Jeremiah 17
Jeremiah 17 contains one of the most quoted and most unsettling sentences in all of Scripture: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (v. 9). The chapter opens, though, not with the diagnosis but with the disease at work. Judah's sin, the prophet says, is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond - not scribbled lightly but engraved, cut so deep it cannot be rubbed out, graven upon the table of their heart (v. 1). What a people loves shapes what a people becomes, and Judah's loves have hardened into the very grain of its character, passed down to its children. The early verses trace where that leads: the loss of the land, exile among strangers, a fire of judgment long in coming.3
Then the chapter sets two human lives side by side, as starkly as a parable. Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD (v. 5) - he is like the heath in the desert, a scrubby bush in a salt land, unable to see good when it comes. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD (v. 7) - he is as a tree planted by the waters, green in the heat, fruitful in the drought. The picture is the same one the book of Psalms opens with, and the difference between the two lives is not their circumstances but their roots: what each one is finally trusting. Set between the two trees stands the great question about the heart - and its answer, that the LORD Himself searches it (v. 10).
The chapter then turns personal. The prophet who has just exposed every other heart prays for his own: Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise (v. 14). Mocked by people who jeer Where is the word of the LORD?, hunted by enemies, Jeremiah does not reach for flesh to defend himself; he reaches for God as my hope in the day of evil. And the chapter ends where Judah's public life happened - at the city gates - with a plain call to hallow… the sabbath day (v. 22). To stop, to rest, to refuse to carry the burden one day in seven, is to confess in the body what the whole chapter has been teaching the heart: that life is held up by God, and not by us.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 17:1-4Graven Upon the Table of the Heart
1The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars; 2Whilst their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills. 3O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil, and thy high places for sin, throughout all thy borders. 4And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.
The chapter opens with one of the most vivid images of sin in all the prophets: The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart (v. 1). This is not ink on a page that a wet cloth could wipe away. It is engraving - a hard iron stylus and a diamond point cutting letters into stone. The word graven is deliberate: it is the very work done on tablets and altars meant to last for ages. Judah's sin has gone that deep. What began as a choice has become a carving, cut into the table of their heart until it is part of the surface itself. And the same point that engraved the heart, the verse says, has marked the horns of your altars - the place of worship is stained with the same guilt. Sin that is practiced long enough stops being something a person does and becomes something a person is; it sinks from the hand to the heart, and from one generation to the next.3
The engraving does not stay hidden inside; it shows up in the next generation's habits: Whilst their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills (v. 2). The children have inherited not a memory of the LORD but a memory of the wrong altars - the groves and high places where Judah had gone after other gods. This is how a sin graven on the heart propagates: the young learn by watching, and what the parents loved becomes the landscape the children grow up in. So the judgment falls on the whole inheritance. O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil (v. 3) - the wealth and the very high places that fed the false worship are handed over to plunder. And then the deepest loss of all is named: thou… shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not (v. 4). The land was the LORD's gift, the sign of His covenant; to lose it is to lose the home that being His people was built around. The fire kindled… in mine anger is the sober end of a heart that would not be turned.1
Jeremiah 17:5-13Cursed Shrub, Blessed Tree · The Heart Searched
5Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. 6For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. 7Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. 8For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. 9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. 11As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. 12A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. 13O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.
At the heart of the chapter stand two men drawn as two plants, and everything turns on what each one is rooted in. The first is cursed: the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD (v. 5). To make flesh his arm is to lean the whole weight of life on what is merely human - one's own strength, another's favor, the visible power of the moment. Such a man, Jeremiah says, is like the heath in the desert (v. 6), a stunted shrub in a salt waste, who shall not see when good cometh - rain can fall nearby and he cannot reach it. The second man is blessed: he trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is (v. 7), and he is as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river (v. 8). Notice carefully what does and does not change between them. Both face the same heat; both meet the same year of drought. The blessed man is not promised an easier climate. What he is promised is that his leaf shall be green and he shall not cease from yielding fruit - because his roots reach water the drought cannot dry up. The difference between a withered life and a flourishing one is not the absence of hardship. It is the hidden thing each is drawing on underground.
Set right between the two trees comes the sentence the whole chapter is famous for: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (v. 9). It lands like a verdict, and its placement is no accident. The man who trusteth in man (v. 5) is, in the end, a man trusting his own heart - and Scripture here sounds a sober warning about that heart. The trouble it names is not only that we do wrong; it is that we cannot reliably see ourselves doing it. The heart is deceitful - it bends the truth, and it bends it first of all toward its owner, dressing up what we already wanted as what is wise and right and good. We are, the verse says, the hardest people in the world for ourselves to read: who can know it? This is Scripture's honest diagnosis, and it is meant to drive us off of self-trust - not into despair, but onto the very next line. For the question who can know it? is not rhetorical. It has an answer, and the answer is God. The heart we cannot search, He can; the self we cannot see, He sees clear through. And the chapter has already told us what to do about a heart like this: not to trust it more, but to plant ourselves by the river - to root our hope in the LORD rather than in the unreliable testimony of our own insides.
The unbearable question of verse 9 is answered in the very next breath: I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings (v. 10). The one thing no person can fully do - know his own heart - God does perfectly. To search is to examine all the way down, leaving no chamber unlit; the reins (the kidneys) were spoken of as the seat of a person's deepest motives, the hidden springs beneath even the choices we are aware of. God reads them all. And this is, at one and the same time, the most frightening and the most comforting truth in the chapter. Frightening, because there is no corner of us hidden from Him, no self-justifying story He does not see past, and He gives to each according to his ways. But comforting, because a heart that cannot trust itself is not therefore lost in the dark - there is One who knows it truly, and who can therefore heal it truly. You cannot be cured by a physician who cannot find the disease. The God who searches the heart is the only one qualified to mend it; and the prophet will, just a few verses on, ask Him to do exactly that.
The section closes by turning the two trusts into two pictures of futility and one of life. As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool (v. 11). The proverb pictures effort that comes to nothing - a bird brooding over eggs that never hatch - and applies it to wealth gained unjustly: it slips away before life is over, and the one who trusted it is left a fool. Against that emptiness Jeremiah lifts his eyes: A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary (v. 12). Over against fading riches and the withering shrub stands the LORD enthroned, the true and lasting refuge. Then comes the verse that gathers the whole contrast into one image: O LORD, the hope of Israel… they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters (v. 13). Here is why trusting in flesh leaves a person like a desert bush. To forsake God is to walk away from the spring itself. He is the fountain of living waters - running, fresh, never failing - and those who leave Him are written in the earth, names traced in dust that the next wind erases, because they turned from the one Source that could have made them a tree by the river.
Jeremiah 17:14-18Heal Me, O LORD, and I Shall Be Healed
14Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise. 15Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? let it come now. 16As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before thee. 17Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil. 18Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.
Having laid every heart open, the prophet now prays for his own, and his words are exactly the prayer a heart like the one just described requires: Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise (v. 14). The form of the prayer is worth pausing on. Jeremiah does not say “help me heal myself” or “show me the way to be saved.” He puts the whole work in God's hands and rests the whole outcome there: heal me - and I shall be healed. The certainty in the second half flows entirely from the first; because it is the LORD who acts, the result is sure. This is the practical answer to verse 9. A heart too crooked to straighten itself and too sick to cure itself does not need better self-help; it needs a Healer. And it is no accident that the same word group runs through the book for the nation's deep wound - the hurt that cannot be healed by the false comfort of those who cry Peace, peace; when there is no peace. What Judah refused for itself, Jeremiah seeks for himself: real healing from the only One who can give it, and the joy of making God his praise.
The prayer is wrung out of real pressure, and Jeremiah names it. Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? let it come now (v. 15). His enemies mock the very delay of the judgment he has announced: if God has really spoken, where is it? Their scoffing turns the slowness of God's mercy into a weapon against His prophet. Jeremiah answers by appealing to a heart God can read - the very heart-searching of verse 10 now becomes his refuge: I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee… that which came out of my lips was right before thee (v. 16). He has not run from his calling, nor wished the woeful day of disaster on his people; he has only said what God gave him to say. Then, exposed and weary, he asks one thing above all: Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil (v. 17). The God whose word he carries is the God he runs to for shelter. His closing cry for his persecutors to be confounded and dismayed (v. 18) is the raw prayer of a hunted man laying his case, and his vindication, entirely in God's hands rather than taking them into his own. He trusteth in the LORD - he is living, under fire, as the blessed man of verse 7.
Jeremiah 17:19-27Hallow the Sabbath Day
19Thus said the LORD unto me; Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by the which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem; 20And say unto them, Hear ye the word of the LORD, ye kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these gates: 21Thus saith the LORD; Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; 22Neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers. 23But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.
The chapter ends with the LORD sending Jeremiah to the busiest, most public place in the city - the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in… and in all the gates of Jerusalem (v. 19) - to deliver a command that sounds, at first, surprisingly small: Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day… neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day (vv. 21-22). After the towering language of the deceitful heart and the searching God, why end on a rule about hauling loads through the gate on one day in seven? Because the sabbath is no small thing; it is the heart laid bare in the body. To stop working one day in seven is to make a confession with your whole life: that the world does not depend on you, that your bread comes from God and not from your own ceaseless effort, that you can take your hands off and the LORD will keep the universe running. A person who cannot stop is, underneath, a person who is trusting in flesh - his own labor, his own grip - exactly the curse of verse 5. So the command to hallow the sabbath is the practical test of everything the chapter has said about trust. And Judah's response exposes the heart all over again: they obeyed not… but made their neck stiff (v. 23). The stiff neck is the heart's refusal made visible - the very crookedness of verse 9, declining to bend even before God.
24And it shall come to pass, if ye diligently hearken unto me, saith the LORD, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day, to do no work therein; 25Then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and this city shall remain for ever. 26And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the places about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plain, and from the mountains, and from the south, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and meat offerings, and incense, and bringing sacrifices of praise, unto the house of the LORD. 27But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.
The oracle ends by setting two futures before the city, and they hang on this one act of trust. If the people will diligently hearken and hallow the sabbath day (v. 24), the promise is life and continuance: Then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David… and this city shall remain for ever (v. 25). Worshippers will stream in from every direction - from Judah, Benjamin, the plain, the mountains, the south - bringing offerings and sacrifices of praise unto the house of the LORD (v. 26). The city that keeps the day of rest becomes a city full of life, ruled justly, gathered in worship. But if they will not, the same gates that should have refused the burden will themselves be the kindling: then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched (v. 27). The choice is laid out as plainly as the two trees were. The gate is where the burden enters or is turned away; the gate is therefore where the city's whole future is decided. And underneath the question of sabbath-keeping lies the question of the entire chapter - will this people trust the LORD enough to take their hands off, or will they keep making flesh their arm until the fire falls?
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 17 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for lev (vv. 1, 5, 9, 10, the “heart” that runs through the whole chapter), for the difficult word aqov (v. 9, rendered “deceitful”), and for the imagery of the desert shrub and the water-rooted tree in verses 6 and 8.
- Jeremiah 17 ↔ Psalm 1 · Ezekiel 36 · John 2 & 15Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 17 to the rest of Scripture - the blessed man as a watered tree (vv. 7-8) read beside Blessed is the man… like a tree planted by the rivers of water (Ps. 1:1-3), the unsearchable heart (v. 9) read with the One who knew what was in man (John 2:25), and the promise of a healed heart held against the new heart of Ezekiel 36:26 and Jeremiah 31:33.
- Jeremiah 17 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 17 - the engraving image of verse 1, the rare desert plant behind “the heath” in verse 6, the much-discussed phrase about the heart in verse 9, the partridge proverb of verse 11, and the structure of the sabbath oracle in verses 19-27.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Graven Upon the Table of the Heart
- Jeremiah 31:33I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.The hopeful reversal of verse 1 - in place of sin graven on the heart, the LORD will write His own law there.
- Proverbs 3:3let not mercy and truth forsake thee... write them upon the table of thine heart.The same image of engraving the heart (v. 1) - but with mercy and truth, not sin, cut into the stone.
- Deuteronomy 28:36The LORD shall bring thee, and thy king... unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known.The exile threatened in verse 4 - service to enemies in a land not known, foretold as covenant consequence.
- 2 Corinthians 3:3written not with ink... not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.The gospel answer to the graven heart of verse 1 - a new writing, by the Spirit, on the heart itself.
Cursed Shrub, Blessed Tree · The Heart Searched
- Psalm 1:1-3he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither.The blessed tree of verses 7-8 in nearly the same words - the life rooted by the water that does not wither.
- John 15:5I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me... bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing.The fruitfulness of verse 8 named in person - the branch that bears fruit because it abides in the true vine.
- John 2:24-25he knew all men... for he knew what was in man.The searching of the heart in verse 10 done among us - the One who read straight through every crooked heart.
- Ezekiel 36:26A new heart also will I give you... I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.The hope beyond the deceitful heart of verse 9 - a heart not merely searched but made new.
- Jeremiah 2:13they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.The same image as verse 13 - forsaking the living fountain for broken substitutes that cannot satisfy.
Heal Me, O LORD, and I Shall Be Healed
- Isaiah 53:5he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities... and with his stripes we are healed.The healing of verse 14 accomplished - the wound of the sick heart bound up by His own wounds.
- Matthew 9:12They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.The Physician the prayer of verse 14 reaches for - come for exactly the heart Jeremiah 17 diagnoses.
- Psalm 6:2Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed.The same cry as verse 14 - a sufferer asking the LORD Himself to be his healer.
- Jeremiah 20:11But the LORD is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble.The confidence of verses 17-18 - the persecuted prophet leaving his vindication with God.
- Romans 12:19Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.The principle beneath verse 18 - the wronged servant placing judgment in God’s hands, not his own.
Hallow the Sabbath Day
- Matthew 11:28-30Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.The rest the sabbath of verse 22 rehearsed - offered now in person to the heavy-laden.
- Hebrews 4:9-10There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God... he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works.The deepest meaning of the sabbath rest (vv. 21-22) - ceasing from one’s own works to rest in God’s.
- Exodus 20:8-11Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy... for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth... and rested the seventh day.The command Jeremiah recalls in verse 22, <em>as I commanded your fathers</em> - rest grounded in the Maker’s own.
- Mark 2:27The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.What hallowing the sabbath (v. 22) was always for - a gift to people, not a burden laid on them.
- Nehemiah 13:19I commanded that the gates should be shut... that there should no burden be brought in on the sabbath day.The command of verse 21 actually carried out at the gates - the burden turned away to keep the day.