Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
Is Anything Too Hard for Me
Jeremiah 32:26-44
26 Then Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah, saying, · WEB
Jeremiah's own words are handed back to him as a question, and the answer runs through the burning of the city to a covenant that includes the keeping of it.
The reply opens by quoting the prayer. Jeremiah had said There is nothing too hard for you. The answer asks Is there anything too hard for me? The confession is turned into an examination, and what follows tests it in the hardest possible direction. The first thing said after it is that the city will be given to the Chaldeans and burned, along with the houses whose roofs had been used for offering incense. The affirmation is not being used to avert the disaster. It is being stretched to cover what lies on the far side of it.
The indictment is the book's fullest and its scope is startling: this city has provoked God from the day that they built it even to this day. Not since Manasseh, not since the schism — since the foundation. And the list of the guilty is the standing one: kings, princes, priests, prophets and people. The specific charges are setting abominations in the house called by God's name, and burning children in the valley of Hinnom. It ends, once more, with the denial that this had ever entered his mind.
Then the turn, and the promises are all first person. He will gather them from every country he drove them to; they will be his people; and he will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever. After a book about a divided, deceitful heart, the gift named is singleness. Then comes the clause that distinguishes this covenant from the one Israel broke: I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me. The old arrangement required faithfulness and got none. The new one supplies the faithfulness it requires. That is why it can be called everlasting without being naive.
The warmth of the language is worth registering because it is unusual. I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. And the symmetry that follows is the pledge behind it. Just as he brought all this great evil on the people, so he will bring all the good he has promised. The same reliability that made the judgment certain is what makes the restoration certain, and the reader has watched the first half being fulfilled.
The chapter then ends where it began, in a conveyancer's office. Fields will be bought for money, deeds signed and sealed, witnesses called. It is the vocabulary of Jeremiah's own purchase, repeated word for word and extended across the whole map from Benjamin to the hill country, the lowland and the South. The sign is interpreted by describing thousands of people one day doing what one prisoner did that afternoon.
settled What this mark means