Bible Strands
Jeremiah 37:10
Indeed, if you were to strike down the entire army of the Chaldeans that is fighting against you, and only wounded men remained in their tents, they would still get up and burn this city down.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jeremiah addresses King Zedekiah’s court and the besieged population of Jerusalem during the Chaldean campaign. He speaks at a moment when the enemy army has temporarily halted its advance, prompting false hopes of deliverance.
The words — The Hebrew אִם־ (’im) operates as a conditional "if" or "even if," while הִכִּיתֶם (hikkîṯem) translates literally as "you struck down." These terms establish a hypothetical military scenario that the prophet immediately nullifies.
The thread — The pattern of futile human resistance against predetermined judgment appears in Isaiah 30:17, where flight precedes total defeat, and Leviticus 26:36, where survivors face despair in foreign lands. Jeremiah 50:45 later mirrors this structure by applying the same inescapable decree to Babylon.
Why it lands — The text states that battlefield success or enemy withdrawal cannot alter the appointed fate of the city. It requires the reader to discard political optimism and submit to the declared outcome.
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 though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire.
Cross-references
- Leviticus 26:36 As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them.
- Isaiah 30:17 A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee, until you are left alone like a pole on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.
- Jeremiah 50:45 Therefore hear the plans that the LORD has drawn up against Babylon and the strategies He has devised against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely the little ones of the flock will be dragged away; certainly their pasture will be made desolate because of them.
- Joel 2:11 The LORD raises His voice in the presence of His army. Indeed, His camp is very large, for mighty are those who obey His command. For the Day of the LORD is great and very dreadful. Who can endure it?
- Isaiah 10:4 Nothing will remain but to crouch among the captives or fall among the slain. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.
- Isaiah 13:15 Whoever is caught will be stabbed, and whoever is captured will die by the sword.
- Isaiah 14:19 But you are cast out of your grave like a rejected branch, covered by those slain with the sword, and dumped into a rocky pit like a carcass trampled underfoot.
- Jeremiah 21:4 this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will turn against you the weapons of war in your hands, with which you are fighting the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans who besiege you outside the wall, and I will assemble their forces in the center of this city.
- Jeremiah 37:8 Then the Chaldeans will return and fight against this city. They will capture it and burn it down.
- Jeremiah 49:20 Therefore hear the plans that the LORD has drawn up against Edom and the strategies He has devised against the people of Teman: Surely the little ones of the flock will be dragged away; certainly their pasture will be made desolate because of them.