Commentary on Jeremiah 31:7-14

The joyful declaration that God is the giver of every good gift, even of life itself, appears in each of this week’s readings for the Second Sunday of Christmas. While the Gospel of John traces the eternal presence of the gift of life through the creative Word of God, Jeremiah 31:7–14 encourages readers to focus on a single moment in time, when both the Giver and the gifts appear to have been lost forever. For so many people, the Christmas season can evoke a similar sense of absence, when gifts and moments of merriment are abundant, but only for other people. What message does this text bring to such a moment?

Jeremiah 31:7–14 overflows with song and joy, but it does not shy away from acknowledging loss and pain.¹ In verse 7, for example, God calls for praise, but what is uttered is a prayer for deliverance: “Proclaim, give praise, and say: Save, O LORD, your people, the remnant of Israel” (verse 7b). In subsequent verses, God declares God’s intention to gather the “remnant,” those exiles who have been dispersed among the enemies. As these scattered ones are gathered from distant corners of the earth and restored to their land, God meets weeping with consolation (verse 9) and turns mourning into joy (verse 13).

This gathered remnant is called a “great company” (verse 8)—an expression more typically employed of festival or military assemblies, and yet here it is a motley crew consisting of the blind and lame alongside women “with child and those in labor,” all needing help for such an arduous journey, with God leading them in straight paths (verse 9).²

Almost as a non sequitur, the reason given for this special care is God’s claim, “For I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn son” (verse 9). The word “for” suggests that the father-son relationship now motivates God’s actions, while the statement that God has become Israel’s father confirms the sense that Israel’s origin and identity as the people of God were in doubt.

Throughout the book of Jeremiah, the case was repeatedly made that the inhabitants of Judah had so thoroughly broken the covenant that God had no other alternative but to hand them over to the Babylonians for punishment. Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem and deportation of the Judeans was, according to Jeremiah, the result of that rupture between God and Israel.

It’s possible that covenant language had become so saturated with injury and accusation that it could no longer convey any hope of reconciliation. If so, then the parental imagery employed in this verse reestablishes the relationship with God on other grounds. To be sure, parental imagery is no guarantee of an enduring bond. The Bible is filled with stories of fractured families and estranged fathers and sons; human experience confirms the truthfulness of these ruptures. Parental and covenantal relationships have more in common than we would like to admit. Even the most intimate of bonds can be broken, often beyond repair. But somehow, God reestablishes the bond, this time as father, with the intention of bringing the remnant home.

One is reminded of the imagery in Hosea of God tenderly teaching the infant Ephraim to walk, becoming infuriated when Ephraim grows up and continually rebels, agonizing over what to do, deciding to disown Ephraim but finally determining to put away wrath because, after all, God is God (Hosea 11:8–9). A covenant can be broken, and a rebellious child can strain a parent’s patience to the breaking point, and yet, God resolves to resume this relationship. God’s decision to claim paternity in verse 9 suggests the possibility of beginning again where all hope had been lost.

God’s deliverance of the exiles is deeply rooted in conceptions of familial responsibility. When God acts to redeem and rescue those who had been scattered among the nations, God acts not as a warrior king or, for that matter, as the lord of the covenant, but rather as Jacob’s next of kin (verses 10–11). The language of redemption is closely tied to conceptions of the obligation to act as “redeemer”—literally, to act as “next of kin” for family members who, for one reason or another, fall into captivity or become estranged from their ancestral inheritance.³

The unit reaches its climax in verses 10–14. In the presence of the nations of the world, divine care for Israel is on full display. God shepherds the gathered flock, while abundant harvests and fecund flocks signal the end of hunger and want; all are signs of God’s goodness. Water imagery pervades this section.

The verb employed in verse 12a to describe the people’s return (nhr) can connote either the flowing of a river or shimmering light reflecting off the water. Accordingly, translations seek to convey either the people’s flowing unity or their radiance.⁴ There’s no need to decide between these options, since the verb conveys both meanings at once: God’s gathered people come streaming home. Like a river, they are fully alive, shimmering with radiance, moving freely and in unity toward the source of that joy: God, the giver and sustainer of all good things.

These gifts of God do not stop: Once established in the land, the gathered remnant is like a “watered garden” (verse 12b). Here, again, the translations convey a range of options, from simply referencing the availability of water to implicitly drawing attention to the Gardener as its source, as if to suggest that the gathered remnant is no longer subject to the vagaries of rainfall or drought but is “well-watered,”⁵ even “irrigated,” by the one who has brought them home.

If, as Ronald Clements has suggested, this unit grounds Israel’s hope in the character of God as the one who creates and gives life,⁶ then the message of Jeremiah 31:7–14 anticipates the philosophical meditation on the creative Word of John 1, even while it remains concretely grounded in the physicality of human, vegetal, and animal life. From lameness and vulnerability to the radiance of abundant life, these scattered ones are not simply created but also redeemed, nurtured, and sustained, as metaphors of God as father, redeemer, shepherd, and gardener converge. As in John 1, it becomes difficult to differentiate the gifts from the Giver, all of which are goodness itself.

Notes

1. For the mixture of grief and joy in Jeremiah, see Louis Stuhlman and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, You Are My People: An Introduction to Prophetic Literature (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010), especially 134–136.
2. William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 2: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, Chapters 26–52, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 184.
3. L. William Countryman, “Redeem,” in Westminster Theological Wordbook of the Bible, ed. Donald E. Gowan (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 413–414.
4. For the translation of nhr as “radiant” in 31:12b, see, for example, NRSVue, NAS, REB (compare “jubilant,” CEB). For the translation “flowing” or “streaming,” see KJV, NKJV, ASV.
5. “Watered”: NRSVue, KJV; “well-watered”: NKJV, NEB; “irrigated”: CSB; “lush: CEB.
6. Ronald E.Clements, Jeremiah, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988), 175–185, esp. 185.