Jeremiah 15:1 - Meaning and Application

Few passages show God’s anger against a stubborn people more strongly than these verses. Jeremiah had prayed earnestly for them, and others had joined him, yet they gained no delay and no softening of the judgment. God’s answer makes it clear that the sentence had already gone out, could not be reversed, and would soon be carried out.

The first thing to notice is the sin on which this severe sentence rests. It looks back to an old evil, because of Manasseh, king of Judah, and what he did in Jerusalem (Jeremiah 15:4). We are told elsewhere that Jerusalem was destroyed for that very reason, especially for his idolatry and the innocent blood he shed, which the Lord would not forgive (2 Kings 24:3-4). He is called the son of Hezekiah, because being the child of such a good father made his sin even worse, not better. Many years had passed since Manasseh’s time, yet his sin is still counted, showing that bloodguilt does not vanish with time and that a delay is not the same as a pardon.

The judgment also rests on their present hard-heartedness. God says they have forsaken him, turned away from his service, and gone backward from the path he set before them (Jeremiah 15:6). Their stubborn refusal to repent is also clear, because they do not return from their own ways back to God’s commandments (Jeremiah 15:7). There is mercy for those who have strayed if they will come back, but those who keep clinging to rebellion can expect no favor.

The sentence itself means total ruin. God says he will no longer look on them with favor: his heart cannot be toward them. The holy God cannot keep pleasure in people who have such deep dislike for him. So he says, “Cast them out of my sight,” meaning he will treat them as something hateful and offensive, and he will no longer bear with them.

He also says he will not allow anyone to plead for them, even Moses or Samuel (Jeremiah 15:1). Moses and Samuel were two of the greatest examples of prayer and mediation, that is, standing between God and his sinful people to seek mercy for them. Many times Israel would have been destroyed if Moses had not stood in the gap, and Samuel’s prayers had also helped save them (1 Samuel 12:19). Yet even their intercession would not be enough here. The point is that if even such great saints could not turn away this judgment, Jeremiah should not expect to do so either. The wording also suggests that saints in heaven are not acting as intercessors for saints on earth. Christ alone is the only mediator in the life to come, though Moses, Samuel, and others had that role in their own time.

God then says they will be handed over to one destroying judgment after another. If he drives them from his presence, where can they go for safety (Jeremiah 15:2)? Nowhere. Some will die by pestilence, which is death that strikes without visible human force, like the plague (Revelation 6:8). Others will die by the sword, each one falling in the way appointed for him. Captivity is named last, likely because it is the harshest of all, since it brings both long suffering and a full burden of trouble.

The sword is mentioned again in Jeremiah 15:3, and four destroyers are named over them, like officers over soldiers. If some escape the sword, they will still be cut off by pestilence, famine, or captivity. If some fall by the sword, they are still under God’s judgment, which follows sinners even beyond death. Even dogs will tear those left in the field. And if any think they can outrun justice, they will be made public examples of it, scattered into many kingdoms of the earth (Jeremiah 15:4), like Cain, who became a wandering warning to all.

They will fall with no one able to help them. God himself, who had been their own God, turns against them and says, “I will stretch out my hand against you.” This means a deliberate and firm blow that will reach far and strike deeply. He says, “I am weary with relenting” (Jeremiah 15:6), a striking phrase that shows how long they had pressed his patience, especially by pretending to repent when they did not mean it. God had often held back his anger, but now there will be no more delay. How miserable it is when people sin so long against God’s mercy that they finally lose it.

Their own land also turns against them and drives them out, just as it once drove out the Canaanites, which was part of the warning in the law (Leviticus 18:28). God says he will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land, meaning he will scatter them through their own city gates and into the gates of the surrounding nations (Jeremiah 15:7). Their own children, who should have helped them when they spoke with the enemy at the city gate, will be taken from them. He says he will make them childless, so there will be little hope that the next generation will restore their fortunes. When the people are destroyed, the land itself will soon lie empty.

This dark picture is then expanded in the following verses, where the destroyer is brought against them. When God has bloody work to do, he will find bloody tools to carry it out.

Nebuchadnezzar is called a spoiler at noon, not a thief in the night. He is not pictured as someone afraid of being caught, but as one who openly breaks through every defense and destroys the rights of others in broad daylight. Some read the line as, “I have brought against the mother a young man, a spoiler,” because Nebuchadnezzar, when he first invaded Judah, was still a young man, in the first year of his reign.

The verse can also mean, “I have brought against her, against the mother of the young men, a spoiler.” That is, Jerusalem was like a mother city with many young men. Or it may especially point to the grief of mothers who had many sons fit for war. These sons would soon risk their lives on the battlefield, likely fall before an enemy stronger than they were, and bring deep sorrow to the mothers who had raised them with great care.

The same God who brought the spoiler against them also caused him to fall suddenly on the spoil, and then terror came upon the city. The Hebrew wording is very abrupt, “the city and terrors,” as if to say, “O city, what dread will come over you!” The city and its terrors are brought together, though they seemed far apart before. Mr. Gataker reads it as, “I will suddenly bring upon her a watcher and terrors,” since the word can mean a watcher (Daniel 4:13, Daniel 4:23), and the Chaldean soldiers were called watchers (Jeremiah 4:16).

A dreadful slaughter is then described. First, the wives are left without husbands. “Their widows are increased above the sand of the seas,” so many have they become. God had once promised that the men of Israel would be as the sand of the sea for number, but now they are cut down, and their widows become just as countless. Yet God says, “They are increased to me.” Though their husbands were killed by the sword of his justice, the widows were taken into the arms of his mercy. God has even taken the God of widows as one of his honored titles.

Second, parents are deprived of their children. The mother who has borne seven sons, whom she expected to be the support and joy of her old age, now fades away after seeing them all cut down by the sword in one day. She that had many children has grown weak (1 Samuel 2:5). This shows how uncertain children’s comfort can be, and it should teach us to enjoy them as though we did not cling to them too tightly. When the children are killed, the mother gives up the ghost, because her life was tied up in theirs. Her sun goes down while it is still day. She loses all her comforts just when she thought she was in the middle of enjoying them.

She is now ashamed and confused to think how proud she was of her sons, how much she loved them, and how much she had hoped to gain from them. Some understand this mournful mother to mean Jerusalem, grieving for the death of her people as deeply as any mother mourns her children. Many have already been cut off, and the rest, who escaped and were hoped to become a new generation, will also be given over to the sword before their enemies, says the Lord, the Judge of heaven and earth, who always judges rightly, even when the sentence seems severe.

They will fall without anyone pitying them (Jeremiah 15:5). “Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem?” When God has cast you out of his sight, and his compassion is closed off from you, neither enemies nor friends will show you mercy. No one will sympathize with you, mourn for you, or trouble themselves to ask how you are doing.

This is because their friends were themselves caught up in the same troubles, and had enough to do to lament their own misery. It was also plain to everyone around them that they had brought this ruin on themselves by refusing to give up their sin. They had often been urged to repent and change, but they would not listen. So who can pity them? Israel has destroyed itself. Those who could have been saved on such easy terms, and would not be, will perish forever without pity.

In this way God would complete their misery. He would set their acquaintances at a distance from them, just as he did with Job’s friends, and we should recognize his righteous hand in the coldness of friends as well as in the harms done by enemies.