I Will Not Make a Full End

The chapter opens with a conditional promise. If Israel would return and put away their abominations, they would swear As Yahweh lives in truth, justice and righteousness, and the nations would bless themselves in him. Faithfulness in God's people was meant to become a blessing to the world.

Then comes an agricultural command. Break up your fallow ground, and don't sow among thorns. Unplowed ground is hard and choked with weeds, and seed sown there is wasted. God also spoke of circumcising the heart, an image of inner devotion rather than an outward sign only, and called Jerusalem to wash its heart from wickedness. The alternative was judgment from the north, pictured as a lion from its thicket, storm clouds, and chariots like a whirlwind.

Jeremiah's response is one of the most personal passages in the prophets. In verse 19 he cries, My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart! He then described a vision in the language of Genesis 1 reversed. The earth was waste and void, the heavens had no light, the mountains trembled, no man remained, and the birds had fled. Yet in the middle of this vision God declares, The whole land will be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.