Jeremiah 17:1 - Meaning and Application

The people had asked, “What is our sin? What have we done wrong?” in Jeremiah 16:10, as if they could not be blamed for anything serious enough for God to judge them. That challenge was answered there, and here God gives a fuller reply. The charge is fully proved against them, both the facts and the guilt. Their sin is too clear to deny and too serious to excuse, so they have nothing to say in their defense or to lessen the coming judgment.

They cannot claim they are innocent, because their sins are on record in God’s full knowledge and in their own conscience. Their sin is also visible to the world in the marks it has left behind, in Jeremiah 17:1-2. It is written before God in the clearest, most lasting way, and stored away by him so it will not be forgotten (Deuteronomy 32:34). It is written with an iron pen and the point of a diamond, so it cannot wear away with time. The sin of sinners is never forgotten until it is forgiven.

Their sin is also graven on their hearts. Their own consciences witness against them and stand like many witnesses in court. What is written on the heart may be hidden for a while, but it cannot be erased. One day it will be brought out as evidence when the books are opened. Even if they refuse to admit the witness of conscience, there is still enough proof without going further.

God points to the horns of their altars, where the blood of their idolatrous sacrifices was sprinkled. Those altars may also have carried the names of the false gods they served. Their neighbors will testify against them, and so will the creatures they abused in the service of their lusts. Their own children will also be witnesses against them, because children remember the altars and groves to which their parents led them when they were young, in verse 2. They were full of these things from early on. They spoke of them often, naturally, and with delight.

They also cannot claim that they have repented or changed their hearts. Their guilt is plain, and their love for sin is still strong and hard to cure. Many understand Jeremiah 17:1-2 in this way, that their sin is deeply engraved on the tablets of their hearts. They have a settled love for it. It has become part of their nature, and they cling to it as something precious. Their minds are still bent toward their idols, and neither God’s word nor his discipline has made them forget them or care less for them.

Their sin is written on the horns of their altars because they have bound themselves to their idols and determined to stay with what they have done. In that sense, Jeremiah 17:2 can also be read this way, they remember their children, and they remember their altars and groves just as warmly. They are as fond of them and as unwilling to leave them as people are with their own children. They will live and die with their idols, and they cannot forget them any more than a mother can forget her nursing child.

Since the case is fully proved, the sentence is also confirmed in Jeremiah 17:3-4. Because they are so fixed in their sins and will not let them go, they will have to part with their treasures, and strangers will take them. Jerusalem is God’s mountain in the field, built on a hill in the middle of a plain. God will give all the wealth of that rich city to be plundered. Or, as the words can be taken, all the wealth of his mountain and fields, both the crops from the country and the stores from the city, will be handed over to the Chaldeans.

It is right for people to lose what they have used in idol worship and in serving their lusts. The whole land was God’s mountain, as in Psalm 78:54 and Deuteronomy 11:11, but they turned it into places of sin and worshiped idols on the high hills, as in Jeremiah 17:2. Now those places will become spoil throughout their borders. What we turn into a tool for sin, God can turn into plunder. What comfort can we expect from what dishonors God?

They will also lose their inheritance and be carried away as captives to a foreign land in Jeremiah 17:4. “You yourself,” or “you and all who are in you,” will lose the land that I gave you. God admits it was their inheritance and that he gave it to them. They had a clear right to it, which made their folly even greater when they threw themselves out of it. Some read the words to mean, “Through your own fault you will be driven out.” They will discontinue the use of the land, or let it rest. The law had told them to let the land rest every seventh year, in Exodus 23:11. They had not obeyed that command, so God would force the land to rest, as in Leviticus 26:34. But that rest would not be restful for them, because they would serve their enemies in a land they did not know.

Sin breaks our comfort and takes away the enjoyment of what God has given us. Yet losing possession is not the same as losing the right forever. This hints that if they repent, they may recover the land again. For now, they have kindled a fire in God’s anger, and it burns so fiercely that it seems as if it will burn forever. And it will, unless they repent, because it is the anger of the everlasting God against immortal souls. Who can know the power of that anger?