Bible Strands
Jeremiah 2:20
“For long ago you broke your yoke and tore off your chains, saying, ‘I will not serve!’ Indeed, on every high hill and under every green tree you lay down as a prostitute.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The Lord speaks through Jeremiah to the house of Israel, intervening between a warning that apostasy brings self-inflicted discipline and a reminder of His prior cultivation of them as a choice vine.
The words — שָׁבַרְתִּי (sha.bar.ti) translates literally as "I broke off," and מוֹסְרֹתַיִךְ (mos.ro.tai.kh) means "your fetters," describing Israel's deliberate rejection of divine restraint.
The thread — The imagery of idolatry on high hills and under green trees reappears in Jeremiah 17:2, while the yoke and chain metaphor echoes Leviticus 26:13's deliverance from Egyptian slavery and Deuteronomy 12:2's command to destroy foreign worship sites.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that self-proclaimed independence is actually a return to bondage, requiring the reader to abandon self-directed rebellion and submit to the authority they originally rejected.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 12:2 Destroy completely all the places where the nations you are dispossessing have served their gods—atop the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.
- Leviticus 26:13 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk in uprightness.
- Jeremiah 17:2 Even their children remember their altars and Asherah poles by the green trees and on the high hills.
- Isaiah 1:21 See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness resided within her, but now only murderers!
- Jeremiah 30:8 On that day, declares the LORD of Hosts, I will break the yoke off their necks and tear off their bonds, and no longer will strangers enslave them.
- Hosea 3:3 Then I said to her, “You must live with me for many days; you must not be promiscuous or belong to another, and I will do the same for you.”
- Exodus 3:8 I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
- Exodus 19:8 And all the people answered together, “We will do everything that the LORD has spoken.” So Moses brought their words back to the LORD.
- Exodus 24:3 When Moses came and told the people all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all responded with one voice: “All the words that the LORD has spoken, we will do.”
- Exodus 34:14 For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.