Grief of Survivors (2:10–19)

Elders … dust … sackcloth … young women (2:10). The entire community of survivors was gripped by grief. The author expresses this by means of the merism45 of elder and virgin (NIV “young women”), which combines opposites of young and old, male and female, wizened and naive. In this culture grief and mourning were expressed by, among other things, donning coarse, black, burlap-like cloth made of goat hair (e.g., Gen. 37:34; Est. 4:1). This rough cloth was worn next to the skin on the lower part of the body.46 The mourners would also “soil” their heads with ash or dirt (Josh. 7:6; Est. 4:1). A Ugaritic poem describes El’s mourning for Baʾal,

Thereupon El, god of mercy

descends from the throne and sits on a footstool,

and from the footstool he sits on the ground.

He pours ashes of mourning on his head,

dust of wallowing on his scalp.47

Eyes fail from weeping (2:11). The imagery the poet uses here is consistent with that used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible and in literature from neighboring cultures. Emotions were commonly understood psychosomatically, as integral to the person. Distressing situations were understood to have physical implications as well as emotional impact. At its core, distress impacts the gut (mē ʿeh, “intestines” [NIV “within”]; kābēd, “liver” [NIV “heart”]) and then expresses itself through the eyes, which flow with tears. As the tears flow, vision is impaired—the eyes “waste away”—and one’s strength flows out.48

Even today the Jews continue to weep over and pray for Jerusalem.

Dr. Mark Polis

Bread and wine (2:12). This is an idiomatic word pair for “food and drink.” However, instead of the more usual “grain [dāgān] and new wine [tîrôš],” the latter is replaced here by yāyin (“wine”). The point is that the destruction has resulted in severe famine.

Watches of the night (2:19). Hebrew reckoning of time divided the night into three four-hour “watches”: first watch, middle watch (Judg. 7:19), and morning watch (e.g., Ex. 14:24; 1 Sam. 11:11). These were determined by observing the position of circumpolar stars.49

Women eat their offspring (2:20). In the context of the blessings and curses component of the covenant (Deut. 28:53–57), the outcome of violating and abandoning the covenant might include such desperation as to lead to cannibalism (2 Kings 6:26–30). In the face of incorrigible apostasy, the prophet Jeremiah is instructed to buy a pottery jar and gather some of the leadership; just before he smashes the pottery, he is instructed to announce:

So beware, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

In this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. I will devastate this city and make it an object of scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds. I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh during the stress of the siege imposed on them by the enemies who seek their lives. (Jer. 19:6–9)

Second Kings 25:1–3 reports that by 587 B.C., as result of a year and a half long siege of Zedekiah’s Jerusalem, “the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.” Shortly thereafter, the city was entered and destroyed.50

On the international scene, imprecations in a treaty of Esarhaddon (680–669 B.C.) include: “May they make you eat in your hunger the flesh of your brothers, your sons and your daughters…. In your hunger eat the flesh of your sons! In want and famine may one man eat the flesh of another.”51 Ashurbanipal (c. 669–627 B.C.) reports that as a result of the Assyrian campaign against the Arabs of Qedar, “famine broke out among them and they ate the flesh of their children against their hunger.”52

Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the LORD? (2:20). Jeremiah had directly challenged the bent toward trusting in the external religious forms rather than in Yahweh himself, toward trusting the sacred space (the temple) rather than the sacred relationship (the covenant). Jeremiah sought to refute the notion that as long as they were in Jerusalem and had the temple, no bad thing could ever happen to them. The content of this sort of faith was a grand deception. So Jeremiah declares:

Therefore, this is what the LORD says about the prophets who are prophesying in my name: I did not send them, yet they are saying, “No sword or famine will touch this land.” Those same prophets will perish by sword and famine. (Jer. 14:15)

“Both prophet and priest are godless;

even in my temple I find their wickedness,”

declares the LORD.

“Therefore their path will become slippery;

they will be banished to darkness

and there they will fall.

I will bring disaster on them

in the year they are punished,”

declares the LORD. (Jer. 23:11–12)

In the very place that they believed would keep them safe, they met calamity.