Jeremiah 13:12 - Meaning and Application

Here is a judgment threatened against this people that would leave them completely overwhelmed. The Lord speaks of it in a picture so it will be noticed and felt more strongly: “Every bottle shall be filled with wine” (Jeremiah 13:12). The meaning is that those who have made themselves worthy of judgment, like vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, will be filled with God’s anger, just as a bottle is filled with wine. In the same way, every vessel of mercy prepared for glory will be filled with mercy and glory (Isaiah 51:20).

They will also be as brittle as bottles. Like old wineskins that burst when new wine is poured in, they will be broken apart (Matthew 9:17). Or the saying may mean that their minds will be as full of confusion as bottles are full of wine, which is explained in Jeremiah 13:13. Compare Isaiah 51:17. This may have been a common proverb among them, used in different ways. But they did not understand the prophet’s point, so they mocked him: “Do we not already know that every bottle is filled with wine? Why tell us something so obvious?” Perhaps they were also offended because they knew this was a rebuke for their drunkenness. They loved wine flasks and drink (Hosea 3:1). Their watchmen were all for wine (Isaiah 56:12). They loved the false prophets who promised them wine and pleasure and told them to be cheerful, as if they would never lack a bottle to keep them happy (Micah 2:11).

The prophet’s answer is, “Yes, your bottles will be full of wine, but not the wine you want.” He means that they will become drunk in a deeper sense. A drunk person is like a bottle full of wine, because when the wine goes in, wisdom and self-control go out. God says they will all be filled with drunkenness (Jeremiah 13:13). Their plans will be confused, their speech will fail, and their steps will stagger. They will not know what they say or what they do, much less what they should say or do. They will be sick of all they enjoy and vomit it up, as drunkards do (Job 20:15). They will fall into helpless sleep, unable to help themselves, and, like people who have drank away their reason, they will be open to scorn and at the mercy of others.

This will not be true of only a few. Even the kings who sit on David’s throne, who should have been like their ancestor David, wise and steady, will be intoxicated in this way. Their priests and prophets, especially the false prophets who should have guided them, will also be ruined in their understanding. They had been indulgent toward their own lusts, and so they were justly deprived of their senses. In fact, all the people, both in the land and in Jerusalem, were carried away in the same way. Those whom God intends to destroy, he also leaves without sense.

Being confused, they will turn on one another. The cup of the wine of the Lord’s fury will throw them not only into helplessness, but into violence. God says, “I will dash a man against his brother” (Jeremiah 13:14). Their drunken foolishness and their drunken quarrels will help bring them down. Drunk people often become quarrelsome, and that brings them grief and shame (Proverbs 23:29, Proverbs 23:30). So their sin becomes their punishment. God would send unrest into families and neighborhoods, as he did in another case (Judges 9:23), so that fathers and sons would fight and be ready to tear one another apart. That would make them an easy target for their enemies. Since this judgment had already been determined, God says, “I will not pity, spare, or have mercy, but destroy them,” because they would not pity, spare, or have mercy, but destroy one another (Habakkuk 2:15, Habakkuk 2:16).

There is also good advice here, and if they had followed it, it would have kept them from ruin. In short, they needed to humble themselves under God’s powerful hand. If they would listen, this is what God says to them: “Do not be proud” (Jeremiah 13:15). Pride was one of the sins for which God had been arguing with them (Jeremiah 13:9). If they would turn from that sin, God would stop pressing the case against them. They must not think too highly of themselves when God speaks through his prophets. They must not act stubborn, scornful, or unwilling to be taught, and they must not despise the messengers who bring his word. When God comes against them in his providence, as he does through his works and judgments, they must not grow careless when he warns them or angry when he strikes. Pride was behind both of those responses.

They must remember that the Lord who speaks is great, his authority cannot be challenged, and his power cannot be resisted. So they should bow to what he says and stop being proud as they have been. They must also honor God. “Give glory to the Lord your God,” and do not give it to idols or other gods. They give him glory by confessing their sins, admitting they are guilty before him, and accepting the punishment they deserve (Jeremiah 13:16). They also give him glory by true repentance and a changed life. Only then do we begin to live as we should, and with purpose, when we make God’s honor our main aim.

They must do this quickly, while there is still time to repent, before God brings darkness and they lose their way. Darkness will belong to those who refuse to repent and give glory to God. When people were scorched by judgment and still did not repent to give glory to God, the next judgment brought darkness (Revelation 16:9, Revelation 16:10). The warning here is even sharper because their own efforts to escape will help destroy them. Their feet will stumble while they are hurrying over the dark mountains, and they will fall and not be able to get up again. Those who think they can outrun God’s judgments will find the road impossible. No matter how fast they go, the judgment will catch them. Their path is dark and slippery (Psalm 35:6). So before things reach that point, wisdom says to give glory to God and make peace with him. Then there will be no need to flee from his justice.

The people’s hopes for a better future would be disappointed. While they looked for light, comfort, and relief, God would turn it into the shadow of death, something gloomy and dreadful, and make it total darkness, like Egypt’s darkness when Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, a darkness that could be felt. The hopes of stubborn sinners die with them, when they finally realize they will never be met.

They must humble themselves and bring shame on themselves. Even the king and queen would not be exempt from this (Jeremiah 13:18). They were to be told that, great as they were, they must repent honestly, and so give glory to God and set a good example for their people. Those who are lifted above others in this world must humble themselves before God, who is higher than the highest and holds kings and queens to account.

They must bow low, sit down, and think about what is coming. They must sit in the dust and mourn over themselves. If they do not humble themselves, God will find a way to bring them low. Their power and status, the crown they boasted in and trusted in, would come down when they were led away as captives. Then what would their rank and all the marks of it matter? Blessed be God, there is also a crown of glory for those who humble themselves, and that crown will never come down.

This warning is strengthened by the danger of staying proud and unbroken. If they refuse to listen, the prophet’s grief will be deep and hidden. Jeremiah says that not only his eyes, but his very soul, will weep in secret places (Jeremiah 13:17). The stubbornness of people who will not hear God’s word breaks the hearts of faithful ministers, who know the terrors of the Lord and the value of souls.

His sorrow would be real, not put on. He would choose to weep where no one could see him except God, who sees all. He would join his tears to both his public preaching and his private prayers. The thought of their condition would make him so sad that he would almost withdraw from company altogether. He would grieve over their unrepented sins, their pride, their stubbornness, and their false confidence. The sins of others should trouble us, especially when we cannot correct them. We must mourn the more because we cannot fix them.

He would also grieve over their ruin, because it could not be turned back. His tears would fall not mainly because his relatives, friends, or neighbors were in trouble, but because the Lord’s flock, his people and the sheep of his pasture, were being carried away captive. What should move us most is whatever brings shame on God and weakens his kingdom.

Their own ruin was certain (Jeremiah 13:19-21). The land would be laid waste. The cities of the south would be shut up. These were the cities of Judah in the southern part of Canaan, and they would be tightly besieged so that no one could go in or out. Some take this to mean the cities of Egypt, south of Judah, where they had hoped to find help. Even there, every place they looked to for rescue would fail them.

The people themselves would be carried off into a foreign land to live as slaves. Some had already been taken away, and they may have hoped that would satisfy the warning and leave the rest behind. But no, the whole nation would go. God would make a full end of them, and the whole land would be carried away. So it happened in the final captivity under Zedekiah, because they did not repent.

The enemy was already near, the one who would do this (Jeremiah 13:20). The prophet tells them to lift up their eyes and look at those coming from the north, from the land of the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. They were advancing quickly and looked fierce. Then he turns to the king, or rather to the city and state, since the wording is feminine.

What would they do now with the people placed under their care, whom they should have protected? Where was the flock given to them, their beautiful flock? Where could they take it now for safety? How could it escape such ravening wolves? Rulers should think of themselves as shepherds, and those under them as a flock entrusted to their care. They must care about the flock’s safety in times of danger. Fathers and mothers who neglect their children, and ministers who neglect their people, should hear this question as if God were asking it of them: Where is the flock given to you to feed, that beautiful flock? It is starving. It is left open to wild beasts. What will you answer when the chief Shepherd appears?

What could they say against the fairness of God’s actions? What would they say when he visited them for what they had done in earlier days (Jeremiah 13:21)? They could say nothing except that God was right in everything he brought upon them. Those who flatter themselves that they will escape punishment will be put to shame when they find they were wrong and that God has judged them.

They would also have to face their own folly in giving the Chaldeans power over them by turning to them for help and making agreements with them. In that way, they had taught those enemies to become their masters. Hezekiah started this kind of trouble when he showed his treasures to the messengers from the king of Babylon, which invited him to come and plunder Judah. Those who have God to trust in, yet court foreign alliances and rely on them, are only making rods for their own backs and teaching their neighbors how to rule over them.

How would they bear the trouble that was right at the door? Would not pain seize them like a woman in labor? These would be pains they could not avoid or put off, sharp and severe pains. In some ways they would be worse than labor pains, because they were not expected beforehand, and because there would be no child to be born whose joy might afterward make the suffering seem forgotten.