YHWH Responds With A Warning To Jeremiah That He Will Yet Face Worse Things Than This (Jeremiah 12:5-6).
YHWH calls on Jeremiah to recognise that what he has endured up to now is as nothing compared with what lies ahead. Up until now he has only had to face the footmen (the local opposition or the lower level authorities), in the future he will have to face the horses (the higher powers that be, including the king, in Jerusalem). Up to now he has been comparatively at ease, shortly he must enter the jungle with its wild beasts. To serve God is not always a guarantee that life will be easy and prosperous. ‘it is through much tribulation that we must enter under the Kingly Rule of God' (Acts 14:22).
‘If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you,
Then how can you contend with horses?
And though in a land of peace you are secure,
Yet how will you do in the pride of the Jordan?'
The first picture is of a fugitive being chased down. Up to this point in time Jeremiah has only been ‘chased' by men on foot, and yet he has clearly found that wearisome. What then is he going to do when he is chased down by horsemen, as in the future he surely will be? In other words while he has had trouble dealing with those in authority at lower levels, he will shortly be brought to the attention of the court. The idea of contending with horses might have in mind Elijah's running before Ahab's chariot to the gates of Jezreel (1 Kings 18:46).
The second picture, which illustrates the same idea and confirms it, is of having to leave a part of the land where there was peace and security, and where he would not have to face obstacles, a land which was relatively free from wild beasts, to enter a land where lions, bears and other wild beasts roamed relatively freely, and vegetation was at its thickest. The Pride of Jordan was the name given to the marshy thicket country on the verge of the Jordan in the Arabah (Jordan Gulf), which was a favourite haunt of wild animals, including especially lions (Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:44; Zechariah 11:3).
‘For even your brothers,
And the house of your father,
Even they have dealt treacherously with you,
Even they have cried aloud after you.
Believe them not,
Though they speak fair words to you.'
But what would be worst of all would be that he would be betrayed by his own family, and possibly already was being. Even his brothers and his father's house, the one place where he should have been secure and at peace, would have turned against him, leading the chase against him, shouting after him and raising a hue and cry. Thus he must in the future trust no one, not even his closest family. This needs, of course, to be taken in parallel with the fact that the people were at the time totally untrustworthy, even to each other (Jeremiah 9:8). It is always necessary to count the cost of serving God.
We should at this point possibly give a reminder that tenses in Hebrew verbs are not similar to the tenses that we find in Latin, Greek and English. Rather than having a past tenses and a future tense, indicating chronological sequence, they had a complete tense (often called ‘perfect' and indicating an action that was certain and complete, and therefore usually, although not always in the past) and an incomplete tense (often called ‘imperfect', which would be present or future because uncertain and incomplete). They expressed the completeness and certainty of the action, or otherwise. Thus the so-called ‘perfect tense' could express the future as it was seen to be perfectly complete in the mind of God though His prophet.