What does Jeremias Chapter 17 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Trust contrasts use desert shrub and watered tree. Heart-searching and healing requests retain their stated speakers. Sabbath obedience and refusal receive conditional city outcomes.

Chapter breakdown

Jeremias 17 describes Juda's sin engraved with an iron pen on hearts and altar horns. Children remember altars and groves on high places; substance and treasures are spoiled and inheritance lost, with enemy service in unknown land. Cursed trust in man makes flesh an arm and departs in heart from the Lord, like a dry desert tamaric in salt uninhabited land. Trust in the Lord resembles a watered tree spreading roots toward moisture, retaining leaves and fruit in drought.

The perverse, unsearchable heart is searched by the Lord, who tries reins and repays ways and deeds. The partridge hatches eggs it did not lay; unjust riches are left by their possessor midlife. The glorious throne is the place of sanctification. Forsakers are ashamed and written in earth for leaving living waters. Jeremias asks healing and salvation, answers demands that the word come, and says he has followed the Lord as pastor without desiring man's day. He asks protection from terror and double destruction for persecutors; the edition distinguishes prediction from malice.

At the people's gate and all Jerusalem gates, kings and inhabitants must hear. No burdens through gates or out of houses, and no work on the sabbath, accompany sanctification as commanded to fathers who refused. Conditional obedience brings kings, princes and people with chariots and horses, and the city's perpetual habitation. People from Juda, Jerusalem, Benjamin, plains, mountains and south bring victims, holocausts, sacrifice, frankincense and praise. Refusal brings unquenched gate-fire consuming houses. These are stated conditions, not unconditional promises or restrictions limited to commercial merchandise.

The story inside

Opening: Trust contrasts use desert shrub and watered tree. Development: Heart-searching and healing requests retain their stated speakers. Conclusion: Sabbath obedience and refusal receive conditional city outcomes.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Trust contrasts use desert shrub and watered tree.
2
Heart-searching and healing requests retain their stated speakers.
3
Sabbath obedience and refusal receive conditional city outcomes.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 85713–85730
17:5. Thus saith the Lord: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. 17:6. For he shall be like tamaric in the desert, and he shall not see when good shall come: but he shall dwell in dryness in the desert in a salt land, and not inhabited. Tamaric.... A barren shrub that grows in the driest parts of the wilderness. 17:7. Blessed be the man that trusteth in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his confidence. 17:8. And he shall be as a tree that is planted by the waters, that spreadeth out its roots towards moisture: and it shall not fear when the heat cometh. And the leaf thereof shall be green, and in the time of drought it shall not be solicitous, neither shall it cease at any time to bring forth fruit.
Lines 85782–85812
17:21. Thus saith the Lord: Take heed to your souls, and carry no burdens on the sabbath day: and bring them not in by the gates of Jerusalem. 17:22. And do not bring burdens out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work: sanctify the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers. 17:23. But they did not hear, nor incline their ear: but hardened their neck, that they might not hear me, and might not receive instruction. 17:24. And it shall come to pass: if you will hearken to me, saith the Lord, to bring in no burdens by the gates of this city on the sabbath day: and if you will sanctify the sabbath day, to do no work therein: 17:25. Then shall there enter in by the gates of this city kings and princes, sitting upon the throne of David, and riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Juda, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and this city shall be inhabited for ever. 17:26. And they shall come from the cities of Juda, and from the places round about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plains, and from the mountains, and from the south, bringing holocausts, and victims, and sacrifices, and frankincense, and they shall bring in an offering into the house of the Lord. 17:27. But if you will not hearken to me, to sanctify the sabbath day, and not to carry burdens, and not to bring them in by the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day: I will kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the houses of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.