Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
Ammon, Edom and the Pride of the Rock
Jeremiah 49:1-22
1 Of the children of Ammon. Yahweh says: “Has Israel no sons? Has he no heir? Why then does Malcam possess Gad, and his people dwell in its cities? · WEB
Two neighbors are judged for taking what was not theirs and for a confidence built on high ground, and in the middle of Edom's sentence God offers to keep its orphans alive.
The case against Ammon is a property dispute. Has Israel no sons? Has he no heir? Why then does Malcam possess Gad? When the northern tribes were deported, Ammon moved into the empty territory east of the Jordan and settled it. The oracle treats that as theft from an absent owner rather than as a conquest, and the sentence is worded as repossession: Israel will possess those who possessed him. The national god goes into captivity with his priests and princes, in the same words used of Moab's Jeremiah 48:7, and what Ammon had trusted is named — her treasures, and the confidence of a rich valley saying Who will come to me?
Edom is judged for something less material. The oracle opens by asking where the famous wisdom of Teman has gone, and then strips the country with an image drawn from harvest law. Grape gatherers leave gleanings behind and even thieves stop when they have enough — but I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he will not be able to hide himself. The point of the comparison is that ordinary plundering leaves something; this does not.
And then, in the middle of it, a sentence that has no business being there. Leave your fatherless children. I will preserve them alive. Let your widows trust in me. It is addressed to Edomites, in an oracle announcing their destruction, and it offers the two most defenseless classes in the ancient world the protection the law had commanded Israel to give its own Deuteronomy 10:18. The judgment falls on a nation; the offer inside it is made to particular people, and it is made to enemies.
The argument that closes the Edom oracle is the one used earlier over the cup. Nations that had less reason to expect it have already drunk; and are you he who will altogether go unpunished? The specific fault named is a place and a state of mind together — the pride of the heart of people who live in the clefts of the rock and hold the height of the hill. A country whose capital sat in a defensible gorge had built a theology out of its geography, and the reply is that a nest as high as an eagle's is still brought down. The last question of the section is the widest thing in it: For who is like me? Who will appoint me a time? Who is the shepherd who will stand before me?
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