Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
Fishermen and Hunters
Jeremiah 16:14-21
14 “Therefore behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that it will no more be said, ‘As Yahweh lives, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;’ · WEB
A return is promised that will replace the exodus as the nation's standard oath, and the nations are shown arriving to say their inheritance was a lie.
The promise is measured in an unexpected unit. People swore by the God who brought Israel out of Egypt. That formula will be replaced by a new one, naming a bringing up from the land of the north. Israel's oaths were where its history was stored, so this predicts a deliverance that displaces the exodus at the center of national memory. The claim is repeated later in the book in the same words Jeremiah 23:7–8. It is a large claim. The founding rescue will become the second-greatest thing God has done for this people.
Before that, the searching. Fishermen are sent, and then hunters, to take them from every mountain and hill and out of the clefts of the rocks. The two trades are not decorative. A net gathers indiscriminately; a hunt tracks individuals into cover. Both are needed because the hiding will be thorough. The verses on either side settle what the search is for: my eyes are on all their ways, their iniquity is not concealed, and first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double. This is the roundup for judgment rather than the gathering for return. It answers the assumption that distance from Jerusalem would mean distance from its God.
Then the chapter opens outward without warning. Jeremiah addresses God as his strength and refuge, and in the same breath sees the nations coming from the ends of the earth. What they say when they arrive is a verdict on their own religion: Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, vanity and things in which there is no profit. The word is inheritance. They are not described as having chosen badly, but as having received badly. That is exactly the charge laid against Judah for walking after the Baals their fathers taught them Jeremiah 9:14.
That parallel is the reason the passage sits where it does. Judah and the nations are shown to have the same disease. The question the nations ask — should a man make himself gods, which are no gods — is one Judah has been unable to ask for sixteen chapters. The answer to both is a single act with a single result, stated twice for emphasis. God will cause them to know his hand and his might, and then they will know that my name is Yahweh. Knowing the name is what the whole book has been about. Here it is promised to the outsiders in the same sentence in which the insiders are being carried away.
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