Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Jeremiah 17:5-11
The Cursings And The Blessings On Individuals (Jeremiah 17:5).
But not all of Judah will come under YHWH's anger. Only those (the huge majority) who have turned from Him and forsaken Him and are under the curses described in Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28 ff. For them there will be barrenness and emptiness. But provision had to be made for those comparatively few who did truly respond to YHWH, and for them there is promised blessing and fruitfulness. They will flourish in the midst of the carnage, and this included a Jeremiah dragged to Egypt by refugees from Palestine. And whoever is to receive this blessing will be determined by the One Who searches the mind and tries the heart. (Which is why the wicked will end up with the partridge's stolen eggs on their faces).
Thus in the midst of the outright condemnation of Judah and the declarations that YHWH would no more spare His erstwhile people, it was seen to be very necessary that a word be spoken explaining the position of those few who did remain true to him. And that is what we find here.
“Thus says YHWH,
Cursed is the man who trusts in man,
And makes flesh his arm,
And whose heart departs from YHWH.”
“For he will be like the bare bush (or ‘destitute man') in the desert,
And will not see when good comes,
But will inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
A salt land and not inhabited.”
The nation as a whole having been cursed, the blessings and the cursings of the covenant are now applied to individuals revealing that in the end every man must be responsible for his own fate. Judah as whole is under the curse, as has already been made clear, and their situation, and the reason for it, is described here. But the following verses will then give the assurance that even in such a situation those who truly respond to YHWH will flourish. God never leaves Himself without a witness, and those who trust in Him will never be put to shame wherever they might find themselves (Daniel in Babylon, Ezekiel in Babylonia, Jeremiah in Egypt).
The man who is cursed is the one who, whoever he may be, trusts in man, and relies on human flesh because his heart has departed from YHWH. He is differentiated by the fact that he no longer genuinely looks to God but to human aid. His reliance is on alliances and on the ideas built up by his own political, religious and social environment, rather than on the ideas found in God's covenant and God's word. His trust is in man and in human resources. Such a man will be like a bare bush, or a destitute man (literally something or someone destitute), struggling to survive in the desert, and will see no good for it will pass him by. For him it will be as though he exists in the parched places in the wilderness, a place so salty that no one lives there (in mind is probably the salt lands around the Dead Sea). He is to be thirsty and without hope. That is to be his destiny.
(Interestingly in the future many of God's true people will have to exist in precisely such places as they flee persecution (Hebrews 11:38), but that is not the point. The point is that for them the following verses will be true wherever they have to survive, whilst those who do not truly believe and respond to God will find themselves in such a desert in their innermost being even while they reside in king's palaces).
“Blessed is the man who trusts in YHWH,
And whose trust YHWH is.
For he will be as a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not be afraid when heat comes,
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be careful in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.”
In contrast is the man who is truly blessed (compare here Psalms 1:3). The man who is truly blessed, and will enjoy the blessing of God, is the man whose whole trust is in YHWH. YHWH means everything to him. He loves Him with heart, soul, mind and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5). He will be like a tree planted by permanent waters, whose roots spread out to absorb the moisture from the ever-flowing river. Such a tree is not afraid of the heat (and even for the believing remnant the heat was coming), its leaf will continue to be green, and it will not be fearful of drought, nor will it cease from continually producing fruit. A similar idea is reflected in Psalms 1, and in the teaching of John the Baptist and Jesus Himself. It was what John's baptism illustrated. It is by their fruits that men will be known.
Thus it is clear from this that while political Jerusalem was so hidebound that there was no righteous person to be found there (Jeremiah 5:1), such righteous people could be found elsewhere in the land of Judah. Jeremiah was not alone.
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And it is exceedingly corrupt, who can know it?
But the vital question is, who will decide which among the people of Judah are the truly righteous? Who can discern who it is who truly trusts in YHWH? It is not a decision that can be made by Judah itself, nor by its priests and prophets. For all men in their hearts deceive themselves. When they face up to such issues their decisions are unreliable. This is because their hearts are so totally corrupt that they are no judges in the matter.
Indeed even at this time many in Judah would still loudly have proclaimed that they did trust in YHWH. It was true, they would have said, that they did participate in other religious activity, which was as it happened the ways of their fathers, and that they did follow other gods, but that did not mean that they had failed to maintain the Temple ritual and the priesthood, and to observe the feasts, even if somewhat watered down and ‘brought up to date'. They would thus have seen themselves as reasonably good Yahwists. But the truth was that they were deceiving themselves, because of the deceitfulness of their own hearts. For as far as YHWH was concerned only those who were wholly true to him were genuine Yahwists. And it was He alone Who knew men's hearts and could test out their ways in order to get at the truth.
While these words do bring out well the sinfulness of man's heart, and are true in that regard, the context requires that it is more than just a general statement about all men, for the context is distinguishing ‘the wicked' from ‘the good'. Thus what it is bringing out is that man's heart is so deceitful that he cannot be trusted to make a right judgment in that regard. We only have to think of the attitude of the more belligerent of the elders and Pharisees towards Jesus to recognise the truth of this fact.
“I, YHWH, search the mind,
I try the heart,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.”
For searching out men's minds and trying their ways was exactly what He was about. It is YHWH, and YHWH alone, who can search the mind and try the heart so as to give to every man his deserts, and to reward him according to his fruitfulness. It is He alone Who ‘knows those who are His' (2 Timothy 2:19), and can discern truth from false. And it was He alone Who would determine who was to be cursed and who was to be blessed.
“As the partridge which sits on eggs,
Which she has not laid,
So is he who obtains riches,
And not by right,
In the midst of his days they will leave him,
And at his end he will be a fool.”
Thus those who were like partridges (or sand grouse) who sit on other birds' eggs until they hatch, only to find themselves rejected by the fledglings, in other words who sought to make themselves prosperous and wealthy by unfair methods, will find in the midst of their days that their wealth will desert them and ‘reject' them, and they will end up looking like a fool, and go to a fool's end.
Direct appropriation of eggs by partridges or sand grouse has not been documented, but the idea of an unknown egg in a partridge nest may well have become folklore from observing cuckoo's eggs laid in partridge nests, and what consequently followed when they hatched out. (Note that no explanation is given as to how the eggs got into the nest. It is only the general recognition that it happens and the consequence that is used as an illustration).