Bible Strands
Jeremiah 9:2
If only I had a traveler’s lodge in the wilderness, I would abandon my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, a crowd of faithless people.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jeremiah speaks to Judah during a period of systemic covenant betrayal, immediately after lamenting the slaughter of his people. He addresses a community where deception has replaced truth and moral decay is institutionalized.
The words — The opening uses מִֽי־ (mi-) "who?" and יִתְּנֵ֣נִי (yi.te.Ne./ni) "will he give to me" to pose a rhetorical question. The text literally asks who will provide a wilderness lodging place so the speaker may abandon the crowd.
The thread — The motif of national adultery and land mourning appears in Jeremiah 23:10 and Hosea 4:2, where rampant sin triggers ecological and social collapse. Jeremiah 5:7 similarly questions divine patience as the people forsake God for foreign gods.
Why it lands — The verse records a prophet’s desire to withdraw from a community that consistently refuses to take God into account. It asks the reader to acknowledge that prolonged collective faithlessness exhausts even the most devoted intercessor.
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
Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 5:7 “Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken Me and sworn by gods that are not gods. I satisfied their needs, yet they committed adultery and assembled at the houses of prostitutes.
- Jeremiah 23:10 For the land is full of adulterers—because of the curse, the land mourns and the pastures of the wilderness have dried up—their course is evil and their power is misused.
- Hosea 4:2 Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.
- Jeremiah 12:1 Righteous are You, O LORD, when I plead before You. Yet about Your judgments I wish to contend with You: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?
- Jeremiah 12:6 Even your brothers—your own father’s household—even they have betrayed you; even they have cried aloud against you. Do not trust them, though they speak well of you.
- Hosea 7:4 They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by a baker who needs not stoke the fire from the kneading to the rising of the dough.
- Psalms 55:6 I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and find rest.
- Psalms 120:5 Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech, that I live among the tents of Kedar!
- Ezekiel 22:10 In you they have uncovered the nakedness of their fathers; in you they violate women during their menstrual impurity.
- Hosea 5:7 They have been unfaithful to the LORD; for they have borne illegitimate children. Now the New Moon will devour them along with their land.