Jeremiah 31:1–6

Jeremiah 30–31 forms a distinct literary body within the book of Jeremiah known as the “Book of Consolation.” These two chapters are bracketed by God’s command to Jeremiah to “write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you” (Jer 30:2) and the return to the narrative account of Jeremiah’s actions in Jeremiah 32. Jeremiah provides no particular date for the writing of the Book of Consolation, while the surrounding events are set in the reign of Zedekiah. Jeremiah 30:3 summarizes the theme of the book Jeremiah is to write when God says, “I will restore the fortunes of my people” and “I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take possession of it.” God’s people who are to be restored are defined as both “Israel and Judah.” Pamela Scalise writes:

The Book of Consolation stands as a refuge amid the storm of divine wrath that blows through the rest of the book of Jeremiah. Yet these two chapters are thoroughly integrated with the message and ministry of the book in its canonical form. The content of the Book of Consolation repeatedly deals with the relationship between present suffering, further danger, and future salvation… . (Gerald L. Keown, Pamela J. Scalise, and Thomas G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26–52, Word Biblical Commentary, Word, 1995, 83)

Jeremiah 31:1–6, the Old Testament reading for Easter Sunday (Year A), is part of this Book of Consolation.

At one level, the poetic imagery in Jer 31:2–4 reflects the salvation history of Israel, recalling the exodus, the crossing of the sea, and the wilderness wandering. Pharaoh came after Israel with the sword, cornering the people at the Red Sea. God parted the waters so that those who crossed over “survived the sword” and then “found grace in the wilderness.” The Egyptian army in turn drowned within the sea, which led Miriam and the women with her to take up “tambourines and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers” (cf. Exod 15:20). Even the imagery of virgin Israel recalls Jeremiah’s assertion that God remembered Israel’s “love as a bride” and how Israel “followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown” (Jer 2:2) before becoming “the faithless one, Israel” who “played the whore” (Jer 3:6). Now, God declares a reversal that could only be achieved by the power of the redeeming creator: “I shall build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel.”

But having “survived the sword” is not Jeremiah’s usual way of referring to the exodus. Typically, he speaks of God bringing Israel “out of the land of Egypt” (Jer 11:4; cf. Jer 7:22, 25; 11:7; 31:32, etc.). “Sword,” on the other hand, is central to the tripartite judgment of death “by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (Jer 21:9), which appears 16 times in Jeremiah, far outnumbering the use of the phrase by any other prophet. Jeremiah pronounces this judgment most often on Jerusalem (Jer 29:7, etc.), but also on those who abandon Judah for Egypt (Jer 42:17, 22; 44:13), and, indeed, all nations that come under God’s judgment (Jer 27:8). Certainly this would be the image Jeremiah would use to describe what Assyria had done to Israel.

While Jeremiah can describe the wilderness wandering as “in the wilderness (midbār), in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives” (Jer 2:6), he also uses midbār (“wilderness” or “desert”) to describe the devastation following military conquest. “For thus says the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah,” declares Jeremiah, “I swear that I will make you a desert (midbār), an uninhabited city” (Jer 22:6). Of Babylon he declares “she shall be the last of the nations, a wilderness (midbār), dry land, and a desert” (Jer 50:12). When the enemy came, they “made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness (midbār)” (Jer 12:10; see also Jer 4:26; 9:10; 17:6). The “wilderness” in Jer 31:2 reflects this kind of devastation, which is only reversed in Jer 31:6. Jeremiah asserts that those “who stay in the city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but those who go out and surrender to the Chaldeans who are besieging you shall live and shall have their lives as a prize of war” (Jer 21:9). Ezekiel contends that “The sword is outside, pestilence and famine are inside; those in the field die by the sword; those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them” (Ezek 7:15). Whether those in Israel had “survived the sword” through surrender or flight into the wilderness where they found “grace” and preservation, the image of Israel’s post-war devastation at the time of Jeremiah is clear.

The image of Israel’s punishment is typologically overlaid with the image of the exodus. By the merger of these two paradigmatic images Jeremiah brings past promise and present punishment together to create future hope. Although images of the exodus journey are used, this oracle addresses the remnant resident in the land of Israel. The following verses in Jer 31:7–9 address the return of those who are in exile. Jeremiah asserts that the exodus paradigm will be replaced by the image of the exilic return (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8). What the renewal of the land in the first oracle shares with the return from the exile in the second is divine reversal. While the resident “planters shall plant” in wilderness in Jer 31:5, the “great company” that returns will have “among them the blind and the lame, those with children and those in labor together” (31:8). None will be left behind and those most marginalized and vulnerable will have full status “among them” as equal members of the community. The use of the name Ephraim for the northern kingdom links the two oracles with their respective reversals. Ephraim will once again be fortified with sentinels. Jacob’s reversal in crossing his hands while blessing the sons of Joseph (Gen 48:13–15) will now be fulfilled as God declares “I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jer 31:9).

The final reversal consists of the juxtaposition of Samaria in Jer 31:5 with Zion in the following verse. Samaria had no significance for Israel prior to the establishment of the divided kingdom. It is first mentioned as a region during the reign of Jereboam I (1 Kgs 13:32) and only came into prominence when Omri made it his new capital (1 Kgs 16:24). Jeremiah’s image of restored Israel is not a return to an idyllic time before the divided monarchy, but incorporates the intervening reality of the northern tradition and history into this future hope. Yet, he does not see restored Samaria as a capital city but as once again a region where “you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria” (Jer 31:5). This restoration of formally nationalistic names and sites for Israel takes a startling turn in Jer 31:6 as the entire northern kingdom turns once again to Zion, the city of David, as the sentinels cry out “Come, let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.”

Israel as an independent state fell under the sword of Assyria in 722 b.c.e., long before Jeremiah came on the scene. He had never known Israel as anything other than a backwater in the Mesopotamian or Egyptian empires. How Jeremiah viewed the religious and political reform under Josiah as the king attempted to reincorporate the region of Israel under the Davidic throne and centralize the worship at the Jerusalem temple after 622 b.c.e. is unclear (2 Kgs 22:1–23:28). While Jeremiah had great respect for Josiah (Jer 22:15–16), it was during Josiah’s reign that Jeremiah condemned Israel as “the faithless one” who “played the whore” and who could best be described as “less guilty than false Judah” (Jer 3:6–11). However Jeremiah felt about the Josianic reform, Jer 31:1–6 seems to look back on Josiah’s dream as one might look back on Camelot. Were this prophecy fulfilled, Josiah’s dream of Israel and Judah united with worship centralized in Jerusalem would be realized.

The post-exilic age, however, found the rift between Jerusalem and Samaria greater than ever before. Then suddenly Easter came, imposing a third layer of imagery on Jeremiah’s consolation. With the resurrection of Christ, the mountains of Samaria and the sentinels of Ephraim cry out “Come, let us go up to Zion,” to the risen Christ, “to the Lord our God.” Indeed, as Peter comes to realize, “in every nation anyone who fears him” (Acts 10:35) may now join in this turning. For in Christ the Lord has “appeared from far away” revealing that he has truly “loved with an everlasting love” Judah, Israel, and all people. Thus, we, too, can “go forth in the dance of the merrymakers” this Eastertide.