Jeremiahchapter 30
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Speaks with:Jeremiah 30×3Ezekiel 34×2Jeremiah 46×2Jeremiah 1×2Jeremiah 10×2Jeremiah 33×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The Book of Consolation opens with a command to write all these words in a book, because the captivity of both Israel and Judah will be turned. First the terror: men holding their loins like a woman in travail: 'Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it' (30:7), a day read here as the tribulation still ahead of Israel. Then rescue: the yoke broken, 'they shall serve Jehovah their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.' The incurable wound is healed; the city rebuilt on its own heap; ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–11 Write All the Words in a Book: the Time of Jacob's Trouble
- B. 12–17 Thy Bruise Is Incurable — Yet I Will Restore Health to Thee
- C. 18–24 The City Rebuilt on Her Own Heap; a Ruler from the Midst
The outline
A.Write All the Words in a Book: the Time of Jacob's Troublevv. 1 to 11
Read vv. 1 to 11 →B.Thy Bruise Is Incurable — Yet I Will Restore Health to Theevv. 12 to 17
Read vv. 12 to 17 →C.The City Rebuilt on Her Own Heap; a Ruler from the Midstvv. 18 to 24
Read vv. 18 to 24 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 30The history
The chapter begins with an instruction to write all these words in a book. That is deliberate archiving. Words spoken in a doomed city vanish with it; words written on a scroll can be carried into exile, copied, and read to a generation born a long way from home.
The images of injury are medical. Your hurt is incurable, your wound is grievous, there is no one to plead your cause, no medicine for your sore — and then the reversal, I will restore health to you and heal your wounds. In that world a wound was cleaned, dressed with oil and resin, and bound. To say no one binds it up is to say the patient has been abandoned.
One line names a period the rest of Scripture returns to: that day is great, so that none is like it — a time of trouble for Jacob, but he shall be saved out of it. Read in the traditional framework this looks past the Babylonian disaster to a still-future distress for Israel, ended by the LORD's own deliverance and followed by the reign of David's king — the same sequence the prophets and the book of Revelation lay out.
The chapter also promises the return of ordinary life: a city rebuilt on its own mound, a palace where it used to stand, thanksgiving and the sound of merrymakers, and a ruler who comes from among their own people rather than being installed by an empire.
What it meant to them
For first hearers the point of writing it down was that they would need it when nothing around them agreed with it. This is a document meant to outlive the city it was written in.
The heart of it is a reversal they would have thought impossible: the God who is bringing this on them is the same one who says I am with you to save you, and I will make a full end of all the nations among whom I scattered you, but of you I will not make a full end.
Sources cited
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Jeremiah
- John Bright, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 30. 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.