Jeremiahchapter 16
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Speaks with:Jeremiah 25×2Psalms 83×2Jeremiah 9×2Ezekiel 24×2Jeremiah 15×2Jeremiah 7×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The prophet's life becomes the sermon: he may not marry or father children, may not enter the house of mourning, may not sit in the house of feasting. Because the mourning and the marriage songs of Judah are both about to end. Then a startling reversal of Israel's founding confession: the day comes when men will no longer swear by the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, but by the God who brought them back 'from the land of the north.' Fishers and hunters will fetch them home, and the nations will come from the ends of the earth confessing that their fathers inherited nothing but lies.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–9 Take Thee No Wife, Enter No House of Mourning
- B. 10–13 Why Hath the LORD Pronounced All This Great Evil?
- C. 14–21 Fishers and Hunters; the Nations Come from the Ends of the Earth
The outline
A.Take Thee No Wife, Enter No House of Mourningvv. 1 to 9
Read vv. 1 to 9 →B.Why Hath the LORD Pronounced All This Great Evil?vv. 10 to 13
Read vv. 10 to 13 →C.Fishers and Hunters; the Nations Come from the Ends of the Earthvv. 14 to 21
Read vv. 14 to 21 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 16The history
Marriage and children were not optional in that culture. A man without sons had no one to carry his name, work his land, or bury him, and childlessness was widely read as a misfortune from God. Being told not to marry in that society was closer to being told to disappear.
Funeral custom is described in detail because the prophet is banned from all of it. Mourners tore their clothes, went barefoot, shaved the head or cut the beard, and in some places gashed their skin — a practice the Law forbade but which kept happening. Neighbours brought the bread of mourners to a house where no cooking was done, and passed the cup of consolation to the bereaved. All of that is cancelled.
The threat that the dead will not be buried or lamented is the heaviest curse in the chapter. Proper burial in the family tomb was the last duty a household owed, and to be left on the ground was the fate of enemies and criminals.
The chapter also names hunting practice: God will send for many fishermen to net them and many hunters to drive them off every mountain and out of the clefts of the rocks. Ancient hunts worked exactly that way — beaters sweeping ground toward waiting nets.
What it meant to them
For the first hearers, the prophet's empty house was the sermon. Whole streets were about to have no weddings and no funerals, because there would be no one left to hold either.
Yet the same chapter contains one of the most hopeful lines in the book: a day is coming when people will no longer swear by the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, but by the God who brought them back out of the north country. The exile has not happened yet and the return is already being described as the greater rescue.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 16. 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.