Hunger was an important element in Israel’s history before and after the Exodus. God used hunger during the time of Jacob to move Israel down to Egypt. He used it during the journey through the wilderness to show “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut. 8:3).

As Jeremiah continues to describe all that Judah and Jerusalem had suffered, the images of slavery, bread, and heat may be intended to recall lessons learned earlier for Israel. It was a great irony that the people whom God had once freed from Egyptian slavery were slaves once again. More than this, they were now the slaves of slaves, forced to submit to the servants of their enemies (v. 8). In the wilderness, they lived on “bread from heaven” (Ex. 16:4; Neh. 9:15). After Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, they could obtain food only at the risk of their lives “because of the sword in the desert” (v. 9). This metaphor may suggest that Judah’s situation was similar to Gideon’s day when the harvest had to be threshed in secret to hide it from bands of marauders (Judg. 6:11). The people who once drank water from the rock now suffered from heat as well as hunger (v. 10).

As was true of the previous verses in this poem, these statements are not complaints or grumbling but a sober reflection on the consequences of disobedience. Jeremiah’s allusions to blessings of the past are tacit admissions of present guilt placed on Judah’s lips by the prophet. They are an implicit acknowledgment that Judah’s suffering is deserved. Therefore, although these heart-rending descriptions are indeed a cry for help, they are also the first stirrings of a confession. That confession will become more explicit as Jeremiah’s lament moves toward its conclusion.

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