Jeremiah17chapter 17

Jeremiah 17:1-4

The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond, engraved rather than erasable, graven upon the table of their heart and upon the horns of their own altars. Keil reads the double location as the whole problem stated at once, idolatry no longer a practice but a fixture cut into the organ meant to love the Lord. Clarke notes the children remembering the altars and the groves as apostasy handed down like an inheritance, and the discontinuance from the land in verse 4 as the covenant curse landing exactly where the sin was committed.

Jeremiah 17:5-8

Cursed be the man that trusteth in man opens a contrast the bench reads beside the Psalter's two ways, the cursed man like the heath in the desert, rootless in a salt land that cannot support him, and the blessed man who trusts the Lord like a tree planted by the waters, its leaf green and its fruit unfailing even in a year of drought. Henry reads the two trees as one soul under two conditions, dependent on man it withers, dependent on the Lord it cannot be moved by heat or drought. Gill notes the deliberate echo of the wisdom tradition, Jeremiah restating in his own oracle what the Psalter already taught as the two ways.

Jeremiah 17:9-11

The heart is deceitful above all things: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? is answered in the next breath by the Lord who searches the heart and tries the reins, so that self-deception meets an examiner it cannot fool. Calvin reads the pairing as the whole doctrine of sin and grace stated in two verses, human self-knowledge bankrupt and divine knowledge sufficient in its place. Wesley reads the partridge hatching eggs not her own beside the man who gathers riches not by right as one figure, what is gained by fraud does not stay gained, and the fool is left with nothing at his end.

Jeremiah 17:12-13

A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary turns from the deceitful human heart to the one dwelling that does not fail, the Lord's own sanctuary, exalted from the first while every human refuge falls. Barnes reads the fountain of living waters in verse 13 as the same contrast the book draws at 2:13, the Lord as the source no broken cistern can replace, so that forsaking him is forsaking the only water that does not fail. Gill notes that those who depart are written in the earth, the deliberate opposite of a name kept in a book of remembrance, recorded only in dust.

Jeremiah 17:14-18

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise belongs to the confessions running through chapters 11 to 20, Jeremiah turning from preaching to prayer when the mockery, Where is the word of the Lord? let it come now, grows unbearable. Henry reads the appeal I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee as Jeremiah reminding a God who alone knows it that the threats he carries were never his own choosing. Calvin reads the prayer for his persecutors' confounding, rather than his own, as grief permitted a man asking God to vindicate the word he was made to speak.

Jeremiah 17:19-27

The word turns to a sign-act at the city gates, stand where the kings of Judah come in and go out, and preach a single commandment, keep the sabbath, carrying no burden through the gates of Jerusalem on that day. Clarke reads the sabbath test as representative rather than exhaustive, one visible commandment standing for the whole covenant obedience the fathers refused, they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff. The chapter closes on a conditional promise stated in full, obedience bringing kings and princes riding into a city that shall remain for ever, disobedience bringing an unquenchable fire in the gates, the same two ways as the cursed and blessed man of verses 5 to 8 now applied to the whole city.