Jeremiah 30:1 - Meaning and Application

Here Jeremiah is told to write down what God had spoken to him, and this likely includes all the messages that came before. He was to write them and make them public, so that people who had not benefited from hearing them once might think more carefully when they read them later. More likely, it refers especially to the promises about their return, which had been mixed in with his other messages. He was to gather those promises together, and God would add more words like them.

He was also to write them for future generations, who would see them fulfilled and have their faith strengthened by the prophecy. He was not to send this as a private letter, like the one in the previous chapter to the captives, but to write it in a book, to be kept carefully in public records. Daniel understood from these books when the captivity was nearing its end (Daniel 9:2). It was to be written in a book, not on loose papers, because the days would come, though still far off, when God would bring back the captives of Israel and Judah, many from the ten tribes along with those from the two tribes (Jeremiah 30:3). It should be written so it could be read then too, showing how exactly the fulfillment matched the prediction. That is one purpose of written prophecy.

It also hints that God would love them because of their fathers, as Paul later says (Romans 11:28). For that reason God would bring them back to Canaan, the land he gave their fathers, and so they would possess it again.

Jeremiah is then told what to write. These are the very words the Holy Spirit teaches him to record (Jeremiah 30:4). The promises written by God’s command are as truly his word as the Ten Commandments written by his finger.

First, he must write a picture of the terror and panic the people were in, and would still face whenever the Chaldeans attacked. This would make their rescue seem all the greater and all the sweeter (Jeremiah 30:5). They had heard a voice of trembling, the cries of fear echoing through danger. The false prophets had promised peace, but the reality was fear and no peace. No wonder, when trouble comes from outside, fears rise within. Even the fighting men would be overwhelmed by the disaster of their nation. They would sink under it and be as helpless as women in labor, whose pain comes on hard and cannot be escaped (Jeremiah 30:6).

You never hear of a man in childbirth, yet here it is not just a few fearful men, but every man with his hands on his loins, in deep anguish, like women in labor, when they see their cities burned and their land ruined. Yet this pain is compared to childbirth, not to a deathbed, because it will end in joy, and the pain will be forgotten like a mother’s labor. All faces will turn pale. The word means more than a sudden fright. It can also describe a body made weak and sickly, like jaundice.

The prophet laments the coming disaster as he foresees it (Jeremiah 30:7). He cries, “Alas, that day is so great,” a day of judgment, like the great and terrible day of the Lord (Joel 2:31, Jude 1:6). It will be so great that nothing like it has come before. Our Lord spoke in the same way about the later destruction of Jerusalem, saying it would be unlike anything else (Matthew 24:21). It is also called the time of Jacob’s trouble, a sorrowful time when God’s own people will suffer more than others. The whole time of the captivity was such a time. Anyone who cares for the good of Jacob and the honor of the God of Jacob should deeply grieve such times.

Second, Jeremiah must write the sure promise that these troubles will one day end happily. Jacob’s troubles will stop, and he will be saved out of them. Though the church’s afflictions may last a long time, they will not last forever. Salvation belongs to the Lord, and he will bring it for his church.

Jacob’s oppressors will also be stopped from doing more harm, and they will be punished for what they have done (Jeremiah 30:8). The Lord of hosts, who has all power, says, “I will break his yoke from off your neck,” the yoke that has long pressed so heavily and worn you down. “I will burst your bonds and restore your freedom and ease, and you will no longer be at the command of foreigners. They will no longer rule you, and they will no longer make their profit from your property or your labor.”

The mercy reaches its fullest point here: they will be restored to the free worship of God (Jeremiah 30:9). They are delivered from serving their enemies, not so they can live for themselves, but so they can serve the Lord their God and David their king. That means they would come back into proper order, under God’s settled rule in both worship and civil life. They had been brought low and forced to serve enemies because they had not served the Lord as they should have, with joy and gladness of heart (Deuteronomy 28:47).

When God saves them from trouble, he also prepares them for that rescue by giving them a heart to serve him. He makes the blessing sweeter by giving them the chance to serve him. We are delivered from the hand of our enemies so that we may serve God without fear (Luke 1:74-75). Deliverance from outward trouble is truly a mercy when it leads us into fuller service to God.

They will serve their own God, and they will no longer, as in their old days of rebellion, choose false gods, nor, as in the days of captivity, be forced to serve them. They will serve David their king, meaning the rulers God would appoint from David’s line, such as Zerubbabel, or at least those who sat in judgment on the throne of David, like Nehemiah. But this clearly reaches further than that. The Chaldee paraphrase reads it as obeying the Messiah, the Son of David, their king, and Jewish interpreters also apply it that way. That restored era, which began with their return from captivity, was meant to lead them to the Messiah.

He is called David their king because he was David’s son (Matthew 22:42), and he fulfilled the name fully. David was a striking picture of him in both humility and exaltation. The covenant of kingship made with David pointed mainly to Christ, and in him all the promises of that covenant came to their full and final fulfillment.

God gave David the throne of his father, and he set him on Zion, his holy hill. In the New Testament, God is often said to have raised up Jesus, setting him up as King (Acts 3:26; Acts 13:23, Acts 13:33).

Notice this: those who serve the Lord as their God must also serve David their King, that is, they must give themselves to Jesus Christ and let him rule them. All people must honor the Son as they honor the Father, and they must come to God through him as the Mediator, the one who stands between God and man.

Those who are freed from spiritual slavery must show it by serving Christ. Those to whom he gives rest must also take his yoke upon them.