Why does he say, “I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert”?

In the Creation account in Genesis, the Lord gives the first humans the instruction to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). They are to do this by working and keeping the garden he creates, and where he places them (Genesis 2:15). In other words, the Garden of Eden represents the place of blessing that is supposed to spread across the whole world as mankind works it and cares for it in a relationship of trust and obedience with the Lord. In the story of Israel’s rescue from Egypt, the land of Canaan represents the Garden of Eden. It too was supposed to be a place where Israel experienced the Lord’s blessing as they lived in covenant faithfulness to the Lord. Ultimately, this was meant to lead to the restoration of the Lord’s blessing to all nations (see Jeremiah 4:2). But now, in his vision, Jeremiah sees that the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins. Instead of the rule of mankind leading to fruitfulness and blessing, all that he has ruled over lies in ruins. This has happened because of the Lord’s fierce anger. The judgment that is about to come on Judah is seen by Jeremiah through the lens of the Lord’s ultimate judgment on creation.¹

The language used to describe Jeremiah’s vision in Jeremiah 4:23–26 is apocalyptic. It speaks of the Lord’s judgment undoing creation. But it is not an eschatological or apocalyptic vision. Jeremiah is not speaking of the final end of the world. Rather, he has been given a vision of the final judgment of the world as a sign of how serious the Lord’s coming judgment of Judah is going to be. The dissolving, however temporarily, of the covenant bond between the Lord and Israel was a step of the same magnitude as undoing the divine creative purpose for the earth and reverting to re-creation chaos.² Judah’s failure as the Lord’s covenant people has serious implications for the whole world, because it raises the question of how the Lord will ever restore his blessings to his world in the face of the stubborn evil that exists in the human heart. Is it not inevitable that the Lord will simply allow chaos to overwhelm order because the evil of mankind is simply too great?³