1. Jeremiah 6:6 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Why does the Lord command the attackers to cut down her trees?

Jeremiah 6:6 (ESV)

6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: “Cut down her trees; cast up a siege mound against Jerusalem. This is the city that must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her.

There now follows an oracle from the Lord himself in Jeremiah 6:6–8. Ominously for Jerusalem, the Lord himself commands the enemy to get on with the siege. The coming events, in other words, will take place because of the Lord and not merely as a circumstance of history.1

A siege mound is a mound built of trees and large stones that allowed battering rams to attack weaker parts of the wall.2