Commentary - Jeremiah 17:14-18

Bird's-eye view

In this brief but potent section of Jeremiah, the prophet turns from his public oracle concerning the man who trusts in man versus the man who trusts in Yahweh, and he makes the matter intensely personal. This is the prayer of a man who has been faithfully delivering God's word and has received nothing but scorn and derision for his trouble. The passage is a raw, honest cry to God, moving from a profound declaration of dependence to a faithful defense of his own ministry, and culminating in a robust, hard-as-nails imprecatory prayer against his persecutors. Jeremiah, caught between a holy God whose word burns in his bones and a hostile people who mock that word, does the only thing a righteous man can do: he takes his entire case to the high court of heaven. He asks for healing, for salvation, for vindication, and for raw justice. This is not the prayer of a man hedging his bets; it is the prayer of a man who knows that if God does not act, he is utterly lost. It is a model of faithful desperation.

The structure is straightforward. First, Jeremiah establishes his sole reliance upon God for salvation and defines God as the very substance of his praise (v. 14). Second, he lays out the complaint against him; the taunts of the wicked who demand to see the prophetic goods (v. 15). Third, he defends his own conduct as a faithful, uncomplaining shepherd before the all-knowing God (v. 16). Fourth, he pleads with God not to become an object of terror to him, reaffirming his trust in God as his refuge (v. 17). And last, he calls down covenantal curses upon his enemies, asking God to bring shame, dismay, and a "twofold crushing" upon them (v. 18). This is the prayer of the church militant, and it has much to teach us about how to stand when the world demands that we sit down and shut up.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This passage follows one of the most memorable sections in Jeremiah, the contrast between the cursed man who trusts in flesh and the blessed man who trusts in Yahweh (Jer 17:5-8), and the profound statement on the deceitfulness of the human heart (Jer 17:9-10). Jeremiah has just laid out a foundational principle of covenant life: trust in God brings blessing and life, while trust in man brings a curse and barrenness. Now, in our text, Jeremiah applies this principle to his own soul. He is living out the reality of being the "blessed man" whose trust is in Yahweh, yet he finds himself in a spiritual desert, surrounded by mockers who are demanding proof. His prayer is a plea for God to vindicate His own word and His own servant. The prophet is not just having a bad day; he is feeling the full weight of the nation's apostasy. His personal crisis is a microcosm of the national crisis. The people have abandoned the fountain of living waters (Jer 2:13), and now they mock the one man who is still standing by that fountain, telling them to come and drink.

Key Issues

The Hard Prayers of a Soft Heart

We modern evangelicals tend to be a soft lot. We have been catechized by a therapeutic culture to believe that any negative emotion is a sign of spiritual sickness. Anger, dismay, a desire for vindication, these are things to be confessed and medicated, not things to be brought before God in prayer. And so, when we come to a passage like this, we get squeamish. Jeremiah's prayer ends with a raw request for God to crush his enemies, twice. This doesn't sound very much like "bless those who persecute you."

But we must understand that the Bible is a robust book for a hard world. Imprecatory prayers, like this one, are not the vindictive ramblings of petty men. They are formal, legal appeals to the Judge of all the earth to do right. Jeremiah is not seeking personal revenge. He is seeking God's vindication. His enemies are not just his enemies; they are God's enemies. They are mocking the "word of Yahweh." This is high treason in the covenant kingdom. To pray for God to act against them is to pray for the establishment of God's own righteousness. These prayers are an expression of zeal for God's name and God's glory. A faith that has no room for imprecation is a faith that has lost its grip on the absolute antithesis between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Jeremiah's heart was soft toward God, which is precisely why his prayers against God's enemies were so hard.

Verse by Verse Commentary

14 Heal me, O Yahweh, and I will be healed; Save me and I will be saved, For You are my praise.

Jeremiah begins at the only place a man can begin, with a declaration of his complete and utter dependence on God. Notice the logic: "Heal me... and I will be healed." There is no other source of healing. If God does it, it gets done. If God does not do it, it will not happen. This is true for salvation as well. "Save me and I will be saved." Jeremiah is not looking to a committee, or to a change in his circumstances, or to his own resilience. He knows that true deliverance comes from God alone. This is the bedrock of Reformed theology, and it is the bedrock of all true prayer. And the ground for this confidence is stated at the end: "For You are my praise." This means that God is the object, the substance, and the cause of his praise. It is not that Jeremiah will praise God if He heals him. It is that God's very character is what makes Him praiseworthy, and this character is the foundation upon which Jeremiah builds his plea. He is, in effect, saying, "Be who You are, Lord, for Your character is my only hope and my highest boast."

15 Behold, they keep saying to me, “Where is the word of Yahweh? Let it come now!”

Here is the reason for the prayer. Jeremiah lays out the evidence for the prosecution. He is being constantly taunted by the intellectual and political elites of Jerusalem. For years, he has been preaching a message of impending judgment. He has been telling them that if they do not repent, Babylon will come and lay the city waste. But years have gone by, and things are still pretty much the same. So they mock him. "Where is this word you keep talking about, Jeremiah? Let's see it! Bring it on!" This is the ancient version of "pics or it didn't happen." It is the cynical sneer of the unbeliever who mistakes God's patience for God's nonexistence or impotence. They are not just questioning Jeremiah's prophetic credentials; they are challenging the very efficacy of God's own word. This is a high-handed, arrogant sin, and it cuts the prophet to the quick.

16 But as for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd after You, Nor have I longed for the sickening day; You Yourself know that the utterance of my lips Was in Your presence.

In response to their accusations, Jeremiah defends his own ministry, and he does so by appealing to the one witness who cannot be fooled: God Himself. First, he says he has not "hurried away from being a shepherd after You." That is, he has not abandoned his post. The pressure was immense, but he remained faithful to his calling to shepherd God's people, even when they were acting like wolves. Second, he says he has not "longed for the sickening day." He took no perverse delight in the message of judgment he was called to preach. He was not some crank who enjoyed predicting doom. The thought of Jerusalem's destruction was a "sickening day" to him. He was a patriot who loved his people. Finally, he makes a solemn appeal to God's omniscience: "You Yourself know that the utterance of my lips Was in Your presence." Everything he preached was open and before God. He had not cooked up this message in a back room. He spoke as a man standing before the face of God, delivering the words God had given him. His conscience was clear.

17 Do not be a terror to me; You are my refuge in the day of calamity.

This is a raw and vulnerable plea. The taunts of men were bad enough, but the one thing Jeremiah could not bear was the thought of God Himself turning against him. "Do not be a terror to me." When the whole world is against you, your only hope is that God is for you. But what if it feels like God is also against you? This is the dark night of the soul. Jeremiah feels the looming terror of being abandoned by God, and he recoils from it. He immediately counters this fear by faith, declaring what he knows to be true despite his feelings: "You are my refuge in the day of calamity." He preaches to his own soul. He reminds himself that the God who feels like a terror is in fact his only safe place. This is the fight of faith, waged in the midst of trouble.

18 Let those who pursue me be put to shame, but as for me, let me not be put to shame; Let them be dismayed, but let me not be dismayed. Bring on them a day of calamity, And crush them with twofold crushing!

And now we come to the hard part, the imprecation. Having established his dependence on God, the nature of the opposition, and the integrity of his own ministry, Jeremiah now formally calls for justice. Notice the careful parallels. He prays that the shame and dismay his enemies intend for him would be turned back upon their own heads. This is the lex talionis, the principle of retributive justice. He is asking God to make the punishment fit the crime. Then he gets brutally specific. "Bring on them a day of calamity." This is the very day they were mocking him about. He is saying, "Lord, answer their sarcastic prayer. They asked for the day of Yahweh to come, so let it come upon them in all its fury." And finally, "crush them with twofold crushing!" This is a request for a double portion of judgment, a theme we see elsewhere in Scripture for particularly grievous sins (cf. Rev 18:6). This is not a petty wish for revenge. It is a formal, legal petition for the covenant God to act decisively against covenant-breakers who are holding His word and His office in contempt. It is a prayer for the glory of God.

Application

Jeremiah's prayer is a tonic for our timid age. It teaches us, first, that all our spiritual health and safety is found in God alone. We are not healed or saved by our programs, our techniques, or our positive attitudes. We are healed and saved by God, full stop. Our only proper posture is one of radical dependence.

Second, it prepares us for the reality of mockery. If you stand on the word of God in a fallen world, you will be mocked. People will say, "Where is your God? Where are the promises He has made?" They will demand signs and wonders on their own terms. When this happens, we must not abandon our post. We must, like Jeremiah, appeal to the God who sees our hearts and knows our faithfulness, however imperfect.

Finally, this passage gives us permission to pray hard prayers. We live in a world that is in open rebellion against the living God. We see evil men prosper, and we see the righteous afflicted. It is not wrong to be angry about this. It is not wrong to ask God to do something about it. We are not to take vengeance into our own hands, but we are absolutely commanded to appeal to the righteous Judge. We can, and should, pray that God would bring the plans of wicked men to nothing. We should pray that He would confound them, put them to shame, and vindicate His own name. We do this not out of personal spite, but out of a deep love for God's glory and a longing for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And the ultimate vindication of God's word came not in the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., but at the cross, where God crushed His own Son with a twofold crushing for our sake, so that we who trust in Him would never be put to shame.