Jeremiah11chapter 11

Jeremiah 11:1-5

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: The chapter opens as a covenant lawsuit, words to be preached in the streets of Jerusalem, cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, and traces the covenant to its origin in the day I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, Sinai grounded in the exodus rather than left abstract. Jeremiah's own answer closes the unit, so be it, O Lord, the prophet assenting to the curse-and-blessing pattern he is about to preach against his own people.

Jeremiah 11:6-8

Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah: The command to proclaim is doubled by the record of how long the warning had already run, rising early and protesting, an idiom the bench reads as tireless persistence rather than a literal hour of the day. Verse 8 gives the verdict the covenant itself predicted, yet they obeyed not, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart, so the curse now falling is the covenant's own words returning rather than an arbitrary sentence.

Jeremiah 11:9-10

A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah: Conspiracy names the covenant breach as a deliberate plot rather than a drift, and verse 10 states the breadth of it, the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant, north and south joined in one indictment though the north had already fallen. The fathers named here are the wilderness generation, refused to hear my words, so the present generation is charged with repeating rather than originating the pattern.

Jeremiah 11:11-13

Behold, I will bring evil upon them: The judgment is stated as inescapable and, this once, unanswerable to prayer, though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them, the same refusal the temple sermon pronounces at 7:16. Verse 13 counts the idols by the city itself, according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, altars to Baal multiplied street by street in Jerusalem, an idol-count the bench reads against the whole chapter 10 polemic on false gods.

Jeremiah 11:14-17

pray not thou for this people: Pray not thou for this people repeats the standing order of 7:16 nearly word for word, the intercessor forbidden his own office because the time for prayer to avert judgment has closed. The Lord called thy name, a green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit recalls what Judah once was before verse 16 turns it to kindling, fire upon it, and the branches of it are broken, the covenant name spoken over the very tree about to burn.

Jeremiah 11:18-20

And the Lord hath given me knowledge of it: The chapter turns from national indictment to Jeremiah's own danger without warning, and this unit opens the run of confessions the book carries through chapter 20, the prophet's inner life recorded as Scripture rarely records anyone's. Like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, I knew not that they had devised devices against me states the plot's success at the moment it is exposed, and verse 20 answers with the appeal the confessions repeat, that triest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them.

Jeremiah 11:21-23

the men of Anathoth, that seek thy life: The plotters are named as the men of Anathoth, Jeremiah's own priestly hometown from 1:1, his kinsmen demanding silence, prophesy not in the name of the Lord, that thou die not by our hand, a threat from the very people who should have known his call best. The sentence answering them, the young men shall die by the sword, is the first judgment the book records Jeremiah asking for and receiving in kind, and the bench reads the unit as proof that prophecy in this book costs the prophet his own household before it costs him anything else.