The Curse of the Slack Hand Text: Jeremiah 48:6-10
Introduction: The Impotence of Idols
We live in an age that prides itself on its sophistication. We have split the atom, mapped the genome, and sent robots to other planets. We have, in our own minds, outgrown the need for God. We look back on ancient cultures like Moab, with their national god Chemosh, and we feel a smug sense of superiority. We don't bow down to carved stones or offer sacrifices on high places. But our idolatry is not less real for being more refined. Man is a worshiping creature; he cannot help it. If he will not worship the living God, he will invariably craft a god out of something else. For Moab, it was their military might and their national wealth. For modern man, it is much the same: trust in our technology, our portfolios, our political systems, our own supposed goodness. We trust in our works and in our treasures.
The prophet Jeremiah is tasked with delivering God's oracle against Moab, and it is a message of total, unvarnished, and catastrophic judgment. This is not a message our therapeutic age wants to hear. We prefer a god who is a celestial butler, on call to meet our needs, but who would never dream of bringing a nation to ruin. But the God of the Bible is not safe; He is good, but He is not tame. He is a consuming fire, and His holiness requires that He judge sin, whether that sin is found in Jerusalem or in Moab.
This passage is a divine declaration of war against the great sin of self-reliance. Moab was proud. Moab was complacent. Moab trusted in itself. And God, through His prophet, announces that the entire edifice of their national pride is about to be leveled. Their god, Chemosh, will be carted off into exile like a piece of furniture, and their cities will become uninhabitable ruins. The judgment is comprehensive and inescapable. And right in the middle of this terrible oracle, we find a curse that should stop every Christian in his tracks, a curse on the one who does the Lord's work with a slack hand. This is not just about Moab. This is a word for us. God demands total, uncompromising, radical obedience in the execution of His will. There is no room for half-measures in the work of the kingdom.
The Text
Flee, escape with your lives, That you may be like a juniper in the wilderness. For because of your trust in your own works and treasures, Even you yourself will be captured; And Chemosh will go off into exile Together with his priests and his princes. A destroyer will come to every city, So that no city will escape; The valley also will perish, And the plateau will be destroyed, As Yahweh has said. Give wings to Moab, For she will flee away; And her cities will become a desolation, Without inhabitants in them. Cursed be the one who does the work of Yahweh with a slack hand, And cursed be the one who restrains his sword from blood.
(Jeremiah 48:6-10 LSB)
Desperate Flight and False Trust (v. 6-7)
The prophecy begins with a frantic, desperate command.
"Flee, escape with your lives, That you may be like a juniper in the wilderness. For because of your trust in your own works and treasures, Even you yourself will be captured; And Chemosh will go off into exile Together with his priests and his princes." (Jeremiah 48:6-7 LSB)
The first word is one of sheer panic: "Flee!" When the judgment of God finally arrives, there is no dignified retreat. There is only a mad scramble for survival. The image of a juniper in the wilderness is a picture of isolation and desolation. It is a lonely, scraggly shrub in a barren land. This is the best-case scenario for the survivors of Moab: a solitary, impoverished existence, stripped of all community, comfort, and security. God's judgment will so thoroughly dismantle their civilization that the only hope is to become a hermit in the desert.
Verse 7 gives us the reason for this devastation, the root of the spiritual rot. It is "because of your trust in your own works and treasures." Moab's idolatry was practical atheism. They may have paid lip service to Chemosh, but their functional trust, their true confidence, was in their military fortifications ("works") and their economic prosperity ("treasures"). They believed their ingenuity and their wealth made them secure. This is the perennial temptation of man. We build our own towers of Babel, whether they are made of brick and mortar or of stock portfolios and technological prowess, and we think they can protect us from the storms of life and from the judgment of God. But God says this trust is a delusion. In fact, it is the very thing that guarantees their capture.
And what of their god, Chemosh? He is exposed as utterly impotent. He will not save his people; he will be carried off into exile right alongside them. The image is one of profound mockery. The priests and princes, the entire religious and political establishment, will be led away in a great procession of shame, and their chief deity will be part of the plunder. This is what happens to all false gods. They are powerless to save because they are nothing, the work of men's hands. When the true God rises in judgment, all idols are revealed to be the hollow frauds they have always been. They cannot stand against the Destroyer that Yahweh sends.
The Inescapable Destroyer (v. 8-9)
The scope of the judgment is absolute and its agent is relentless.
"A destroyer will come to every city, So that no city will escape; The valley also will perish, And the plateau will be destroyed, As Yahweh has said. Give wings to Moab, For she will flee away; And her cities will become a desolation, Without inhabitants in them." (Jeremiah 48:8-9 LSB)
God is the one who summons the "destroyer." In this historical context, the destroyer is the Babylonian army. But we must understand that Babylon is merely the instrument, the axe in the hand of the divine woodsman. God is sovereign over the affairs of nations. He raises up empires and He casts them down according to His perfect will. The judgment is therefore not an accident of history; it is a divine decree. "As Yahweh has said." His Word is performative. What He declares will come to pass.
The destruction is total. Every city, from the fertile valleys to the high plateaus, will be touched. There is no escape. There is no hiding place from the wrath of God. The command to "Give wings to Moab" is a piece of grim, divine sarcasm. It's as if God is saying, "Go ahead, try to fly away. It won't do you any good." Even if they could sprout wings and fly, their homeland would still be rendered a complete desolation, empty of inhabitants. The judgment is not just on the people, but on the land itself. Their prideful civilization will be erased from the map.
The Curse on Half-Heartedness (v. 10)
Now we come to the verse that broadens the application from Moab to all who are called to do the work of God.
"Cursed be the one who does the work of Yahweh with a slack hand, And cursed be the one who restrains his sword from blood." (Jeremiah 48:10 LSB)
This is a jarring and terrifying statement. The "work of Yahweh" in this context is the execution of His righteous judgment upon Moab. The agent of this work is Babylon, God's sword. God pronounces a curse on any of His instruments who would carry out this task half-heartedly. A "slack hand" is a lazy, negligent, deceitful hand. It is the hand of someone who does the job, but without zeal, without thoroughness, without a commitment to finishing it as commanded.
The second line is even more stark: "cursed be the one who restrains his sword from blood." This is not a call for bloodlust. It is a call for uncompromising obedience. When God commands judgment, He does not want a squeamish, sentimental executioner who will second-guess the divine decree. He is commanding His instrument to be thorough. Think of King Saul, who was commanded to utterly destroy the Amalekites but restrained his sword from Agag and the best of the livestock. For this act of sentimental, half-hearted disobedience, he was rejected as king. God's commands, especially His commands of judgment, are not suggestions. They are to be carried out fully and without reservation.
How does this apply to us, who are not called to wield a literal sword against a neighboring nation? The principle of uncompromising obedience is timeless. We are engaged in a spiritual war. Our enemies are not flesh and blood, but the spiritual forces of wickedness, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And we are called to do the work of the Lord in this war. We are to preach the gospel, disciple the nations, and fight against sin in our own lives and in the world around us. To do this work with a "slack hand" is to be cursed. It is to preach a diluted gospel, to tolerate sin in the camp, to make peace with the world, to be lazy in prayer, and to be negligent in the study of His Word. It is to be a lukewarm Christian, whom the Lord will spit out of His mouth.
And what does it mean to not restrain our sword from blood? Our sword is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17). We are to wield it without apology and without compromise. We are to put sin to death in our own lives, ruthlessly. This is what Paul means when he says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13). This is a bloody business. It means killing our pride, our lust, our greed, our bitterness. There is no room for sentimentality here. You do not negotiate with sin; you execute it. To restrain this sword is to allow the enemy to live and fester within our own hearts and our churches. It is to choose a false peace over a righteous war. And for this, God says, we will be cursed.
The Gospel in the Curse
This is a hard word. A curse for a slack hand. A curse for a restrained sword. Where is the good news in this? The good news is found when we see who ultimately fulfilled this demand and who took this curse.
The ultimate "work of Yahweh" was the work of redemption, accomplished at the cross. And Jesus Christ did not do this work with a slack hand. He set His face like flint toward Jerusalem. He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. He did not shrink back. He was not negligent. He did everything the Father commanded Him, perfectly and completely. "He was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8).
And on that cross, He did not restrain His sword from blood. But the sword was turned against Himself. The judgment we deserved, the holy war against our sin, was executed upon Him. The blood that was shed was His own. He took the curse. Galatians 3:13 says it plainly: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." He took the curse for every time we have done His work with a slack hand. He took the curse for every time we have restrained the sword from our own sin, coddling our idols and making excuses for our rebellion.
Therefore, our motivation for radical, uncompromising obedience is not the fear of being cursed. Our motivation is the grateful, adoring love for the One who was cursed in our place. Because He did not do His work with a slack hand, we are now empowered by His Spirit to do our work with diligent hands. Because He did not restrain the sword from His own body, we are now free to wield the sword of the Spirit against our sin, not in order to earn our salvation, but in the joyful freedom of a salvation already won. The judgment on Moab reminds us that God is serious about sin and idolatry. The curse in verse 10 reminds us that God is serious about obedience. And the cross of Christ reminds us that God is serious about grace, a grace that both saves us from the curse and empowers us for the work.