12:1–4 These verses show how sincere complaint against God is the seedbed of revitalized faith rather than crippling doubt. Jeremiah makes Yahweh’s righteousness (v. 1a) his basis for grappling with questions of divine justice (v. 1b–c). In the prophet’s mouth, the familiar language of Psalm 1 becomes a provocative challenge to Yahweh concerning his delay in judging the wicked (cf. 11:21–23).

Whereas the first psalm praises the wise man who avoids the “counsel of the wicked” and the “way of sinners” (Ps. 1:1), Jeremiah instead wonders, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jer. 12:1). Psalm 1 uses the same Hebrew root to describe the wise man who receives the promise (“In all that he does, he prospers”; Ps. 1:3). It likewise ought to be the righteous who flourish “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season” (Ps. 1:3), but Jeremiah complains that the treacherous appear to receive God’s blessing (“You plant them, and they take root; they grow and produce fruit”; Jer. 12:2). The prophet clearly knows the wisdom traditions of Psalm 1 (cf. Jer. 17:7–8), but in this complaint he has turned them upside down. Is Psalm 1 no longer true?

Before this parody of Psalm 1 becomes too grotesque, Jeremiah also reuses the psalm’s language to confess, “You, O Lord, know me” (Jer. 12:3), much like the “Lord knows the way of the righteous” (Ps. 1:6). His earlier appeal to the “Lord of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind” (Jer. 11:20), resurfaces here in the intensely personal confession, “You see me, and test my heart toward you” (12:3). The prophet Jeremiah is thus able to redirect his earlier language of being threatened “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter” (11:19) outward toward his enemies through the demand that Yahweh would treat them “like sheep for the slaughter” (12:3).

All is not resolved for Jeremiah, though, since Yahweh has not yet made good on his promise to repay the wicked (cf. 11:21–23). The prophet’s lament of “How long?” indicates that, in the meantime, the polluting sins of the people cause the land to mourn for itself and all the creatures Yahweh has set in Judah (v. 4; cf. 4:28; Hos. 4:3). More damningly than this, the people of Judah even have the gall to claim that Yahweh is blind to their actions: “He will not see our latter end” (Jer. 12:4). Now that Jeremiah has thrown down the gauntlet by pointing out injustices in a just God’s world (cf. 12:1), how will Yahweh respond?

12:5–6 The challenge raised by the prophet leads to a pointed rejoinder from Yahweh. Here the imagery of racing with men and competing with horses (vv. 5–6) is often taken as a positive example of how “to live life at its best—to fuse freedom and spontaneity with purpose and meaning.”49 This idealized understanding, however, is truer to an American tendency to romanticize horses as paragons of rugged individualism (as in the use of mustangs on the prairie as cultural icon) than to Jeremiah’s ancient Near Eastern context, in which these imposing animals were symbols of imperialism or even mythical power (e.g., Ex. 14:9; Jer. 4:13; 46:9; Ezek. 26:7).50 Being forced to “run with the horses” amid a barren landscape would have evoked terror instead of sentimentality for the original audience of this book.

Yahweh is therefore not commending Jeremiah in these verses. Rather, the lesser-to-greater comparisons between racing with men (v. 5a) and competing with horses (v. 5b), as well as living “in a safe land” (v. 5c) and dwelling “in the thicket of the Jordan” (v. 5d), serve a different purpose: a harbinger of tougher trials for which Jeremiah must prepare. His present difficulties seem extreme to him, but in retrospect they will be easy races in a safe land compared to the faster races and harder terrain to come as Jeremiah and his people go into exile. In this and others of the “Confessions,” the content of Jeremiah’s lament (vv. 1–4) is not incorrect (for Yahweh will later take up its themes in vv. 7–13) as much as the tone of his complaint borders on irreverence. But even in such reprimands of the prophet (e.g., 15:19–21) Yahweh offers solemn encouragement for the prophet to persevere despite difficulties. Vigilance on his part is necessary due to the family members’ plotting treachery against him (v. 6; cf. v. 1), even as Yahweh will ultimately do his part in judging their sins (11:21–23).

12:7–13 Yahweh’s determination to vindicate innocent sufferers like Jeremiah is rooted in the fact that he is numbered among those who have suffered on Judah’s account. Compared to the somewhat didactic reprimand of Jeremiah in verses 5–6, Yahweh’s rebuke against Judah is stinting and impassioned in tone. The four “I” assertions of verses 7–8 are particularly poignant: “I have forsaken my house” (v. 7), “I have abandoned my heritage” (v. 7), “I have given [over] the beloved of my soul” (v. 7), and “therefore I hate her” (v. 8). For Judah to be described successively as an ancestral family, a family estate, a beloved wife, and a banished wife shows the depth of Yahweh’s distress that arises when his compassion and justice meet.

Yet we must not go too far in understanding the intensity of these emotions to mean that the divine personality is at war with itself.51 It is noteworthy that Yahweh’s anger is entirely justified in the fact that his people have betrayed him in unconscionable ways: speaking against this God of love (v. 8b) and violating the fertile inheritance he lavished on them (vv. 10–11; cf. 11:5). What is more, Judah’s “heritage” (Hb. nakhalah) in the land is the focus of this section (cf. 12:4) in no less than five ways: as (1) the lair of scavengers against which predatory nations will gather (v. 9); (2) the victim of Judah’s sins (v. 10); (3) the personification of an innocent sufferer crying out to God (v. 11); (4) the desolated wilderness in which no creature will dwell securely after Yahweh’s judgment (v. 12); and (5) the metaphorical vehicle to portray how Judah’s sinful sowing has yielded destructive reaping (v. 13). The agents of judgment are both humans and animals, and the nature of divine causality may be indirect or direct, but all that will come upon Judah is “because of the fierce anger of the Lord” (v. 13).

12:14–17 A final aspect of this chapter’s description of a nation’s land as its God-given “heritage” (Hb. nakhalah) remains to be explored. Just as it is true that Judah’s “heritage” was abandoned by Yahweh (v. 7) for being guilty of sin (v. 8) and was thus handed over to be prey (v. 9), it is also the case that the nations who invade Judah are guilty of violating the sanctity of Yahweh’s “heritage” (v. 14). Notable in this verse is the allusion to Jeremiah 1:10 in that Yahweh will both “pluck up” (nathats) pagan nations from their land and move to “pluck up” (nathats) Judah’s exiles from among them. Once all nations have lost their “heritage” by suffering exile (Israel and Judah included), Yahweh promises to give this “heritage” back to them (12:15). All nations will thus be judged fairly for their sins, even (and especially!) when they are committed while the nations are serving as Yahweh’s chosen instruments. God’s lack of a double standard toward all peoples is a prominent theme in this book, notably in chapters 25; 45–51.

Return from exile confronts each nation with a pivotal choice, Israel and Judah again not excepted. Amazingly, pagan nations will receive an opportunity to learn the faith and ethics of Israel/Judah, instead of the other way around. What is more, these nations will even be accorded equal status to Yahweh’s chosen people if only they turn to him by swearing, “As the Lord lives,” rather than swearing by Baal, the impotent fertility god of Canaan (v. 16) who needed to die and come back to life every year (cf. 1 Kings 18). Failure to respond to such a marvelous offer, however, means that a nation will suffer ultimate destruction (Jer. 12:17). This verse’s threat to “pluck up” (nathats) and “destroy” (ʾabad) echoes the botanical verbs that feature in Jeremiah 1:10 and run throughout the book (e.g., 4:26; 18:7).

Jeremiah has been chastised for his complaints (12:5–6), and will continue to be (15:19–21), but the present act of speaking Yahweh’s words to nations besides Israel/Judah means that he remains faithful as a “prophet to the nations” (1:5, 10). Judgment or salvation is available to all individuals and nations who respond sincerely to Yahweh (cf. 18:7–12).