The Berean Table

Field	Value
Pericope	Jeremiah 9:1–26
Theme	True glory lies not in wisdom, might, or riches but in knowing the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness.

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Opening Prayer

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Closing Prayer

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Timeline Context

Jeremiah 9 belongs to the block of oracles in chapters 7–10 commonly associated with the temple sermon period, delivered in Jerusalem in the final decades before the Babylonian destruction of 586 B.C. Jeremiah was called in 627 B.C., “in the thirteenth year” of Josiah (Jeremiah 1:2), and ministered through the reigns of Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah.

Historical/political setting. The Assyrian empire, which had crushed the northern kingdom in 722 B.C., was collapsing: Nineveh fell in 612 B.C. Josiah died at Megiddo in 609 B.C. opposing Pharaoh Neco, and his reforms died with him. Babylon’s victory at Carchemish in 605 B.C. made Nebuchadnezzar master of the Levant. Judah, wedged between Egypt and Babylon, oscillated in its alliances while its religious life rotted beneath a veneer of temple orthodoxy (Jeremiah 7:4). The oracles of chapters 8–9 most plausibly reflect the reign of Jehoiakim (609–598 B.C.), when covenant infidelity had become brazen.

Narrative flow of the book. Chapters 2–6 indict Judah’s apostasy; chapters 7–10 demolish her false confidence in temple, sacrifice, circumcision, and national election. Chapter 8 ends with the anguished cry, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” (Jeremiah 8:22), and chapter 9 flows directly out of that lament — indeed, in the Hebrew (Masoretic) versification, our 9:1 is numbered 8:23, underscoring the continuity. The chapter moves from the prophet’s tears (vv. 1–2), to the anatomy of a deceitful society (vv. 3–9), to the announced desolation (vv. 10–16), to the summons of mourning women (vv. 17–22), to the great counter-boast (vv. 23–24), and finally to the leveling word against mere fleshly circumcision (vv. 25–26).

Redemptive-historical placement. Judah stands under the sanctions of the Mosaic covenant: the scattering threatened in Leviticus 26:33 and Deuteronomy 28:64 is now at the door. Yet the same book will announce the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34), in which the knowledge of the LORD that Judah refused (9:3, 6) becomes the gift of grace: “they shall all know me.” Jeremiah 9 thus marks the exhaustion of the old administration in Israel’s unbelief and points forward to the heart-circumcising work of God in Christ.

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Historical-Grammatical Study

Genre. The chapter is prophetic poetry combining several forms: personal lament (vv. 1–2), judgment oracle with indictment and sentence (vv. 3–16), a communal dirge or funeral song employing professional mourners (vv. 17–22), a wisdom-style saying (vv. 23–24), and a concluding prose judgment announcement (vv. 25–26). The mixture is deliberate: Judah’s funeral is being arranged even as her true glory is defined.

Key Hebrew elements.

• Rosh mayim — “my head… waters” (v. 1): the prophet wishes his head were a spring and his eyes a meqor dim’ah (“fountain of tears”), the vocabulary of inexhaustible grief.
• Sheqer (“falsehood, deception”) dominates vv. 3–6, appearing alongside mirmah (“deceit,” vv. 6, 8). The tongue is “bent” like a bow (qeshet), an image of speech weaponized.
• Verse 4 puns on the patriarch Jacob: “every brother is a deceiver” renders ‘aqob ya’qob — literally “utterly supplants,” echoing ya’aqob (Jacob), the heel-grabber (Genesis 27:36). The nation has become Jacob-the-supplanter without Jacob-the-wrestler’s transforming encounter with God.
• Yada’ (“to know”) is the covenantal keyword: “they refuse to know me” (v. 6); “he understands and knows me” (v. 24). In covenant usage yada’ denotes committed relational loyalty, not bare cognition (cf. Hosea 4:1).
• Tsaraph (“refine”) and bachan (“test,” v. 7) are metallurgical terms: judgment as smelting.
• La’anah (“wormwood,” v. 15) with “poisoned water” forms a stock pair for bitter judgment (cf. Deuteronomy 29:18).
• The triad of v. 24 — chesed (steadfast covenant love), mishpat (justice), tsedaqah (righteousness) — summarizes the LORD’s covenantal character (cf. Exodus 34:6–7).
• The hithpael of halal (“boast, glory,” vv. 23–24) is reflexive: self-praise redirected to praise grounded in the LORD.

Ancient Near Eastern background. Professional mourning women (meqonenot, v. 17) were a fixture of ANE funerary culture, skilled in the qinah (dirge) meter. The startling image of death climbing “through our windows” (v. 21) likely trades on West Semitic mythology in which death (Mot) was feared as an intruder through the window — Jeremiah demythologizes the image: it is the LORD, not a Canaanite demon, who sends the reaper. The nations listed in v. 26 (Egypt, Edom, Ammon, Moab, desert tribes who “cut the corners of their hair”) all practiced forms of circumcision, which strips Judah of any claim that the rite itself distinguished her.

Covenantal patterns. The chapter is structured as covenant lawsuit: indictment (deceit, refusal to know God, forsaking Torah, vv. 3–6, 13–14), sentence (refining, scattering, sword, vv. 7, 15–16), and covenant curse vocabulary drawn from Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. Verses 25–26 apply the Deuteronomic demand for heart-circumcision (Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6) as the criterion of true covenant membership.

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Expanded Outline

Section 1 — A Fountain of Tears for the Slain of My People (Jeremiah 9:1–2)

Key Insight

The chapter opens with one of the most famous cries in prophetic literature: “Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (v. 1). This is why Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet, yet the label misleads if it suggests mere temperament. His tears are theological. He grieves as one who stands in the counsel of the LORD (Jeremiah 23:18), seeing the coming slaughter as certain though it has not yet fallen. The phrase “daughter of my people” (bat-ammi) is a term of tenderness; the prophet weeps over those he must condemn. In the Hebrew versification this verse closes chapter 8, binding it to the cry “Is there no balm in Gilead?” (Jeremiah 8:22) — the physician weeps because the patient refuses the cure.

Verse 2 gives the counter-impulse: “Oh that I had in the desert a travelers’ lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them!” The same heart that longs to weep over them longs to escape them, “for they are all adulterers, a company of treacherous men.” Here is the authentic tension of faithful ministry: love for a people and revulsion at their sin. Calvin observes that Jeremiah was not carried away by “an immoderate feeling,” but that his grief was the mark of a true shepherd who mourned the ruin his hearers laughed at. The desert lodge — a bare caravansary — would be preferable to a capital city full of covenant-breakers, for “adulterers” here is covenantal language: Judah’s idolatry is marital treachery against her divine Husband (Jeremiah 3:20).

Many Reformed interpreters also hear in these verses the voice of the LORD Himself speaking through His prophet, since the surrounding oracles slide without marker between divine and prophetic speech (compare v. 3, “declares the LORD”). At minimum, Jeremiah’s tears image God’s own grief over sin He is about to judge — judgment and sorrow are not opposites in the divine character (cf. Lamentations 3:32–33).

Redemptive-historically, the fountain of tears finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the greater Jeremiah, who “when he drew near and saw the city, wept over it” (Luke 19:41) and cried, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often would I have gathered your children together… and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37). The Man of Sorrows does what Jeremiah could only long to do: He not only weeps for the slain of the daughter of His people; He is slain for them.

Application

This section confronts the coldness of our own hearts toward sin and its consequences. Jeremiah did not enjoy denouncing Judah; he wept over her. A Reformed doctrine of judgment that produces smugness rather than tears has been mislearned. Examine your reaction to the moral collapse around you: is it contempt, amusement, or grief? The believer who has tasted grace knows he differs from the perishing only by mercy (1 Corinthians 4:7), and that knowledge turns denunciation into lament. Pray for the gift of tears — over your own sin first, then over your church, your city, and the unreached. Let Jeremiah’s cry shape your intercession: name specific people and communities before God “day and night.”

At the same time, verse 2 legitimizes the weariness faithful believers feel amid pervasive treachery. It is not sinful to feel the pull toward withdrawal; Elijah felt it (1 Kings 19:4), and David longed for wings like a dove (Psalm 55:6). But notice that Jeremiah voices the longing and stays. God’s servants bring their exhaustion into prayer and remain at their posts. If you are worn down by a workplace, family, or culture marked by deceit, tell God plainly — and then ask for grace to remain a truthful presence there rather than retreating into a comfortable enclave of the like-minded.

A warning against misapplication: do not use Jeremiah’s desert-lodge wish to justify actual abandonment of the visible church or of difficult people. The prophet expressed the longing but never deserted his calling; monastic escape is precisely what he did not choose. Equally, do not romanticize melancholy as if perpetual gloom were holiness — Jeremiah’s tears flowed from love and truth, not from a cultivated despair, and the same book commands hope (Jeremiah 29:11; Lamentations 3:21–24).

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Section 2 — A Tongue Bent Like a Bow: The Anatomy of Deceit (Jeremiah 9:3–9)

Key Insight

The indictment now becomes specific, and its target is the tongue. “They bend their tongue like a bow; falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land” (v. 3). The archery image is chilling: speech has been weaponized, aimed, and loosed to wound. The root problem surfaces at the end of the verse: “they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, declares the LORD.” Deceit in the mouth flows from ignorance of God in the heart — a diagnostic Jeremiah will repeat (v. 6) and reverse in the great counter-boast (v. 24).

Verses 4–5 depict total social breakdown: “Let everyone beware of his neighbor, and put no trust in any brother, for every brother is a deceiver.” The Hebrew ‘aqob ya’qob (“utterly supplants”) deliberately puns on the name Jacob (cf. Genesis 27:36): the covenant nation has reverted to its ancestor’s worst trait — heel-grabbing treachery — without his transforming midnight wrestling with God. Society has become a war of all against all: “everyone deceives his neighbor… they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity.” The verb “taught” is damning — deception is a discipline they have practiced until it became second nature, and even so it exhausts them. Sin is hard work. “Heaping oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, declares the LORD” (v. 6). Refusal, not inability to access truth, is the verdict: their ignorance of God is willful (cf. Romans 1:28).

Verse 7 announces the sentence with a striking “therefore”: “Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do, because of my people?” The metallurgical verbs (tsaraph, bachan) show that the coming judgment is a smelting furnace, purposed not merely to destroy but to separate dross from metal (cf. Isaiah 1:25; Zechariah 13:9; Malachi 3:3). Even in wrath, God is working toward a purified remnant. The pathos of “what else can I do?” reveals a God who has exhausted lesser measures — prophets, droughts, reforms — and now must use the furnace.

Verses 8–9 close the unit by returning to the arrow-tongue (“their tongue is a deadly arrow”) and the deadly gap between lips and heart: “with his mouth each speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he plans an ambush.” The refrain “Shall I not punish them for these things?… Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” repeats verbatim from Jeremiah 5:9 and 5:29, a triple witness that the verdict is settled. As Matthew Henry notes, God appeals to His own justice: no honest court could acquit such a people.

Application

James tells us the tongue “is a fire, a world of unrighteousness… set on fire by hell” (James 3:6), and Jeremiah 9 shows what an entire society looks like when that fire spreads: no one can trust a neighbor, a brother, a colleague. The application begins at your own mouth. Take an audit of a single day’s speech — texts, emails, meetings, social media — and ask where you shaded truth to protect image, flattered with your mouth while harboring criticism in your heart (v. 8), or passed along slander dressed as concern. Verse 5 says liars “have taught their tongue to speak lies”: deceit is a trained habit, which means truthfulness must be trained too. Put on practices that build veracity: let your yes be yes (Matthew 5:37), correct exaggerations on the spot, refuse to say behind a back what you would not say to a face, and speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) even when silence would be more comfortable.

Notice too the link Jeremiah draws between speech and knowing God (vv. 3, 6). Growth in honesty is not mere ethics; it is communion with the God who cannot lie (Titus 1:2). And when you find yourself in the furnace, remember verse 7: God refines His people rather than discarding them, so trials that expose your sin are mercy in severe form (1 Peter 1:6–7).

A warning against misapplication: verse 4 — “put no trust in any brother” — describes Judah’s pathology; it does not prescribe cynicism as a Christian virtue. Believers are commanded to love, trust, and bear with one another in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 13:7). Using this text to justify chronic suspicion, or to withhold committed membership in a local church because “people always disappoint,” turns a diagnosis into a disease.

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Section 3 — Why Is the Land Ruined? Forsaking the Law of the LORD (Jeremiah 9:10–16)

Key Insight

The scene widens from society to landscape. “I will take up weeping and wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste” (v. 10). Creation itself suffers for human covenant-breaking: no lowing cattle, no birdsong — an eerie de-creation echoing Jeremiah 4:23–26, where the prophet saw the land return to “without form and void.” Verse 11 pronounces the sentence on the capital: “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals,” and on the cities of Judah “a desolation, without inhabitant.” The city of the great King will become a haunt of scavengers — which is precisely what happened in 586 B.C.

Verses 12–14 then stage a question-and-answer that is the theological heart of the section. “Who is the man so wise that he can understand this?… Why is the land ruined?” The question invites the wise men of Judah to explain the catastrophe — and none can. So the LORD answers His own question: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them” (vv. 13–14). The explanation of national ruin is not geopolitical miscalculation, economic mismanagement, or Babylonian ambition; it is covenant infidelity. Notice the threefold anatomy of apostasy: abandonment of revealed law, obedience transferred to the self (“their own hearts” — the ESV’s “stubbornly followed” renders sherirut, stubbornness), and worship transferred to idols (“the Baals”). Notice also the generational engine: “as their fathers taught them.” Idolatry, like deceit in verse 5, is taught.

Verses 15–16 deliver the sentence in covenant-curse vocabulary: “Behold, I will feed this people with bitter food (wormwood), and give them poisonous water to drink. I will scatter them among the nations… and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.” Wormwood and poisoned water invert the covenant blessings of a land flowing with milk and honey (Deuteronomy 29:18 uses the same pair for the root of idolatry). Scattering among nations “whom neither they nor their fathers have known” is lifted almost verbatim from the curse lists of Leviticus 26:33 and Deuteronomy 28:64. Calvin comments that God here shows Himself faithful even in judgment: He does nothing against Judah that He had not covenantally forewarned. The God who keeps His threats can be trusted to keep His promises — which is why the same book can pivot to the New Covenant hope of Jeremiah 31.

Application

Verse 12 poses a question every generation must answer: “Why is the land ruined?” Judah’s pundits doubtless had explanations — Egyptian weakness, Babylonian aggression, bad harvests — but the LORD’s answer cut beneath them all to forsaken Torah and self-willed hearts. Christians must learn this deeper level of analysis without becoming simplistic. When we assess wreckage — a collapsed ministry, a broken marriage, a church split, our own spiritual dryness — we should ask not only “what went wrong?” but “what did we forsake, and what did we follow?” Verse 14 supplies the recurring pattern: God’s word abandoned, our own hearts obeyed, substitute gods embraced. Trace that sequence in your own drift seasons; it is remarkably reliable.

The phrase “as their fathers taught them” (v. 14) presses on parents, elders, and mentors: we are always teaching the next generation something — either the fear of the LORD or the worship of Baals with respectable names (career, comfort, appearance, nation). Deuteronomy 6:6–7 remains the antidote: diligent, daily, ordinary-life instruction in God’s words. Ask concretely: what are my children or disciples learning from my actual priorities, not my stated ones?

Finally, let the certainty of fulfilled judgment strengthen your confidence in fulfilled promise. The God who kept Leviticus 26 to the letter will keep Jeremiah 31 to the letter — and has, in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).

A warning against misapplication: do not wield verse 12 as a tool for explaining other people’s suffering, as though every ruined life could be traced to a specific sin of the sufferer. Job’s counselors made that mistake and were rebuked (Job 42:7), and Jesus explicitly refused such calculus for the man born blind (John 9:3). Jeremiah is interpreting a covenant nation under announced covenant sanctions, not authorizing us to read individual afflictions as divine scorecards.

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Section 4 — Call for the Mourning Women: Death Has Climbed Through Our Windows (Jeremiah 9:17–22)

Key Insight

The LORD of hosts now issues a startling command: “Consider, and call for the mourning women to come… let them make haste and raise a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears” (vv. 17–18). Professional mourners — skilled women who led communities in ritual lament with practiced dirges — were summoned when death struck a household. But here they are summoned before the funeral. Judah is so certainly dead in God’s courtroom that the wake can begin while the nation still walks about. Charles Spurgeon pressed the image homiletically: when hearts are too hard to weep over their own condition, God must call in help to teach them lamentation. The people’s eyes will not produce tears on their own (contrast Jeremiah’s fountain in v. 1); grief must be provoked, modeled, taught — “teach to your daughters a lament, and each to her neighbor a dirge” (v. 20). Lament, like deceit (v. 5) and idolatry (v. 14), is transmitted by teaching; Judah’s daughters must learn the songs of catastrophe because the catastrophe is sure.

The content of the dirge is given in verse 19: “How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.” The exile is sung as already accomplished — the prophetic perfect of grief.

Verse 21 provides the chapter’s most arresting image: “For death has come up into our windows; it has entered our palaces, cutting off the children from the streets and the young men from the squares.” Ancient Near Eastern texts feared death (Mot) as an intruder entering through windows, and Baal mythology took care about window-openings in the god’s palace. Jeremiah seizes the pagan image and turns it: no demon stalks Judah — the covenant LORD has opened the windows to the reaper. Neither palace walls nor lattices keep it out; it takes the children from the streets and the young men from the squares — the nation’s future, cut down mid-play and mid-strength. Verse 22 completes the horror: “The dead bodies of men shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves after the reaper, and none shall gather them.” Corpses as dung — fertilizer, not family; sheaves with no harvester — death with no burial, the ultimate ANE disgrace (cf. Jeremiah 8:2; 16:4).

Yet even this section serves grace. The God who commands lament is the God who takes death seriously — and who, in the fullness of time, would send His Son to absorb death’s intrusion. At the house of Jairus the professional mourners were already wailing when Jesus arrived, and He put them out, “for the girl is not dead but sleeping” (Matthew 9:24). Where Christ enters, the dirge is interrupted.

Application

This passage teaches the church to lament — a discipline modern Christians have largely lost. Judah needed skilled women to raise the wail because the community had forgotten how to grieve rightly; our praise-only worship culture risks the same amnesia. Nearly a third of the Psalter is lament, and Scripture includes an entire book of Lamentations, yet many believers have no vocabulary for bringing devastation — bereavement, miscarriage, church collapse, national sin — honestly before God. Recover the practice deliberately: pray the lament psalms (Psalm 13; Psalm 88) verbatim in dark seasons; allow funerals to be funerals rather than relentlessly upbeat “celebrations” that forbid tears; and “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) without rushing the sufferer to premature resolution. Verse 20 even suggests lament must be taught to the next generation — children permitted to see godly adults grieve in faith learn that faith does not require pretending.

The image of death at the windows (v. 21) also punctures every illusion of security. Palaces could not keep it out; neither can portfolios, fitness, or technology. Believers should live with a candid mortality — “teach us to number our days” (Psalm 90:12) — that drives us to Christ, who alone has abolished death (2 Timothy 1:10), and that makes us urgent in the gospel toward the young, whom verse 21 pictures as death’s particular prey.

A warning against misapplication: lament must not curdle into despair or become a settled identity of gloom. Judah’s dirge was truthful because judgment was truly coming, but Christian lament always operates inside the resurrection — we grieve, yet “not as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). To wallow without hope dishonors Christ as surely as to grin without honesty dishonors the sufferer.

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Section 5 — Let Him Who Boasts Boast in This (Jeremiah 9:23–24)

Key Insight

Out of the smoke of judgment rises one of the most magnificent statements in the Old Testament. “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD’” (vv. 23–24).

The triad of wisdom, might, and riches names the three great pillars of human confidence — intellect and expertise, power and capability, wealth and resources. All three are gifts of God and none is condemned in itself; what is forbidden is boasting (hithhallel, the reflexive of halal, “to praise”) — resting one’s glory, identity, and security in them. Judah’s wise men could not answer “Why is the land ruined?” (v. 12); her warriors could not keep death from the windows (v. 21); her riches would be plundered by Babylon. Each pillar was about to snap. The command is therefore mercy: God removes false glories before they fail their trusters.

The true boast is defined with precision: “that he understands and knows me.” Here the yada’ refused in verses 3 and 6 returns as the one treasure worth having. To know the LORD is to know Him as He is — and He identifies Himself by three attributes: chesed (steadfast covenant love), mishpat (justice), and tsedaqah (righteousness), practiced “in the earth” — not abstract perfections but character in action, in history, in this chapter. Judgment on Judah is His mishpat; the promised restoration is His chesed; both together are His tsedaqah. “For in these things I delight”: God’s justice is not reluctant duty and His love is not sentimental indulgence; He delights in being who He is. As R.C. Sproul notes, the deepest question of the human heart — what is God like? — is answered here by God’s own self-description.

Paul seizes this text twice, condensing it as “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17). In 1 Corinthians the citation crowns his argument that God chose the foolish, weak, and low things of the world “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” — and that Christ Jesus “became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:29–30). The Christological weight is total: the knowledge of God in which alone we may glory is now given in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6), in whom steadfast love, justice, and righteousness met at the cross (Romans 3:26).

Application

Identify your functional boast. It is whatever you reach for when you need to feel that you matter: credentials and being the smartest voice in the room (wisdom); competence, fitness, influence, or self-sufficiency (might); the portfolio, the house, the salary (riches). A reliable diagnostic: what loss would devastate not merely your circumstances but your sense of self? That is where your glory is stored. Jeremiah 9:23 does not tell you to despise these gifts but to stop staking your soul on them, because every one of them is mortal — wisdom dementia can erase, might a diagnosis can end, riches a market can consume.

Then practice the true boast. Knowing God is not a vague warmth but a pursued acquaintance with His self-revealed character — steadfast love, justice, righteousness — through His word, prayer, and His acts in your history. Keep a record of His chesed to you; rehearse it aloud in family worship as Israel rehearsed the exodus. Let His delight define yours: if God delights in steadfast love, justice, and righteousness “in the earth,” His people will love mercy, pursue justice for the weak, and do righteousness in their ordinary dealings (Micah 6:8). And when you speak of yourself — in interviews, on profiles, in conversation — learn Paul’s reflex: “far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14).

A warning against misapplication: boasting in the Lord is not a pious formula pasted over ongoing self-promotion — thanking God loudly for achievements we still count as our glory. Nor does this text sanctify anti-intellectualism, weakness-worship, or poverty as virtues in themselves; wisdom, strength, and wealth remain gifts to steward (Proverbs 3:13–16). The target is the heart’s trust, not the gift’s existence.

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Section 6 — Circumcised, Yet Uncircumcised in Heart (Jeremiah 9:25–26)

Key Insight

The chapter closes with a thunderclap. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh — Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart” (vv. 25–26).

The shock is in the list. Judah appears second in a roll call of pagan nations — sandwiched between Egypt and Edom as just one more people to be punished. Most of these nations practiced some form of circumcision or ritual cutting (“cut the corners of their hair” describes desert tribes’ distinctive trim), so the physical rite, in itself, distinguished Judah from her neighbors not at all. The final clause detonates the presumption: the nations are uncircumcised — but “all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.” Externally marked, internally unrenewed, Judah stands in the dock with the Gentiles. The sign without the thing signified saves no one; indeed it aggravates guilt, for Judah sinned against covenant light the nations never had (cf. Amos 3:2).

This is not a novelty but Moses’ own doctrine. The Torah that Judah forsook (v. 13) had commanded, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart” (Deuteronomy 10:16), and had promised that after exile “the LORD your God will circumcise your heart… so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart” (Deuteronomy 30:6). Jeremiah preached the same demand at the start of these oracles: “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the foreskin of your hearts” (Jeremiah 4:4). The demand exposes the need; the promise announces the gift. What the law required and Israel could not produce, God covenants to perform — which is precisely the New Covenant logic of Jeremiah 31:33, “I will write it on their hearts.”

The apostolic teaching flows straight from this text. Paul: “no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (Romans 2:28–29). And the heart-surgery itself is located in union with Christ: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands… having been buried with him in baptism” (Colossians 2:11–12). At the cross Christ was, as it were, “cut off out of the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8) — the true and final cutting — so that in Him sinners of every nation receive the circumcised heart the law demanded. The chapter that began with tears ends by driving every reader off external religion onto sovereign grace.

Application

Verses 25–26 interrogate every form of inherited, external, or ceremonial religion — and the Reformed churches, with our high view of sacraments and covenant membership, must hear them with particular care. Baptism, church membership, a Christian family name, catechetical knowledge, years of attendance: all are genuine privileges, and none regenerates. The question this text presses is not “Have you received the sign?” but “Has God given you the thing signified — a heart that loves Him, grieves over sin, and trusts Christ?” Parents in covenant homes must say this plainly to their children: your baptism calls you to faith in Christ; it does not replace it. Longtime members must ask whether decades of orthodoxy have ever been accompanied by new birth (John 3:3). Where the examination exposes deadness, the remedy is not despair but the promise: the God who demands a circumcised heart delights to give one (Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 36:26) — flee to Christ and ask.

The passage also demolishes religious tribalism. Judah listed among the pagans warns every “insider” group — denominational, national, familial — that God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34). We may not rest in belonging to the right tradition while our hearts are far from Him (Isaiah 29:13). Let the text produce humility toward outsiders and honest dealing with ourselves.

A warning against misapplication: this text must not be twisted into contempt for the outward means God Himself appointed. Circumcision was God’s command and a true sign of His covenant (Genesis 17:11), as baptism and the Supper are today; the error was not receiving the sign but resting in it. Nor should tender believers turn heart-examination into perpetual morbid doubt — the call is to look away from externals to Christ, and hearts that trust Him are the very hearts God has circumcised.

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Cross References

Comparative Gospel Study

Not Applicable as Direct Comparison — Jeremiah is an Old Testament prophetic book, and chapter 9 is a prophetic lament and judgment oracle, not Gospel narrative. However, Jeremiah 9:1–26 anticipates key Gospel themes:

The weeping Christ over the doomed city. Jeremiah’s longing for a fountain of tears over “the slain of the daughter of my people” (v. 1) anticipates Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem as He foresaw another destruction — “would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace” (Luke 19:41–42) — and lamented, “How often would I have gathered your children” (Matthew 23:37).

Judgment on hollow religion. Jeremiah’s assault on trust in circumcision without heart-reality (vv. 25–26) anticipates Jesus’ collision with Pharisaic externalism: “you clean the outside of the cup… but inside you are full of greed” (Matthew 23:25), and John the Baptist’s warning against presuming on descent from Abraham (Matthew 3:9).

The tongue as the index of the heart. The bent-bow tongues and neighbor-deceiving speech of verses 3–8 anticipate Jesus’ teaching that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34) and that people will give account for every careless word (Matthew 12:36).

True treasure and the failed triad. The prohibition of boasting in wisdom, might, and riches (v. 23) anticipates the Gospels’ parables of misplaced security — the rich fool whose barns could not buy one more night (Luke 12:16–21) — and Jesus’ verdict that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

Death interrupted. The dirge of the mourning women (vv. 17–20) anticipates the professional mourners already wailing at Jairus’s house, whom Jesus expelled before raising the child (Matthew 9:23–25) — the Gospel’s first hint that where Christ enters, the funeral Jeremiah convened is finally called off.

Old Testament Connections

Pentateuch. Deuteronomy 10:16 and 30:6 supply the demand and the promise of heart-circumcision that verses 25–26 presuppose. The scattering, sword, wormwood, and poisoned water of verses 15–16 enact the covenant curses of Leviticus 26:33 and Deuteronomy 28:64, with the wormwood-and-poison pair drawn from Deuteronomy 29:18. The Jacob wordplay of verse 4 reaches back to Genesis 25:26 and 27:36, and God’s self-description in verse 24 echoes the great self-revelation of Exodus 34:6–7.

Historical Books. The fall of Jerusalem in 2 Kings 25 is the historical fulfillment of verses 11 and 16. The northern kingdom’s earlier exile “because they did not obey the voice of the LORD” (2 Kings 18:12) stands as the ignored precedent. Israel’s superstitious trust in the ark (1 Samuel 4:3) parallels Judah’s trust in circumcision and temple.

Wisdom Literature. The failure of Judah’s wise men (v. 12) and the ban on boasting in wisdom (v. 23) resonate with Proverbs 3:5–7 (“be not wise in your own eyes”) and Job 28, where wisdom is hidden from man and found only in the fear of the Lord. Psalm 49 dismantles boasting in riches before death; Psalm 52:1 rebukes the mighty man who boasts of evil.

Major Prophets. Isaiah 1:25 and 48:10 share the refining-furnace image of verse 7. Isaiah 29:13 (lips near, heart far) parallels verse 8. Ezekiel 36:26 promises the new heart that answers verse 26, and Ezekiel 44:7 condemns the “uncircumcised in heart” in nearly Jeremiah’s words. Lamentations is the extended performance of the dirge commissioned in verses 17–20.

Minor Prophets. Hosea 4:1–2 indicts the land where there is “no knowledge of God” and lying and deceit abound — the same diagnosis as verses 3–6. Micah 6:8 states the human counterpart of verse 24’s triad: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly. Zechariah 13:9 and Malachi 3:3 develop the refining of verse 7 toward a purified remnant, and Amos 3:2 grounds Judah’s severer judgment in her greater privilege.

New Testament Fulfillment

Gospels/Acts. Jesus embodies the weeping prophet (Luke 19:41; Matthew 23:37) and pronounces the temple’s doom as Jeremiah did (Matthew 24:2; cf. Jeremiah 7:14). His teaching on the tongue as the heart’s overflow (Matthew 12:34–37) fulfills the diagnosis of verses 3–8. At Pentecost and in Cornelius’s house, the promised knowledge of God spreads to every nation without partiality (Acts 2:38–39; 10:34–35), answering the leveling of verses 25–26.

Paul’s Epistles. Paul cites Jeremiah 9:23–24 directly in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17, making the true boast the banner of his gospel: Christ our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). Romans 2:28–29 restates verses 25–26 — circumcision is “a matter of the heart, by the Spirit” — and Colossians 2:11–12 locates the true circumcision in union with Christ’s death. Philippians 3:3–8 renounces the boast in pedigree for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.

General Epistles/Revelation. James 3:1–12 is the New Testament’s fullest exposition of the arrow-tongue of verses 3–8. First Peter 1:6–7 applies the refining furnace of verse 7 to the church’s trials. Hebrews 8:8–12 quotes Jeremiah’s New Covenant answer to the uncircumcised heart. Revelation 18 stages the final dirge over the great city that trusted riches — mourning women on a cosmic scale — and Revelation 21:4 promises the end of all tears the prophet longed to shed.

Redemptive-Historical Context

Jeremiah 9 sits at a hinge of redemptive history, and the Creation → Fall → Redemption → Consummation arc runs visibly through it.

Creation and Fall. The chapter’s imagery of a land stripped of birds and beasts (v. 10) deliberately echoes de-creation: the covenant community’s sin unravels the created order entrusted to it, replaying Adam’s fall, in which the ground was cursed for man’s sake (Genesis 3:17). Judah in the land was meant to be a new humanity in a new Eden; instead, deceitful tongues (vv. 3–8) reproduce the serpent’s primal weapon — the lie — and the garden-land becomes a lair of jackals (v. 11). The Fall is not merely behind Israel; it is at work within Israel, for “all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart” (v. 26). This is the Old Testament’s own witness that the Sinai administration, holy as it was, could not renew the heart (cf. Deuteronomy 29:4).

Redemption. Yet judgment in this chapter is refining, not annihilating: “I will refine them and test them” (v. 7). Through the furnace of exile God preserves the line of promise, and out of Jeremiah’s own book comes the New Covenant word that answers every indictment here: the people who “refuse to know me” (v. 6) will be a people who “all know me” (Jeremiah 31:34); the heart uncircumcised (v. 26) will be the heart on which God writes His law (Jeremiah 31:33). The fulfillment is Christ. He is the true Israel with no deceit in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22), the Man of Sorrows whose tears complete Jeremiah’s (Luke 19:41), the One “cut off” (Isaiah 53:8) in the true circumcision-death (Colossians 2:11), and the Lord in whom alone we boast (1 Corinthians 1:30–31). At His cross the triad of verse 24 — steadfast love, justice, righteousness — converges: God justly judges sin and lovingly justifies sinners (Romans 3:26).

Already/Not Yet. The church now lives in the overlap of the ages. Already the Spirit circumcises hearts among all nations (Romans 2:29; Philippians 3:3); already believers know the LORD and boast in Him alone. Not yet is the refining finished — the church still passes through fiery trials (1 Peter 1:6–7; 4:17) — and not yet are all tears dried; lament remains a Christian calling in a world where death still climbs through windows.

Consummation. The end of the story reverses the chapter point by point: the dirge over the doomed city gives way to the Bride-city descending (Revelation 21:2); the God who delights in steadfast love, justice, and righteousness fills the earth with them; and “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4). The fountain of tears becomes the river of the water of life.

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Systematic Theology Connection

Total Depravity

Jeremiah 9 is a locus classicus for the Reformed doctrine that sin corrupts every faculty of fallen humanity. The chapter indicts the tongue (bent like a bow, vv. 3, 8), the mind (wise men who cannot answer God’s question, v. 12), the will (“they refuse to know me,” v. 6; “stubbornly followed their own hearts,” v. 14), and above all the heart (“uncircumcised in heart,” v. 26) — the whole person in rebellion. Depravity here is not maximal wickedness (Judah still practiced religion) but total in extent: no faculty is unfallen, and therefore no faculty can be the base for self-recovery. The Westminster Confession summarizes this biblical picture: by the fall we became “wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body” and “utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good” (WCF 6.2, 4; cf. WLC 25). Jeremiah’s wider testimony agrees: “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9), and the Ethiopian cannot change his skin (Jeremiah 13:23). The practical implications are pastoral, not merely polemical. First, depravity explains why external reform — Josiah’s included — fails without regeneration; behavior modification cannot circumcise a heart. Second, it demolishes self-righteous comparison: Judah, church of the old covenant, stands listed among the pagans (v. 26), so no religious pedigree exempts anyone from the diagnosis (Romans 3:9–12). Third, it drives sinners to sovereign grace: only the God who demands a new heart can give one (Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 36:26). Rightly preached, total depravity is the doorstep of the gospel — it silences every boast in the flesh precisely so that the one legitimate boast (vv. 23–24) may be heard (Ephesians 2:1–9).

The Attributes of God

Verse 24 is one of Scripture’s most concentrated divine self-descriptions: “I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight.” Three truths about God’s attributes emerge. First, God’s attributes are known by His own revelation, not by human speculation — the true boast is knowing God as He declares Himself, echoing the great proclamation of Exodus 34:6–7. Second, His attributes are active and historical: He “practices” them “in the earth.” Steadfast love (chesed) is His covenant loyalty enacted toward His people; justice (mishpat) is His righteous governance, seen even in the furnace of verse 7; righteousness (tsedaqah) is His unwavering rightness in every relation. Third, God’s attributes are the object of His own delight: He is not reluctantly just nor sporadically loving; He rejoices to be who He is. The Westminster Confession gathers this testimony: God is “most loving, gracious, merciful… and withal most just and terrible in his judgments” (WCF 2.1), and the Shorter Catechism’s famous definition (WSC 4) lists the perfections this verse displays in action. Doctrinally, the verse guards divine simplicity in practice: love, justice, and righteousness are not competing parts of God but one harmonious character, displayed together supremely at the cross, where God is “just and the justifier” (Romans 3:26). Practically, the doctrine shapes both worship and ethics: we adore a God whose judgments need no apology and whose love needs no exaggeration, and we imitate what He delights in — doing justice and loving kindness (Micah 6:8) — since knowing God, in Jeremiah’s usage, always issues in likeness to God (Jeremiah 22:16).

Justification by Faith Alone

Jeremiah 9 prepares the ground for the doctrine of justification by demolishing every alternative righteousness. The chapter strips away boasting in human attainment — wisdom, might, riches (v. 23) — and boasting in religious privilege — circumcision in the flesh (vv. 25–26). What remains is nothing in man and everything in God: the only legitimate glorying is in the LORD Himself (v. 24). Paul reads the text exactly this way. Having proven that Jew and Gentile alike are under sin — quoting the prophets’ universal indictments — he concludes that “no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law” (Romans 3:20), that circumcision avails nothing without the heart-reality (Romans 2:28–29), and that God’s righteousness comes “through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe… so that no human being might boast” (Romans 3:22; 1 Corinthians 1:29). His citation of Jeremiah 9:24 in 1 Corinthians 1:31 caps the argument: because Christ has become our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, the believer’s only boast is the Lord. The Westminster Confession states the doctrine precisely: God justifies “not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins… not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone” (WCF 11.1; cf. WSC 33). The practical implications flow directly from the text: assurance rests on Christ’s righteousness, not our religious performance; humility replaces comparison, since the justified have nothing they did not receive (1 Corinthians 4:7); and worship becomes boasting of the right kind — “far be it from me to boast except in the cross” (Galatians 6:14).

Regeneration and Heart-Circumcision

The closing verdict — “all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart” (v. 26) — establishes the necessity of what Reformed theology calls regeneration: the sovereign, gracious renewal of the heart by the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament frames the doctrine in circumcision language: the command “circumcise the foreskin of your heart” (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 4:4) exposes human obligation, while the promise “the LORD your God will circumcise your heart, so that you will love the LORD” (Deuteronomy 30:6) reveals that God Himself must perform the surgery. Jeremiah’s New Covenant oracle makes the gift explicit — “I will write my law on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33) — and Ezekiel parallels it: “a new heart I will give you… I will remove the heart of stone” (Ezekiel 36:26). The New Testament identifies the fulfillment: true circumcision is “of the heart, by the Spirit” (Romans 2:29), accomplished in union with Christ, “a circumcision made without hands” (Colossians 2:11), and experienced as new birth from above (John 3:3–8). The Westminster standards describe this as effectual calling, in which God takes “away their heart of stone” and gives “a heart of flesh, renewing their wills” (WCF 10.1; WSC 31), and insist that grace is “not from anything at all foreseen in man.” Practically, the doctrine forbids two errors this chapter exposes: trusting external rites to accomplish what only the Spirit can (Judah’s error), and despairing that hardened hearts are beyond hope — for the God who diagnoses the uncircumcised heart delights to give new ones. Prayer for the unconverted, therefore, targets the heart, and asks God to do what He promised.

The Covenant of Grace

Jeremiah 9 is unintelligible apart from covenant, and it displays the covenant of grace under both its sanctions and its promise. The judgments of the chapter — refining (v. 7), desolation (v. 11), wormwood and scattering (vv. 15–16) — are not arbitrary but execute the curses Israel accepted under the Mosaic administration (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28), demonstrating that God deals with His people by covenant faithfulness even in wrath. Yet the same chapter reveals the deeper, gracious substrate: God still calls Judah “the daughter of my people” (v. 1), still refines rather than annihilates (“what else can I do, because of my people?” v. 7), still defines Himself by chesed — steadfast covenant love (v. 24) — and still points beyond the failed external administration to the heart-reality (vv. 25–26) that the New Covenant will secure (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Reformed theology reads this as one covenant of grace in successive administrations: the Confession teaches that the covenant was “differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel” but is “one and the same, under various dispensations” (WCF 7.5–6). The Mosaic administration’s exposure of sin and its typological ordinances (circumcision, temple, sacrifice) all drove toward Christ, the mediator in whose blood the New Covenant is enacted (Luke 22:20; Hebrews 8:6–13, quoting Jeremiah 31). Practically, covenant theology anchors assurance — God’s chesed to His people survives even their chastisement (Lamentations 3:22–23) — and it disciplines the church: covenant privilege heightens accountability (Amos 3:2; 1 Peter 4:17), so membership in the visible church calls for the faith it signifies.

The Judgment of God

This chapter will not allow judgment to be treated as a marginal doctrine. God announces punishment with a judicial refrain — “Shall I not punish them for these things?… Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” (v. 9) — and executes it in history: Jerusalem became the heap of ruins of verse 11 within a generation. Several features of the biblical doctrine appear. Judgment is judicial, grounded in evidence (deceit, oppression, forsaken Torah) and announced beforehand, never capricious. It is impartial: Judah is listed among Egypt, Edom, Ammon, and Moab (vv. 25–26), for “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11). It is proportioned to privilege: the covenant people, who knew God’s law, are judged first and most searchingly (Amos 3:2; 1 Peter 4:17). Yet toward His elect it is refining rather than destroying (v. 7) — a fatherly severity that purifies a remnant. And it is grievous to God, announced through tears (v. 1; cf. Lamentations 3:33), never with relish. The Westminster Confession affirms that God “is most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty” (WCF 2.1) and that He has appointed a final day of judgment through Jesus Christ (WCF 33.1; Acts 17:31). Practically, the doctrine sobers evangelism — the wrath to come is real, and love warns of it (2 Corinthians 5:11) — and comforts the oppressed, since deferred justice is not denied justice (Revelation 6:10–11). Above all it magnifies the cross, where the believer’s judgment has already fallen: “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

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Reformed Theology

Reformed theology reads Jeremiah 9 within the single covenant of grace, administered first through Moses and consummated in Christ, and the chapter rewards that reading at every turn. The judgments Jeremiah announces are covenant sanctions, executed exactly as written in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28; the hope beneath them is covenant chesed (v. 24), which will surface as the explicit New Covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:31–34 — the text quoted at greater length in Hebrews 8 than any other Old Testament passage in the New. Geerhardus Vos taught the church to see that this movement is organic, not disjointed: revelation unfolds like a plant, and the heart-religion demanded in 9:25–26 is the seed of which Pentecost is the flower. Meredith Kline’s work on covenant lawsuit illuminates the chapter’s structure — indictment, evidence, sentence — as the LORD’s legal prosecution of a vassal people under oath.

Calvin’s exposition of the chapter presses its doctrine of sin and grace: the tongue bent like a bow shows that corruption is not superficial but seated in the heart, and the uncircumcised heart of verse 26 proves that “whatever men bring of their own is polluted” until God renews them. For Calvin, verses 23–24 are a compendium of true religion: he observes that men are inflated by three things — acuteness of mind, strength, and wealth — and that God throws down all three so that the knowledge of Him alone may stand as our glory. Spurgeon preached Jeremiah’s fountain of tears as the portrait of the true evangelist: hard doctrine from a soft heart. Sinclair Ferguson’s emphasis on union with Christ finds its Old Testament anchor in Colossians 2:11’s “circumcision made without hands” — the answer to 9:26 is not a better rite but incorporation into the Christ who was cut off for His people.

The Israel/Church question is answered here with typological continuity. Judah’s leveling among the nations (vv. 25–26) and Paul’s use of the passage (Romans 2:28–29; 1 Corinthians 1:31) show that the covenant community was never constituted ultimately by flesh but by heart-circumcision — which is why the church of Jew and Gentile, “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16), inherits the promises in Christ without hermeneutical violence. G.K. Beale traces this trajectory: the true temple, true Israel, and true circumcision converge on Christ and thence on His body. R.C. Sproul loved verse 24 as a charter for the Reformed doctrine of God — the holiness that judges and the love that saves are one character, delighted in by God Himself. John Piper presses the same verse doxologically: God’s delight in His own perfections is the deepest foundation of the believer’s joy, for the true boast is the soul’s satisfaction in knowing Him. D.A. Carson notes that Paul’s double citation makes Jeremiah 9:23–24 nothing less than a summary of the gospel of grace: all human boasting excluded, all glorying relocated in the Lord — soli Deo gloria.

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Dispensational Theology

A Dispensational reading of Jeremiah 9, following the literal-grammatical hermeneutic of Scofield, Ryrie, Walvoord, Pentecost, and Blaising, begins with the text’s plain historical referent: national Judah in the last decades before Nebuchadnezzar. The judgments are concrete and were literally fulfilled — Jerusalem became “a heap of ruins” (v. 11) in 586 B.C., the population was scattered among nations (v. 16), and the sword pursued them. Dispensationalists take this precision as programmatic: prophecies of judgment were fulfilled literally, therefore prophecies of Israel’s restoration will be fulfilled just as literally, to the same national entity. Ryrie’s sine qua non — the consistent distinction between Israel and the Church — governs the reading: Judah here is the covenant nation under the Mosaic economy, and the chapter’s threats and hopes belong in the first instance to ethnic Israel, not to the Church, which is a mystery unrevealed until the apostles (Ephesians 3:4–6).

Within the dispensational scheme of stewardship-economies, Jeremiah 9 documents the failure of Israel under the dispensation of Law: given Torah (v. 13), the nation forsook it, and the dispensation moves toward its judicial climax in exile. The passage’s demand for heart-reality over ritual (vv. 25–26) shows that even under Law, God required faith and inward devotion — dispensationalists insist that salvation in every dispensation is by grace through faith, though the content of revelation differs. Verses 23–24 are read as timeless moral revelation, applicable to any age, which is why Paul can cite them to the Church (1 Corinthians 1:31) without collapsing Israel into the Church.

Concerning the future, dispensationalists connect the scattering of verse 16 with the worldwide diaspora and expect its reversal in a literal regathering: Jeremiah himself promises that the LORD will bring Israel back to the land (Jeremiah 30:3; 32:37–41), and the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31:31–34 — the divine answer to the uncircumcised heart of 9:26 — is made explicitly “with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” Walvoord and Pentecost therefore anticipate a future national conversion of Israel (Romans 11:26), a millennial kingdom in which the Davidic throne is restored, and a redeemed Israel finally knowing the LORD from the least to the greatest. The punishment of the circumcised nations (vv. 25–26) is seen as previewing the judgment of the nations that precedes that kingdom (Matthew 25:31–46; Joel 3:2). While the Church participates in the soteriological blessings of the New Covenant through Christ’s blood (Luke 22:20), progressive dispensationalists like Blaising speak of an “already/not yet” inauguration, insisting that the covenant’s territorial and national promises to Israel await literal fulfillment in the coming kingdom, when the true boast of verse 24 will characterize a restored nation in a restored land.

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Bibliography

• John Calvin, Commentaries on the Prophet Jeremiah and the Lamentations, Vol. 1 (Baker reprint).
• Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 4: Isaiah to Malachi.
• Matthew Poole, A Commentary on the Holy Bible, Vol. 2.
• Charles H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, sermons on Jeremiah 9 (“The Weeping Prophet”).
• R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Tyndale, 1985).
• John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals (B&H, 2002), chapter on boasting only in the Lord.
• Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996).
• D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: An Exposition of Passages from 1 Corinthians (Baker, 1993).
• Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Eerdmans, 1948).
• Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King (Eerdmans, 1963).
• G.K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology (Baker Academic, 2011).
• Derek Kidner, The Message of Jeremiah (IVP, The Bible Speaks Today, 1987).
• J.A. Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1980).
• Westminster Confession of Faith and Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms (1647).
• C.I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford, 1917), notes on Jeremiah.
• Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism (Moody, 1995).
• John F. Walvoord, The Millennial Kingdom (Zondervan, 1959).
• J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come (Zondervan, 1958).
• Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism (Baker, 1993).
• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Crossway, 2001).