Will You Be to Me as a Deceitful Brook
10 Woe is me, my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have not lent, neither have men lent to me; yet every one of them curses me. 11 Yahweh said, “Most certainly I will strengthen you for good. Most certainly I will cause the enemy to make supplication to you in the time of evil and in the time of affliction. 12 Can one break iron, even iron from the north, and bronze? 13 I will give your substance and your treasures for a plunder without price, and that for all your sins, even in all your borders. 14 I will make them to pass with your enemies into a land which you don’t know; for a fire is kindled in my anger, which will burn on you.” 15 Yahweh, you know. Remember me, visit me, and avenge me of my persecutors. You are patient, so don’t take me away. Know that for your sake I have suffered reproach. 16 Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words were to me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by your name, Yahweh, God of Armies. 17 I didn’t sit in the assembly of those who make merry and rejoice. I sat alone because of your hand, for you have filled me with indignation. 18 Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuses to be healed? Will you indeed be to me as a deceitful brook, like waters that fail? 19 Therefore Yahweh says, “If you return, then I will bring you again, that you may stand before me; and if you take out the precious from the vile, you will be as my mouth. They will return to you, but you will not return to them. 20 I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall. They will fight against you, but they will not prevail against you; for I am with you to save you and to deliver you,” says Yahweh. 21 “I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem you out of the hand of the terrible.”
Jeremiah accuses God of being a stream that dries up in summer, and is answered with a call to repent before the promise of his own commission is renewed.
The complaint begins with his birth and ends with a curious piece of evidence. He is a man of strife to the whole country, cursed by everyone — and he points out that he has neither lent nor borrowed. In a society where most enmity grew out of debt, he is establishing that there is no ordinary grievance against him whatsoever. The hostility has no financial cause, no property dispute behind it, nothing but the message; and that leaves him with nothing to fix.
What he says about the message itself is the finest thing in the passage. Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words were to me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart. Eating is a strange verb for it, and an exact one — the words went in and became him rather than remaining something he carried. But the same paragraph records the cost of that: he did not sit with people who were enjoying themselves, he sat alone, and the reason he gives is not disapproval of their company but the hand of God on him. The joy and the isolation come from the same source and he says so in consecutive sentences.
Then the accusation. Will you indeed be to me as a deceitful brook, like waters that fail? The image is a wadi that runs in the rains and is dry bone in August — the thing a traveler counts on and finds empty at the worst possible time. The charge is aimed with unusual precision, because this book's own name for God is the spring of living waters Jeremiah 2:13, and Jeremiah is saying that the spring has behaved like a seasonal stream. It is the most serious thing he ever says.
The reply does not soothe him and does not defend God's record. It puts a condition to him: If you return, then I will bring you again, that you may stand before me. The prophet is called to repent, in the same vocabulary used for the nation all through the book, and the specific work required is discrimination — to take out the precious from the vile — followed by a warning about direction. They will return to you, but you will not return to them. The pressure on him is to move toward his hearers, and he is told that if he does he stops being usable. Only after all that is the language of his call given back to him, a fortified bronze wall, fought against and not overcome; and this time two verbs are added that were not in chapter 1, to save and to redeem. He asked whether the water had failed and was answered by being handed the original promise with more in it.
settled What this mark means