5:1–5 These verses recall the ancient dialogue concerning the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:22–33). But rather than Abraham pleading with God on behalf of the righteous who might be in these cities, it is Yahweh who commissions both Jeremiah and his compatriots (the four verbs to “run,” “look,” “take note,” and “search” are plural commands in Hb.) to locate anyone “who does justice and seeks truth” (Jer. 5:1). Abraham’s intention in Genesis is to avoid any possibility that Yahweh would “sweep away the righteous with the wicked” (Gen. 18:23), but in Jeremiah 5 it becomes apparent that no such moral mixture exists.

Any search for the righteous in Jerusalem is a fool’s errand, for its inhabitants are all wicked. Their failure to uphold “justice” (mishpat; Jer. 5:1) is more than a failure of Judah’s legal system, for this term in Hebrew denotes the covenant community’s ethical obligation to protect the vulnerable among them (e.g., 7:5; 9:24; 22:3). To seek “truth” (or “faithfulness,” emunah; 5:1) is similarly relational in referring to the honesty and integrity of one’s words (e.g., 7:28; 9:3). Incredibly, Yahweh has set the bar so low for forgiving Jerusalem that a single person in the city who had these virtues (v. 1) and did not swear falsely (v. 2) would result in forgiveness for everyone (v. 1g)! Jerusalem has nonetheless degenerated into something worse than Sodom and Gomorrah centuries earlier: whereas Abraham thought he might negotiate the threshold for judgment down to ten people in those proverbially wicked cities, Yahweh hints that not one such person will be found in his chosen city.

Jeremiah offers a conflicted reply (vv. 3–5). On the one hand, he echoes Yahweh’s insistence that “truth/faithfulness” (cf. v. 1) is what he seeks but has not found among this numb people who continue to refuse divine discipline (v. 3). On the other hand, the prophet voices the hope that his people may be unresponsive due to either ignorance or poverty (“poor” in v. 4 can mean both). Surely the powerful in Judah who are spared these handicaps will respond (v. 5a–d)? But whether poor or rich, ignorant or educated, Jeremiah discovers that apostasy knows no class distinctions: “They all alike had broken the yoke; they had burst the bonds” (v. 5e–f). Judah has sought to overthrow the gracious rule of the God who delivered his people in the exodus (cf. 2:20).

5:6–11 The apostate nation that imagines itself to be free from Yahweh (as exemplified in Judah’s cry, “I will not serve [Yahweh]”; 2:20) will soon find itself “free” to be chased down by its predators. The lion, wolf, and leopard (5:6) represent a range of natural habitats and hunting tendencies. Taking this trio as a figurative expression for enemies with no weaknesses, it becomes clear that Judah will be pursued in any and every place without the protection afforded by Yahweh’s care (v. 5; cf. 4:7; Hos. 13:7). This destruction is nevertheless self-inflicted because of Judah’s choice to revel in many sins (Jer. 5:6) and pursue false gods shamelessly like beasts in heat (vv. 7–8). Yahweh’s deep exasperation with his people is evident in two sets of rhetorical questions framing this paragraph section: (1) “How can I pardon you?” (v. 7) and (2) “Shall I not punish them for these things? . . . Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” (v. 9). The answer to the first question about punishment is a resounding no, while to the second about vengeance it is a qualified yes (on which cf. the Response section on 4:5–31).

Yahweh turns in 5:10–11 to deploy the predators (i.e., foreign nations) mentioned in verse 6. Now, however, Judah is depicted as an immobile and helpless vineyard rather than a fugitive on the move (cf. v. 5). This shift in spatial imagery corresponds to a milder command than previously (cf. 4:7) for Judah’s enemies to “destroy, but make not a full end” (5:10; cf. 4:27). The commission of the enemies is to prune away the bad branches in Israel and Judah (5:10–11) instead of completely ransacking them. Later in the book, this boundary set by Yahweh will provide the ethical basis for confronting Babylon due to its cruelty toward Judah (e.g., Jeremiah 50–51).

5:12–29 At this moment before the onset of exile, though, the theological problem of unrequited evil centers on Judah and not Babylon. Verses 12–13 quote the false prophets in Judah’s midst, ancient peddlers of a form of “prosperity theology”—the attractive heresy that divine judgment and/or suffering could never be the fate of God’s people. Other passages in Jeremiah cite the false prophets’ teaching that Jerusalem will always prosper (e.g., 6:14; 8:8; 23:17), even as that which masquerades as a theology of assurance merely provides cover for currying favor with the city’s elites and propping up immoral lifestyles (e.g., 23:14–17). Yahweh decrees that the opposite of what these false prophets say is precisely what will happen to them (5:13).

In response to the false prophets, verse 14 also contains Yahweh’s address to both Jeremiah as true prophet and the false prophets around him. The three references to “you/your” in verses 14–15 need special comment due to English’s limitations in rendering Hebrew’s second-person pronouns. Yahweh first speaks against the false prophets as a plural “you” in Hebrew for speaking lies about him (v. 14b). Turning to Jeremiah as a singular “you,” Yahweh places catalytic words (v. 14c–d) in his true prophet’s mouth. Finally, these words through Jeremiah will herald the coming of a foreign nation to consume a plural “you,” referring now to the entire “house of Israel” (v. 15). That nation will be a ravenous, destroying invader who devours Israel’s people and all the goods of the land (vv. 16–17). Here is an intentional overlap between the conceptual fields of Yahweh’s word as consuming fire (v. 14; cf. 4:4; 20:9) and Babylon’s arrival as consuming predator (5:15–17). The wordplay in these verses on the Hebrew verb ʾakal (“to eat, consume”) emphasizes how the God of Israel is sovereign even as he uses destructive human agents to fulfill his will.

Yet a disobedient nation continues to wonder, “Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?” (v. 19). This theological question about evil’s ultimate source is likely why Yahweh again insists that this punishment will be redemptive in the end. In addition to destruction being neither complete nor final (v. 18), Yahweh explains that exile in a foreign land is necessitated by Israel’s choice of foreign gods (v. 19). Idolatry is not merely wrong but self-destructive for its choice of useless and impotent gods (vv. 20–21) over Yahweh, who alone is Creator (v. 22). To cut oneself off from the Creator is also to remove creation’s good gifts, such as the rains so essential to Israel’s survival in a dry land (vv. 23–25).30

Rejection of the Creator also results in distortion of his image as found in humanity, the crown of creation. In contrast to Jeremiah’s earlier hope that he could reason with them (cf. 5:5), the rich and powerful grow even more so due to their scheming against the helpless (vv. 26–27) and their failure to uphold proper justice (v. 28). These verses contain a series of general allusions to the ethical abominations catalogued in other passages: (1) oppression of the orphan, widow, and sojourner (7:6); (2) practice of human sacrifice for venerating Canaanite gods (7:31; 32:35); and (3) the tendency of Judah’s kings to enlist vast armies of corvée labor for royal projects (22:13–15). This litany of sins means that the answer to Yahweh’s question is an unfortunate yes—“Shall I not punish them for these things? . . . Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” (5:29; cf. 4:14, 28). It is tragically accurate that Yahweh identifies Israel/Judah using the impersonal term “nation” (goy), with its pagan connotations (cf. 2:11; 5:9, 15). This insult means that the first audience of this “prophet to the nations” (1:5, 10) is his own apostate people.

5:30–31 The passage concludes by revisiting an earlier accusation against the false prophets (cf. vv. 12–13). Contrary to what Jeremiah’s audience would expect, Yahweh issues the surprise that the “appalling and horrible thing” (v. 30) is not Babylon and its despoiling armies. Instead, the greatest threat at hand is Judah’s conspiracy against Yahweh, which has taken hold at every level of society. Verse 31 lists three groups: false prophets who invent their own words but pass them off as Yahweh’s (e.g., 23:25–27), priests who join prophets in abusing their spiritual authority (e.g., 6:13; 20:1–7; 23:11), and the common people of Judah, who “love to have it so” (5:31). Later passages in Jeremiah will also confront Judah’s kings for their stake in Judah’s social hierarchy, which rewards prophets and priests for their false promises of prosperity (e.g., Jer. 23:25–39) while marginalizing Yahweh’s true servants, like Jeremiah, who face abuse for speaking the truth (e.g., ch. 28). The true prophet of Yahweh must speak truth in Judah’s halls of power, yet such figures in human history have never been welcome when doing so.