1Righteous are You, O LORD.
When I dispute with you,
my brief I will speak against You.
2Why does the way of the wicked prosper,
all who deal treacherously rest tranquil?
You plant them, what’s more, they strike root,
they spread out, what’s more, they yield fruit.
Near are You in their mouth
and distant from their conscience.
3As for You, LORD, You know me, You see me,
and You probe my heart that is with You.
Draw them out like sheep to the slaughter,
set them aside for the day of killing.
4Till when will the land be bleak,
and the grass of every field wither?
From the evil of its dwellers
beasts and fowl are swept away,
for they thought, “He will not see our end.”
5For if you run with foot soldiers and they tire you,
how will you compete with horses?
And if in a peaceful land you flee,
what will you do in the Jordan’s thickets?
6For even your brothers and the house of your fathers,
even they betrayed you,
they call after you in full voice.
Trust them not
when they speak to you good things.
7I have forsaken My house,
abandoned My estate,
I have given My dearest one
into her enemies’ hands.
8My estate has become for Me
like a lion in the forest.
She raised her voice against Me,
therefore I do hate her.
9Is My estate a blood-splattered vulture?
Are the vultures circling round her?
Go gather all beasts of the field,
bring them to the devouring.
10Many shepherds despoiled My vineyard,
they trampled My plot.
They made My precious plot
11They have made her a desolation,
she mourns to Me, desolate.
All the land is desolate,
for no man pays it heed.
12On all the bare heights in the wilderness
despoilers have come,
for the LORD’s sword has devoured from the end of the land
to the end of the land.
There is no peace for all flesh.
13They have sown wheat, and thorns they have reaped.
They fall ill to no avail.
by the smoldering wrath of the LORD.
14Thus said the LORD: “Concerning all My evil neighbors who encroach on the estate that I conferred on My people Israel—I am about to uproot them from their land, and the house of Judah I will uproot from their midst. 15And it shall be after I uproot them that I will turn back and show mercy to them and bring them back each to his estate and each to his land. 16And it shall be, if they indeed learn the ways of My people to swear by My name—‘as the LORD lives’—as they taught My people to swear by Baal, they shall be built up in the midst of My people. 17But if they do not heed, I will uproot that nation, uprooting and destroying,” said the LORD.
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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1. my brief I will speak against You. Even though the Hebrew word rendered as “against You” might be understood as “with you,” the metaphorical context of an adversarial legal argument invites one to construe it as “against You.”
2. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? This entire verse sounds rather like an early anticipation of Job, not only in its content but even in its language.
they spread out. The Hebrew verb here would usually mean “they go,” which is not right in context. The Septuagint, reading one consonant differently, shows, “they give birth.” The idea that the wicked are a deep-rooted, fruit-bearing tree is an exact reversal of the imagery in Psalms (see Psalm 1), where that is the state of the righteous whereas the wicked are wind-blown chaff.
their conscience. As before, the literal sense of the Hebrew is “their kidneys.”
3. Draw them out like sheep to the slaughter. These are the wicked, the prophet imploring God to reverse matters and bring retribution upon the wrongdoers. Since he has just implicitly invoked his own innocence (“You know me, You see me”), it may be that Jeremiah has in mind his own predicament with the wicked—the men of Anathoth who have sought to kill him.
4. He will not see our end. The implication of these words is that God will pay no attention to the future condition of the speakers, which is to say, will never bring them to judgment.
5. foot soldiers. This is what the Hebrew ragli (here in the plural, raglim) always means elsewhere. The image, then, is of battle: if you can’t keep up with foot soldiers on the battlefield, how will you contend with cavalry?
flee. The received text has boteaḥ, “trust,” which does not work in the a fortiori relation of the first verset to the second. An old exegetical tradition, going back to the Aramaic Targum and several medieval commentaries and picked up by some modern scholars, understands the verb to mean “fall,” which makes the meaning neat but for which there is slim philological evidence. This translation adopts a proposed emendation, reading boreaḥ, “flee,” instead of boteaḥ.
the Jordan’s thickets. The Hebrew says “Pride of the Jordan,” and this appears to be the name for a twisting stretch of the river where there is dense overgrowth and so where one can easily stumble. The phrase occurs twice elsewhere in Jeremiah in this sense, 49:19 and 50:44.
7. My house, / . . . My estate. The house is the Temple and the estate is the Land of Israel.
9. a blood-splattered vulture. This phrase is a famous crux. The word tsavuʿa does mean “painted,” as some understood it in later Hebrew, but is not used in this sense elsewhere in the Bible, and painting birds of prey would be a strange practice. Lundbom finesses this by translating it as “speckled.” Others link it with the Hebrew word for “finger” and suggest that it refers to sharp claws. This translation follows Rashi and Kimchi, assuming that the relentlessness of the bird as a scavenger is emphasized. In later Hebrew, the phrase became a term for “hypocrite,” with tsavuʿa by itself having that meaning. This usage was based on the idea that the bird was actually painted, passing itself off as something it was not.
10. Many shepherds. Elsewhere, “shepherds” refers to the leaders of the Judahite people, but some interpreters take it here as a reference to the generals of the allied armies that invaded Judah.
11. desolate / . . . desolate. Some form of this word is repeated four times in two verses in order to convey an emphatic sense of utter desolation.
13. Be shamed by your harvests. The harvests are metaphorical, in keeping with the wheat sown and the thorns reaped—they are the dire consequences of the people’s actions.
14. all My evil neighbors. These are the sundry nations bordering on Judah, many of whom collaborated with the invading Babylonians. God calls them “My neighbors” because the Land of Israel is God’s.
I am about to uproot them from their land, and the house of Judah I will uproot from their midst. These are opposite actions: the hostile “neighbors” will now suffer the fate of exile, and the exiled Judahites will be plucked up and returned to their land.
16. learn the ways of My people to swear by My name. What the prophet envisages is a turning of the cultic tables. Previously, the Judahites had learned from their neighbors to invoke the name of Baal. Now, if those nations are not to undergo continuing exile, they must learn to invoke the name of YHWH, which implies accepting the God of Israel as the legitimate God of all.