Commentary - Jeremiah 18:18-23

Bird's-eye view

Jeremiah 18:18-23 is a raw and visceral portion of Scripture, one that makes modern evangelicals nervous. After delivering a stark warning from God using the metaphor of the potter and the clay, a warning that contained a gracious offer of relenting if the people would only repent (Jer. 18:8), the prophet is met not with contrition but with conspiracy. The response of the people is to plot against the messenger. This passage, then, records Jeremiah's response to their treachery. It is a prayer, but not the sort you are likely to hear in your small group. It is an imprecatory prayer, a calling down of divine curses upon the heads of God's enemies. Jeremiah, having faithfully interceded for these very people, now turns and faithfully calls for God's righteous judgment to fall upon them. This is not petty vindictiveness; it is a prophet aligning his heart with the just decrees of a holy God against covenant-breakers who have set their faces like flint against Him.

The passage serves as a potent reminder that rebellion against God is not a light thing. It has consequences. It also demonstrates the profound personal cost of prophetic ministry. Jeremiah is not a detached orator; he is a man deeply wounded by the rejection of his people, a people he has loved and prayed for. His prayer, shocking as it may be to our sanitized sensibilities, is an honest cry to the only one who can execute true justice. It is a surrender of vengeance into the hands of God, which is precisely where it belongs. In this, Jeremiah is a type of Christ, who was also plotted against, betrayed, and who will one day execute perfect judgment.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This section follows directly on the heels of the famous passage at the potter's house (Jer. 18:1-12). There, God established His absolute sovereignty over the nations, including Judah. He is the potter, they are the clay. He can make, and He can remake. Crucially, that demonstration of sovereignty included an offer of mercy: if the nation turned from its evil, God would relent from the disaster He had planned. The people's response in verse 12 was one of defiant despair: "It's no use! For we will walk according to our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart." Our current text, then, is the next logical step in their rebellion. Having rejected God's word, they now seek to eliminate God's spokesman.

This passage is one of several "confessions" or "laments" of Jeremiah (see also Jer. 11, 15, 17, 20), where the prophet pours out his personal anguish to the Lord. These sections give us a startlingly intimate look at the emotional and spiritual toll of being a faithful prophet in a faithless time. They reveal a man wrestling with rejection, betrayal, and the profound wickedness of the people he was called to serve.

Key Issues

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 18 Then they said, “Come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah.

The response to a gracious, albeit stern, word from the Lord is not introspection or repentance, but conspiracy. Notice the dark fellowship here: "Come and let us..." Sin loves company. They gather together to scheme. And what is their plan? To "devise plans." This is the same Hebrew root word God used in verse 11 when He said, "Behold, I am...devising a plan against you." They are mimicking God, but in a perverse, rebellious way. God devises a plan of judgment to bring about repentance; they devise a plan of malice to silence the truth. This is the creature setting himself up against the Creator in the most direct way imaginable.

Surely the law is not going to perish from the priest, nor counsel to the wise man, nor the divine word to the prophet!

Here is the self-justification for their rebellion. They are the religious establishment. They have their priests, their wise men, and their prophets, the officially sanctioned ones, the ones who tell them what they want to hear. They are confident in their institutions. "We don't need this Jeremiah, this weeping killjoy. We have our own sources of spiritual authority, and they tell us we're fine." This is the perennial temptation of institutionalized religion: to trust the forms, the offices, and the traditions more than the living and active Word of God, especially when that Word is uncomfortable. They are essentially saying that their religious infrastructure makes them immune to the kind of radical message Jeremiah is bringing. They have made an idol out of the very means of grace.

Come on and let us strike at him with our tongue, and let us give no heed to any of his words.”

Their chosen weapon is the tongue. Slander, misrepresentation, rumor, false accusation. This is how you destroy a man's credibility. If you can't refute the message, you attack the messenger. It is the age-old tactic of the serpent, who first cast doubt on God's character with a word: "Has God indeed said...?" And their goal is explicit: "let us give no heed to any of his words." They are plugging their ears, hardening their hearts, and encouraging one another to do the same. This is a willful, deliberate, and corporate rejection of the proclaimed Word of Yahweh. It is high treason against the heavenly court.

v. 19 Do give heed to me, O Yahweh, And listen to the voice of those who contend against me!

Jeremiah now turns from the horizontal conflict to the vertical reality. They have resolved not to give heed to his words, so he implores the Lord to give heed to his prayer. He doesn't just ask God to listen to him; he asks God to listen to his enemies. This is the confidence of a man with a clear conscience. He is saying, "Lord, just listen to what they are saying. Listen to their plotting, their slander, their rebellion. Their own words will condemn them." He is not afraid of God hearing both sides of the story, because he knows which side God is on.

v. 20 Should good be repaid with evil? For they have dug a pit for me.

Here is the heart of the injustice. Jeremiah lays out the moral equation, and it is grotesquely unbalanced. He has done them good, and they are repaying him with evil. The imagery of digging a pit is visceral. This isn't a casual disagreement; this is a premeditated plot to trap and destroy him. They are treating him like a wild animal to be hunted down. This question hangs in the air before the throne of God, demanding a just answer. The universe is a moral universe because God is a moral God, and this kind of wicked inversion cannot be allowed to stand.

Remember how I stood before You To speak good on their behalf, So as to turn away Your wrath from them.

The evil is compounded by the good that was done. This is the ultimate betrayal. Jeremiah reminds God, not because God forgets, but as a formal part of his legal appeal, that he has been their intercessor. He has stood in the gap for these very people. He has pleaded their case before the Almighty, laboring in prayer to see God's wrath averted from them. He loved them. He prayed for them. And their response was to sharpen their tongues and dig a pit for his life. This is a faint echo of the ultimate betrayal, where the great Intercessor would come to His own, and His own would not receive Him, but would instead plot His death.

v. 21 Therefore, give their children over to famine And deliver them up to the power of the sword; And let their wives become childless and widowed. Let their men also be smitten to death, Their young men struck down by the sword in battle.

And here the prayer turns. Because of their treachery, because of their hard-hearted rebellion, Jeremiah's intercession ceases and his imprecation begins. This is not a fit of pique. This is a prophet, who knows the terms of the covenant, calling for the covenant curses to fall. Famine, sword, bereavement, these are the very judgments threatened in Deuteronomy 28 for covenant unfaithfulness. Jeremiah is not inventing novel punishments; he is asking God to be true to His own Word. He is saying, "Lord, they have chosen the curse. Let them have it." This is a terrifying prayer, but it is a prayer deeply rooted in a biblical understanding of justice and covenant.

v. 22 May an outcry be heard from their houses, When You suddenly bring raiders upon them; For they have dug a pit to capture me And hidden snares for my feet.

He prays for the consequences of their sin to come home to them, literally. He prays for the terror of sudden invasion, for the screams of fear to echo in the houses of those who plotted against him in secret. There is a righteous symmetry here. They dug a pit for him in secret; he prays for a public and sudden judgment to fall on them. They set hidden snares for his feet; he prays for their own ruin to be swift and inescapable. He is asking God to unravel their wicked plans and turn their own destructive intentions back upon their own heads.

v. 23 Yet You, O Yahweh, know All their deadly counsel against me; Do not atone for their iniquity Or blot out their sin from before You. But may they be overthrown before You; Deal with them in the time of Your anger!

The prayer concludes with a final appeal to God's omniscience and justice. "You know." Nothing is hidden from God. He sees the secret counsels, the murderous intent. And on the basis of that perfect knowledge, Jeremiah makes his most shocking request: "Do not atone for their iniquity." He is asking God to withhold forgiveness. This is not a prayer to be prayed lightly. This is the prayer one prays when a people has crossed a line, when they have shown themselves to be utterly given over to their rebellion. He is asking God to confirm them in their judgment, to let their sin remain on their record. He is handing them over to the justice they have demanded by their actions. The final line is a complete surrender of the situation into God's hands: "Deal with them in the time of Your anger!" It is a recognition that vengeance belongs to God, and a faithful plea for Him to act at the proper time to vindicate His own name, His own prophet, and His own justice.

Application

First, we must recognize that opposition to the clear Word of God is a serious and dangerous thing. The men of Judah here were religious men. They had priests and prophets. But they preferred a religion that comforted them in their sin to a Word that called them out of it. We must always be on guard against this temptation in our own hearts and in our churches. When the Word of God cuts, our only proper response is to say, "Amen," and repent, not to conspire against the preacher.

Second, this passage gives us a category for righteous, godly anger against profound evil. We live in an effeminate age that often mistakes niceness for godliness. Jeremiah was not "nice" here. He was righteously indignant. When we see the unborn slaughtered, the faithful mocked, and the truth of God trampled in the streets, a prayer that calls for God's justice to fall is not out of line. We are not to take vengeance into our own hands, but we are commanded to hand it over to God. Imprecatory prayer is one of the primary ways we do that. It is an act of faith, trusting that God is a better and more thorough judge than we could ever be.

Finally, we see the cost of faithfulness. Jeremiah's reward for loving his people and praying for them was a death plot. We are told to expect no different. "Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Tim. 3:12). If you stand for the truth in a world that loves lies, you will be attacked. Your weapon will be the Word of God. Your refuge will be the throne of grace. And your confidence will be that the God who sees all will one day set all things right. Therefore, do not lose heart. Speak the truth. Love your enemies, which includes praying for their conversion, but when they set themselves as implacable foes of God, do not be afraid to pray that they be overthrown before Him.