Jeremiah 30:17 — the promise made to the one they called an outcast
17For I will close up your scar, and I will heal you of your wounds, says the Lord. For they have called you an outcast, O Zion: ‘This is she who has no one asking for her.’ ”
The reason declared is the nickname given to Zion. In this edition the first image is of a scar being closed up, and the healing answers the slander rather than any merit.
Short answer
Jeremiah 30:17 promises to close up the scar and heal the wounds, and gives the reason: they called Zion an outcast, a city nobody asks after. The promise answers a nickname. It is addressed to a people, and the individual reading, common as it is, widens the address of the text.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
Chapters 30 to 33 form what is usually called the book of consolation, set inside a book that is otherwise almost all warning.
The addressee is a people about to lose everything and be carried into exile. It is at that point, and not before, that a run of restoration promises appears.
The ground of the promise is displaced: God acts because of what other people said. That lifts the weight off the one receiving and puts it on the one promising, which is good news for anyone with no record to present.
The promise is collective. Zion is the city, the people, the community — and reading the verse as a guarantee of personal healing widens the original address. The portrait of God stays the same, someone who answers abandonment with restoration, but the specific addressee is named inside the sentence itself.
It speaks to anyone carrying a name given by other people: the one who did not make it, the one who walked away, the family nobody wants near. The verse does not guarantee that the wound closes by a certain date, and it would not be honest to promise that. What it says is that the name they gave you is not the name God uses.
Where this verse appears
Chapters 30 to 33 form what is usually called the book of consolation, set inside a book that is otherwise almost all warning.
The addressee is a people about to lose everything and be carried into exile. It is at that point, and not before, that a run of restoration promises appears.
What it says
The ground of the promise is displaced: God acts because of what other people said. That lifts the weight off the one receiving and puts it on the one promising, which is good news for anyone with no record to present.
The promise is collective. Zion is the city, the people, the community — and reading the verse as a guarantee of personal healing widens the original address. The portrait of God stays the same, someone who answers abandonment with restoration, but the specific addressee is named inside the sentence itself.
What to do with it today
It speaks to anyone carrying a name given by other people: the one who did not make it, the one who walked away, the family nobody wants near. The verse does not guarantee that the wound closes by a certain date, and it would not be honest to promise that. What it says is that the name they gave you is not the name God uses.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, they called me things I began to believe. Heal what stayed open, and teach me the name you use for me. Amen.