Jeremiahchapter 11
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Speaks with:Jeremiah 7×5Jeremiah 2×3Jeremiah 11×22 Chronicles 36×2Ezekiel 8×2Jeremiah 12×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Jeremiah is sent to preach 'the words of this covenant' in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. Cursed be the man that heareth not, blessed the obedience that makes them his people. But a conspiracy is found: Judah has returned to the iniquities of the fathers, and Jerusalem's gods are as many as her streets. Do not pray for this people; their crying will not be heard in the time of their trouble. Then the plot comes home. The men of his own town Anathoth seek his life, and the prophet realizes it only when Jehovah shows him: 'I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter' (11:19).
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–8 Hear Ye the Words of This Covenant
- B. 9–17 A Green Olive Tree with Its Branches Broken
- C. 18–23 A Gentle Lamb Led to the Slaughter: Plots at Anathoth
The outline
A.Hear Ye the Words of This Covenantvv. 1 to 8
Read vv. 1 to 8 →B.A Green Olive Tree with Its Branches Brokenvv. 9 to 17
Read vv. 9 to 17 →C.A Gentle Lamb Led to the Slaughter: Plots at Anathothvv. 18 to 23
Read vv. 18 to 23 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 11The history
A covenant in that world was a treaty, and treaties had a fixed shape: the terms were read aloud in public, the parties agreed, and a list of blessings and curses was attached for keeping or breaking them. Copies of Assyrian treaties of the same century survive and read the same way. The phrase repeated here — cursed is the man who does not hear the words of this covenant — is that closing curse formula.
The reading has a recent memory behind it. In Josiah's eighteenth year the book of the Law was found during temple repairs, read out to the whole assembly, and sworn to by king and people together. Shrines were smashed and the Passover was kept on a scale nobody remembered.
The chapter says the reform did not take. Judah had as many gods as she had towns, and as many altars for burning incense to Baal as Jerusalem had streets. Household religion is harder to demolish than a hilltop platform.
Then the chapter turns personal. The plot to kill Jeremiah comes from Anathoth — his own priestly village, his own relatives. Their threat is that he must stop prophesying or die by their hand. He compares himself to a tame lamb led to slaughter, an animal that walks alongside the man with the knife because it trusts him.
What it meant to them
First hearers had lived through a genuine revival and were being told that a national ceremony had not changed a single street. That is an uncomfortable thing to hear about a movement you were proud of.
And the attempt on the prophet's life tells them where opposition would come from. Not from Babylon or from pagan Egypt, but from the religious professionals of a village of priests.
Sources cited
- Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 11. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.