The Bible Says
Jeremiah 11:6-8 Meaning

In Jeremiah 11:6-8, Jeremiah is sent to carry God’s covenant warning into every neighborhood of Judah. The LORD commands him to stand in the streets and call the people back to the basic terms of the agreement: “And the LORD said to me, ‘Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying...’” (v. 6). First of all, the message is public, not hidden. God wants His warning known, so that His people are given an avenue to return to Him. The “cities of Judah” reference the hill-country towns south of Benjamin-fortified sites like Lachish and smaller agrarian centers scattered along ridges and valleys. The “Streets of Jerusalem” points to the stone-paved thoroughfares that radiated from the temple mount through market districts and city gates. God wants the covenant practiced where life happens, not only in the temple. The charge-“Hear the words of this covenant and do them” (v. 6)-echoes Deuteronomy’s pattern: hearing that issues in obedience (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; 30:11-14). Historically this oracle likely falls after Josiah’s reform (c. 622 BC) and into the reigns of Jehoahaz/Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), when the book of the covenant had been found, read, and briefly heeded, only to be neglected again (2 Kings 22-23).

God reminds Judah that the summons to listen is not new: “For I solemnly warned your fathers in the day that I brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day, warning persistently, saying, ‘Listen to My voice’” (v. 7). The phrase “warning persistently” literally pictures God “rising early,” a vivid way of saying He got up before dawn to speak through Moses and, across centuries, through His prophets (Jeremiah 7:13, 25). The content is concise: “Listen to My voice.” That imperative sits at the heart of Israel’s identity (Deuteronomy 6:4). The same through-line reaches the New Testament, where the Father says at the Transfiguration, “This is My beloved Son… listen to Him” (Matthew 17:5), and the Messiah identifies His people as those who hear His voice (John 10:27). Covenant life is responsive before it is ritual; it is relationship before it is ceremony.

Judah’s history, however, is a story of resistance: “Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked, each one, in the stubbornness of his evil heart...” (v. 8). The Hebrew for “stubbornness” (shĕrîrûth) denotes a hardened, self-willed posture. Notice the deeply personal phrasing-“each one”-which refuses to dissolve guilt into the crowd. When a people refuses to listen, the covenant does not evaporate; it enforces itself: “...therefore I brought on them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not” (v. 8). “All the words” recalls Deuteronomy 28’s blessings and curses; since the listening failed, the curses advance-already seen in the northern kingdom’s fall to Assyria (722 BC) and soon to crest over Judah under Babylon (586 BC). Theologically this drives toward Jeremiah’s later promise of a New Covenant in which God writes His law on the heart so that listening becomes possible and obedience becomes natural (Jeremiah 31:31-34). In Christ, the obedient Israelite, the covenant’s “do and live” finds its faithful keeper (Romans 5:19), and by His Spirit the people of God are enabled to incline their ear and walk in newness of life (Romans 8:4; Hebrews 8:10).

Jeremiah 11:6-8 thus lays out a generational pattern and a present choice: God’s word must be heard and done. Geography and history-streets, cities, exodus, prophets-form the stage, but the act belongs to the heart. Where leaders and people alike “rise early” to hear the LORD’s voice, the covenant brings life; where ears stay shut and feet walk their own way, the covenant’s words of discipline arrive just as surely. The cure is not more volume of ritual, but the grace that creates willing listeners and doers.