The Consuming Word and the Coming Fury Text: Jeremiah 5:14-17
Introduction: When God Stops Pleading
There comes a point in the downward spiral of a rebellious people when God's warnings shift from pleading invitations to stark declarations of judgment. We are a people who love to think of God's Word as a comforting balm, a sweet honey, a lamp to our feet. And it is all of those things, but only for those who receive it in faith. For those who dismiss it, who mock it, who say in their hearts, "It is not He; neither shall evil come upon us," that same Word undergoes a terrifying transformation. It becomes a fire. It becomes a hammer. It becomes the very instrument of their destruction.
Jeremiah has been sent on a fool's errand. God told him to run through the streets of Jerusalem and see if he could find just one man who deals honestly and seeks the truth, and for that one man's sake, He would pardon the city. But he finds none. The poor are brutishly ignorant and the rich have altogether broken the yoke and burst the bonds. They are well-fed, sleek stallions, each neighing after his neighbor's wife. And when confronted with the Word of the Lord, they dismiss it as so much wind. They have lied about Yahweh. They have said He will do nothing.
This is the context for our passage. This is not a God who is flying off the handle. This is a covenant Lord who has patiently endured generations of spiritual adultery, who has sent prophet after prophet, who has stricken them with lesser judgments to bring them to their senses, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces harder than rock. And so, the time for pleading is over. The time for devouring has come. God is about to answer their flippant dismissal of His Word by making that very Word the fire that consumes them. We live in a generation that treats the Word of God with a similar contempt. We think we can redefine what God has defined, ignore what God has commanded, and escape what God has promised to judge. This passage is therefore a terrifying and necessary warning for us. When men treat the Word of God as wood for their intellectual fires of mockery, God makes them wood for the fire of His judgment.
The Text
Therefore, thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts, “Because you have spoken this word, Behold, I am making My words in your mouth fire And this people wood, and it will devour them. Behold, I am bringing a nation against you from afar, O house of Israel,” declares Yahweh. “It is an enduring nation; It is an ancient nation, A nation whose tongue you do not know, Nor can you understand what they say. Their quiver is like an open grave; All of them are mighty men. They will devour your harvest and your food; They will devour your sons and your daughters; They will devour your flocks and your herds; They will devour your vines and your fig trees; They will demolish with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust.
(Jeremiah 5:14-17 LSB)
The Prophet's Mouth, God's Fire (v. 14)
The judgment begins with a terrifying commissioning of Jeremiah's own ministry.
"Therefore, thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts, 'Because you have spoken this word, Behold, I am making My words in your mouth fire And this people wood, and it will devour them.'" (Jeremiah 5:14)
Notice the direct cause and effect. "Because you have spoken this word," that is, the word of dismissal, the word that says God is an absentee landlord and judgment is a fairytale, "therefore... I am making My words in your mouth fire." The people thought Jeremiah's words were just hot air, just "wind" as they said in verse 13. God says, fine, you want to talk about my Word's properties? Let's talk. It is not wind, it is fire. And you are not stone, you are kindling.
This is a fundamental principle of how God interacts with the world. His Word is never neutral. It never returns to Him void. It always accomplishes the purpose for which He sends it. To the repentant, it is a refining fire, burning away the dross. To the rebellious, it is a consuming fire. The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. The same gospel that is an aroma of life to life for those who are being saved is an aroma of death to death for those who are perishing. You do not get to decide what the Word of God does. You only get to decide how you will receive it, and that decision determines what it does to you.
For Jeremiah, this must have been a heavy burden. His job was not to win friends and influence people. His job was to be a walking, talking instrument of divine judgment. Every sermon he preached, every warning he delivered, was not just a message; it was the very means by which God's fiery judgment was being applied to the dry wood of Judah. The prophet's words do not merely predict the future; they enact it. When a true prophet speaks, reality rearranges itself accordingly. This is the power of the delegated Word of God.
The Instrument of Wrath (v. 15-16)
God now identifies the physical instrument that will carry out the sentence pronounced by the fiery Word. The Babylonians are coming.
"Behold, I am bringing a nation against you from afar, O house of Israel,” declares Yahweh. “It is an enduring nation; It is an ancient nation, A nation whose tongue you do not know, Nor can you understand what they say. Their quiver is like an open grave; All of them are mighty men." (Jeremiah 5:15-16 LSB)
God's sovereignty is absolute. He says, "I am bringing a nation against you." Nebuchadnezzar may think he is acting on his own geopolitical ambitions, but he is merely an axe in the hand of the Lord. God raises up nations and He casts them down. He uses pagan, godless empires to chastise His own covenant people when they become pagan and godless themselves. This is a hard truth, but a biblical one. God used Assyria, the rod of His anger, against the northern kingdom, and now He is summoning Babylon against the south.
The description of this nation is meant to inspire terror. They are from "afar," making them seem alien and inexorable. They are "enduring" and "ancient," not some fly-by-night tribe but a historic, formidable power. Their foreignness is emphasized: "whose tongue you do not know." There will be no pleading for mercy, no negotiation, no understanding. This is a key feature of the covenant curses described in Deuteronomy 28, that God would bring against them a nation of a foreign tongue that would show them no mercy (Deut. 28:49-50). This is not random bad luck; this is covenant lawsuit.
And their character is death. "Their quiver is like an open grave." This is a horrifying image. Every arrow they possess is destined for a corpse. Their arrows do not miss. When they open their quivers, think of it as opening a tomb to receive a new resident. They are not soldiers; they are mobile gravediggers. And they are all "mighty men," gibborim in the Hebrew. There are no weak links in this chain of judgment. God is sending His best to carry out this destruction.
The Logic of Total Devouring (v. 17)
The final verse in this section outlines the comprehensive nature of the destruction. It is a systematic undoing of every blessing of the covenant.
"They will devour your harvest and your food; They will devour your sons and your daughters; They will devour your flocks and your herds; They will devour your vines and your fig trees; They will demolish with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust." (Jeremiah 5:17 LSB)
The repetition of the word "devour" is intentional. It links back to the fiery Word of God that "will devour them" in verse 14. The Babylonian army is simply the teeth and stomach of God's fiery judgment. The devouring is total. It is agricultural: harvest, food, flocks, herds, vines, fig trees. All the produce of the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey, will be consumed by foreigners. This is a direct reversal of the covenant blessing.
It is familial: "They will devour your sons and your daughters." The covenant promise was to be fruitful and multiply, to be a great nation. Now their posterity, their future, will be consumed. This is the most brutal aspect of the judgment, striking at the very heart of a parent's love and a nation's hope.
And finally, it is military and religious. "They will demolish with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust." Here is the root of their sin, plainly stated. Where was their trust? Not in Yahweh, the God of hosts. Their trust was in their military defenses, their thick walls, their strategic locations. They trusted in the arm of flesh. And God says that the very thing you trust in instead of Me will be utterly demolished. This is the logic of all idolatry. Whatever you trust in apart from God will not only fail you, it will be spectacularly destroyed before your eyes, so that you are left with nothing but the rubble of your false faith.
Conclusion: Fleeing the Fire
This is a grim and terrifying passage. It shows us a God who is holy and just, a God whose Word cannot be trifled with. The people of Judah thought they could live in open rebellion, trust in their own strength, and pay lip service to God, saying "The Lord lives," while swearing falsely. They thought God's Word was just wind. They were wrong. It was fire.
The application for us is straightforward and sharp. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. Our culture is sowing the same seeds of rebellion. We have dismissed God's Word on creation, on marriage, on sexuality, on justice, on salvation. We have put our trust in our technology, our economy, our military, our own supposed goodness. We are trusting in fortified cities of our own making.
And God's Word comes to us today with the same two-edged nature. For those who hear it and harden their hearts, it is a fire that consumes. It is a declaration of a judgment that is coming, a devouring that is certain. But for those who hear it and repent, for those who flee from the wrath to come, this fiery Word points to the one who absorbed the fire for us.
On the cross, Jesus Christ stood in the place of the rebellious wood. The full, fiery wrath of God against sin, the devouring judgment that we deserved, was poured out upon Him. He was consumed so that we would not have to be. He faced the open grave of God's judgment so that for us, the grave could become a doorway to life. The choice before us is the same choice that was before Judah. You can stand before the Word of God as dry wood, or you can hide behind the one who was burned for you. You can trust in your own fortified cities, or you can trust in the cross. One leads to demolition. The other leads to a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.