A fire shut up in the bones

This is the only self-portrait in the volume given by a man who was trying to get rid of the Word at the time.

Jeremiah has been beaten and put in the stocks overnight by a temple official. He comes out and prays one of the angriest prayers in Scripture — you deceived me, I am ridiculed all day long, the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach.

And then he says what he decided to do about it.

I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name. That is a resignation, and he meant it.

And then: but His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.

Every other image in this volume describes what the Word does to a willing reader. This one describes what it does to an unwilling one.

Note the location. Not in his notes, not in his memory — in his heart, and then in his bones, which is as deep inside a man as Hebrew idiom goes. He is describing something lodged where he cannot reach it.

And note the word shut up. He is not fanning the fire. He is containing it, deliberately, and the containing is what hurts.

Jeremiah is not saying he loved preaching. The same chapter has him cursing the day he was born. He is saying he tried to quit and discovered he was not able to, and that the inability came from something the Word had already done inside him.

Two men on a road to Emmaus described the same thing from the other side, and this volume met them in Week Five: were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road? Same element, opposite mood. Burning as joy there, burning as compulsion here, and both caused by the Word.

Which means the image is not primarily about zeal. Fire in Scripture consumes, refines, and will not be ignored. A man can be warmed by it and a man can be worn out holding it in, and Jeremiah reports both in one chapter.

And the practical use of the day is narrow and real. Anyone who has read this Book seriously for long enough will eventually want to put it down — because of what it costs, or because of what it keeps saying, or because obeying it has made life harder rather than easier.

Notice also that Jeremiah tells us about the attempt. He could have left it out. The book that records his commission also records the day he decided to quit, and the sentence stands in Scripture as the testimony of a man who did not manage to.

Jeremiah tried. He is the patron of everyone who has. And his testimony is that the attempt failed, and that the failure was mercy.

Jeremiah 20:7–18 is the last and harshest of the passages usually called his confessions — six sections scattered through chapters 11 to 20 in which the prophet complains to God about his commission. They are unique in the prophetic literature for their bluntness, and their preservation in the canon is itself notable.

The verb in verse 7 rendered deceived or persuaded is strong; it is used elsewhere of enticing or seducing. Translators have handled it variously precisely because the plain sense is so uncomfortable, and honest versions keep the force.

The passage ends without resolution. Verse 13 sings — sing to the LORD, He has delivered the life of the needy — and verse 14 curses the day of his birth. The chapter does not tidy itself, and the canon left the order as it stands.

The fire image recurs in Jeremiah 5:14 and 23:29, which this volume met in Week One: I will make My words in your mouth a fire, and are not My words like fire? The prophet who says the word burns inside him had been told it would.

Paul says something structurally similar in 1 Corinthians 9:16: if I preach the gospel, I have no reason to boast, because I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not. Two men, a Hebrew prophet and a Greek-speaking apostle, describe the same absence of an exit.

Look it upH784 אֵשׁ esh, fire · H1197 בָּעַר baar, to burn, consume · H6113 עָצַר atsar, to restrain, shut up · H6106 עֶצֶם etsem, bone, substance

Then read Amos 3:8 — the lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken, who can but prophesy? — and Acts 4:20, where Peter and John say they cannot help speaking about what they have seen and heard.

Where this touchesJeremiah 20:7–18; 5:14; 23:29 (Week One, Day Two) · Luke 24:32 (Week Five, Day One) · Amos 3:8 · Acts 4:19–20 · 1 Corinthians 9:16. Fire and hammer, honey, lamp, sword, seed, milk, mirror, goads and nails, gold and washing were the earlier self-portraits.