Jeremiahchapter 14
22 verses · BSBJeremiah book hub →
Speaks with:Jeremiah 8×4Joel 1×3Jeremiah 3×3Jeremiah 17×2Jeremiah 2×2Jeremiah 14×2
Summary
Chapter summary
A drought oracle: the gates languish, nobles send servants to empty cisterns, they return with vessels ashamed and cover their heads; the hind forsakes her calf, the wild asses pant on the bare heights. Jeremiah prays out of the drought: 'O thou hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a sojourner in the land?' (14:8). The people's prophets promise assured peace in this place; Jehovah answers, 'I sent them not.' Judgment lands on prophets and hearers alike, and Jeremiah is again told not to intercede. Yet he ends still pleading, 'we wait for thee; for thou hast made all these things.'
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–9 The Drought: Nobles Send Their Little Ones for Water
- B. 10–16 The Prophets Who Prophesy Lies in My Name
- C. 17–22 Let Mine Eyes Run Down with Tears Night and Day
The outline
A.The Drought: Nobles Send Their Little Ones for Watervv. 1 to 9
Read vv. 1 to 9 →B.The Prophets Who Prophesy Lies in My Namevv. 10 to 16
Read vv. 10 to 16 →C.Let Mine Eyes Run Down with Tears Night and Dayvv. 17 to 22
Read vv. 17 to 22 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 14The history
That country lives on a rain season. Showers come between roughly October and April and nothing falls in the summer at all, so every household depended on a cistern filled in winter and on springs that ran low by autumn. A failed rainy season did not mean discomfort; it meant no bread the following year.
The chapter's details are exact. Nobles send their servants for water and the servants come back with empty jars, heads covered — the gesture of shame and grief. The ground is cracked because no rain has fallen. The plowmen cover their heads. A doe abandons her newborn fawn because there is no grass, which a deer will not normally do, and wild donkeys stand on the bare heights with their sides heaving, panting like jackals.
The people's response is the standard one: a public fast, with weeping, and prayers offered at the sanctuary. That was the correct procedure. God tells the prophet not to pray for them and says he will not accept the offerings.
The prophets get the blame in the middle of the chapter. They had been announcing assured peace — no sword, no famine — and are called out as men speaking a lying vision of their own minds. Their punishment is to die by the sword and famine they said would never come.
What it meant to them
For a first audience in a drought, the shocking thing is not the description of the crisis. They were living it. The shock is being told that the emergency prayer service will not be answered.
The chapter's honesty is worth noting. Jeremiah keeps praying anyway, and keeps arguing — pointing out that the people were misled by professional preachers. The prayer is refused, but the man refuses to stop praying it.
Sources cited
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 14. 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.