Jeremiah 17:5 - Meaning and Application

These verses teach sound and useful truth for all of us. They do not seem to point only to Judah and Jerusalem at that moment. Jeremiah, the prophet, did not always speak only about future events, sometimes he gave practical teaching, and this message would have warned them not to place their trust in the wrong place when trouble came.

We should learn, first, the misery and disappointment that always come to those who depend on people for rescue and success in times of trouble (Jeremiah 17:5-6). The Lord says, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man.” God calls him cursed because he has insulted God by giving to people the trust that belongs to God alone. Or, cursed means miserable, because such a person is leaning on a broken reed, something that will not only fail him, but may also wound him.

The sin here is trusting in man, that is, putting confidence in human wisdom, power, kindness, and faithfulness the way we should trust only in God. It is making flesh, weak and dying human nature, the arm we lean on for help and protection. God is his people’s arm (Isaiah 32:2). We must not expect any creature to be for us what God has promised to be.

Scripture calls man “flesh” to show how foolish it is to make him our confidence. He is weak, like flesh without bones or sinews. He is inactive, like flesh without spirit. He is mortal and wasting away, like flesh that soon decays. He is also false and sinful, because human nature has fallen from its original integrity (Genesis 6:3). This sin is really a turning away from the living God. People may still speak respectfully of God and say that they trust him, but their hearts have moved away from him. To cling to a broken cistern is to leave the fountain, and God takes that seriously.

The result is certain. The person who trusts in man deceives himself. He will be like the heath in the desert, a poor shrub that grows in barren ground, dry, useless, and worthless. His comforts will fail, and his hopes will be ruined. He will wither, be cast down in himself, and be stepped on by others. When good comes, he will not truly share in it. When times improve, they will not improve for him. He will live in the dry places of the wilderness, always disappointed, with no harvest while others reap one.

This also applies to those who trust in their own righteousness and strength, and think they can do well enough without Christ’s merit and grace. They too make flesh their arm. Their souls cannot prosper in grace or comfort, and they cannot bring forth acceptable service to God or receive saving blessings from him. They dwell in a dry land.

Second, we learn the rich satisfaction that belongs to those who make God their confidence, who live by faith in his care and promises, and who rest in his love even in troubled times (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Our duty is to trust in the Lord, to do what he commands, and then depend on him to support us in doing it. When creatures fail us, lie to us, or turn against us, we are to commit ourselves to God, who is enough to fill the place of what is lost and to protect us from what threatens us.

Those who do this will be like a tree planted by the waters. It is a choice tree, carefully set in good soil, unlike the dry shrub in the wilderness. Its roots spread out by the river, so it draws in plenty of sap. That pictures both stability and comfort. Such people are settled, peaceful, and inwardly secure.

When heat comes, that tree is not harmed. It is well supplied from its roots, so it can stand against drought. In the same way, those who make God their hope will flourish in honor and comfort, like an evergreen tree whose leaves do not wither. They will be pleasant to themselves and lovely in the eyes of others. God gives honor to those who honor him by trusting him.

They will also have inward peace and contentment. In a year of drought, when there is no rain, they will not be filled with anxious care. A tree has seed within itself, and in a similar way these people have support within, from God. When the comforts of life break down, they still have enough in him. We do not need to worry about a broken cistern while we still have the fountain.

They will also be fruitful in holiness and in good works. Those who trust God and draw strength and grace from him by faith will not stop bearing fruit. They will still be able to do what brings glory to God, helps others, and benefits themselves.

Third, we learn about the sinfulness of the human heart and the fact that God always sees it (Jeremiah 17:9-10). It is foolish to trust in man, because he is not only weak, but also false and deceitful. We are often ready to think we trust God and to claim the blessings promised to those who do. Yet our own hearts can deceive us here more than anything else. We may think we trust God, while in reality we do not. One sign is that our hopes and fears rise and fall according to whether outward things go well or badly.

This is true in general. There is wickedness in our hearts that we do not notice or suspect. In fact, people commonly think better of themselves, and of their own hearts, than they should. The heart, in its fallen state, is deceitful above all things. It is subtle and false. It is ready to trip others up, and even its name has the sense of one who supplants another, like Jacob, whose name means a supplanter.

It calls evil good and good evil. It puts false colors on things and says peace to people who have no peace. When people say in their hearts, that is, when they let their hearts whisper to them, that there is no God, or that he does not see, or will not call them to account, or that they will have peace even if they keep on sinning, the heart is deceitful in all these and many similar ways. It tricks people into their own ruin, and this makes the evil worse, because they are deceiving themselves and destroying themselves.

This is where the heart is truly and deeply wicked. It is deadly, hopeless, and beyond cure. The case is very bad, and almost hopeless, if the conscience, which should correct the rest of the soul, becomes itself a source of lies and leads the whole person astray. What will become of a person if the thing inside them that should be the Lord’s lamp gives false light? What hope is there if God’s deputy in the soul, the part meant to guard his interests, turns against him?

Such is the deceitfulness of the heart that we can rightly ask, Who can know it? Who can fully describe how bad the heart is? We cannot fully know our own hearts, not what we will do in a time of temptation. Hezekiah did not, and Peter did not. We do not know what corrupt desires are hidden there, or how many ways we have already turned aside. Who can understand his errors? Much less can we know the hearts of others, or put our trust in them.

But whatever evil is in the heart, God sees it and knows it completely. He says, “I, the Lord, search the heart.” This is true of everything in the heart, all its thoughts, even the quickest ones that we ourselves overlook. It is true of all its purposes, even the deepest ones, the ones hidden most carefully from other people. Men may be fooled, but God cannot be. He does not only search the heart with a piercing eye, he also tests the mind and will, so he can judge what he finds and give everything its true value. He tests it as gold is tested to see whether it is pure, or as a prisoner is tested to see whether he is guilty.

God’s judgment of the heart prepares the way for his judgment of the man. He gives to every person according to his ways, according to what his actions deserve and where they lead, life to those who walked in the ways of life, and death to those who stayed in the path of ruin. He also gives according to the fruit of his deeds, that is, their effect on others, or according to what God’s word sets out as the result of such deeds, blessings for the obedient and curses for the disobedient. Therefore God alone is Judge, because he alone knows the hearts of the children of men.

This is especially true of all the deceit and wickedness of the heart, all its corrupt plans, desires, and schemes. God sees and understands them, and, more than any human can do, he judges the outward act by the heart behind it. God knows more evil about us than we know about ourselves. That should keep us from flattering ourselves and should make us always fear God’s judgment.

The prophet also speaks about the curse that comes with wealth gained unfairly. Fraud and violence had become common sins in Judah and Jerusalem. Now Jeremiah wants those who were guilty of these sins, and who had been stripped of all they owned, to read their sin in their punishment. “He who gets riches, but not by right,” even if he makes them his hope, “will never enjoy them.”

It is possible for people who use wrongful means to gain wealth to succeed for a time. That tempts many to cheat and oppress their neighbors when money can be made that way. A man may gather treasures by empty schemes and a lying tongue, then pride himself on his success and say, “I am rich,” and even, “I am innocent too” (Hosea 12:8). But he will leave them in the middle of his days. They will be taken from him, or he will be taken from them. God will strike him suddenly, just when he says, “Soul, take your ease, you have plenty stored up for many years” (Luke 12:19-20).

He will leave them to he knows not whom, and he will not be able to take any of his riches with him. This shows how bitter it is for a worldly person to die and leave wealth behind. It should also frighten those who got it unfairly, because although the wealth will not follow them into the next world, the guilt will, along with the pain of eternal torment, “Son, remember” (Luke 16:25). In the end, he will be shown to be a fool, like Nabal, whose great wealth did him no good because his heart had become hard and dead as stone.

He was a fool all along, though his conscience may sometimes have told him so. But at the end he will be proved to be one. Those are true fools who are fools in their last end, and many people praised as wise will turn out that way, people who seemed to do well for themselves (Psalm 49:13, 18). Those who gain grace will be wise in the end. They will have comfort in death and gain for eternity (Proverbs 19:20). But those who make wealth their happiness and are determined to be rich, right or wrong, will regret their folly when it is too late to fix the fatal mistake.

This is like the partridge that sits on eggs but does not hatch them; the eggs are broken, stolen (Isaiah 10:14), or spoiled, as in Job 39:15. There was a bird well known among the Jews whose case was often like this. The rich man works hard to build an estate and sits brooding over it, but never gets real comfort from it. His plans to enrich himself by sinful means fail and come to nothing. So let us be wise in time. Let us get what we have honestly and use it generously, so that we may store up a good foundation and be wise for eternity.