Jeremiah 2

The Hebrew words for “love” and “devotion” seem tied to the covenant, or agreement, the Jewish people made with God in the days of Moses. They agreed to love him and to stay devoted and faithful to him. In turn, he agreed to protect and prosper them. The Hebrew words may have sounded to the Jews like the marriage vow “to love and to honor” sound to us. These were covenant words from a sacred vow. The Hebrew words were the same ones Moses used when he warned the people as they traveled through the desert, “It’s important for you to stay devoted to God” (Deuteronomy 8:2). Jeremiah was about to tell the people they broke their vows to God.

This is during the journey out of Egyptian slavery and toward the Promised Land of Canaan, now called Israel and Palestinian Territory.

More literally, “Israel was holy to God.” One meaning of holy is “devotion. Israel and God were devoted to each other. “You’ll become a nation of priests because you’ll all be devoted to me, which will make you holy in my eyes” (Exodus 19:6).

More literally, Israel was the “first fruits of the harvest,” the most cherished. Oldest sons were described that way. And they typically led the extended family after the father died. Also, they got a double share of the inheritance.

Baal was the top god in Canaan, which became known as the Holy Land, the territory of today’s Israel and Palestinian Territory. Baal was a god of fertility in family, fields, and flocks. Joshua led Hebrew ancestors of the Jews in killing many Canaanites while reclaiming the land that the Bible says God promised to the descendants of Abraham. But Jewish ancestors continued to worship Baal and other Middle Eastern gods off and on throughout Old Testament times.

Kedar is the name of a tribe of nomads from the deserts of what are now Syria and Saudi Arabia. God was telling the Jews to look from the oceans to the deserts.

This is courtroom language for a divorce proceeding. And the sky is a witness for the Prosecution.

“Living water” is the more common translation. But it means flowing water, like from a river or a spring—not stagnant water like from a pond. When Jews ritually cleansed themselves, the bathwater had to come from “living water.” Water was a common theme and symbol of life in the dry land where Jews lived.

“Israel.” In this case seems to mean the southern Jewish nation of Judah. The northern Jewish nation of Israel was gone—Assyrians defeated, dismantled, and deported the nation. It’s sometimes hard to tell which “Israel” the writer is talking about: the nation before it split, the northern tribes called Israel, or the southern Jewish nation of Judah, when it was all that was left of the original nation of Israel. We have to look for context clues, which aren’t always solid.

Tahpanhes and Memphis were towns near the northern end of the Nile River, where the river flows northward into the Mediterranean Sea. Tahpanhes was about 70 miles (110 km) northeast of Cairo. It was on a popular caravan route to Israel. This is where many Jews escaped to when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC—a destruction Jeremiah witnessed. Memphis was Egypt’s capital. It was 12 miles (20 km) south of Cairo.

“Beat,” could be translated “shaved,” which would suggest slavery. So it’s unclear what the Egyptians did to the people of Israel. But it wasn’t anything wonderful.

Instead of trusting God to keep them safe, they trusted in alliances they made with their enemies.

The metaphor is about spiritual unfaithfulness, at least. But it might be more than that. Some religions apparently involved sex with temple priests and prostitutes. “You have sex on the hilltops. Then you finish with a sacrifice” (Isaiah 57:7). That’s likely a euphemistic way of talking about fertility rituals that try to invoke Canaanite gods to provide fertility in family, fields, and flocks. Throughout the early centuries, Jews were constantly tempted to think of the LORD as the god of war with local Canaanite gods in charge of other aspects of life, such as farming and baby-making.

Literally, if not figuratively. A wild ass is only partly a donkey. It’s a distinct species: onager (Equus hermionus). In Bible times, people thought it was impossible to domesticate them. A donkey is an ass, too, but a different ass, one that’s domesticated: Equus africanus asinus or as yet another species, Equus asinus. Donkeys were domesticated in Africa several thousand years before Jeremiah, by at least 3,000-5,000 BC.

The attracting smell was the urine of a male wild ass.

It’s unclear what the writer is describing. Children and other innocent people, perhaps some prophets as well, died at the hands of their own Israelite kings. “Manasseh sacrificed his own son and burned the body on an altar” (2 Kings 21:6). King Jehoiakim personally killed a prophet named Uriah with a sword and buried him in an unmarked grave (Jeremiah 26:23).

If this metaphor is about God’s people involved in fertility rights, this could imply they taught cult prostitutes new tricks of the trade.

In Bible times, many empires emerged as international bullies, invading other countries and demanding tribute, a form of taxation or extortion. Assyria was the first of the superpowers. Judah called on Assyrians to save them from an attack by the combined armies of Israel and Syria. Those two nations tried to force Judah to join an anti-Assyria coalition. Assyria defeated Syria and Israel, eventually taking everything from the northern nation of Israel, deporting the survivors and erasing Israel from the political map. That was in 722 BC, a century or more before Jeremiah. Assyrians also imposed heavy tribute on the southern nation of Judah. Just as the Assyrian ally became a bitter disappointment for Judah, Egypt would fail them as well.