The Heart Above All Things
1 “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond. It is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of your altars. 2 Even their children remember their altars and their Asherah poles by the green trees on the high hills. 3 My mountain in the field, I will give your substance and all your treasures for a plunder, and your high places, because of sin, throughout all your borders. 4 You, even of yourself, will discontinue from your heritage that I gave you. I will cause you to serve your enemies in the land which you don’t know, for you have kindled a fire in my anger which will burn forever.” 5 Yahweh says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man, relies on strength of flesh, and whose heart departs from Yahweh. 6 For he will be like a bush in the desert, and will not see when good comes, but will inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, an uninhabited salt land. 7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in Yahweh, and whose confidence is in Yahweh. 8 For he will be as a tree planted by the waters, who spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes, but its leaf will be green, and will not be concerned in the year of drought. It won’t cease from yielding fruit. 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? 10 “I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” 11 As the partridge that sits on eggs which she has not laid, so is he who gets riches, and not by right. In the middle of his days, they will leave him. At his end, he will be a fool. 12 A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary. 13 Yahweh, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be disappointed. Those who depart from me will be written in the earth, because they have forsaken Yahweh, the spring of living waters. 14 Heal me, O Yahweh, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved; for you are my praise. 15 Behold, they ask me, “Where is Yahweh’s word? Let it be fulfilled now.” 16 As for me, I have not hurried from being a shepherd after you. I haven’t desired the woeful day. You know. That which came out of my lips was before your face. 17 Don’t be a terror to me. You are my refuge in the day of evil. 18 Let them be disappointed who persecute me, but don’t let me be disappointed. Let them be dismayed, but don’t let me be dismayed. Bring on them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.
Judah's sin is described as engraved where it cannot be erased, and the heart itself is diagnosed as incurable — with the one who searches it named in the next breath.
The opening image is about permanence. The sin is written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond, on two surfaces: the tablet of the heart, and the horns of the altars. The second is the sharper of the two. Blood was applied to the horns of the altar as the ritual act by which guilt was dealt with Leviticus 4:7, so the record is described as cut into the very place where its removal was supposed to happen. Where a covenant people wrote its law on tablets, this people has written its sin on the one instrument of forgiveness, and the engraving is not a stain that can be washed but a groove.
The chapter then sets two men side by side. One trusts in man and relies on the strength of flesh, and is a bush in the desert who will not see when good comes — the sharpest clause in the picture, since it says the failure is not that good is withheld but that the man is not positioned to register it. The other trusts in Yahweh and is a tree by water, whose leaf stays green in the heat and which does not stop bearing in a year of drought. Neither man is promised the absence of drought. What differs is where the roots are, and the whole comparison turns on that single variable.
The diagnosis follows, and it is the most quoted sentence in the book: The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? Two words carry it. The first, 'aqob `H6121`, is built on the root behind the name Jacob and behind what he did to his brother — the heart is a supplanter, and the trickery it works is on its owner. The second, 'anash `H605`, means incurable, and it is the word used of the wound Judah cannot heal Jeremiah 30:12. The organ that is supposed to do the trusting is itself the untreatable injury, which is why every remedy in this book eventually has to be applied there.
The question at the end of that verse is often quoted as though it were despairing, and the verse after it answers immediately: I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart. Nobody can know the heart, including the person who has one — and one party can, and does, and gives to each according to his ways. That turns an unanswerable question into a statement about who holds the file. It is comfort and warning in the same clause, and the book leaves both edges on it.
The closing prayer is Jeremiah's, and it uses the vocabulary of the diagnosis on himself: Heal me, O Yahweh, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved. He does not claim to be the tree by the water; he asks for the treatment the nation's incurable wound needs. What he is defending himself against is the taunt in the streets — where is the word of Yahweh, let it come — thrown at a man whose predictions had not yet arrived. His reply is that he never wanted the day he announced and never hurried after it, and the request that follows is honest about what he does want, which is to see the people making the taunt disappointed instead of himself.
settled What this mark means