1Judah’s offense is written
with a pen of iron,
incised with an adamantine point
and on the horns of their altars,
2as their sons recall their altars and their sacred poles
by lush trees,
on high hills, on mountains in the open.
3Your wealth, all your treasures,
I will turn into booty,
your offending high places in all your regions.
4And you shall let your estate slip away, on your own,
that I gave to you.
And I will make you serve your enemies
in a land you did not know.
For fire rages in My nostrils,
forever shall it burn.
5Thus said the LORD:
Cursed be the man who trusts in humans,
and makes mortal flesh his strong arm.
6And he shall be like an arid shrub in the desert,
and he shall not see when good things come.
And he shall dwell in scorched places in the wilderness,
a barren land that cannot be settled.
7Blessed be the man who trusts in the LORD,
and the LORD becomes his trust.
8And he shall be like a tree planted by waters,
and by a stream it sends forth its roots,
and it shall not see when the heat wave comes,
and its leaves shall be lush,
and in a drought year it shall have no care
and never cease from yielding fruit.
9More crooked the heart than all things,
it is grievously ill and who can fathom it?
10I am the LORD who probes the heart,
and allotting to a man according to his ways
according to the fruit of his deeds.
11A partridge that hatched but did not lay
is he who makes wealth but not in justice.
In the midst of his days it forsakes him,
and at his end he becomes an abject man.
12—The throne of glory is on high,
from the first, the place of our sanctuary.—
13Israel’s hope is in the LORD.
All who forsake You shall be shamed.
And those who swerve from You shall be cut off,
for they forsook the source of living water, the LORD.
14Heal me, O LORD, that I may be healed,
rescue me, that I may be rescued
for You are my praise.
15Look, they say to me:
Where is the LORD’s word? Let it come.
16As for me, I did not urge to be a shepherd following You,
nor did I long for a day of disaster.
You Yourself knew my lips’ utterance,
in Your presence it was.
17Do not become a terror to me.
You are my refuge on an evil day.
18Let my pursuers be shamed and I be not shamed.
Let them be terrified and let not me be terrified.
Bring upon them an evil day
and break them with a double breaking.
19Thus said the LORD to me: “Go and stand in the People’s Gate, through which the kings of Judah come in and go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem. 20And you shall say to them, ‘Listen to the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the dwellers of Jerusalem who come in through these gates.’ 21Thus said the LORD: Take care at the risk of your lives and do not carry a burden on the sabbath day and bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. 22And you shall not bring out a burden from your homes on the sabbath day, nor any task shall you do. And you shall hallow the sabbath day as I charged your fathers. 23But they did not listen and did not bend their ear, and they made their necks stiff so as not to listen and not to take reproof. 24And it shall be, if you indeed listen to me, said the LORD, not to bring your burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, not to do on it any task, 25kings and nobles shall enter the gates of this city, who sit on the throne of David and who ride in chariots or on horses, they and their nobles, the men of Judah and the dwellers of Jerusalem, and the city shall be dwelled in for all time. 26And they shall come from the towns of Judah and from the environs of Jerusalem and from the land of Benjamin and from the lowlands and from the hill country and from the Negeb bringing burnt offering and sacrifice and grain offering and frankincense and bringing thanksgiving offering to the house of the LORD. 27And if you do not listen to me to hallow the sabbath day and not to carry a burden when you come through the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day, I will light a fire in its gates and it shall consume the citadels of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.”
CHAPTER 17 NOTES
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1. written / with a pen of iron, / incised with an adamantine point. The writing in question is incised on a stone or clay tablet. The pen of iron has a point of very hard stone, shamir, for this purpose; shamir is perhaps diamond, though that identification is not certain.
on the tablet of their hearts / and on the horns of their altars. Inwardly, the consciousness of their offense is indelible, whatever they outwardly profess. The altars should be sacred places but have been profaned by their acts, which would involve performing pagan rites on the altars. The altars usually had protuberances at their four corners, referred to as “horns.” The received text has “your altars” but many Hebrew manuscripts show “their altars.”
2. as their sons recall. The phrase is somewhat obscure and has been construed by some antithetically, making “sons” the object of the recalling. In the understanding of this translation, the verse is a direct continuation of the previous one: Judah’s offense is manifested in the pagan altars and in the sons, perniciously taught by their fathers, who cling to all the paraphernalia of pagan worship.
4. And you shall let your estate slip away, on your own. The wording is not entirely transparent, but this translation hews to the received text.
And I will make you serve your enemies. These two lines of poetry replicate 15:14, with minor variations.
5. humans. Although ʾadam can be translated as “man,” it is the generic term either for “person” or for “humankind” and is not limited to the male gender.
strong arm. The Hebrew says merely “arm,” an epithet for “strength.”
6. an arid shrub. The exact identity of the plant named is not certain, but it should be noted that this Hebrew term ʿarʿar clearly evokes ʿariri, “barren,” and alliterates with the next word in the Hebrew text, ʿaravah, “desert.”
barren land. Literally, “a salt land.”
8. And he shall be like a tree planted by waters. The kinship of this entire verse with Psalm 1 has often been noted, though it is unclear whether Jeremiah was alluding to that psalm or simply deploying a stock comparison shared by his poem and the psalm.
9. More crooked the heart than all things. While the adjective ʿaqov certainly suggests “deceitful,” as many translations reflect, the root meaning of “crooked” is worth preserving. This is an etymology of Jacob’s name, as the angry Esau reminds us in Genesis 27:36.
it is grievously ill. The crooked human heart is the manifestation of a pathological condition. Though Jeremiah may sometimes seem a ranter, on occasion he shows himself to be a shrewd moral psychologist.
10. I am the LORD who probes the heart. No human can fathom the deviousness of the heart, but God can.
conscience. As before, the literal sense is “kidneys.”
11. A partridge that hatched but did not lay. At least in ancient understanding, the male partridge sits on the eggs (the noun and verb here are both masculine), which of course he could not have produced.
it forsakes him. The logical antecedent is “wealth.”
an abject man. The Hebrew naval does not really mean “fool,” as most translations continue to represent it. A naval is a scoundrel, a base fellow, someone in an abject state, and that is surely the dire end predicted for the person with ill-gotten wealth, not the condition of foolishness.
12. The throne of glory. This verse appears to be a fragment not directly connected with what proceeds or what follows and so it is marked off with dashes in the translation.
13. those who swerve from You. The translation reads wesurekha for the Masoretic yesurey, “torments of.”
shall be cut off. The translation reads yikareitu for the Masoretic yikateivu, “shall be written.”
15. Look, they say to me. These mockers are obviously the hostile Judahites to whom Jeremiah refers frequently.
16. I did not urge to be a shepherd following You. Although the translation proposed here is a viable understanding of the Hebrew, the meaning of this clause has been disputed. “Shepherd” would refer to the role of prophet. But a frequently proposed emendation of that Hebrew word yields: “I did not urge to evil”—that is, the evil fate predicted for Israel.
18. Let them be terrified. The verb used can also mean “be shattered.”
21. do not carry a burden on the sabbath day and bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. Some scholars have claimed that the emphasis here on observance of the sabbath reflects a sixth-century B.C.E. exilic setting, as in the late chapters of Isaiah. This is by no means a necessary inference because the sabbath is, after all, part of the Decalogue, and its violation in the Book of Exodus is considered to be a capital crime. The “burden” brought through the gates would be produce from the surrounding countryside and perhaps also merchandise transported from abroad.
22. nor any task shall you do. Both the verb and the noun are the ones used in the prohibition of work on the sabbath in the Decalogue.
25. who sit on the throne of David and who ride in chariots and on horses. The translation follows the Hebrew wording, which is distributive—that is, only the kings sit on the throne whereas the nobles ride in chariots and on horses.
26. the lowlands. This refers to the coastal plain. Thus the four points of the compass in the land are invoked: Benjamin to the north of Jerusalem, the hill country of its eastern region, the Negeb to the south, and the lowlands to the west.