Commentary - Jeremiah 23:9-15

Bird's-eye view

In this section, the prophet Jeremiah expresses a deep, visceral, and holy agony over the state of spiritual leadership in Judah. This is not a detached theological critique; it is a heart-rending lament from a man who feels the weight of God's holy words and sees them being profaned by the very men appointed to proclaim them. The passage lays out a formal indictment against the prophets and priests of Jerusalem. Their corruption is not isolated but has resulted in a nationwide pollution, a covenantal curse that affects the land itself. God, through Jeremiah, contrasts the relatively straightforward idolatry of Samaria's fallen prophets with the more insidious and appalling hypocrisy of Jerusalem's leaders. They maintain a religious veneer while living in flagrant sin, and worse, their ministry actively encourages wickedness and prevents repentance. The verdict is therefore delivered: God will serve them a bitter cup of judgment, for the poison they have spread throughout the land originated with them.

This is a divine lawsuit against pastoral malpractice. The core charge is that the spiritual shepherds have become wolves, not just neglecting the flock but actively leading them to damnation. Their lies and adulteries have created a culture where sin is normalized and repentance is unthinkable. Consequently, God declares that Jerusalem has become spiritually equivalent to Sodom and Gomorrah, cities marked for total destruction. The judgment announced is a strict and fitting justice: those who served poison will be forced to drink it.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This passage sits within a larger section of Jeremiah's prophecies (chapters 21-24) that deals with Judah's corrupt leadership. Jeremiah has been confronting kings, princes, and now he turns his full attention to the spiritual leaders, the prophets and priests. The historical backdrop is the final, desperate years of the kingdom of Judah, with the Babylonian threat looming. While Jeremiah preaches a hard message of judgment and the necessity of submission to God's instrument of wrath (Babylon), a chorus of false prophets is preaching a message of "peace, peace." They are court prophets, nationalist prophets, feel-good prophets, telling the king and the people exactly what they want to hear: that God would never abandon His temple and His chosen city. This section, therefore, is a direct confrontation between the true word of God, which is often hard and demanding, and the false words of men, which are always soothing and damning.

Key Issues

The Poisoned Wells of Jerusalem

When the water in a city is poisoned, it is a catastrophic failure. But when the poison is coming from the wells that are designated as pure, and when the men in charge of the wells are the ones administering the poison, you have a crisis of the highest order. This is the picture Jeremiah paints of Judah. The prophets and priests were supposed to be the sources of living water, the very words of God. Instead, they had become polluted wells, and from them, a spiritual toxin was seeping out into the entire nation.

Verse by Verse Commentary

9 As for the prophets: My heart is broken within me; All my bones tremble; I have become like a drunken man, Even like a man overcome with wine, Because of Yahweh And because of His holy words.

Jeremiah begins not with a detached analysis, but with a testimony of his own physical and emotional state. This is what the prophetic burden does to a man. His heart is not just sad; it is broken within him. His very frame, his bones, are shaking. He compares the experience to being drunk, completely overwhelmed and disoriented. But what is the cause of this holy intoxication? It is a double cause: because of Yahweh and because of His holy words. He has seen the holy character of God and has heard the holy words of God, and the chasm between that reality and the reality of what is being preached in Jerusalem is so vast that it shatters him. This is the proper reaction of a godly man to rampant apostasy. He does not shrug; he trembles.

10 For the land is full of adulterers; For the land mourns because of the curse. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up. Their course also is evil, And their might is not right.

The prophet connects the spiritual crisis to the state of the nation. The land is full of adulterers, which must be understood in two ways: literal sexual immorality, which always accompanies spiritual decay, and spiritual adultery, which is idolatry and covenant unfaithfulness. Sin has real-world consequences. Because of this sin, the land itself is under a curse. The creation groans. The pastures are barren. This is covenant theology in action. When the people break covenant, the land vomits them out. The problem is with their entire direction; their course, their way of life, is evil. And their might, their power and influence, is illegitimate. It is not right, not based on God's standard of justice.

11 “For both prophet and priest are polluted; Even in My house I have found their evil,” declares Yahweh.

Here God Himself speaks, identifying the source of the national corruption. It is not just a problem with the laity; the rot starts at the top. Prophet and priest, the two key spiritual offices, are profane, polluted. And where does God find this wickedness? Not just in the streets or the marketplace, but even in My house. The Temple, the place of God's holy presence, has been defiled by the very men consecrated to serve there. This is the ultimate treachery. When the sanctuary becomes a den of thieves and the pulpit a platform for lies, judgment is not far behind.

12 “Therefore their way will be like slippery paths to them; They will be driven away into the thick darkness and fall down in it; For I will bring their evil upon them, The year of their punishment,” declares Yahweh.

Because of their sin, God announces their sentence. The punishment fits the crime. Their way of life, which they thought was clever and sophisticated, will become a slippery path in the dark. They chose darkness, and God is going to give them an abundance of it. He is not just going to let them wander; they will be driven into it and they will fall. Their ruin is certain. God will bring their own evil back upon their heads. There is a set time for this: the year of their punishment. God's patience has an expiration date.

13 “Moreover, among the prophets of Samaria I saw an offensive thing: They prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray.

God now draws a comparison to put Jerusalem's sin in perspective. He brings up the Northern Kingdom, Samaria, which had long since been judged and exiled. Their sin was an offensive thing, a folly. What was it? Open, unambiguous idolatry. They prophesied in the name of a false god, Baal. It was a straightforward, overt rebellion, and for this, God judged them and led them astray into captivity.

14 Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen an appalling thing: The committing of adultery and walking in lying; And they strengthen the hands of evildoers, So that no one has turned back from his evil. All of them have become to Me like Sodom, And her inhabitants like Gomorrah.

If Samaria's sin was offensive, Jerusalem's is appalling, a thing of absolute horror. Their sin is more insidious. They still use the name of Yahweh, but their lives are characterized by adultery and lies. And here is the heart of the charge: they strengthen the hands of evildoers. Their preaching, their counsel, their entire ministry has the effect of encouraging wicked men to continue in their wickedness. They soothe the conscience of the sinner. They remove the fear of judgment. Their pastoral malpractice is so effective that no one has turned back from his evil. This is the opposite of a true ministry. Therefore, God renders His verdict. In His eyes, the covenant city of Jerusalem has become the new Sodom, a place of utter depravity ripe for fiery judgment.

15 Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts concerning the prophets, ‘Behold, I am going to feed them wormwood And make them drink poisoned water, For from the prophets of Jerusalem Pollution has gone forth into all the land.’ ”

The sentence is pronounced by Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of armies. He is going to war against these false shepherds. He will feed them wormwood, a symbol of extreme bitterness, and make them drink poisoned water, a symbol of death. The justice is poetic. They served spiritual poison to the people, and now they will drink it themselves, undiluted. The reason is explicitly stated: they are ground zero for the epidemic. From the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land. The spiritual leadership is the source of the nation's terminal illness, and so the surgeon of heaven will cut them out first.

Application

This passage is a terrifying and necessary warning for the church today. The temptation to become a false prophet is perennial. It is the temptation to value applause over faithfulness, to measure success by numbers instead of by fidelity to the Word, and to offer a cheap grace that requires no repentance.

We must recognize that a true man of God will be shaken by the holiness of God and His Word. He will feel the weight of it. A ministry that does not tremble before the Word will end up trifling with it. We must also see the absolute connection between the pulpit and the pew, between the leadership and the land. A nation's spiritual health flows downward from its teachers. When pastors commit adultery, walk in lies, and preach a message that strengthens the hands of evildoers by refusing to call sin what it is, they are poisoning the wells.

The most appalling sin is not the overt paganism of the world, but the corrupt hypocrisy within the house of God. It is the preaching that makes sinners comfortable on their way to Hell. It is the counsel that encourages people to remain in their sin. The great need of our day is for men like Jeremiah, who love God and His Word so much that they are broken by the sight of its profanation, and who love the people enough to tell them the hard truth. The only cure for poisoned water is the living water offered by Jesus Christ, who did not just condemn the false shepherds but laid down His life as the Good Shepherd, so that we might be cleansed from all our pollution and turn back from all our evil.