Original Meaning

JEREMIAH 17 CONTINUES the pattern of collecting the prophet’s disparate sayings according to topics. Readers will find more than one theme or subject matter in these verses, although they are concerned primarily to communicate the reasons for the failure of Judah and Jerusalem, primarily its sinful condition. This chapter offers no indication of a precise setting in Jeremiah’s life for this report or any of the poetic material.

The prophet has adopted and adapted some well-known traditions in both poetry and prose to make his case. One theme is the corruption of the human heart (17:1, 5, 9). Another appears to be an adaptation of Psalm 1 to indicate the self-incurred failure of human pride (Jer. 17:5–8). Verses 9–11 are almost proverbial in form and draw on the sapiential traditions (cf. Prov. 16:1–9). There is even praise of God in this chapter (Jer. 17:12–14), which leads the prophet to lament his circumstances and to pray for judgment on his persecutors (17:15–18). Finally, in a prose report the Lord urges Jeremiah to stand in public and proclaim the significance of the Sabbath as a means of honoring God and preserving a form of spiritual order to public life (17:19–27). Failure to keep the Sabbath will result in judgment on Judah and Jerusalem; thus the chapter ends with the familiar claim of divine judgment to come.

17:1–4. This brief passage—that Judah has rejected God’s instruction and will be judged accordingly—is similar to many preceding parts. For example, Jeremiah spoke metaphorically about the heart before. Judah’s heart is in need of circumcision (4:4; 9:25).1 The people are “senseless” (5:21; lit., “without heart”); they have “stubborn and rebellious hearts” (5:23; 7:24; 9:14; 11:8). Here the metaphor is also a play on the formulation of the Decalogue as the content of God’s covenant with Israel: “He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets” (Deut. 4:13). Judah’s sinfulness is described as “engraved with an iron tool … on the tablets of their hearts.” This metaphor underscores the indelible nature of sin and its corrosive effects on the people.

Verse 2 mentions the “Asherah poles” (NIV) as evidence for Judah’s defection from the Lord, along with the people’s embracing of false worship. The Hebrew word is ʾ ^ašerim, a plural word literally meaning Asherahs. The NIV assumes that the plural refers to a cultic implement, and this is likely correct, whether a pole or tree or some other totem object. Asherah is also the name of a goddess worshiped in the ancient world. In recent years several inscriptions have been discovered in and around the ancient territory of Judah that mention Asherah in the singular. On more than one occasion there is the reference to “YHWH and his Asherah.” These texts demonstrate a kind of unhealthy syncretism, if not outright polytheism, from the time of Jeremiah and other prophets.2 According to 2 Kings 23:4–7, part of King Josiah’s reforming measures in the temple precincts were the destruction of vessels made for Baal and Asherah, the removal of the Asherah (an idol? NIV “Asherah pole”), and the tearing down of weaving areas for Asherah.

Once more the prophet employs the familiar metaphor of inheritance (naḥ^ala) to speak of judgment. Canaan is actually the Lord’s inheritance, but the people were granted a life in it as part of God’s covenant promises to them. Punishment means they will lose their place in his inheritance.3 This is tantamount to saying they have lost their place in the household (i.e., family) of the Lord.

17:5–8. This passage reads like a “play” (i.e., a serious pun) on Psalm 1. Jeremiah draws a contrast between the one who is cursed (’arur) and the one who is blessed (baruk).4 These two terms are used in the great listings of curses and blessings in Deuteronomy 27–28. The contrast is between trust in human effort and design, and reliance on God.

17:9–13. These verses elaborate on the theme of the previous unit. Human commitments, and especially the deeds that proceed from them, have consequences that an observant person should take to heart. Two verses are like a proverb in their brief “systems analysis.” (1) Verse 9 represents the heart as the seat of human deceitfulness. The depths of its possible depravity are difficult to measure. Indeed, only God can accurately measure it. According to verse 10, this knowledge, which belongs to God, enables him to “reward a man according to his conduct.” The connection between act and consequence is important in the wisdom traditions of the Old Testament (e.g., Proverbs). Such a connection is further elaboration of the blessing-and-curse contrast presented in the previous unit. Part of what God does in overseeing blessings and curses is to connect the disposition of the human heart and the deeds that flow from it. This is not a law of physics but the operation of a sovereign God, who cannot be bound rigidly by a formula.

(2) Verse 11 is another proverbial statement: Riches gained unjustly are like a bird hatching eggs it did not lay. Here again the connection between act and consequence is set out. Jeremiah’s use of this proverb suggests a connection between Judah’s “gains” from idolatry and the sad loss of its land and freedom. Only a fool (nabal) would want such gains.

17:12–13. These two verses join the blessing of the sanctuary (almost certainly the one in Jerusalem) with God’s presence as “the spring of living water” (cf. 2:13). That God is “the hope of Israel” has been used by Jeremiah before (14:8).

17:14–18. Here is another of Jeremiah’s laments. Verse 14 draws a connection between healing and saving. Healing likely means the kind of restoration of emotional spirit and physical well-being that only God can grant. Since Jeremiah has been the object of scorn and ridicule as well as physical oppression (e.g., 20:1–6; 38:1–13), his acceptance by God is crucial to his survival. In verse 15 the prophet reports to God that he has been verbally abused by those who ridicule his prophecies. Their question (“Where is the word of the LORD?”) points to the as-yet unfulfilled prophecies of disaster.

In poignant fashion the prophet reminds God that he has walked the path of discipleship. He has taken no joy in announcing a day of despair. It is almost as if waiting for the prophecies of disaster to be fulfilled has made Jeremiah feel separated from God, so he prays that God will be his “refuge”5 when disaster falls. He also prays that God will deal strictly with his persecutors, so that they will know for certain that the prophecies Jeremiah delivered have come to pass and that in opposing Jeremiah they were opposing the word and prophet sent by God.

17:19–29. This is an autobiographical report in prose. It functions like a sermon on the fourth commandment of the Decalogue (Deut. 5:12–15) to keep the Sabbath day holy. Some scholars see in this section an example of editorial work, whereby the compilers of Jeremiah’s prophecies added a statement on the importance of the Sabbath for exilic or early postexilic readers. Since it is generally acknowledged that the institution of the Sabbath grew in importance in the exilic and postexilic periods, there is a certain plausibility to this conclusion.

It is just as plausible, however, that one of Jeremiah’s own forms of prophetic indictment includes a reference to the people’s failure to maintain the integrity of the Sabbath day and that this indictment is intended to instruct the communities in exile, who had questions about the status of their covenant relationship with the Lord. In his temple sermon, Jeremiah charged the people with several failures, including theft, murder, and perjury (Jer. 7:9). These terms come from the Decalogue. The charge of violating the Sabbath is simply another example of his using normative covenant traditions in his critique of the people.

Jeremiah’s minisermon on the Sabbath, furthermore, has the familiar “two-way” formulation. This is entirely in keeping with the poetic texts that precede it. For example, the blessing or curse formulation in 17:5–8 is a brief exposition of the two-way paradigm. Here, keeping the Sabbath holy will result in receiving God’s blessing, while failure to do so will bring destruction on Jerusalem.

Note that Jeremiah’s specific accusation concerns carrying loads on the Sabbath, (i.e., working rather than refraining from labor). Resting from work helped make the Sabbath day holy. If God’s people honor him by keeping the Sabbath, then not only Jerusalem but the various regions of Judah will be inhabited, and right worship will be offered to the Lord. This is the one place in the chapter that suggests a role for repentance and renewed obedience to God’s law.

Bridging Contexts

THE SINFUL HUMAN CONDITION. The repeated references to the corruption of the heart in chapter 17 indicate the seriousness of Judah’s predicament; this failure is deeply rooted in the essence of Judah’s identity before God. The same sense of corruption and failure is true in the broader critique in 17:5–11. Jeremiah’s portrayal of human fallibility has links with other biblical writers (Old and New Testament),6 who in varying degrees see sinfulness not just as a harmful deed or process but as a condition of human existence.

The prophetic critique, generally speaking, saw human sinfulness as a condition that mitigated against Israel or Judah’s ability to reform themselves. If the human heart was corrupt and seemingly incapable of reformation, then Ezekiel, Jeremiah’s younger contemporary, would proclaim nevertheless that Judah should make for itself a new heart and new spirit (Ezek. 18:31). But can reformation be done adequately from the human side? Note how this same prophet proclaimed that God would be the One to give his people a new heart and spirit so that they might walk in obedience to his commandments (Ezek. 11:19; 36:26; cf. Deut. 30:6; Jer. 24:7).

Corruption is not something to be defined in rational terms, for it can manifest itself in mysterious ways, nor is it amenable to easy explanation or removal. Indeed, sinfulness as a condition of human existence is not something to be “fixed” by human effort. Jesus noted that it is not what goes into a person that causes permanent defilement (such as a particular food), but what proceeds from the human heart (i.e., the volitional center of an individual) that demonstrates corruption (Mark 7:20–23). Paul assumed the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the human species, and he understood the advent of Christ as God’s decisive countermeasure (Rom. 1:16–3:26).

Modern Western people begin from a doctrine of individuality that makes the corporate thinking of biblical writers more difficult to grasp. One of the necessary bridges from Jeremiah’s world to modernity is to work with the more individualistic mentality of the present so that people can affirm the truths of a common humanity (before God!) and the insights of someone like Reinhold Niebuhr, whose classic work on Moral Man and Immoral Society7 points out how all people participate in a social identity that defines, at least in part, who they are.

A primary reason why human sinfulness is so devastating is that the condition is terminal. Corruption and sin beget more of the same, and that vicious cycle can only be broken from God’s side. The rhetorical question of Paul, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24), has been answered from God’s side. Jeremiah’s own proclamation fits this orientation: Only God can heal Judah’s brokenness. In Jeremiah’s world (or that of the New Testament), people did not think in modern psychological terms, and such concepts as repentance or new birth were not submerged into a therapeutic model (as is often the case in modernity). It is not necessarily wrong to cast the human plight in behavioral terms such as addiction or compulsion as long as one acknowledges the terminal condition and human culpability (the scriptural claim of sinfulness).

The Sabbath. Jeremiah’s words about the Sabbath partake of the larger biblical teaching about the sanctity of the seventh day and the requirement that Israel be holy as the Lord their God is holy (Lev. 19:2). The sanctification of the Sabbath is the bridge commandment in the Decalogue (Ex. 20:8–11), mediating between those commands to relate rightly to God (20:3–7) and those commands to relate rightly to one’s family and neighbor (20:12–17). Sabbath-keeping is a pattern rooted in divine disclosure (Gen. 2:1–3) and an activity blessed by God. Although Jesus offered severe criticism of a legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath (e.g., Mark 2:24–3:6), he acknowledged its divine origin and purpose.

The shift on the part of most churches to worship on the first day of the week (Sunday) is an example of bridging the gap between Jeremiah’s world and Christian affirmation. Christ’s resurrection on the Sunday morning of the first Easter has given a new orientation to the Sabbath injunctions for rest and holiness.

Contemporary Significance

THOUGHTS ON HUMAN SINFULNESS. Jeremiah’s assumptions about human sinfulness contribute to a fuller biblical doctrine of sin. In contemporary Western culture, where individual culpability is seldom discussed apart from the decision of law courts, a concept of corporate human failure has also waned as a significant issue for discussion. Recovering the doctrine of the corporate nature of sin and its universal effects on individuals is a necessary condition for the proclamation that God has spoken decisively to the world in Jesus Christ.

In the modern West, among the places perhaps to start a conversation is the prevalence of addictive behavior, racism, and random violence. All three of these phenomena in Western societies are symptomatic of larger issues of human existence, and they stand under the judgment of God’s Word. Nevertheless, they defy easy explanation or cure. They are irrational, and they lead to more of the same in spirals of self-destruction.

Perhaps another way to hear these words of Jeremiah for today is to see the increasing secularization of society as a judgment rooted in the hubris of the human heart. Most versions of secularization in the West (myths of progress and technological security) are ultimately foolish attempts at self-deification. Their fruits will not be technological emancipation from human problems, but like the partridge with eggs it did not hatch, humankind will find that it does not possess the key to its own salvation.

Keeping the Sabbath. Jeremiah informs his contemporaries that keeping the Sabbath is one of the keys to honoring God. In essence he says: “Don’t work.” There is nothing explicit about worshiping on the Sabbath in Jeremiah’s minisermon. In fact, one can search the whole Bible and find little about worshiping on the Sabbath. This fact should not be misunderstood; the Bible has a lot to say about the worship of God, but the Sabbath day is not the place for that discussion. “Don’t work,” Jeremiah says. If you go to the Decalogue, it is the same. There is nothing direct about worship in the fourth commandment; rather, it is to set the Sabbath day apart. That is what holiness means. Even God followed that pattern in creation (Gen. 1:24–31).

For many people, it is easy to draw a negative image from the insistence on “no work,” and even easier to think immediately of Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Many sermons have been preached about Jewish legalism and the Sabbath with the goal of convincing Christians that Sunday (the Christian “Sabbath”) should not fall prey to Pharisaical legalism. Of course Christians don’t want to be legalists, but isn’t it ironic that the Sabbath commandment not to work has become identified in the minds of some Christians with works righteousness and legalism, a kind of external religion? Christians don’t want to make the Sabbath rest a negative institution, but does this commendable goal also inevitably blunt the force of the Sabbath commandment for modern appropriation?

Christians don’t have to identify the Sabbath day with Saturday or Sunday nor think of a Sabbath rest in a legalistic way as a twenty-four-hour period (Col. 2:16–17). But what should they do? This will vary somewhat from culture to culture, but for many middle-class Christians in North America, perhaps the Sabbath commandment can point to a way of living that says work and busy schedules do not define us. Rather than thinking about the Sabbath as a legalistic prop for works righteousness, perhaps one should think of the Sabbath rest as a supreme example of God’s grace. What could be more grace oriented than a refusal to live by work and through human achievement? Perhaps a Christian Sabbath can become a sign in a busy, tension-packed world that disciples will not live by work alone but through the rest and renewal that comes from God. Perhaps the sanctifying of a day or period in the week for rest can become a provisional illustration to the world of faithful Christian existence, where one is initiated in the process of loving God and enjoying him forever.