The condition is that the LORD's covenant with day and night does not stand.
- The condition is that the LORD has not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth.
33:26
- If that condition held, the LORD would cast away the seed of Jacob and David his servant.
- Casting them away would mean not taking from David's seed rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
- The LORD says he will restore their captivity.
- The LORD says he will have mercy on them.

Words Worth Explaining

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

33:1: Jeremiah was under arrest in the courtyard of the guard, an open detention area attached to the royal palace in Jerusalem. He had been confined there by King Zedekiah while Babylonian forces besieged the city, around 588–587 BC. "A second time" links this message to the one in the previous chapter, given in the same place.
33:2: Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters, the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God, four consonants usually written YHWH and often pronounced "Yahweh." Jewish readers said "Lord" aloud in its place, and English Bibles follow that custom. The line "the LORD is his name" is pointing at that name specifically.
33:3: The Hebrew word behind "hidden" comes from the vocabulary of fortification: things walled off, out of reach, not able to be got at by ordinary means. The sense is not merely "secret" but "inaccessible without being told."
33:4: Siege ramps were huge embankments of earth and rubble piled against a city wall so that attackers could climb to the top or bring up battering rams. The defenders of Jerusalem were pulling down their own houses and palaces, either to use the stone and timber to build the wall higher against the ramps, or because the ramps and fighting had wrecked the buildings nearest the wall. The Hebrew is compressed and both readings are defensible.
33:5: "The Babylonians" translates "the Chaldeans," the people of southern Mesopotamia who ruled the Babylonian empire; Jeremiah uses the two terms interchangeably. "I have turned my face away" is a standard Hebrew idiom for withdrawing protection and favor, the opposite of the blessing in which God's face shines on someone.
33:6: "Peace" translates shalom, which means health, safety and everything being whole, not only the absence of war. The word behind "truth" means reliability, the quality of something you can lean on, so the pair is closer to "well-being and dependability" than to a statement of fact.
33:7: The Hebrew phrase translated "bring back from captivity" is idiomatic and can mean either "bring back the captives" or, more broadly, "restore the fortunes." Both senses are live in this chapter, and translators have long split over which to use.
33:9: "A name" here means a reputation: what other nations will say about Jerusalem. The "fear and trembling" at the end is awe at something overwhelming, not terror at a threat, the nations are shaken by how good the city's reversal of fortune is.
33:11: "LORD of Hosts" is a military title: the LORD who commands armies, whether Israel's forces or the heavenly ones. The sentence "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his faithful love lasts forever" was a fixed liturgical refrain, sung at the temple and quoted repeatedly in the Psalms. A thank offering was an animal sacrifice made specifically to acknowledge a rescue or a kindness received; most of the meat was eaten by the worshiper and their guests as a shared meal. "The house of the LORD" is the temple in Jerusalem.
33:12: LORD of Heaven's Armies is a name for God. It means God is stronger than any army.
33:13: These are the standard regions of Judah, named as a set: the central hill country around Jerusalem and Hebron; the Shephelah, the belt of low foothills sloping west toward the coastal plain; and the Negev, the dry grazing country to the south. Together with Benjamin, the small tribal territory just north of Jerusalem, they amount to "the whole land, everywhere."
33:14: "House of Israel" and "house of Judah" mean the nation or family line, not a building. Israel here is the northern kingdom, destroyed by Assyria over a century before Jeremiah; Judah is the southern kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital.
33:15: "Branch" translates a Hebrew word for a green shoot sprouting from a stump or root, the image is of a royal family cut down to a stump and putting out new growth. It had become a near-technical term for a future king in David's line. "Grow up for David" means "descended from David," the dynasty's founder, dead some four centuries by Jeremiah's time.
33:16: The Hebrew name is Yahweh Tsidkenu. In an earlier version of this promise (chapter 23) the name is given to the coming king; here the grammar is feminine and attaches it to Jerusalem, which in Hebrew is spoken of as a woman. The name also plays on Zedekiah, the name of the king then reigning, which means roughly "the LORD is my righteousness."
33:17: "Never lack a man to sit on the throne" is a Hebrew idiom, literally "a man shall not be cut off for David sitting on the throne", the promise of an unbroken succession of descendants.
33:18: The Levites were the tribe assigned to religious duties; the priests were drawn from within it, and the phrase "the priests, the Levites" is the standard way of naming them. A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar, none of it eaten. A grain offering was flour, oil and incense, of which a token handful was burned and the rest went to the priests. "To stand before me" is the ordinary Hebrew expression for serving in an official position.
33:20: The word rendered "agreement" is covenant, a formal, binding pact of the kind made between a king and his subjects or between two states, sealed with oaths and obligations on both sides. Applying it to the day and the night casts the regular alternation of daylight and darkness as an unbreakable treaty God has made with creation.
33:22: The "host of heaven" means the stars, pictured as a vast army drawn up in ranks. Uncountable stars and unmeasurable sand together echo the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 22:17.
33:24: Which "two families" are meant is disputed and the Hebrew does not say. It may be Israel and Judah, the two kingdoms of the previous verses; it may be the family of David and the family of Levi, the two lines just promised permanence. "Thrown them away" is the language of a rejected contract.
33:25: "The fixed order" translates a word meaning decrees or statutes, the same word used for laws given to people. The heavens and earth are pictured as running under legislation.
33:26: Jacob, grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac, was renamed Israel; "the descendants of Jacob" and "the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" both mean the nation as a whole, traced back to its founding family.

Read Jeremiah 33