“And in the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land.”
My Notes
What Does Jeremiah 52:6 Mean?
"And in the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land." The narrator records the date of the famine's worst point with the precision of a medical chart: fourth month, ninth day. The famine is "sore" (chazaq — strong, severe, intensifying) and the food supply has hit zero: no bread. Not reduced bread. No bread. The siege of Jerusalem has accomplished what Babylon's armies couldn't do directly: starved the city into submission.
The date marker makes the suffering historical, not mythological. This happened on a specific day in a specific month to specific people. The famine that Jeremiah prophesied for decades arrived at a date you can put on a calendar.
Reflection Questions
- 1.What warning are you currently ignoring that might have a date attached to its fulfillment?
- 2.How does the precision of the date (fourth month, ninth day) make this suffering more real and more urgent?
- 3.When has 'no bread' — the complete exhaustion of resources — forced you to reckon with something you avoided?
- 4.What does the avoidability of this famine (Jeremiah warned for decades) teach about the cost of ignoring prophetic speech?
Devotional
Fourth month. Ninth day. No bread. The narrator gives you the date because this is history, not parable. Real people. Real hunger. Real day that the last loaf was eaten and the city realized: there's nothing left.
The famine was sore. Chazaq — strong, powerful, dominating. The famine isn't just present. It's in control. It's the strongest force in Jerusalem now. Not the king. Not the army. Not the priests. The famine. It commands the city with an authority that no military commander ever achieved. When there's no bread, everything else — strategy, morale, resistance, hope — becomes irrelevant.
No bread for the people of the land. Zero. Not rationing. Not reduced supply. None. The bakeries are empty. The storage bins are scraped clean. The emergency reserves that sustained the city through months of siege have been consumed. And the date is recorded because the day the bread ran out is the day Jerusalem functionally died. The walls still stand. The soldiers still patrol. But the city is already dead. It just hasn't fallen yet.
Jeremiah predicted this. For decades. The famine is coming. Serve Babylon and live. Resist and starve. And the leaders chose resistance. And the people followed the leaders. And the bread ran out on the ninth day of the fourth month. Exactly as predicted. On a day specific enough to mark on the calendar.
The precision of the date is an indictment: this was avoidable. The day the bread ran out didn't have to happen. There was a scroll. There was a prophet. There was a decades-long warning. And the warning was ignored until the ninth day of the fourth month, when ignoring became impossible because the bread was gone.
Prophetic warnings have calendar dates attached to their fulfillment. The day the prophecy becomes reality has a day and a month. And the people who ignored the warning experience the date — not as a theological concept but as the specific day they couldn't feed their children.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
Then the city was broken up,.... Either its gates were broke open, some one or other of them; or a breach was made in…
This narrative begins no higher than the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, though there were two captivities before,…
In the fourth month In memory of this date also, a fast was appointed (Zec 8:19). The numeral, which was dropped out of…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture