Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 8 opens in a graveyard. Judgment has fallen so completely that even the dead are not left at rest: the bones of kings and princes, priests and prophets, are dragged from their tombs and spread out before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven - the very things the people have loved… and served… and worshipped (vv. 1-2). It is the final indignity, and it is also a grim irony: they bowed to sun and stars in life, and now their bones lie exposed beneath them. The chapter then turns to the question underneath the ruin - why did it come to this? - and the answer is a stubborn, settled refusal. Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? (v. 4). Anyone who stumbles gets back up; anyone who wanders comes home. But this people has made itself the strange exception: slidden back by a perpetual backsliding… they refuse to return (v. 5).3
Then comes one of the chapter's sharpest images. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD (v. 7). The migrating birds keep their seasons by instinct; they know when to go and when to return. Judah, given the law and the prophets, knows less than a swallow. And the men who should have known best have failed worst: the scribes have made the law in vain, the wise men have rejected the word of the LORD, and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely (vv. 8-10). The healers themselves are sick. So they patch the nation's deep wound with a shallow word, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace (v. 11) - a false comfort that lets the infection spread.
The last movement is pure lament, and the speaker's grief and the LORD's grief blur into one voice. When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me (v. 18). The harvest closes with no rescue in it - The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved (v. 20) - and the prophet is undone by the hurt of his people: For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me (v. 21). It ends on a cry that the chapter leaves open, hanging like a wound that has not yet closed: Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? (v. 22). The question waits for an answer the prophet cannot yet give.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 8:1-10Slidden Back by a Perpetual Backsliding
1At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: 2And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth. 3And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the LORD of hosts. 4Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD; Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? 5Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return. 6I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle. 7Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD. 8How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain. 9The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them? 10Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall inherit them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.
The chapter opens on an image meant to stop the reader cold: the graves of a whole society torn open. They shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah… the priests… the prophets… the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves (v. 1), and scatter them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven (v. 2). To an ancient hearer, to leave the dead unburied was the deepest disgrace there was; not even the quiet of the tomb is left to them. And the horror carries a pointed irony. The very powers they are exposed beneath - sun, moon, the host of heaven - are the things they have loved… and served… and worshipped. They gave their devotion to the created lights instead of the LORD who made them, and now their bones lie bleaching under those lights, for dung upon the face of the earth. The opening verses are not cruelty for its own sake; they are a portrait of where a long refusal finally leads. And in a line that the whole chapter will turn back upon, the people are said to prefer ruin to rescue: death shall be chosen rather than life (v. 3).3
After the graveyard, the LORD asks the question that exposes the whole tragedy: Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? (v. 4). It is drawn from the most ordinary experience. When a person trips, they get back up; when a traveler wanders off the road, they turn around and come back. Falling and straying are not meant to be permanent - recovery is the natural next move. That is exactly what makes Judah's condition so strange and so grievous: Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return (v. 5). They have made the temporary permanent. The fall that should have ended in standing up again has become a settled posture. And the cause is named without flinching - not weakness, not ignorance, but will: they hold fast deceit (they grip the lie tightly, refusing to let go) and they refuse to return. The LORD listens for the one word that would change everything - I hearkened and heard - but no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? (v. 6). Instead, every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle - headlong, blinkered, charging on without a backward glance. The door home stands open; they will not turn to it.
Now comes the image that lands hardest, because it measures Judah against creatures that cannot read and have never heard a sermon: Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD (v. 7). The migrating birds keep their seasons by an instinct written into them - they know without being told when to go and when to return. Judah, given the written law and the living word of the prophets, knows less than a swallow. The rebuke is sharpened, not softened, by the people's own boast: How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? (v. 8). They held the Scriptures in their hands and claimed to be the wise. But a law unheeded is a law made in vain, and the pen of the scribes - all that careful copying and teaching - comes to nothing when the heart will not bend. So the verdict falls on the experts: The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them? (v. 9). To have rejected the word of God is to have cut the root of true wisdom; what is left is only a hollow claim. And the rot is everywhere, top to bottom: from the least even unto the greatest… from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely (v. 10).
Jeremiah 8:11-17Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace
11For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. 12Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. 13I will surely consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them. 14Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD. 15We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble! 16The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land, and all that is in it; the city, and those that dwell therein. 17For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the LORD.
At the center of the chapter stands the sentence that names what went most deeply wrong: For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace (v. 11). The word slightly is the whole indictment. The wound was deep; the treatment was shallow. The prophets and priests dressed a mortal injury with a light touch and a soothing word, telling the people all was well when calamity was already on its way. Peace, peace - the comforting thing everyone wanted to hear - when there is no peace. It is the oldest failure of a false shepherd: to ease the patient's mind rather than treat the disease, to flatter rather than warn. And it works for a while, which is exactly its danger; a wound covered over feels healed even as it festers underneath. The next verse traces the rot to its source: Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush (v. 12). They had lost the very capacity for shame. A person who can still blush can still be reached; conscience is still alive in them. But a people who could not blush had silenced the inner voice that might have turned them back - and a conscience that no longer flinches is a wound no shallow word can reach.
Because the false healers said peace where there was none, the real trouble arrives undeflected. The LORD declares a stripping-away of every good thing the land relied on: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them (v. 13). Vine and fig tree were the very emblems of security and blessing; their barrenness signals that the props are being knocked out. Then the perspective shifts, and we hear the people themselves, suddenly awake to their danger, scrambling: Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities (v. 14). The crisis they were told would never come is at the gate, and now they run for the walled towns. But their own words betray that they finally understand the cause: for the LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD. The bitter cup is traced to its real source, and the confession comes - we have sinned - though it comes late, with the enemy already in the land. Verse 15 is the sound of false hope collapsing: We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble! They had been promised peace and health; they got the opposite. This is the bitter harvest of Peace, peace, when there is no peace - a people lulled until the danger was upon them.
The section ends with the threat made vivid and near. The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones (v. 16). Dan lay at the northern edge of the land - the first place an invader from the north would reach - and from there the sound of warhorses carries until the whole land trembled. The enemy is no longer a distant rumor; the people can hear it coming, and the report is total: they are come, and have devoured the land, and all that is in it; the city, and those that dwell therein. Everything the false prophets said was safe is being swallowed. The final image turns to something that cannot be talked out of its purpose: behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you (v. 17). A snake-charmer could sometimes master an ordinary serpent with a soothing tune - but these will not be charmed. The point is pointed and deliberate: this is a judgment that no soothing word can disarm. The people loved being charmed; they loved the lullaby of Peace, peace. Now comes the one thing that will not be lulled. The chapter has drawn a straight line from the shallow comfort of verse 11 to the bite that cannot be charmed in verse 17 - the wound left untreated does not stay quiet forever.
Jeremiah 8:18-22Is There No Balm in Gilead?
18When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me. 19Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people because of them that dwell in a far country: Is not the LORD in Zion? is not her king in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with strange vanities? 20The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. 21For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. 22Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
The chapter's last movement drops the language of oracle and opens onto raw grief, and the voice that speaks is hard to pin to one speaker - the prophet weeps, and through his weeping the LORD's own sorrow can be heard. When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me (v. 18). Here is a grief that resists comfort; the attempt to find consolation only deepens the ache. Then the cry of the people themselves rises up from a far country of exile: Is not the LORD in Zion? is not her king in her? (v. 19). It is a bewildered question - how can this be happening when God dwells among us? - and it is answered at once by a question of His own that lays the cause bare: Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with strange vanities? The presence of the LORD in Zion was never a charm against judgment; it was a relationship they broke. And then the speaker is overwhelmed: For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me (v. 21). This is the tenderness at the bottom of the whole book. The One who pronounces the judgment is wounded by it. He does not stand over the suffering city unmoved; He is hurt by her hurt, darkened by it, seized with horror at it. The grief is not detached - it is the grief of love watching what it warned of come to pass.
Into this grief falls one of the most desolate lines in all of Scripture: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved (v. 20). The image comes from the rhythm of the agricultural year. Through the harvest and the long summer, there was still time - still a chance for the crop to come in, still a season of opportunity open. Now both have closed, and the verdict is in: we are not saved. The window did not stay open forever. The chance to turn, so long held out, has passed with nothing gathered. There is a particular kind of sorrow in this line that everyone recognizes - the grief not of disaster striking out of nowhere, but of a door that was open and is now shut, a season that could have been used and was let slip. It is the lament of the missed moment. And it stands as the chapter's most sobering word to anyone who keeps telling themselves there will always be more time. The harvests of a life are not endless. There is such a thing as a season of grace, and Jeremiah's people are standing on the far side of one, looking back at what they did not take. The verse does not say salvation was impossible; it says the time for it was let go.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 8 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for shuv (vv. 4-5, the “return” the people refuse), for tsori (v. 22, the “balm” of Gilead), and for the doubled shalom, shalom of verse 11 (“Peace, peace”).
- Jeremiah 8 ↔ Matthew 9 · 2 Corinthians 6 · Ephesians 2Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 8 to the rest of Scripture - the cry for a physician (v. 22) read alongside they that be sick need a physician (Matt. 9:12), the false Peace, peace (v. 11) read beside he is our peace (Eph. 2:14), and the lost harvest (v. 20) read against now is the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2).
- Jeremiah 8 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 8 - the exposed bones of verses 1-2, the wordplay on “turn / return” in verses 4-5, the migrating birds of verse 7, the difficult shift of speakers in the closing lament, and the renowned balm of Gilead in verse 22.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Slidden Back by a Perpetual Backsliding
- Hosea 6:1Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.The return Judah refuses in verses 4-5 - the turning back to the LORD that brings healing.
- Isaiah 1:3The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.The same rebuke as verse 7 - the beasts know what God’s people will not.
- Matthew 9:12-13They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick... I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.The mission of the One who heals the sick - the answer waiting behind the chapter’s whole portrait of a wounded people.
- Luke 15:20when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.The homecoming the word “return” holds out (vv. 4-5) - the father who runs to the one who finally turns back.
- Jeremiah 6:13For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.The same indictment as verse 10 - corruption running from top to bottom, prophet to priest.
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace
- Ezekiel 13:10they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered morter.The same false comfort as verse 11 - healers who cry peace over a wall that will not stand.
- Ephesians 2:14For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.The true peace the false healers of verse 11 could only counterfeit - peace that actually heals the breach.
- John 14:27Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.The contrast verse 11 cries out for - real peace, not the world’s hollow “Peace, peace.”
- Jeremiah 6:14They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.The same charge Jeremiah brings again here - a wound dressed lightly and called whole.
- 1 Thessalonians 5:3For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them.The pattern of verses 11-16 - a false cry of peace, and the trouble that arrives anyway.
Is There No Balm in Gilead?
- Genesis 37:25a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.The famous balm of Gilead behind verse 22 - the prized healing resin carried by traders.
- 2 Corinthians 6:2behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.The answer to the lost harvest of verse 20 - the season of grace held open now.
- Luke 4:18he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives... to set at liberty them that are bruised.The Physician the chapter cries out for in verse 22 - come to heal the wound no balm could reach.
- Matthew 23:37how often would I have gathered thy children together... and ye would not!The grief of verses 18-21 echoed - the Lord weeping over a people who would not be healed in time.
- 1 Peter 2:24Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree... by whose stripes ye were healed.The deep healing verse 22 longs for - recovered at the cost of the Healer’s own wounding.