Jeremiah 16:14 - Meaning and Application

There is a mix of mercy and judgment in these verses, and it is hard to tell which some lines are pointing to. The two are so closely joined here, and some of this reaches forward to gospel times. God will certainly judge them for their idolatry, and they should expect it, because the decree has already gone out.

God sees all their sins, even when they commit them in secret and hide them carefully. He says, “My eyes are on all their ways” (Jeremiah 16:17). They do not keep their eyes on God, and they show no reverence for him, but he is watching them. None of the sins of sinners can be hidden from God, and none will be ignored by him (Proverbs 5:21; Job 34:21; Psalm 90:8).

God is deeply angry, especially over their idol worship (Jeremiah 16:18). His perfect knowledge convicts them, and his justice condemns them. He says, “I will repay their sin and their guilt double,” not double what it deserves, but double what they expect and double what he has done before. In other words, he will punish them richly, after they have abused his patience for so long.

The sin that especially brings God into dispute with them is that they have defiled his land with idols. They have not only turned from what belonged to him as his inheritance, but have polluted the land where he chose to dwell with delight. They have filled it with the dead and filthy things of their false gods. Idols are like detestable carcasses, and God hates them, so we should hate them too. He may also be speaking of the sacrifices they offered to those idols, since their high places were spread through the land.

God will also raise up the agents of his anger and use them to drive the people out of their land, just as he has said (Jeremiah 16:16). He will send for many fishers and many hunters, the Chaldean army, the Babylonian conquerors, who will use many methods to trap and destroy them. They will work by cunning like fishers and by force like hunters. Wherever the people hide, in hills, mountains, or rocky places, they will be found and forced out. God has many ways of bringing judgment on a people who refuse the warning of his word.

Their slavery in Babylon will be harder and more bitter than their slavery in Egypt. Their overseers will be harsher, and their lives will be made far more miserable. This is implied in the promise that their rescue from Babylon will be more glorious and more welcome than their rescue from Egypt (Jeremiah 16:14, Jeremiah 16:15). In Egypt, their bondage came on slowly; in Babylon, it came suddenly and with every added fear. In Egypt they had Goshen, their own place to live; in Babylon they would have no such shelter.

These judgments will also speak to them, and God will be glorified through them. When God corrects his people, he teaches them. Through this rod he asks them, “Can a man make gods for himself?” (Jeremiah 16:20). Can anyone be so blind as to think a god he made with his own hands can help him? Will they ever again be so foolish as to make gods that are not gods, when they already have a God who made them, and who is the true and living God?

God will also make himself known by the judgments he carries out. First he will repay their guilt, and then he will show that he is the Lord, “this once” (Jeremiah 16:21). That means this final and complete judgment, not just another interruption of their peace. He will make them know his hand, its weight and power, how far it can reach and how deeply it can wound. They will learn that his name is the Lord, the God with whom no one can contend, the God who makes his warnings as real as his promises.

Yet even here he has mercy stored up for them. These words were given partly to encourage the prophet and the few among the people who trembled at God’s word. God had said sternly that he would send them into a foreign land (Jeremiah 16:13), but he follows that with comfort so they will not sink into despair. The same hand that scattered them will one day gather them again (Jeremiah 16:14, Jeremiah 16:15).

They are cast out, but they are not cast away. They will be brought back from the land of the north, the place of their captivity, where they are held with a strong hand. They will also be gathered from all the lands where they have been driven, even where they seemed lost in the crowd. God will bring them back into their own land and settle them there. As the warnings fit what was written in the law, so this promise fits it too: “I will not cast them away” (Leviticus 26:44). “From there the Lord your God will gather you” (Deuteronomy 30:4).

The words in Jeremiah 16:16 can also be understood as a promise. God will send for fishers and hunters, the Medes and Persians, who will find the exiles in the places where they were scattered and send them back to their land. Or he may mean Zerubbabel and others of their own people, who would search them out and urge them to return. Or he may mean whatever servants God’s Spirit used to stir their hearts to go back, since at first they were reluctant. They had begun to settle down in Babylon, but God stirred them up like an eagle stirs up its nest and hovers over its young (Zechariah 2:7).

Their return from Babylon would, in some ways, be even more remarkable than their rescue from Egypt. Both were the Lord’s work, and both were wonders in the eyes of his people. Both showed that the Lord lives, and both were to be remembered forever for his honor as the living God. Yet this new mercy would be so surprising and so welcome that it would almost make the former rescue fade from memory.

New mercies should remind us of old ones and move us to thank God again for them. Still, we are often tempted to think the past was better than the present. We ask, “Where are all the wonders our fathers told us about?” as if God’s power has grown weak, or as if the days of miracles were always better than the days when God works through his ordinary care.

For that reason, this deliverance from Babylon is spoken of as greater than the rescue from Egypt. Egypt was a rescue by might and power, but Babylon was a rescue by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4:6). It showed more of pardoning mercy, the kind of mercy that forgives sin, because their captivity in Babylon came more clearly as punishment for sin than their slavery in Egypt. That is why Zion’s comfort in being brought back from Babylon is that her sin is forgiven (Isaiah 40:2).

God shows his glory in mercies that seem ordinary, just as much as in those with miracles. We should praise him for both. And while we must not forget what God did for our fathers, we should give special thanks for what he does for us in our own day.

Their return from captivity will also bring a real change of heart. They will come back healed of their love for idols, and that will complete their rescue and make it a true mercy. They had defiled their own land with their detestable practices (Jeremiah 16:18). But after they have suffered for it, they will come and humble themselves before God (Jeremiah 16:19-21).

First, they will admit that their God alone is truly God, because he is a God of need, meaning a God who is enough for every need. He is their strength to support and comfort them, their fortress to protect and shelter them, and their refuge in trouble. Need drives many people to God who once kept their distance from him. Those who ignored him in days of comfort are glad to flee to him in the day of trouble.

Second, they will be stirred to return because the Gentiles, the nations, will come to God from the ends of the earth. The Jews, who by their idolatry had made themselves like Gentiles, will also come back to him in repentance and obedience, even from the far places to which they were scattered. The prophet is comforted by this hope, and he breaks out in joy at what God has shown him: “O Lord, my strength and my fortress, I am at peace now, since you have shown me that many will come to you from the ends of the earth.” Those who are brought to God themselves cannot help rejoicing when they see others coming to him too.

Third, they will confess the folly of their ancestors. It is fitting for children to say this when they have felt the pain caused by their fathers’ sins: “Our fathers inherited, not what they hoped for, but lies, emptiness, and things that brought no gain.” They will see that their fathers were deceived by idol worship. It did not deliver what it promised, so why should they return to it? It would be good if the disappointments people meet in sin, and the harm sin brings them, kept others from following the same path.

Fourth, they will reason themselves out of idolatry. Reformation is likely to last when it grows out of clear thinking about the foolishness of sin. They will ask themselves, “Should a man be so foolish as to make gods for himself, out of his own imagination and his own hands, when they are really no gods?” Can anyone be so blind as to expect help or blessing from something that has no divinity except what he first gave it himself?

Fifth, in all this they will honor God. They will show that they understand both his hand in providence, meaning his ruling care in events, and his name in the Word. And they will learn his name through what they have experienced of his hand (Jeremiah 16:21). At last, after refusing all the teaching of the prophets, they will be made to know what they would not learn before. We are so dull that nothing less than God’s mighty grace, known by experience, can teach us his name rightly as it is revealed to us.

Their return from captivity will also point ahead to the greater salvation the Messiah will bring, when he gathers into one the children of God who were scattered abroad. In that way, the later rescue shines so much brighter than the rescue from Egypt that it almost makes the earlier one fade from view. Some take the mention of many fishers and hunters to refer to gospel preachers, who are fishers of men and who gather souls into the gospel net, finding them in every mountain and hill and bringing them safely to Christ. Then the Gentiles came to God from the ends of the earth and turned from the worship of silent idols to serve the living God.