Jeremiah 17: 5-8 are wisdom poetry, contrasting the righteous and the wicked, similar to the way Psalm 1 does. It contrasts trust in humanity and trust in God. The text begins with the standard messenger formula. 5 Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those (gever, warrior, strongman) who 1) trust in mere mortals and 2) make mere flesh their strength, 3) whose hearts turn away from the Lord. The structure is one of synonymous parallelism, each of the three elements being essentially the same thought.[1] Isaiah could say that those who go to Egypt for help rely on horses and trust in chariots, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord. Egyptians are nothing but human and flesh, whereas God is spirit (31:1, 3). Jeremiah refers to the way the government of Judah had a tendency to rely on Egypt due to its fear of Assyria at one stage of its history and on Babylon in another historical setting. However, the language of imprecation (invoking curses) is not common in proverbial literature. More frequently, the language of foolishness or (especially in Ecclesiastes) vanity is used to denote unwise or immoral behavior. Cursing is Deuteronomic language. It usually reserves cursing for specific breaches of religious or societal norms, such as fashioning an idol (Deuteronomy 27:15), dishonoring a parent (Deuteronomy 27:16), or moving a neighbor’s boundary marker (Deuteronomy 27:17), and many other examples. The warrior who trusts in mere human power will fail (and, with it, ignominy — the combination of which would constitute a curse). The question naturally occurs whether Jeremiah directs words about the cursed warrior at a specific person (or persons). If they were, the most likely candidate would be Josiah (ruled 640-609 B.C.), whose ambitious dream to restore the “Golden Age” of David’s and Solomon’s empire led him to join the ill-fated coalition of western vassals rebelling against the collapsing Assyrian empire in the late seventh-century B.C. The Assyrians killed Josiah in 609 in the Battle of Megiddo, when he refused to allow Pharaoh Necho II to pass through Judah en route to support his Assyrian allies. One of Josiah’s successors, Jehoiakim (reigned 609-598 B.C., although not directly after Josiah, who was succeeded immediately by Jehoahaz, who reigned for a mere three months in 609), also died during an unsuccessful revolt, this time against the Babylonians. Yet a third rebellion, led by Zedekiah, the last king of Judah (reigned 597-587 B.C.), resulted in the final destruction of Jerusalem and the calamitous deportation of a significant portion of Judah’s population into Babylonian exile. All of these rulers, enmeshed as they were as minor players in the ancient Near Eastern geopolitics of the seventh-century B.C., warranted Jeremiah’s dire reflection. 6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. When good comes, it has no effect. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. In contrast, 7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. 8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. Jeremiah first removed the weeds (false trusts), so that there might be room for the good grain.[2] Unbelief turns life into a parched wasteland; faith makes it a fruitful orchard. The thought is similar in Psalm 1, where those who delight in and meditate upon the Torah are as trees planted by streams of water, yielding fruit and prospering, while the wicked are like chaff that the winds drive away (1:3-4). Soon, the Babylonian army would overrun the kingdom of Judah, and the land of milk and honey would become a wasteland.[3] Unbelief kept the people of Israel out of the Promised Land (Num. 13–14). Unbelief caused them to worship idols and invite the chastening of God during the time of the Judges. During the time of the kingdom, unbelief kept the leaders from repenting and turning to God for help, and they became entangled in the costly politics involving Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon.
Jeremiah 17: 9-11 God knows the heart of humanity, and rewards justly. 9 The heart is devious (`aqov, “insidious as in enticing and harmful, same root as ya`aqov, Jacob)[4] above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? The point here is that we do not know our own hearts. The name of Jacob has a connection to deceiver, and thus the prophet seems to refer to their ancestor. Jeremiah uses an appropriate allusion to their ancestor, whose deceit they followed rather than the faith he would later show. They supplant trust in the Lord for trust in the armies of other nations. They think they can deceive the Lord and that what they are doing will escape the attention of the Lord. To trust in one’s own heart is as foolish as trust in the armies of other nations. Jesus would say that from the human heart arises evil intentions and that what comes from within is what defiles a person (Mark 7:21). 10 I the Lord test the mind and search the heart,[5] to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. Jesus would say that when the Son of Man comes in the glory of his Father, he will repay everyone for what they have done (Matthew 16:27). Thus, while no human being can know the heart, the Lord, of course, does, and will judge human according to that knowledge. The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart, and the human heart is deceitful and incurable. We often say, “Well, if I know my own heart,” but we do not know our own hearts. God does. God searches the heart and mind and knows exactly how to reward each person. If we want to know what our hearts are like, we must read the Word and let the Spirit teach us. The hearts of the Jewish leaders turned away from the Lord and divine truth. Consequently, they made unwise decisions and plunged the nation into ruin.
We do not like to think about the human heart in such terms. Calling the human heart devious and perverse runs counter to the spirit of our age. “I like to think that, deep down, people are basically good.” That line is an article of faith for a great many of our neighbors. If I am honest, I have assumed its truth as well. Such cheery optimism about the human condition happens to contradict the church’s historic creeds, as they stress the human race’s need for a redeemer. Our optimistic, can-do, achievement-oriented culture is less inclined than generations past to regard sin as an inescapable condition. We have little trouble believing in individual sins. Unruly behavior is out there for all to see, screaming from Twitter and Yahoo headlines. Most are inclined to think others commit more sins than they do. Most also think that in especially egregious cases they should receive punishment for it. Our culture’s pervasive individualism inclines us to claim all credit for our individual achievements, even as we blame forces beyond our control for our failures. The highest goal of many parents is to instill in their children the right mix of ability and ambition so they may go out and “make something of themselves.” They are to “seek their fortune” — an older turn of phrase that implies prosperity is a birthright that they simply need to discover and claim. The prophecy of Jeremiah is the opposite. What happens to those whose minds are receptive to the deceptive thought that they can make it out there on their own, relying on the shallow roots they put down in the desert sand? They wither. Only those who live a life close to the Lord — taking their places among the grove of verdant trees by the riverside — survive and flourish.
Christians can adopt a self-deceived approach to sin. We may recognize the issue, attempt to manage sin by lessening it, continue wrestling, but eventually, sin returns to plague us. We think enough spiritual disciplines and prayer will put us beyond the struggle. If we are secular, we locate sin in other places, such as capitalists, or the wealthy, and we think that if we could just rid the country of them we would be all right. In part, communism, Nazism, and Islamism have perpetrated great horrors upon humanity precisely because they located sin in something outside themselves that they thought they could remove. People seek a form of holiness that does not face honestly the deceptive quality of the human mind and heart.[6]
In what can we trust? Human beings do not come to maturity without the people around them nurturing them physically and socially. We are so weak as infants that we could not survive infancy or childhood without people who cared that we are here. To learn, we open ourselves with some degree of trust that the world around us provides us with what we need to live. Yet, we also must learn another difficult truth concerning a human life. Some people are out to deceive us in order that they get what they want from us. This basic selfishness is twisting the legitimate concern we have for our lives into the need to put down others to make us appear better. We have the terrible capacity to lie to ourselves. We will like over the smallest details of our lives, such as how much we ate today, or our actual height and weight. We may lie about how much alcohol we consume. We lie about the sexual thoughts we have at random moments of the day because such thoughts are not socially acceptable. We lie about our most important life choices. We do not have the internal strength to admit the truth and face the consequences. Therefore, we lie to ourselves.[7]In doing so, we lose respect for whatever truth we may have within us or whatever truth that may surrounds us. Losing respect for truth, we lose our love for self and others as well. Thus, I hope we can see the wisdom of the observation that if we find ourselves easily offended, it will because we are deep in self-deception.[8] Our minds have the incredibly capacity to find reasons to believe whatever we want to believe.[9] Psychologist might call such tendencies a reflection of the shadow side of our psyche. The tendency may not be sinful in itself, but it allows us to participate in evil with justification. We cannot rid ourselves of the shadow. We can only become increasingly aware of its game and the signs that usually accompany its expression.[10] We do not know ourselves well. Consequently, we cannot even trust our judgment and wisdom completely.
We will not face honestly the issue with which Jeremiah presents us if we do not engage in some simple practices. We will need the community of faith in its worship, learning groups, and service groups. We will need to pray. All of this leads me to consider that we need something outside of self to give us the wisdom we need for living. The Bible is a good place to begin for that wisdom. Behind the biblical text is the God who inspired it and wants us to develop a relationship with God through Christ. Dealing with the power of self-deception is not easy; it will take a life-long journey, and will take regular attention.
[1] The verse, structurally, is a tristich, with the second and third stichs (lines) in synonymous parallelism with the first stich. To make flesh the warrior’s confidence (stich one) is almost the same thing as trusting in mere mortals (stich two), and both are examples of turning away from Yahweh (stich three).
[2] John Calvin.
[3]Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1995). Be decisive. An Old testament study. (Je 17:1). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
[4] the word “deceit” is from a root, “supplanting,” “tripping up insidiously by the heel,” from which Jacob (Ho 12:3) took his name.
[5] "Kidneys" are emotions, whereas "heart" is thought and will.
[6] Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy. HarperCollins, 2009, 11, 36.
[7] —Cortney Warren, “Honest liars — the psychology of self-deception,” TED talk delivered at TEDx. University of Nevada Las Vegas, May 2, 2014. youtube.com. Retrieved July 31, 2018.
[8] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Macmillan, 1922), 40.
[9] Voltaire
[10] —Richard Rohr, “Seeing Our Shadow,” Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation for March 6, 2015. cac.org. Retrieved July 31, 2018.
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