Jeremiah wishes his head were water so he could cry without stopping. Then God forbids the three things every man boasts about, permits exactly one, and describes an idol being manufactured — a tree cut down, decorated, and nailed so it cannot fall over.
A study in Jeremiah 9-10 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 13 min read
Oh That My Head Were Waters
“Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”
Jeremiah 9:1
This is the verse that named him. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because of this sentence, and it is worth noticing what he is actually asking for.
He is not asking to be comforted. He is not asking to be moved somewhere else, or given a different message, or spared the sight. He is asking for a larger capacity to grieve. His head as a reservoir, his eyes as a spring — because ordinary tears run out, and the thing in front of him has not.
And the grief is for people who will not listen to him and who have tried more than once to kill him. He weeps day and night for the daughter of my people — his own, still his own, after everything the previous eight chapters have said about them.
Anyone who has read the earlier chapters as harsh should stop here. The man delivering those sentences is the man who wishes he could cry harder about them. The severity and the tears come from the same person, and they came in that order.
Not Valiant For The Truth
“And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.”
Jeremiah 9:3
A bow is not drawn casually. It takes deliberate strength, aim and release, and the image says their lying was that kind of act — effortful and directed, not careless talk.
Against that, the charge: they are not valiant for the truth. Not that they were ignorant of it. Valour is a word about courage, not information. They knew what was true and would not spend anything to defend it, while spending real effort on the lie.
And the verse closes where every charge in this book closes: they know not me. That phrase is becoming the refrain. Whatever the surface offence, Jeremiah keeps tracing it to the same root.
The Three Forbidden Boasts
“Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches.”
Jeremiah 9:23
Three men, three possessions, and between them they cover the whole field. Wisdom is what you know. Might is what you can do. Riches are what you have. There is no fourth category; every boast anyone has ever made is one of these three or a mixture of them.
And notice that God does not deny any of it. The wise man is wise — the verse calls him that. The mighty man really is strong and the rich man really is rich. None of these are illusions and none of them are condemned as sins.
What is forbidden is glorying in them — resting your worth on them, presenting them as the account of yourself. The problem is not that Judah had wisdom, strength and money. It is where they were standing.
All three have the same defect: every one of them can be taken away by next season, and every one of them was about to be. The Babylonians would relieve Judah of all three inside a generation.
The One Boast God Allows
“But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.”
Jeremiah 9:24
One boast is permitted, and it is the only one that is not about the person doing the boasting.
Look at how carefully it is worded. Not that he is godly. Not that he keeps the law — which would have been a natural thing to say to this audience, and would have been another achievement to stand on. The permitted glory is that he understandeth and knoweth me. The content of the boast is God, and the man is only the one who happens to know Him.
Then God says which parts of Himself He wants known, and the list is unexpected. Not power. Not holiness or eternity, though He could have named them. Lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness — and then in these things I delight.
That last clause is the one to sit with. God is telling a nation under sentence what He enjoys about being God, and it is the exercise of steady love, right judgment and righteousness in the earth — here, in the place where the trouble is.
Paul thought this verse settled the whole question of Christian boasting, and quoted it twice, compressed to nine words: “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31). He is not making a new rule. He is citing this one.
Learn Not The Way Of The Heathen
“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.”
Jeremiah 10:2
The warning is against learning the way — the picture is of a student, not a convert. Nobody in Judah was proposing to renounce the LORD and enrol with Babylon. They were picking things up, the way anyone picks things up from a culture with better armies and more impressive temples.
The specific item named is fear of the signs of heaven — eclipses, comets, the movements of planets read as omens. Babylon was the great civilization of sky-watching, and its astrology travelled well.
God’s reason for not being dismayed is almost dismissive: for the heathen are dismayed at them. That is the whole argument. Being frightened by the sky is what people do when they do not know who made it.
A Tree Cut Out Of The Forest
“For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.”
Jeremiah 10:3, 4
These two verses are quoted often, and usually to say something the passage does not quite say, so it is worth reading them slowly.
What is being described is the manufacture of an idol, step by step, as though watching it happen. A tree is felled. A craftsman works it — the work of the hands of the workman. It is overlaid with precious metal. Then it is fixed in place with nails and hammers so that it will stand up.
The resemblance to a decorated evergreen is obvious and many have made the connection. It should be said honestly that the passage is not addressing that custom, which did not exist for another two thousand years; the subject here is a carved image of a god, and the silver and gold are its plating rather than ornaments hung on branches. Anyone who wants to argue about December from Scripture will have to do it from somewhere other than this verse. What Is Christmas? takes that question up on its own ground.
But do not let that discussion take the verse away from you, because what it actually says is sharper than the proof text people try to make of it.
Follow the sequence. A man goes into a forest that he did not plant, containing a tree that grew without his help, and cuts it down with an axe. He shapes it. He covers it in metal dug out of ground he did not make. And then — this is the detail Jeremiah lingers on — they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
The god has to be nailed down so it will not fall over.
Every stage of that process runs the wrong way. The worshipper is the maker. The object of worship is the thing that needed help. And the last act of devotion is structural: securing your deity to the floor so gravity does not embarrass you both.
They Must Needs Be Borne
“They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.”
Jeremiah 10:5
Three disabilities, listed without heat: it cannot speak, it cannot walk, and it must be carried.
That third one is the humiliation. A procession carrying its god through the streets looks like honour, and is in fact transport. They must needs be borne, because they cannot go. The worshippers are the delivery service.
Isaiah made the same comparison and put both halves of it in one place. The idols of Babylon were loaded onto weary animals and hauled out of the city, while God said of His own people: “even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you” (Isaiah 46:4).
That is the whole difference between the two religions in one image. You carry an idol. God carries you. And Jeremiah adds the verdict that removes even the dignity of fear: be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good. They are not dangerous. They are not anything.
But The LORD Is The True God
“But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king… He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.”
Jeremiah 10:10, 12
The contrast is placed directly against what has just been described, and every term answers a defect in the idol.
- The true God — against a thing that is a work of hands.
- The living God — against something that cannot speak or walk.
- An everlasting king — against an object that had a manufacture date and can be melted down.
- He made the earth — against a god that had to be made.
And verse 11 supplies the test, which is the only sentence in the book written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew — the international language, as though God wanted this one line quotable to the neighbours: “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish.”
One question separates the true God from every rival, and it is a question about creation. Did you make this? Everything else follows from the answer.
The Way Of Man Is Not In Himself
“O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”
Jeremiah 10:23
The chapter ends with Jeremiah turning from the idol-makers to speak for himself, and what he says closes the circle back to chapter 9.
The three forbidden boasts were all forms of self-sufficiency — my wisdom, my strength, my wealth. The idol was self-sufficiency made visible: a god you can build, plate, position and carry, entirely under management. And here is the sentence that undoes both.
The way of man is not in himself. Not that man cannot walk — he plainly can, and the verse says so, man that walketh. He can move. What he cannot do is direct his steps, which is a different faculty altogether. Plenty of motion, no reliable sense of where it ought to go.
That is a strange admission to find in the mouth of a prophet who has spent two chapters telling a nation exactly where it is going wrong. He does not exempt himself. And it is the honest end to a chapter about manufactured gods, because the alternative to worshipping something you made is not confidence in yourself. It is “O LORD, I know” — addressed to Someone else, out loud.
Next in this study: The Linen Girdle And The Prospering Wicked — Jeremiah 11 to 13, a broken covenant, a sash deliberately ruined, and the question Jeremiah dares to put to God about why the wicked do so well.
