Jeremiah 17:7-8
“Blessed is the man who trusts in Yahweh, and whose trust Yahweh is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, who spreads out its roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat comes, but its leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
Where this sits
Jeremiah sets this directly against a curse two verses earlier on the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength. The two images are a matched pair — a shrub in the desert, and this.
Reflection
Read what the tree is not promised.
It is not promised that the heat will stay away. Heat comes — the verse says so. It is not promised an exemption from the year of drought; the drought year arrives on schedule. Nothing in the picture suggests that trusting God alters the weather.
What changes is what the tree does while the weather is happening. Its leaf stays green. It does not stop bearing fruit. In a landscape where everything else has gone brown and stopped producing, it continues — and the continuation is the whole miracle, because from the outside there is no visible reason for it.
The reason is underground. Roots spread out toward the river. That work was done in seasons nobody was watching, when there was surface water and no particular urgency, and it is the only thing that distinguishes this tree from the desert shrub in the paired image.
Which is the uncomfortable and useful point. The year of drought does not build anything; it reveals what was built. Whatever your roots reached toward during the ordinary years is what you will be drawing on when the heat comes, and there is no way to extend them quickly once it has.
So the verse is less a comfort for the drought than an instruction for the season before it.
- Theme:
- Trust
- Book:
- Jeremiah