The Book of Jeremiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

This is the passage that earned Jeremiah his title, the weeping prophet. "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" He longs to cry an endless flood over his doomed nation. And yet he is so grieved by their sin that he also wishes he could "leave my people, and go from them," to escape into a desert inn, because "they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men." Jeremiah loves them enough to weep and is wounded enough to want to flee, the double ache of a faithful heart. He describes a society rotted through with dishonesty. They "bend their tongues like their bow for lies," they are "not valiant for the truth," they "proceed from evil to evil." Trust has collapsed completely: "trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders." They have "taught their tongue to speak lies" and even "weary themselves to commit iniquity", they work hard at sin. And the root of it all is named twice: "they know not me... through deceit they refuse to know me." The lying life is finally a refusal to know the God of truth.

Gospel Focus

Jeremiah's tears are a shadow of the tears of Christ. When Jesus "beheld the city, and wept over it" (Luke 19:41), He was the greater Jeremiah, God Himself weeping over a people who would not know Him. The heart that grieves over sinners rather than despising them is the heart of God, "God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:3-4). Notice too that the deepest problem in this society of lies is spiritual: "through deceit they refuse to know me." Dishonesty is not merely a social failing; it is a flight from the God of truth, for a life built on lies cannot bear the light of the One who is Truth. Jesus said the devil "is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44), and that He Himself is "the truth" (John 14:6). To walk in deceit is to walk away from God; to come to the truth is to come to Him. And the call to be "valiant for the truth" still stands. In every age it takes courage to be honest, to stand for what is true when lies are easier and safer. Weep with the weeping prophet over a world of deceit, and be one who is valiant for the truth, because you know the God of truth.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God responds to the deceit with refining judgment: "Behold, I will melt them, and try them." Even here His heart breaks, "how shall I do for the daughter of my people?", the pain of a Father who must discipline a beloved child. He describes their weaponized speech: "their tongue is as an arrow shot out," deadly and deceptive, speaking "peaceably" while the "heart... layeth his wait." So the just question returns, "Shall I not visit them for these things?" God Himself takes up a lamentation over the coming desolation of the land, silent of cattle, emptied of birds and beasts, Jerusalem reduced to "heaps, and a den of dragons." Then comes the crucial question: "Who is the wise man, that may understand... for what the land perisheth?" And God gives the plain answer, the key to the whole tragedy: "Because they have forsaken my law... and have not obeyed my voice... But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim." The reason for the ruin is not mysterious. They abandoned God's word for their own imagination and inherited idols. So they must drink "wormwood" and "water of gall," and be "scattered among the heathen." The bitter harvest follows the forsaken law.

Gospel Focus

Verse 12 asks who is wise enough to understand why the land perishes, and verse 13 answers with startling clarity: "Because they have forsaken my law." God is never arbitrary in judgment; there is always a moral cause, and here it is plainly stated. This cuts against the human tendency to blame God, or fate, or circumstance for the ruin our own choices produce. The wise understand that sin has consequences and that forsaking God's word is the root of the wreckage. But notice the refining purpose behind the fire, "I will melt them, and try them." God's aim in judgment is not destruction but purification, to burn away the dross so that what is precious remains. And notice again the Refiner's grief, "how shall I do for the daughter of my people?" This is not a God who delights to punish but One who agonizes even as He must act, the same heart that would one day drink the "wormwood" and "gall" Himself. At the cross Jesus was offered gall and drank the bitter cup of judgment in our place (Matthew 27:34), so that we might drink instead "the cup of blessing" (1 Corinthians 10:16). The wise man understands the cause of ruin, forsaking God, and runs to the Christ who bore the bitterness for us.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The coming catastrophe calls for organized, public grief. God says, "call for the mourning women", the professional wailers, "and send for cunning women" (skilled in lament), "that they may come." The disaster is so great that these experts must "make haste" and lead the whole community in weeping "that our eyes may run down with tears." A cry already rises "out of Zion": "How are we spoiled! we are greatly confounded... our dwellings have cast us out." So terrible is the coming loss that the mourning women must "teach your daughters wailing", a whole generation trained in grief, because there will be so much to mourn. And the reason is stated in a chilling image: "death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets." Death climbs past every defense to take the young. The dead will be so many that "the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field... and none shall gather them", no one left even to bury them. It is a portrait of total, overwhelming loss.

Gospel Focus

"Death is come up into our windows." This haunting image captures the reach of death into every home, past every wall we build against it. Death is no respecter of persons or defenses; it takes children and young men, not only the old. This is the universal human predicament that only the gospel answers, "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27), "for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). No fortress keeps death out. But there is One who climbed down into death itself to defeat it from within. Jesus entered the very grave and "abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10). Because He rose, the believer can say, "O death, where is thy sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:55). The death that climbs through the windows of Jeremiah 9 has been robbed of its final victory by the empty tomb. The mourning women teach their daughters to wail; the gospel teaches us a better song, for those who die in Christ do not perish but "sleep in Jesus" and will rise (1 Thessalonians 4:14). Death has come into our windows, but Christ has come into our death, and turned it into a door.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

After all the grief and judgment, God names what truly matters, and it reorders everything the world values. "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches." The three great human boasts, intellect, power, and wealth, are stripped of their claim to be ultimate. Instead, "let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me." The one thing worth boasting in is to know God, not to know about Him but to know Him personally. And God tells us what He is like, what those who know Him come to treasure: "I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight." God delights in steadfast love, justice, and righteousness, and those who know Him come to delight in them too. Finally, God warns that outward religion saves no one: He "will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised," because "all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart." Having the covenant sign in the body meant nothing while the heart remained unchanged.

Gospel Focus

Verses 23-24 are quoted twice by Paul, who distills them into a single phrase: "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17). This is the great reordering of the gospel. The world glories in wisdom, might, and riches, the very things it chases and worships, but God says the only worthy boast is to know Him. And Jesus defined eternal life in exactly these terms: "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). To know God is not a bonus added to a successful life; it is the one thing that makes any life truly rich. Paul, who had the wisdom, status, and pedigree the world prizes, counted it all "loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). And the closing warning about the "uncircumcised in the heart" reaches its fulfillment in the New Testament truth that "circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit" (Romans 2:29), a heart made new by God, not a mark in the flesh. The question this chapter finally presses is the deepest of all: not what you have achieved, possess, or command, but do you know God? Glory in that, and in nothing else.