Jeremiah 14:1 - Meaning and Application

The first verse serves as the heading for the whole chapter. It is true that the chapter is mainly about the drought, but much of it is also the prophet’s prayer about that drought. Still, these prayers are rightly called “the word of the Lord that came to him” concerning it, because every prayer God accepts is one he first puts into our hearts. Nothing is truly our word when we speak to him unless it first comes from him.

These verses show, first, the voice of nature mourning the disaster. When the sky was like bronze and gave no dew, the earth was like iron and produced no crops. Then grief and confusion spread everywhere. The people of the land were all in tears. If vines and fig trees are destroyed, all joy ends, as in Hosea 2:11-12. Their joy faded with the harvest, with the grain and wine they depended on. Judah mourned (Jeremiah 14:2), not over sin, but over hardship, not over God’s anger, but over the lack of rain.

The city gates, meaning all who came and went there, grew weak and pale. They had no food to support life, and they feared worse trouble still. The gates that once saw corn brought into the city now looked sad, because people were leaving through them to seek bread elsewhere. Even those who sat at the gates were faint. They were black with grief and hunger, like the poor beggars described in Lamentations 4:8, and like the black horse of famine in Revelation 6:5. They fell to the ground from weakness and could no longer walk the streets. The cry of Jerusalem rose up. That may mean the citizens of the city, for the city depends on the fields around it, or people from all over the land gathered there to pray for rain. But it may also have been the cry of distress, mixed with the cry of prayer.

The great men of the land felt this judgment too (Jeremiah 14:3). The nobles sent their servants or attendants to the water, because they could no longer keep all their household help and because even their children might need to learn labor in a time of need. We see Ahab and Obadiah, the king and his chief household officer, searching for water themselves in a similar time of distress (1 Kings 18:5-6). More likely, these nobles sent their lower servants to look for water, because no one can live without it. But they returned with empty jars. The springs had dried up because there was no rain to feed them, and then the masters who sent them came back ashamed and dismayed.

They would not be ashamed of their sins, and they were not humbled by God’s warnings. They thought their wealth and rank put them above repentance. But God found a way to make them ashamed of the very pride they trusted in. They learned that even wealth and rank could not buy them a single drop of water to cool their tongues. Reading this should make us thankful for the gift of water, so that we do not have to learn its value only by losing it. What we need most is often what God gives most freely.

The farmers felt the trouble most sharply and at once (Jeremiah 14:4). The ploughmen were ashamed, because the ground was so hard and dry that it would not take the plow, even though it had cracked open so badly that it seemed ready for one. They were ashamed to stand idle, because there was nothing they could do and nothing they could hope for. The lazy person who will not plow because it is cold is not ashamed of his own foolishness. But the hard-working farmer who cannot plow because of heat is ashamed of his suffering. This shows how directly farmers depend on God’s care. They must always look to him, because they cannot plow or sow with hope unless he waters the furrows (Psalm 65:10).

Even the wild animals were in a pitiful state (Jeremiah 14:5-6). Human sin brings judgments on the earth that make even lower creatures groan. The prophet mentions this as a reason for God to show mercy. Judah and Jerusalem have sinned, but what have the hinds, the doe-like deer, and the wild donkeys done? Hinds are gentle, lovely creatures, and very caring toward their young. Yet in this severe famine they do something against their nature: they leave their newborn fawns and go looking for grass somewhere else. If they find none, they abandon them, because they cannot feed them. The sad part is not only that the hind had no grass for herself, but that she had none for her young. That should shame people who spend on their own desires what should be kept for their families.

The hind is said in Job 39:3 to “cast forth her sorrows” when she brings forth her young, but she still keeps caring for them. Soon she sees the good result of her labor, because her young grow up and need her less. Here, though, the great trouble is that she has nothing to give them at all. Even the wild donkeys deserve pity, though people do not usually feel much for them. Their usual home is the barren wilderness (Job 39:5-6), but now even that is too hot for them. They climb to the highest places they can find, where the air is cooler, and they pant like dragons, or like creatures gasping for breath in the heat. Their eyes grow dim, and their strength fails, because there is no grass to sustain them. The tame donkey, which serves its owner, has a manger to feed from and receives care for its labor (Isaiah 1:3). But the wild donkey, which will not submit to a driver, must live on the air, and gets what fits its refusal to serve. “If a man will not work, let him not eat.”

Second, there is the voice of grace, grieving over sin and bringing the trouble before God. The people are not eager to pray, but the prophet prays for them. In doing so, he stirs them up to pray for themselves and gives them words they can use with hope of being heard (Jeremiah 14:7-9). In this prayer, sin is honestly confessed. When we pray about the removal or prevention of any judgment, we must always admit that our sins testify against us. Our sins speak as witnesses against us. True repentant people see them that way, because they are plain and undeniable. They testify against us by bringing conviction, which leads to present shame and confusion, and later to judgment.

Their sins silence every plea they might make for themselves. Instead of defending them, their own iniquities stand up and speak against them. If they brag about their own goodness and rely on their own righteousness, their sins prove them wrong and show them to be stubborn and evil.

If they complain that God is treating them unfairly or harshly in their suffering, their sins still speak against them. Their own backsliding is great, and their rebellion is many. They have sinned against God too often to hide it, and too deeply to excuse it.

Mercy is then begged for with earnest humility: “Even though our sins testify against us, and even though they seem to block the help we need, do it anyway.” They do not name exactly what they want God to do. As humble penitents and beggars, they leave the matter with him, like Jephthah’s people asking, “Do with us whatever seems best to you” (Judges 10:15). They do not say, “Do it this way” or “Do it now,” but, “Do it for your name’s sake.”

This is a strong prayer. Our best arguments in prayer are those drawn from the glory of God’s own name. “Lord, act so your mercy is honored, your promise is kept, and your place in the world is upheld. We have nothing to offer in ourselves, but everything is in you.”

There is also a very humble request in this prayer, “Do not leave us, and do not withdraw your favor and presence” (Jeremiah 14:9). We should fear God’s leaving us more than we fear losing any earthly comfort.

They also plead their relation to God, their hope in him, and what they expect from him because of that relation (Jeremiah 14:8-9). They look on him as the one who should rescue them in trouble, even though their sins testify against them. In God, mercy has often triumphed over judgment. The prophet, like Moses before him, wants to make the best case possible for the people. So even while he admits they have committed many great sins (Exodus 32:31), he still says, “You are the hope of Israel.”

God has trained his people to hope in him. By so often calling himself the God of Israel, the Rock of Israel, and the Holy One of Israel, he has made himself Israel’s hope. He has given them his word to trust, and he has stirred them to trust it. There are still some in Israel who make God alone their hope and expect him to be their Savior in trouble, with no hope of salvation from anywhere else. “You have often been that to them in times of great need.”

Since God is his people’s all-sufficient Savior, they should hope in him in their worst troubles. And since he is their only Savior, they should hope in him alone. They also say, “You are among us.” They had special signs of his presence, his temple, his ark, and his words. They were called by his name, the name of the God of Israel, so they had reason to believe he would not leave them. “We belong to you, so save us. Your name is called on us, and so our troubles reflect on you, as if you were not able to help your own people.”

The prophet had often warned them that their religion would not protect them from God’s judgments. Yet here he uses that very fact as a plea to God, just as Moses did (Exodus 32:11). Even this argument can have weight with a merciful God, as far as it is right to use it.

It grieves them to think that God does not appear to deliver them. They do not accuse him of doing wrong, but they humbly ask why he should show grace, for the honor of his own name. If he does not help, the nations may say that he does not care for his own people. They may say, “Israel’s hope and Savior does not notice them. He has become like a stranger in the land, with no real interest in its welfare. His temple, which he said would be his resting place forever, is no longer treated that way. He is there only like a traveler who stays one night at an inn and never asks about what happens there.”

God never truly acts that way, but sometimes he seems to. At such times it appears as if he does not care what becomes of his church. Christ himself slept while his disciples were in the storm.

Others may also think he is unable to help. Once Israel’s enemies said that the Lord could not bring his people into Canaan, so he let them die in the wilderness (Numbers 14:16). In the same way, people might now say that either God’s wisdom or his power has failed. They might say he is like a man left stunned and helpless, or like a strong man overcome by someone stronger, and therefore unable to save. Either idea would deeply dishonor God’s perfection.

So they ask, why has the God who is surely among us become like a stranger? Why does the Almighty seem like nothing more than a strong man who is too stunned to save, even if he wants to? In prayer, we should care more about God’s honor than our own relief: “Lord, what will you do for your great name?”