Jeremiah 17 and the Corruption of the Human Heart

"Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

9 The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse—
who can understand it?
10 I the Lord test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.

This first lectionary text probes big themes for faith: the nature of the human heart, the objects of our trust, the "testing" of the human heart by God. In order to understand this oracle, we need to retreat to the first verses of the chapter. Thus, my three points today will be: (1) What is Written on our Hearts?; (2) What are the Objects of our Trust?; and (3) The Desperate Condition of the Human Heart. Jeremiah's words may sound unduly pessimistic in our hearing today, but I think they have a ring of deep truth to them.

I. Setting the Context: Writing on the Human Heart (1-4)

We saw in an earlier essay on Jeremiah that God established him as a prophet who would do twice as much tearing down as building in his prophetic ministry (Jer. 1:10). This tearing down was necessary because exile impended. Now, in Jer. 17 the prophet speaks of the inevitability of judgment against the people. The image he uses to describe this situation is the "engraving" of Israel's sin on the tablet of their hearts (17:1). The concept of carving, engraving, or writing something on the heart is foundational to the Deuteronomic tradition, in which Jeremiah stands. Jeremiah's words must have been shocking to people who believed that you should only etch divine or good things on the heart. The central passage of one of their central books (Deut.) provided as follows:

"Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates," (Deut. 6:6-9).

The commandments of God are to be kept so close because they are the sources of the people's identity, freedom and safety. Here the external "attachment" of the commandments is stressed. Thus, when Jeremiah said that now Israel's sin was engraved on their heart (17:1), the good priests might wonder if this engraving supplanted the other forms of remembrance of the commands of God. So important was the notion of commands on the heart that when Jeremiah prophesied a future day of blessing, he did it with these words:

"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts..." (Jer. 31:33).

God truly wants the law, the Torah, the very words of God to be etched on our hearts. That doesn't mean that we are incapable of straying; it means, however, that we ought to be sure of our identity. What is written on your heart today? That is the first question the text asks us to ponder.

II. Curses and Blessings (5-8)

In words that are strongly reminiscent of Ps. 1, Jeremiah contrasts the ways of the cursed and blessed person. The English loses the sense of alliteration in v. 5 and 6. Cursed (arur) is the one who trusts in human things; that person is like a shrub (arar) in the desert. The person who doesn't trust is basically a blind person. S/he doesn't "see when good comes" (17:6). And, isn't that a profound truth of life? A person putting all its "trust eggs" in the "human basket" doesn't recognize the sources of blessings that are all around us. The person trusting only in human sources becomes parched in the uninhabited places. This language is reminiscent of one of the great history Psalms--Ps. 107, when it says: "He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty grond, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the wickedness of its inhabitants" (vv. 33-34). In contrast, the person who trusts God doesn't "fear" when the "heat" comes (v. 8). It is not so much that the person trusting God doesn't experience heat; it is simply that such a person has resources, through his/her trust to deal with the heat that comes. But the prophet is far more evocative than we. He uses an image common from the wisdom tradition of a person trusting God: that person "shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream." Trust makes us strong; it gives us a staying power; it enables us to reach our arms further and further into the soil of life.

III. The Nature of the Human Heart (9-10)

There are two "mini-movements" in these last two verses. On the one hand, the heart is characterized as deceitful above all things and terribly corrupt. So serpentine are its slithers and labyrinthine its ways that no human can know it. On the other hand, God is the one who tests the mind and searches the heart. Unlike the Psalmist we don't have to say: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts." God is already there testing the human heart. But will God's law, the thing inscribed on our hearts according to Jer. 31, be sufficient to overcome the desperately corrupt nature of the heart? Just to show that Jeremiah isn't just in a prophetic snit in ch. 17, we have the following about the human heart from another text:

"they (his countrymen) have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the Lord," (Jer. 9:3; see also 15:18; 30:12,15).

But God's work is to test the hearts:

"But you, O Lord of hosts, who judge righteously, who try the heart and the mind.." (11:20)

"O Lord of hosts, you test the righteous, you see the heart and the mind.." (20:12).

And so we end with a paradox and a longing. The paradox is that the human heart, made by God and shaped by the divine mercy and law, is now engraved with tales of wickedness and disobedience. The longing is for the day when the heart will, too, be redeemed. We still yearn for that day, even on this side of the Cross. Write your words on our hearts, O God, and give us a spirit to receive and honor them forever.

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