Jeremiah 5:31 describes a situation where the messengers who should speak God’s truth are speaking lies, and the religious leaders are acting as if their own word is final. The verse also says that the people went along with it because they preferred it that way. The prophet Jeremiah records God’s words here, and they are addressed to the nation of Judah, the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding land.
The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own authority; and my people love to have it so. What will you do in the end of it?
Jeremiah 5:31 (WEB)
What Jeremiah 5:31 Means
The first clause says the prophets “prophesy falsely.” A prophet, in the Hebrew sense, was someone who spoke a message on God’s behalf. When the verse says they speak falsely, it means they claim to bring God’s word while bringing something else, most likely words that flattered the people and asked nothing of them. The second clause says the priests “rule by their own authority.” Priests were meant to teach the law and mediate between the people and God. Here they are described as acting on their own power and preference, not on God’s instruction.
The final part is the most striking. The people “love to have it so,” and God asks what they will do “in the end of it.” The verse does not promise that a bad outcome is certain for every individual, but it does name a moral reality: when people prefer comfortable lies to uncomfortable truth, they are heading toward a reckoning they have not prepared for. It is a warning and a question, not a complete timetable.
The Context of Jeremiah 5:31
The book of Jeremiah is traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, who ministered in Jerusalem in the late seventh and early sixth centuries before Christ, during the final decades of the kingdom of Judah. He preached through a period of political instability and religious decline, and he was often unpopular because his message called for repentance rather than reassurance.
The verses just before this one describe a society that has grown prosperous and comfortable while neglecting justice for the fatherless and the needy. God asks whether he should not punish such things, and then declares that something “astonishing and horrible” has happened in the land. Verse 31 names what that horror looks like: religious leaders who tell people what they want to hear, and a population that rewards them for it. Read in that setting, the verse is not a random complaint about bad preaching. It is a diagnosis of how injustice and spiritual deception feed each other.
Key Phrases in Jeremiah 5:31
2 Timothy 4:3
For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts…
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Paul warns that people will gather teachers to suit their own desires and turn away from the truth. It echoes Jeremiah’s picture of a people who prefer what tickles their ears to what God has actually said.
Jeremiah 23:16
The LORD of Armies says, “Don’t listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They teach you vanity. They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.
(WEB)
Later in the same book, Jeremiah warns against prophets who speak visions from their own minds rather than from the Lord’s mouth. It shows the same concern for the source and faithfulness of God’s message.
A Short Prayer From Jeremiah 5:31
Lord, you know how easily we prefer the words that make us feel secure over the words that call us to change. Keep us from loving comfortable lies, and give us a hunger for your truth even when it is hard to hear. Where we have leaned on voices that do not speak your word, open our eyes to see it, and give us the humility to turn. Help us to be people who listen carefully, test what we hear by your Word, and stay faithful to you in the end of it all. Amen.
