Jeremiah 30
Jeremiah 30 opens the section often called the Book of Consolation - four chapters (30-33) of comfort set down in the middle of a book otherwise heavy with judgment. The chapter begins not with an oracle but with an instruction: Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book (v. 2). The word is to be written down because it is for a day the prophet will not live to see. And the heart of it is announced at once: I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah… and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers (v. 3). The exile is real; it is also not the last word.3
What follows holds two things together that the rest of Scripture will hold together to the end. First, the LORD does not soften the coming affliction: Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble (v. 7). The picture is of a man doubled over like a woman in labour, every face turned pale with dread. And yet the same verse refuses to end in the dark: but he shall be saved out of it. The yoke that bound the nation will be broken, the bonds burst (v. 8), and the people will serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them (v. 9). The trouble is named honestly; the rescue is promised certainly.
The middle of the chapter is the most surprising mercy of all. The LORD diagnoses a wound He Himself has dealt - thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous (v. 12) - a wound no advocate can plead away and no medicine can close. Then, against every expectation that diagnosis sets up, He announces the cure: For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD (v. 17). The chapter closes with a rebuilt city, a multiplied and rejoicing people, a ruler drawn near from their own midst, and the covenant word that crowns it all: And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God (v. 22).1
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.

Jeremiah 30:1-3Write Thee the Words in a Book
1The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 2Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book. 3For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.
The chapter opens not with a vision or a sermon but with an order to write: Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book (v. 2). It is a striking command in its setting. For chapter after chapter Jeremiah has spoken words of warning into a nation that would not hear; now, with the disaster arriving, the LORD tells him to commit a different kind of word to writing - a word of restoration that the prophet himself will likely not live to see fulfilled. The point of writing it down is permanence. These promises are meant to outlast the speaker, to be read by exiles in a far country who need to know the future was settled before they ever lost everything. And the substance is announced at once: I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah (v. 3). The phrase gathers up both kingdoms - the northern tribes long scattered and the southern kingdom now falling - under a single promise of return. I will cause them to return to the land… and they shall possess it. Before the exile has even fully begun, its end is written in a book.3
Jeremiah 30:4-11The Time of Jacob's Trouble · But He Shall Be Saved
4And these are the words that the LORD spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah. 5For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. 6Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? 7Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. 8For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him: 9But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them. 10Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. 11For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.
Before the comfort comes, the LORD lets us hear the terror plainly: We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace (v. 5). Then He paints it with one of the most arresting images in the prophets: Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? (v. 6). Strong men are doubled over, clutching themselves, their faces drained white - men gripped by pains like a woman in hard labour. It is a picture of a dread so total it overturns the ordinary order of things. But the labour image is not chosen at random, and it does double work. Travail is agony - and travail ends in birth. The same pains that signal the worst also signal that something is being brought forth. The prophets reach for this image again and again precisely because it holds suffering and new life together in a single picture: the pain is real, and it is not the end, and on the far side of it is something born that could come no other way.
At the heart of the section stands verse 7, and it is the hinge of the whole chapter: Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. Every clause matters. The day is great - not slight, not survivable by mere grit - and none is like it, a trouble in a category by itself. And then the single most important word in the verse: but. The trouble is named without flinching, and then overruled. He shall be saved out of it - not spared the trouble, but brought through it and out the far side. What that salvation looks like is spelled out next: I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him (v. 8). The yoke had been Jeremiah's own sign-act earlier in the book, a wooden bar he wore to dramatize submission to Babylon. Now the LORD promises to snap it. The same God who allowed the yoke to be laid on will be the one to break it off; the bondage is real, and its end is just as certain as its beginning.
The section ends with a word of tender realism: Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob… for, lo, I will save thee from afar… and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid (v. 10). The promise is not a vague brightening of the mood; it is concrete - a journey home, a settled rest, an end to terror. And the ground of it is the nearness of God Himself: For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee (v. 11). Then comes a line that holds two truths most of us are tempted to pull apart. The LORD will make a full end of all nations among whom they were scattered, yet will I not make a full end of thee. The discipline is real - I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished - but it is measured, fatherly, and bounded. There is a kind of suffering that is destruction, and a kind that is correction; the difference is not in how much it hurts but in where it is headed. What the nations receive as a full end, the people of God receive as a chastening that has a limit and a purpose, and that will never consume them.
Jeremiah 30:12-17I Will Restore Health Unto Thee
12For thus saith the LORD, Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous. 13There is none to plead thy cause, that thou mayest be bound up: thou hast no healing medicines. 14All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of thine iniquity; because thy sins were increased. 15Why criest thou for thine affliction? thy sorrow is incurable for the multitude of thine iniquity: because thy sins were increased, I have done these things unto thee. 16Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee will I give for a prey. 17For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.
The LORD now turns to the wound itself, and He does not minimize it: Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous (v. 12). What follows is a piling-up of hopelessness. There is none to plead thy cause, that thou mayest be bound up: thou hast no healing medicines (v. 13). The image is part courtroom, part sickbed: there is no advocate to take the case, and no remedy on the shelf. All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not (v. 14) - the foreign alliances the people had courted instead of trusting the LORD have abandoned them in their need. And the hardest admission of all: it is the LORD's own hand behind the blow. I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy… for the multitude of thine iniquity. The chapter refuses to let the suffering be filed away as bad luck or mere geopolitics. It names sin honestly and names God's discipline honestly. This is the deliberate setup of the passage: it shuts every door of self-rescue, one by one, until there is no advocate, no medicine, no ally, no cure left anywhere - so that when help comes, it can come from one direction only.
Then, with no transition softening the turn, the verbs reverse. Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee will I give for a prey (v. 16). Every word of judgment the enemies had dealt out is now turned back upon them: the devourers devoured, the captors taken captive, the plunderers plundered, the predators made prey. The little word therefore at the head of the verse is striking, because nothing in the people's situation has changed to earn it - they are still wounded, still without advocate or medicine. The therefore rests entirely on the character and purpose of God, who will not let the instruments of His discipline become the final word over His people. He used the nations to correct; He will not let the nations destroy. The reversal is not the people's achievement; it is the LORD acting for those who could not act for themselves, vindicating a cause that verse 13 said had no one to plead it.
And now the answer the whole passage has been driving toward: For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD (v. 17). Set it against verse 12 and the wonder of it lands. The wound was called incurable. There was none to plead, no healing medicines. Every human resource was exhausted. And precisely there the LORD says, I will restore health… I will heal. What no advocate could plead and no medicine could close, He does Himself. The reason He gives is tender and a little surprising: because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after. The very contempt of the nations - their sneer that this was a people nobody wanted, a city no one would ever seek - moves the LORD to act. He heals them in part to answer the scorn, to overturn the verdict of “outcast” with His own seeking. The God who wounded in measure is the same God who heals without limit; and the One the world had written off as the abandoned, sought-after-by-no-one city is the very one He sets His heart to seek.
Jeremiah 30:18-24Ye Shall Be My People, and I Will Be Your God
18Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will bring again the captivity of Jacob's tents, and have mercy on his dwellingplaces; and the city shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall remain after the manner thereof. 19And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small. 20Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their congregation shall be established before me, and I will punish all that oppress them. 21And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me? saith the LORD. 22And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. 23Behold, the whirlwind of the LORD goeth forth with fury, a continuing whirlwind: it shall fall with pain upon the head of the wicked. 24The fierce anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have done it, and until he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it.
The closing movement fills in the picture of the restored people, and it is full and warm. The city shall be builded upon her own heap (v. 18) - rebuilt on its own ruins, on the very mound of its rubble, so that the place of destruction becomes the foundation of the new. Then sound returns to the silenced city: out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry (v. 19). Where there had been a voice of trembling and fear (v. 5), there is now thanksgiving and laughter. The people who were to be cut down will instead be multiplied: I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small. Children fill the streets again - their children also shall be as aforetime (v. 20) - and the worshipping assembly is re-established before the LORD. Every loss the earlier chapters threatened is here answered in kind: ruin met by rebuilding, silence by song, dwindling by increase, scattering by gathering. This is what the LORD meant by bringing again the captivity - not a bare return to the land, but the restoration of a whole common life under His mercy.
Verse 21 turns to leadership, and the language grows quietly remarkable: their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them. The restored people will be ruled not by a foreign overlord but by one of their own, raised up from among them - an answer to generations of subjection to outside powers. But the verse does not stop at politics. Of this ruler the LORD says something that breaks the bounds of ordinary kingship: I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me? To draw near and approach are words drawn from the world of the altar - the language of the one who is permitted to come close to God on the people's behalf, which in Israel was the work of the priest. Here the coming ruler is granted that nearness directly: the LORD Himself brings him near. And the wondering question - who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me? - marvels at the boldness and the privilege of it, for to draw near to the living God uninvited is perilous. A leader who is at once governor and granted priestly access, brought near by God's own hand, is more than the restored community had any reason to expect.3
The chapter ends on a note that can feel jarring after so much comfort: Behold, the whirlwind of the LORD goeth forth with fury… it shall fall with pain upon the head of the wicked. The fierce anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have done it… in the latter days ye shall consider it (vv. 23-24). The storm of God's judgment is real and will not be turned back until it has accomplished its purpose against the wicked. But this is not a contradiction of the mercy; it is its other side. The same resolve that will not let the people be destroyed will not let evil go unanswered either - the One who will not make a full end of His people (v. 11) will make an end of what oppresses them. And the closing phrase points the whole chapter forward: in the latter days ye shall consider it. The full meaning of these words was not for Jeremiah's generation to grasp in the moment; it would come clear later, in days still to come. The chapter that was written down to be read in a far country (v. 2) ends by saying, in effect: keep this; one day you will understand it. Its deepest fulfilment lies ahead.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 30 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the phrase et tzarah le-Yaaqov (v. 7, “the time of Jacob's trouble”), for arukhah (v. 17, the new flesh that closes a healing wound), and for the covenant formula of verse 22.
- Jeremiah 30 ↔ Ezekiel 34 · Hosea 3 · Luke 1 · Revelation 21Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 30 to the rest of Scripture - David their king, whom I will raise up (v. 9) read beside the one shepherd of Ezekiel 34:23-24 and the throne of David in Luke 1:32, and the covenant word of verse 22 read beside Hebrews 8:10 and Revelation 21:3.
- Jeremiah 30 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 30 - the idiom behind “bring again the captivity” (v. 3), the labour-pains imagery of verses 5-6, the legal language of the unpleadable cause in verse 13, and the much-discussed ruler who “draws near” in verse 21.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Write Thee the Words in a Book
- Jeremiah 29:11For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.The promise just before this chapter - the same assurance that the exile has an appointed, hopeful end.
- 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 next chapter unfolds what is written here - the new covenant that crowns the restoration promised in verses 1-3.
- Habakkuk 2:2-3Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables... for it will surely come, it will not tarry.The same instinct as verse 2 - a promise written down because its fulfilment is sure though it lies in the future.
- Deuteronomy 30:3-5Then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity... and will return and gather thee from all the nations.The promise of return to the land (v. 3) was given through Moses long before - restoration was always part of the covenant.
The Time of Jacob’s Trouble · But He Shall Be Saved
- Ezekiel 34:23-24And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David... and my servant David a prince among them.The same promise as verse 9 - one coming shepherd-king bearing David’s name, raised up over the restored people.
- Luke 1:32-33the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever.The angel names the King the LORD promised to raise up (v. 9) - the throne of David given to one who reigns for ever.
- John 16:33In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.The pattern of verse 7 in Jesus’ own words - trouble is promised, and so is being brought through it.
- Daniel 12:1there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation... and at that time thy people shall be delivered.The same paired note as verse 7 - an unequalled time of trouble, and a people delivered out of it.
- Isaiah 9:6-7the government shall be upon his shoulder... Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David.The Davidic King of verse 9 - a child given to reign on David’s throne in unending peace.
I Will Restore Health Unto Thee
- 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 17 borne by another - wounds taken on by the Servant so His people are made whole.
- 1 Peter 2:24Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree... by whose stripes ye were healed.The promise “I will heal thee” (v. 17) fulfilled - healing through the wounds Christ bore for sin.
- Luke 19:10For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.The answer to the taunt of verse 17 - the city “whom no man seeketh after” sought out by the One who came to seek the lost.
- Hosea 6:1he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.The same God in both motions of verses 12-17 - the one who wounds in measure is the one who heals.
- Jeremiah 33:6Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.The healing of verse 17 carried forward later in the Book of Consolation - health, cure, and abundant peace.
Ye Shall Be My People, and I Will Be Your God
- Jeremiah 31:33I will put my law in their inward parts... and will be their God, and they shall be my people.The covenant word of verse 22 deepened in the next chapter - the new covenant written on the heart.
- Hebrews 8:10I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.The promise of verse 22 quoted from Jeremiah and declared kept in Christ - the new covenant ratified.
- Revelation 21:3the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people.The final fulfilment of verse 22 - God dwelling wholly with His people at the end of all things.
- Hebrews 4:14-16Seeing then that we have a great high priest... let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.The ruler brought near to God in verse 21 - the King-Priest who opens that nearness to all who come through Him.
- Ezekiel 37:26-27I will... set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore... and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.The same restored covenant as verse 22 - an everlasting bond with God dwelling in their midst.