Jeremiah 33:3

3 'Judah, pray to me, and I will answer you. I will tell you important secrets you have never heard before.'

Jeremiah 33:3 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 33:3

Call unto me, and I will answer thee
This is spoken not to Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of it; but to the prophet, encouraging him to seek the Lord by prayer, promising an answer to him. So the Targum,

``pray before me, and I will receive thy prayer:''

and show thee great and mighty things;
or, "fortified ones" ^F16; which are like fortified cities, that cannot easily be come at, unless the gates are opened to enter into; and designs such as are difficult of understanding, which exceed human belief, and which reason cannot comprehend and take in; and such are the great things of the Gospel. Some copies read it, "things reserved" ^F17; as the Targum; and so Jarchi, who interprets it of things future, of things reserved in the heart of God, and which he purposed to do; and very rightly: which thou knowest not;
until revealed; and from hence it appears, that by these great and hidden things are not meant the destruction of Jerusalem, and the seventy years' captivity, and return from that, things which Jeremiah had been made acquainted with time after time, and had prophesied of them; but spiritual blessings hereafter mentioned, some of which the deliverance from Babylon were typical of Ben Melech interprets these of comforts great and strong.

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FOOTNOTES:

F16 (twrub) "munita", Vatablus, Paganinus, Montanus; "fortia", Tigurine version.
F17 (twrun) "abstrusa", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "recondita", so some in Vatablus.

Jeremiah 33:3 In-Context

1 While Jeremiah was still locked up in the courtyard of the guards, the Lord spoke his word to him a second time:

2 "These are the words of the Lord, who made the earth, shaped it, and gave it order, whose name is the Lord:

3 'Judah, pray to me, and I will answer you. I will tell you important secrets you have never heard before.'

4 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says about the houses in Jerusalem and the royal palaces of Judah that have been torn down to be used in defense of the attack by the Babylonian army:

5 'Some people will come to fight against the Babylonians. They will fill these houses with the bodies of people I killed in my hot anger. I have turned away from this city because of all the evil its people have done.