Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
Call to Me and I Will Answer
Jeremiah 33:1-13
1 Moreover Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah the second time, while he was still locked up in the court of the guard, saying, · WEB
A second word in the same cell offers to show him things he does not know, and every sound the judgment silenced is named again and given back.
The location is repeated deliberately: while he was still locked up in the court of the guard. Against that the invitation is issued: Call to me, and I will answer you, and will show you great and difficult things, which you don't know. The offer is made to a man whose freedom has been taken and whose city is finished. What it promises is not release but information. Two words in the same confinement establish that the cell has not interrupted anything.
What is happening outside is described in a detail no other passage gives. The houses of the city and of the kings are being pulled down to make a defense against the siege mounds. Jerusalem is demolishing its own homes for rubble to plug the breaches. It is a city consuming itself to survive one more week, and the corpses are described as filling the spaces that work created.
Into that comes a promise that answers, term for term, the diagnosis the book has been repeating. The wound was incurable and there were no medicines Jeremiah 30:12–13; here God says I will bring it health and healing, and I will cure them. The sin was engraved with an iron pen. Here he says he will cleanse and pardon all of it. And the city that was to be a curse among the nations becomes a name of joy, praise and glory before them. The nations tremble — not at the judgment, but at all the good and all the peace provided to it.
The restoration is then measured by sound, and the list is exact. What was taken away was the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride Jeremiah 7:34. What is given back is the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. The same four, in order, with one addition — the voices of people bringing thanksgiving into the house of Yahweh and saying that his loving kindness endures forever. And after the weddings, the shepherds. Flocks lie down again in the waste places and pass under the hand of the man who counts them. Nothing spectacular is promised. Somebody counting sheep in a field is the proof that the country is alive.
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