11 At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow or cleanse, 12 a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them. … 22 For my people are foolish; they do not know me; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good. 23 I looked on the earth, and it was complete chaos, and to the heavens, and they had no light. 24 I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. 25 I looked, and there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. 26 I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger. 27 For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end. 28 Because of this the earth shall mourn and the heavens above grow black, for I have spoken; I have purposed; I have not relented, nor will I turn back.
Jeremiah 4:11–12, 22–28 (NRSVue)
This bleak text from the book of Jeremiah presents us with a stark vision of war and its horrible consequences. In this vision, God’s creation is unmade and transformed into an inhospitable waste. The threat of invasion looms over the book of Jeremiah. When Babylon comes, Jeremiah warns, the effect will be devastating. The prophet is depicted throughout the book as a beleaguered figure to whom practically no one listens. Harsh and violent language throughout the book stresses the severe nature of this threat as the prophet desperately tries to sway any audience with the power to avoid disaster: kings, his peers, the elite, anyone who would listen. Tragically, he was unsuccessful.
The imagery in this particular text stands out even among the other stark warnings of the book. It is a vision of a de-created world, empty and void, without life. The threat described here comes from Yhwh, who brings judgment like a searing wind (4:11). It is too strong to be useful or productive, it brings no help or relief. Instead, it prefaces the complete desolation of the city and the landscape, essentially the entire country where God’s people dwell.
Right at the start of the book Yhwh asks: “What do you see, Jeremiah?” (1:11, 13). Sight plays an important role in the prophetic task and in this text. Not only does it report a vision, but in 4:23–26 there is a repeating pattern in each verse where the prophet “looks” (r’h) and invites the hearer/reader to “see” (wǝhinnê). I looked… and there! See! It is as if the text pulls us even closer in.
What we see has some similarity to the story of creation in Genesis 1:1–2:3. When Jeremiah looks at the earth, what he sees is tōhû wābōhû (4:23), the same phrase that describes the earth at the start of God’s creative activity in Gen 1:2. The phrase is hard to translate, and the idea of “chaos” is often used, but it basically describes an environment that is hostile to life. Where in Genesis God created a world suitable for living beings and placed the sun, moon, and stars in the sky, in Jeremiah the world is desolate (4:27) and the sky is dark (4:28). Where Genesis describes the world being filled with living things, Jeremiah describes it emptied of people and birds. Farmland has become desert, and cities have become ruins. Human civilization has collapsed. This is a place made hostile to life.
Why does God bring this judgment? According to the political outlook of the book of Jeremiah as a whole, the threat from Babylon comes in response to Judean foreign policy. Rather than pay tribute as a loyal vassal to Babylon, Judah sought greater autonomy via allegiance with their regional rival Egypt. This decision proved disastrous. In contrast, the rationale for Yhwh’s judgment in this particular text is given in rather vague, non-specific moral terms. To Yhwh, the people are foolish and ignorant when it comes to doing good, but when it comes to doing evil, they have finely honed their craft. If the people do not know how to do good (4:22), then how do they learn?
Jeremiah reports what he sees and beckons his audience: Look… there! Is it possible to read this invitation to see in a morally capacious way? In her lectures published as The Sovereignty of Good, the 20th century British philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch suggests that sight and morality are strongly connected. How can a person escape the trap of self-obsession and truly gain knowledge, or encounter what is really real? Murdoch describes the process in terms of our attention:
“The direction of attention is, contrary to nature, outward, away from self which reduces all to a false unity, towards the great surprising variety of the world, and the ability so to direct attention is love” (65).
For Murdoch, moral behavior cannot be selfish. So when we learn to pay attention to the world around us as unselfishly, unsentimentally, and objectively as possible, this is the beginning of ethics. For example, when one observes beauty in nature or in art, a person is drawn out of themselves to recognize “how real things can be looked at and loved without being seized and used” (64). Paying attention to the world around us brings us closer to recognizing what is really real, especially the distinctiveness of other persons. To really “see” someone in their full personhood is to recognize how they also cannot be reduced to an object to be seized or used. In other words, the limiting factor of our capacity to love others is our attention, our ability to perceive them as they really are.
Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, saw the disastrous effect that a military invasion would have on the people of Judah. His harshest critiques were directed at those who would mislead the nation and bring pain and suffering to the innocent. The harsh and violent language of the book reflects the urgency of its message, and it is a hard message to hear.
One of the more disturbing aspects of this text from Jeremiah is how the devastating judgment it describes comes directly from Yhwh. Mountains quake and hills tremble here just like in other texts where Yhwh marches into battle (e.g. Judges 5:4; 2 Samuel 18:8; Psalm 18:8). It is as if this judgment comes in the form of a divinely sanctioned Babylonian war machine, and it comes according to Yhwh’s purpose, with no relenting, no turning back (4:28).
There is only a faint glimmer of hope in this text, where Yhwh says that this judgment “will not make a full end” (4:27). Life will persevere, not all will be lost, but this feels like cold comfort. In Jeremiah’s vision there is “no one at all” in the land (4:25), or more literally no human (ʾādām). In search of some positive lesson to take from this text, perhaps we could understand this term a bit more expansively and we could not recognize any humanity in Jeremiah’s vision. Perhaps this might encourage us to look harder for it, to notice its absence, to perceive the inhumane nature of war, to attend to the world more humanely, and therefore act more lovingly.
Just this week, President Donald Trump ordered that the United States change the name of its Department of Defense back to the Department of War. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of the renamed department, hailed the significance of this change as bringing a winning attitude focused on “maximum lethality” and the announcement came with dramatic images from the White House. Although the name change is purely symbolic and perhaps even a bit more honest than the euphemistic term “Defense,” the celebratory, gleeful responses to the news reflects an attitude toward war that does not match that of our text.
For Jeremiah, the threat of destruction is leveled against “this people” and Jerusalem (4:11), the “in-group” or the “us” in its perspective, and divine judgment is brought against the nation for its alleged moral failures. But how much responsibility do everyday people have for the failures of their leaders? Does the accusation that the people are “stupid children” who do not know God merit the complete destruction of their way of life (4:22)? Even if the people did learn to “do good,” would that be enough to prevent the complete collapse of civilized life through war? Who can rightfully claim to make these judgments?
Finally, who can render entire cities waste and landscapes hostile to life itself and stay human in the process? In Jeremiah’s vision there are no people left in the land and only the memory of human civilization remains. Even though Jeremiah attributes this destruction to divine agency, in the end even Babylon is incurably wounded and shattered after all her wars (51:8–9). Jeremiah saw clearly the inhumanity of war and the tragic consequences it would bring upon his fellow Judeans, but war is fundamentally dehumanizing. If we could hear the exhortation of the prophet Jeremiah to expand our moral vision, to really pay attention to the suffering of others, perhaps then we would recognize the horrors of war and spare more people from a full end.
