Biblion Bible Commentary
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Cursed Is the Man Who Does Not Hear
Jeremiah 11:1-17
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, · WEB
Jeremiah is sent to enforce the terms of an old covenant and says amen to its curses, and is then told that a conspiracy has been formed to keep the terms out.
The commission here is legal. Jeremiah is to recite the words of the covenant made when Israel came out of the iron furnace of Egypt, and the recital carries a curse for the man who will not hear. What makes the scene remarkable is his reply. He says Amen, Yahweh. The prophet agrees to the sentence before he delivers it, and puts himself under it in the process. Everything he suffers in the next thirty chapters follows from that agreement, since the curse he endorsed falls on his own city and his own relatives.
The covenant's terms are then quoted, and their order is worth marking. Obey my voice and do them, so you shall be my people and I will be your God. Obedience first, relationship second, and the land held as the fulfillment of an oath rather than as a possession. Judah's whole security rested on that oath, and the book argues that the oath had conditions attached which have now been triggered. The judgment is therefore not God breaking his word. It is the other clause of the same word taking effect.
What God then reports is not idolatry but a conspiracy among the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The word is political and it implies coordination, secrecy and intent. The apostasy is not described as drift or weakness at this point, but as something organized. The description is followed by the count that appeared earlier in almost identical words: as many gods as cities, as many altars as streets Jeremiah 2:28. A conspiracy on that scale requires no meetings. It is a settled national preference with the machinery already built.
So the intercession is forbidden a second time, and this refusal is stated symmetrically. They will cry to God and he will not listen; they will cry to the gods they burned incense to and those will not save them at all. Both doors are described as closed, and the second is closed by the nature of what stands behind it. The chapter ends with a name and its ruin. God had called them a green olive tree, beautiful with goodly fruit, and the fire is kindled on it with a great roar. An olive is a slow tree, planted for grandchildren. The one who planted it is the one now pronouncing against it — a detail the last verse insists on, along with the note that what they did they did to themselves.
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