Jeremias 15:12

12 Will iron be known? whereas thy strength is a brazen covering.

Jeremias 15:12 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 15:12

Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?
] Can iron break iron, especially that which comes from the north, which was harder than the common iron; or steel, the hardest of all? though the Jews were hard as iron, they could not prevail against and overcome Jeremiah, who was made an iron pillar and brasen walls against them, ( Jeremiah 1:18 ) , and so these words are spoken for his comfort and encouragement: or they may respect the Jews and the Chaldeans; and the sense be, that the Jews, as mighty and as strong as they fancied themselves to be, and boasted that they were, they could not find themselves a match for the Chaldean army, which came out of the north; and may be said to be as hard as the northern iron, which came from the Chalybes, a people in the north, near Pontus, from whom steel has its name in the Latin tongue; and this sense agrees with what follows.

Jeremias 15:12 In-Context

10 Woe is me, mother! thou hast born me as some man of strife, and at variance with the whole earth; I have not helped , nor has any one helped me; my strength has failed among them that curse me.

11 Be it so, Lord, in their prosperity; surely I stood before thee in the time of their calamities, and in the time of their affliction, for good against the enemy.

12 Will iron be known? whereas thy strength is a brazen covering.

13 Yea, I will give thy treasures for a spoil as a recompence, because of all thy sins and in all thy borders.

14 And I will enslave thee to thine enemies round about, in a land which thou hast not known; for a fire has been kindled out of my wrath; it shall burn upon you.