Jeremiah 15:12

Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?

King James Version · Read in your translation · Open the Explore console

Word by word — the Hebrew

Word	Hebrew	Strong’s	Meaning
iron	בַּרְזֶ֧ל bar.Zel	H1270	iron (as cutting) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
break	הֲיָרֹ֨עַ ha.ya.Ro.a'	H7489	properly · interrogative particle + verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
northern	מִצָּפ֖וֹן mi.tza.Fon	H6828	properly · preposition + noun, common feminine singular absolute
iron	בַּרְזֶ֛ל bar.Zel	H1270	iron (as cutting) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
steel	וּנְחֹֽשֶׁת u.ne.Cho.shet	H5178	copper · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).

Cross-references

Job 40:9 Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?
Isaiah 45:9 Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashionet…
Jeremiah 1:18-19 For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Ju…
Jeremiah 21:4-5 Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king o…
Jeremiah 28:14 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuc…
Habakkuk 1:5-10 Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it…

Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).

Commentary

Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 15:10-14

Jeremiah has now returned from his public work and retired into his closet; what passed between him and his God there we have an account of in these and the following verses, which he published afterwards, to affect the people with the weight and importance of his messages to them. Here is, I. The complaint which the prophet makes to God of the many discouragements he met with in his work, Jer 15:10. 1. He met with a great deal of contradiction and opposition. He was a man of strife and contention to the whole land (so it might be read, rather than to the whole earth, for his business lay only in that land); both city and country quarrelled with him, and set themselves against him, and said…

Read the whole note in the console

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown on Jeremiah 15:12

steel--rather, brass or copper, which mixed with "iron" (by the Chalybes near the Euxine Pontus, far north of Palestine), formed the hardest metal, like our steel. Can the Jews, hardy like common iron though they be, break the still hardier Chaldees of the north (Jer 1:14), who resemble the Chalybian iron hardened with copper? Certainly not [CALVIN]. HENDERSON translates. "Can one break iron, (even) the northern iron, and brass," on the ground that English Version makes ordinary iron not so hard as brass. But it is not brass, but a particular mixture of iron and brass, which is represented as harder than common iron, which was probably then of inferior texture, owing to ignorance of modern m…

Read the whole note in the console

John Gill on Jeremiah 15:12

Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel? Can iron break iron, especially that which comes from the north, which was harder than the common iron; or steel, the hardest of all? though the Jews were hard as iron, they could not prevail against and overcome Jeremiah, who was made an iron pillar and brasen walls against them, Jeremiah 1:18, and so these words are spoken for his comfort and encouragement: or they may respect the Jews and the Chaldeans; and the sense be, that the Jews, as mighty and as strong as they fancied themselves to be, and boasted that they were, they could not find themselves a match for the Chaldean army, which came out of the north; and may be said to be as hard…

The Church Fathers

Upon these things [what] does God answer to the people that was accused by the prophet or by Christ, and he says these things to it: "Iron and a covering of bronze is your strength"—hard, unyielding, not to be hammered out. "Iron and a covering of bronze is your strength," that is, your strength is something cutting and dividing, a strength not existing for good.
— Origen of Alexandria, HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH 14

(Vers. 12.) Will iron be bound to iron by the North Wind, and bronze? Symmachus, Will iron be harmed by iron by the North Wind, and bronze? LXX and Theodotion, If it recognizes iron and a copper covering? It is clear for the sake of variation: for the word 'Jare' () which is written in this place, depending on the ambiguity of the utterance, it can mean both friendship and malice, but if the letter 'Res' is read as 'Daleth' (which is similar to the letter 'Daleth'), it signifies knowledge and understanding. But what is said must be understood like this: Do not grieve that the people are your enemy; for if you bring them harsh news, those who are harsh cannot love you. Whether it be the Babylonians who come from the North, and are very hard, and resemble unyielding bronze, they will not be able to form a friendship with this more unyielding people. Whether it be that they are as hard as iron, that is, the people of Israel who are unworthy of the knowledge of God, who have reached such great wickedness that they are surrounded by the more unyielding metal of bronze.
— Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah

The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).

Dictionary and topics

Copper — Derived from the Greek kupros (the island of Cyprus), called “Cyprian brass,” occurs only in the Authorized Version in Ezra 8:27. Elsewhere the Hebrew word (nehosheth) is improperly rendered “brass,”…
Metals — The Hebrews, in common with other ancient nations, were acquainted with nearly all the metals known to modern metallurgy, whether as the products of their own soil or the results of intercourse with…
Steel — The “bow of steel” in (A.V.) 2 Sam. 22:35; Job 20:24; Ps. 18:34 is in the Revised Version “bow of brass” (Heb. kesheth-nehushah). In Jer. 15:12 the same word is used, and is also rendered in the…
Iron · FIGURATIVE — FIGURATIVE
Steel · Strength of — Strength of

Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).

Jeremiah 15:12

Word by word — the Hebrew

Cross-references

Commentary

Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 15:10-14

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown on Jeremiah 15:12

John Gill on Jeremiah 15:12

The Church Fathers

Dictionary and topics

Jeremiah 15:12

Word by word — the Hebrew

Cross-references

Commentary

Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 15:10-14

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown on Jeremiah 15:12

John Gill on Jeremiah 15:12

The Church Fathers

Dictionary and topics

John Calvin on Jeremiah 15:12

Keil & Delitzsch on Jeremiah 15:10–end

Tyndale Open Study Notes on Jeremiah 15:12

Rashi on Jeremiah 15:12