The Conditions Of The Siege Which Have Caused Jeremiah To Despair (Jeremiah 33:4-5).
YHWH recognises that Jeremiah might be confused at what he is experiencing as the siege approaches its final intensity, and describes the scenes with vivid reality, before adding His assurance that this causes Him no problems.
“For thus says YHWH, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city, and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, which are broken down to make a defence against the mounds and against the sword, while they come to fight with the Chaldeans, and to fill them with the dead bodies of men, whom I have slain in my anger and in my wrath, and for all whose wickedness I have hid my face from this city,”
In a vivid, but abbreviated description, Jeremiah depicts under YHWH's guidance the awful cost of defending the walls against the besieging army, and he draws attention to the fact that it all arises as a result of the wickedness of those very people (its citizens) who were now dying or facing death, for it was their wickedness that had drawn down on the city the anger and fury of YHWH. It is clear that he was well aware as he sat in his prison, of the ferment in the city as houses were being torn down in order to strengthen the fortifications that were the main target of the besiegers, and he would have been especially so as it directly affected the palace complex where the most substantial stones would be found which were suitable for the purpose. As the siege progressed, the battering rams, dragged by the besiegers up the mounds which enabled the rams to reach the weaker parts of the walls, gradually did their work of weakening the defences. The consequence was that the walls, once thought to be sufficiently substantial, were now crumbling before them, and in such circumstances it was common practise to strengthen such walls from the inside by adding layers of stones and other building materials, which would be obtained by breaking down suitable buildings. It was all a part of the cost of the defence of the city in the face of the daily activity of the Chaldeans (Babylonians) against the walls. And on the other side the enemy would be tearing down houses outside the walls in order to build their siege mounds, adding to the overall final cost. War was not cheap.
‘Against the sword (instrument of war).' The noun used signifies siege axes as well as swords, and indeed all instruments used by the attackers in order to achieve a breach in the walls, and which the defenders had to constantly face in defending those walls. During a fierce siege nothing stood still, and all kinds of weapons and instruments were used.
The account is necessarily very much abbreviated and telescoped, but it vividly brings out the mayhem and devastating effects of the continual fighting. We can visualise the siege engines being dragged up the mounds to attack the walls, accompanied by other instruments of war as men fought from siege towers, with the defendants fighting back gallantly, and their dead being dragged away to be laid in heaps in the remnants of the destroyed buildings near the wall. This is the explanation of the ‘dead bodies of men' who were probably those slain defending the walls, and who would be dragged away when there was a lull in the fighting, in order to be laid in the ruins of the houses. This was so that they would be out of the way, and would also have the purpose of treating them with a rough kind of respect. War was a cruel thing, but even in the midst of hostilities, men still respected their fallen comrades as best they could. They did not leave them just lying around. The numerous bodies that lay there, piled up in the broken down ruins of the buildings, would be a constant reminder of the cost of the siege.
But they were also a reminder, as YHWH Himself points out, of YHWH's anger against Jerusalem, and of His punishment of men whose wickedness had contributed to the demise of the city, a wickedness which had caused Him to hide His face from them rather than defending them. It was because of this wickedness that He had handed them over to the slaughter.
Vividly aware as he would have been of such conditions we can understand why Jeremiah was finding it difficult to reconcile them with YHWH's promises of future deliverance. He would be gaining the impression that once the fighting was over, there would be little left to restore. He would not, of course, have been the only one afflicted with a sense of deep gloom, nevertheless, having no part to play in the fighting, he would have time to think of it more than most. And it was into such gloomy prognostications that the assurance of YHWH came.