Jeremiah 11: Like a Lamb Brought to the Slaughter

"The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; And say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, Which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them… Then answered I, and said, So be it, O LORD" (11:1–5).

"And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah… the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers… For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal. Therefore pray not thou for this people" (vv. 9–14). "The LORD called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he hath kindled fire upon it" (v. 16).

"And the LORD hath given me knowledge of it, and I know it: then thou shewedst me their doings. But I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered. But, O LORD of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I revealed my cause" (vv. 18–20).

"Therefore thus saith the LORD of the men of Anathoth, that seek thy life, saying, Prophesy not in the name of the LORD, that thou die not by our hand… Behold, I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine: And there shall be no remnant of them" (vv. 21–23).

Covenant curses in the ancient world

Treaties between overlords and vassals in the Hittite and Assyrian empires ended with lists of curses on whoever broke them. The vassal treaties of Esarhaddon (672 BC), found at Nimrud and in 2009 in a temple at Tell Tayinat in Turkey, required subjects to swear loyalty to Ashurbanipal under curses of famine, plague and exile; scholars have compared their form and some of their curses with Deuteronomy 13 and 28. Jeremiah 11 speaks of "this covenant" in the same treaty language: Israel's God is the overlord, and the people are vassals who have broken faith. The comparison shows the form the language takes; it does not show which document Jeremiah meant by "this covenant."

Anathoth's priests

Jeremiah's own town was a priestly town (1:1). Why its men wanted to silence him is not stated. Suggestions include anger at his attacks on the temple and its priests, at his support for Josiah's reform (which closed local shrines and moved priests to Jerusalem, 2 Kings 23:8–9), or simply the shame of a local prophet of doom. All are inferences. The text says only that they threatened him with death if he kept prophesying "in the name of the LORD" (11:21) and that his own family took part (12:6).

"This covenant" and Josiah's book

Many interpreters connect "the words of this covenant" with the book found in the temple in Josiah's eighteenth year (622 BC) and the covenant the king made with the people (2 Kings 22–23), often identified with a form of Deuteronomy. The chapter's prose is close to Deuteronomy's style ("iron furnace," "Obey my voice," "rising early"), and some scholars attribute it to later editors who shared that style; others think Jeremiah himself preached in that idiom. The text does not date the scene or name the book.

The lamb and later readers

Isaiah 53:7 also speaks of a lamb led to the slaughter, and from the second century Christian writers read Jeremiah 11:19 as a prophecy of Christ; Justin Martyr even claimed that some Jewish copies had removed the verse (Dialogue with Trypho 72), a charge for which no manuscript evidence is known. In Jeremiah the lamb is the prophet, and his prayer is for vengeance, not forgiveness (11:20). Readers can hold both: the Christian reading as a later interpretation, the original as a persecuted man's cry.

Hebrew and Greek

The Greek lacks most of 11:7–8, the long warning "I earnestly protested unto your fathers… yet they obeyed not," keeping only "and they did not do them." This is a genuine difference between the editions, typical of repeated exhortations that the Masoretic edition has and the shorter edition lacks. In 11:19 the Greek and Latin read "let us put wood into his bread," a literal rendering of the Hebrew "tree in its bread"; the KJV's "tree with the fruit thereof" follows a common emendation ("tree in its sap"). In the library's French file one word of 11:19 is out of place: that is an error of digitization, not a Greek variant. Jeremiah survives in two ancient Hebrew editions: the longer one preserved as the Masoretic Text (the basis of most Bibles) and a shorter one translated into Greek in the last centuries BC and also found, in fragments, among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Greek is not simply a damaged copy of the Hebrew: it often reflects a different Hebrew text. The site shows both, and weighs each difference on its own (see "Two Ancient Jeremiahs").