Jeremiah 23:14

My Notes

What Does Jeremiah 23:14 Mean?

Jeremiah 23:14 is God's assessment of Jerusalem's prophets — and the language is apocalyptic. "I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing" — sha'arurith, a thing that causes shuddering, that makes the skin crawl. God has seen it — ra'ithi, personally observed, witnessed firsthand.

The charges are specific. "They commit adultery" — na'oph, sexual infidelity, both literal and spiritual. "And walk in lies" — halokh bashsheqer, they make falsehood their habitual path. Not occasional deception. Walking in lies — lies as the terrain they move through daily. "They strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness" — the most devastating charge of all. They give strength to people who do evil. Their ministry doesn't produce repentance. It prevents it. By affirming the wicked, they remove the motivation to change.

"They are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah" — God compares Jerusalem's prophets to the cities He destroyed with fire from heaven. The comparison isn't hyperbolic. It's diagnostic. Sodom and Gomorrah weren't just sexually immoral — they were communities so morally inverted that their entire social fabric was corrupt beyond remedy. God says Jerusalem's prophets have reached that same condition. The moral inversion is complete. And the horrifying detail is that these are prophets — people who speak in God's name while embodying everything God opposes.

Reflection Questions

• 1.How do you evaluate spiritual leaders — by their eloquence, their following, or by what their ministry produces?
• 2.Have you encountered leaders who strengthened you in patterns you should have been convicted about?
• 3.What does it look like for prophetic ministry to weaken the hands of evildoers rather than strengthen them?
• 4.How does God comparing Jerusalem's prophets to Sodom challenge your assumptions about who's most at risk of judgment?

Devotional

God has seen a horrible thing. And He saw it in the prophets.

Not in the streets. Not in the bars. Not among the pagans. In the prophets. The people who stood in God's name, who claimed divine authority, who were supposed to be the moral compass of the nation. And what He saw made Him compare them to Sodom.

Three charges: adultery, walking in lies, and strengthening the hands of evildoers. The third one is the worst, because it describes the downstream effect of corrupt leadership. When the prophets commit adultery and walk in lies, the result isn't just personal corruption. It's systemic reinforcement of evil. Nobody repents because the spiritual leaders have made wickedness comfortable. They've removed the sting of conviction. They've strengthened the very hands that should have been weakened by truth.

That's what corrupt spiritual leadership does at scale. It doesn't just fail to help — it actively prevents change. The person who might have turned from their wickedness doesn't, because someone with a prophetic title told them they were fine. The community that might have experienced revival doesn't, because the prophets are walking in lies and calling it truth.

If you're looking for a leader, look at what their ministry produces. Not how eloquent they are. Not how large their following is. Do people leave their presence more convicted or more comfortable in their sin? Do the evildoers in their orbit gain strength or lose it? The prophet who strengthens the wicked is worse than no prophet at all. They're Sodom in a pulpit.

Commentary

Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.

Cross References

Related passages throughout Scripture