Jeremiah 14: The Drought

"Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up. And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty… Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass" (14:2–5).

"O LORD, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for thy name's sake… O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night?… yet thou, O LORD, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name; leave us not" (vv. 7–9).

"Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will give you assured peace in this place. Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them" (vv. 13–14).

"Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things" (v. 22).

Rain and drought in Judah

Judah depends on winter rain, roughly November to April, and on the "former and latter rains" at either end of the season (Deuteronomy 11:14). Average rainfall falls steeply from about 500–600 mm in the Judean hills to under 200 mm a short distance east and south. A failed year meant empty plastered cisterns, lost crops and dying herds. Paleoclimate studies from cave deposits and Dead Sea levels show drier and wetter phases in the Iron Age, but no record dates a particular drought to Jeremiah's lifetime; the chapter's drought cannot be matched to a known year.

A doe and her fawn

Deer (here the female, ayyalah, often the mountain gazelle or fallow deer) are proverbially tender with their young; in Job 39:1–4 God alone watches them give birth. For a doe to abandon a newborn because there is no grass is a picture of utter failure in nature.

A liturgy of lament

Chapters 14:1–15:4 alternate the people's prayers (14:7–9, 19–22), God's refusals (14:10–12; 15:1–4) and the prophet's intercession (14:13). Many scholars think the text reflects a public fast-day liturgy in time of drought, with Jeremiah taking the role of intercessor; others see a literary composition imitating such liturgies. Either way it shows ritual lament in late Judah.

Prophets of peace

The prophets Jeremiah confronts promise "assured peace (shalom emet) in this place" (14:13). Deuteronomy 18:21–22 offers a test: a word that does not come true was not from God. But that test works only after the fact. Jeremiah 14 gives another criterion, the content of the message: prophets who announce safety to a people unrepentant are suspect. The problem returns with Hananiah (28) and the letter to the exiles (29). See "False Prophets" (release 3).

Hebrew and Greek

The Greek and Hebrew agree in substance here; the Greek reads v. 9's "astonied" (nidham, "bewildered") as "sleeping." No Qumran copy preserves more than a few words of 14:4–7 (4QJer-a).