1Seek shelter, you Benjaminites, from within Jerusalem,
and in Tekoa sound the ram’s horn,
and on Beth Hakerem raise a signal fire,
for evil is in sight from the north
and a great disaster.
2Lovely and delicate
did I imagine Zion’s Daughter.
3Against her came shepherds with their flocks,
they pitched their tents all round,
4“Ready battle against her,
arise and let us go up at noon.
Woe to us, for the day declines,
for the shadows of evening stretch out!
5Arise and let us go up by night,
and let us lay waste to her citadels.”
6For thus said the LORD of Armies:
and build a siege-ramp against Jerusalem.
She is the city singled out,
naught but oppression is in her midst.
7As a well flows with water,
so she has flowed with her evil.
“Outrage” and “plunder” are heard within her
before Me perpetually sickness and plague.
8Accept reproof, O Jerusalem,
lest I loathe you,
lest I make you a desolation,
an uninhabitable land.
9Thus said the LORD of Armies:
They shall wholly glean as a vine
the remnant of Israel.
Bring back your hand like a picker of grapes
to the baskets.
10To whom should I speak,
and bear witness that they might heed?
Look, their ear is uncircumcised,
and they are unable to listen.
Look, the word of the LORD has become for them
a disgrace in which they do not delight.
11And with the wrath of the LORD I am filled,
Pour it on the babe in the street,
and on the gathering of young men together,
for both man and woman shall be caught,
the elder with the one full of years.
12And their homes shall be turned over to others,
fields and wives together,
for I will stretch out My hand
against the land’s dwellers, said the LORD.
13For from the least of them to their greatest
and from prophet to priest
all of them work lies.
14And they would heal My people’s wound easily saying,
“All is well, all is well,” but it is not well.
15They acted shamefully, for they performed abominations.
They were not even ashamed,
they did not even know how to be disgraced.
Therefore shall they fall among those who fall.
When I exact judgment from them, they shall stumble—
said the LORD.
16Thus said the LORD:
ask for the paths of old,
what is the good way, and go on it,
and find rest for yourselves.
And they said: “We will not go.”
17And I set up watchmen for you—
listen to the ram’s horn’s sound.
And they said: “We will not listen.”
18Therefore, hear O nations,
and note the testimony against them.
19Hear, O earth, I am about to bring evil against this people, the fruit of their devisings, for they did not listen to all My words, and My teaching they have spurned. 20Why do I need frankincense that comes from Sheba and the goodly fragrant cane from a faraway land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, and your sacrifices do not please Me.
21Therefore, thus said the LORD:
I am about to bring upon this people
stumbling blocks, and they shall stumble on them.
Fathers and sons together,
a neighbor and his fellow shall perish.
22A people is about to come from a land of the north,
and a great nation is roused from the far corners of the earth.
23Bow and javelin they grasp,
they are ruthless and show no mercy.
Their voice roars like the sea
arrayed as one man for battle
against you, O Zion’s Daughter!
24We heard the report of him—our hands went slack.
Distress seized us, pangs like a woman in labor.
25Do not go out to the field,
and on the road do not walk,
is terror all round.
26My People’s Daughter, gird sackcloth
and wallow in the dust.
Observe mourning as for an only child,
a bitter keening.
For the destroyer shall come
all of a sudden against us.
27An assayer I made you in My people [a fortress],
that you should know and assay their way.
28They all are wayward rebels,
they all act ruinously.
29The bellows puff, from the fire lead is consumed.
the impure matter is not drawn out.
30Rejected silver they have been called,
for the LORD has rejected them.
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. Seek shelter . . . from within Jerusalem. The Benjaminites have fled from adjacent territory to Jerusalem as a fortified city, but now Jerusalem itself is about to be assaulted, and they must flee elsewhere.
in Tekoa sound the ram’s horn. The Hebrew makes an untranslatable pun, beteqoʿa tiqʿu.
Beth Hakerem. Like Tekoa, this is a village near Jerusalem. The literal translation, “House of the Vineyard,” indicates it is a site of viticulture.
2. did I imagine. Though some interpreters understand the verb damiti to mean either “I destroyed” or “I silenced,” the prophet is not the one doing the destruction, and so it is best to construe this verbal stem in the sense it has in the Song of Songs, “to imagine” or “to liken.” That is, the speaker once thought Jerusalem to be a fair city, but matters have turned out differently.
3. Against her came shepherds. The “shepherds” are the kings commanding the divisions of the invading army. There is pointed irony in the elaboration of this pastoral metaphor to represent armed besiegers.
his charge. This is a guess at the meaning of the obscure Hebrew phrase, which literally means “his [or, perhaps, with his] hand.”
4. Ready battle against her. These words and what follows are the speech of the invading forces.
Woe to us, for the day declines. They fear they will not have enough daylight to complete the taking of the city. But in the next verse, they resolve to go ahead and carry out a night attack.
6. the trees. The Hebrew ʿetsah, without a dot in the final heh that would indicate a possessive, is a collective noun for “trees.”
build a siege-ramp. These were constructed from timber and packed-down earth.
7. “Outrage” and “plunder.” These two Hebrew words, ḥamas and shod, were exclamations that a person attacked or robbed would cry out, hence the verb “heard” here.
9. They shall wholly glean as a vine / the remnant of Israel. The subject of the verb is the invaders of Judah. The gleaning refers to going back and plucking whatever grapes are left over after the initial harvesting—these would be the remnant of Israel.
10. their ear is uncircumcised. As with the uncircumcised heart, the image is of an interfering membrane that prevents perception.
11. I cannot hold it in. This is a kind of confessional statement of the prophetic imperative: the prophet, identifying with God’s perspective in observing the acts of his people, feels himself so overflowing with God’s wrath that he is driven to express it angrily in his prophecies.
Pour it on the babe in the street. It of course sounds cruel to make toddlers playing in the street the object of divine wrath, but what the prophet has in mind is that the invading army, as was often the case, will perpetrate a general massacre: men, women, and even small children.
the elder with the one full of years. The wording suggests some distinction between the two. Interpreters at least as far back as Rashi have understood “full of years” to mean “extreme old age,” which is possible but not certain.
13. chase gain. A more literal indication of the Hebrew idiom would be “cut their slice,” the probable origin of the expression being the cutting off of slivers of silver from an ingot.
16. the ways . . . / the paths of old. The prophet again invokes the standard Hebrew trope of the way as the regimen of proper conduct. The expression “paths of old” suggests that the right way has always been known, even though now the people neglects it, defiantly proclaiming, “We will not go.”
17. watchmen. As elsewhere, these are the prophets.
18. note the testimony. The Hebrew is rather obscure, but ʿedah probably does not mean “congregation” but “testimony.”
20. Why do I need frankincense. This sounds rather like Isaiah 1:11.
that comes from Sheba. Frankincense was an expensive imported item brought from southern Arabia.
22. from a land of the north. Jeremiah repeatedly imagines the destruction descending from the north. Here, that direction takes on an implicitly mythological coloration. “The far corners of the north [Zaphon]” is a repeated designation in biblical poetry for the Canaanite mountain of the gods (Zaphon is both a proper name from the mountain and the direction north). In a break-up pattern in the parallelism, zaphon appears at the end of the first verset and “far corners of” at the end of the second.
23. and on horses they ride. The use of cavalry was relatively limited among the Israelites, hence the mounted attackers seem all the more fearsome.
25. the enemy’s sword. The translation follows Hoffman, who notes that the construction noun-to-noun often indicates a possessive, as here: ḥerev leʾoyev.
27. [a fortress]. This word is bracketed in the translation because it is probably an intrusive gloss. The word for “assayer” is close in form to a word that means “fortress,” and the person responsible for the gloss probably understood it that way because God had promised to make Jeremiah a fortress against his enemies in 1:18. What is clear is that the image from here to the end of the chapter is of assaying and refining idolators, not of fortification.
28. bronze and iron. While the syntax seems a bit muddled, the idea is that the rebellious people is iron and bronze rather than silver.
29. from the fire lead is consumed. The received text reads meʾeshtam, which would mean “from their fire,” although the vocalization and grammar are wrong. This translation is based on an emendation to meʾesh titom, literally “from the fire it [lead] comes to an end.” Silver is found in lead ore; here the refining process doesn’t work, and the silver is not separated from the lead.
the refiner works. Literally, “the refiner refines.”
the impure matter. This could also mean “the evil ones.”
30. Rejected silver. At the end of the refining, the silver has not been separated from the lead and so it must be rejected, as God rejects a people that has not cleansed itself of its human impurities.