Commentary on Jeremiah 2:4-13

In a long-term relationship such as with a colleague, friend, or family member, expressing interpersonal anger or frustration can be—among many other things—a healthy expression of love, of commitment, of desire for a better relationship. In this passage, we encounter a glimpse of a raw, frustrated God, expressing anger against God’s people. 

This passage is located early in Jeremiah’s discourse, and it recounts God’s disappointment with the history of Israel’s repeated failures as God’s people. The prophet decries an array of powerful figures in the nation, including priests, prophets, and leaders. The entire system is corrupt and guilty of idolatry. 

While we cannot be certain exactly what period this portion of Jeremiah was written in and thus what specific leaders or events it decries, we know that Jeremiah lived during a period of intense social and religious upheaval. Amon, an idolatrous king who reigned during a period of unchecked foreign acculturation, was assassinated, and his son Josiah implemented intense religious and cultural reforms, eradicating idolatry, destroying sites of idol worship, restoring the temple in Jerusalem, and removing foreign inculturation. 

However, Josiah’s reforms would end upon his death. He was followed as king by his son Jehoahaz, who only briefly reigned and then was dethroned by Egyptian political influence and forcibly removed to Egypt. Jehoiakim was installed as king, and he was beholden to external powers (Egypt and Babylon). Biblical and rabbinical sources document him as being incredibly violent, idolatrous, and unjust. Jeremiah’s life and ministry occurred during this time of dramatically shifting priorities that reflect a general milieu of intense religious and social conflict.

This passage is part of an extended discourse that utilizes legal rhetoric. The phrase “I will bring charges against” is utilized. This imagery evokes God resorting to a formal adjudication of the wrongs of God’s people. This passage allows us a theological glimpse of a wronged God who is seeking restitution.  

In Jeremiah 1:1–3, Jeremiah is situated as a member of the tribe of Benjamin who is connected to the very religious order that he decries in this passage and that he will exhort repeatedly throughout the book. Jeremiah here is speaking—at least in part—to his people, his tribe of priests, who have lost sight of God amid all their religious activity. 

The most interesting imagery to me in this passage is that of the water. It is one of the few positive attributions of God as the “living water.” There is some meaning to be explored here. The people are decried for digging cisterns, essentially storage areas for water, but those cisterns have cracked and can no longer hold water. It is interesting that this passage does not say they dug alternative wells, though cisterns can be used to collect water runoff. The passage seems to emphasize that they sought to create an infrastructure for water storage that would protect them from drought and need without attending to the actual water source. The passage is explicitly clear that the actual water source is God, the living water, but what might the cisterns represent? Do they symbolize a religious infrastructure or liturgical practices that have lost touch with God? 

Interesting comparisons as well are that cisterns are generally still, perhaps stagnant, while the spring of living water denotes movement and flow of water. Cisterns are not the source, and over time, they can age and deteriorate. If not attended to, they can no longer hold the very thing for which they were designed. There is significant potential meaning here, depending on how you interpret the symbolism of the cistern. 

Cisterns rely on a water source. They require constant care and upkeep to effectively store the water from the source. The abundance of water in cisterns can distract from the importance of the water source, leaving the community reliant on the cisterns rather than on the actual source of water. Do you think of the source of your water when you drink it? Every time I take a drink here in Chicagoland, it is Lake Michigan, but I am not always thinking about that. If cisterns represent religious infrastructure or liturgical practices that have lost touch with the source of living water, there is much room for interpretative play. 

It is also important to note that water imagery is not just religious but political in Jeremiah, as evidenced directly after this passage. The people of God are reminded that they won’t be able to use Egyptian or Babylonian water in Judah. The Egyptians and Babylonians won’t be able to replace the living water. These cisterns may not just be religious and liturgical. 

This pericope (verses 4–13) is structured in a way that renders less visible the misogynistic imagery underlying this entire text. You must look in front of the text, where God’s people are situated as “a bride” (verse 2), or after the text, where God’s people are “a prostitute” (verse 20 and following), and at several other misogynistic references. Similar imagery of the unfaithful wife is deployed at numerous points in Jeremiah and other Hebrew scriptures. 

Basic examination of the patriarchal religious and sociocultural context of Jeremiah reveals a stark gender inequality in which women were treated as subservient and severely limited in their human rights, even further revealing how deeply problematic this misogynistic image is. While not evident within the limits of this specific pericope, the literary and rhetorical deployment of God’s voice as the bearer of misogynistic imagery for God’s people situates this passage as deeply embedded in violent gender hierarchies of its day. 

As was stated earlier and bears repeating, in this passage we encounter a glimpse of a raw, frustrated God, expressing anger against God’s people. The misogynistic framing renders this angry God as a dominant actor in the world, who is abusive and violent. A question each preacher using this passage will face is whether to address this head-on or to leave it unaddressed, perhaps hoping the congregation has never read nor will they find the explicit misogyny in the immediate scriptural vicinity of this text during the worship service or the coming week. 

This is a very serious choice for several reasons. First, patriarchal imagery in the scriptures can be correlated to misogyny today, and the avoidance of harm requires the use of new, life-giving imagery. Second, this misogynist context renders this text as a deeply shame-based, dominant image of God speaking. This is not just God calling God’s children to account. This is God situated as the dominant social location of male and husband, and God’s children in an unjust position of inferiority and subservience to God. This is the dominant God berating and abusing. When this passage is read through that lens of a misogynistic God shaming “his” bride using misogynistic stereotypes for women, then it also functions to render God violent for women and queer persons today. 

One of the most important and advanced skills my preaching students can develop is the ability to contest and disagree with biblical texts, and Jeremiah requires contesting if you do not wish to endorse a theology of a dominant and abusive God. Disagreeing with and contesting the biblical text can open up for us an understanding of God that differentiates the possibilities of who God is from the deeply human and sociocultural limitations of theology. Disagreeing with the theology of Jeremiah here may open up the possibility for you and all persons in your congregation to encounter an image of God who is sometimes raw, frustrated, or angry with God’s people in ways that can still be deeply relational, healthy, just, and life-giving.