Jeremiah 9:24

Look at what comes right before this verse: Jeremiah just listed the three things people usually brag about — being smart, being strong, being rich (verse 23). Wisdom, might, wealth. Sound familiar? Those are still the three trophies on everybody's shelf. And God says: none of that. Not one of those gets you bragging rights with me.

Instead, he names exactly one legitimate boast: that you understand and know him. Not know about him — the Hebrew word here (yada) is the same word used for the most intimate kind of knowing, the kind between spouses Strong's. This isn't trivia knowledge. It's relational, experiential, lived-in knowledge.

And then God tells you what you'll actually find when you get close enough to know him: three things — chesed (loyal, covenant love that won't quit on you), mishpat (justice — setting things right), and tsedakah (righteousness — doing what's right, consistently). And here's the line that should stop you: God says he delights in doing these things. Not merely does them out of duty. Delights. This is who he is when he's happiest — merciful, just, righteous, all at once, on the earth, not in some abstract heaven far away.

This verse sits at the hinge of Jeremiah 9. The chapter is a funeral dirge — Jeremiah has been weeping over Jerusalem's coming destruction, exposing the lies, the treachery, the corruption that's about to bring Babylon's armies down on them Matthew Henry. Right in the middle of that grief, God pulls back the curtain and shows what real security looks like — not walls, not wealth, not cleverness, but knowing him.

Where Christians disagree a little: is "knowing God" here mainly about correct belief (understanding who God is) or about a transformed life (walking like him)? Most readers, old and new, say it's both — you can't really have one without the other Jamieson-Fausset-Brown.

Jeremiah preached in Jerusalem from around 627 BC until after the city fell in 586 BC — roughly a forty-year ministry watching his nation slide toward a catastrophe he couldn't stop. By the time he spoke chapter 9, the kingdom of Judah was politically weak, squeezed between the collapsing Assyrian empire and the rising Babylonian one under Nebuchadnezzar, and its own leaders — kings, priests, prophets — were lying to the people, telling them "peace, peace" when there was no peace ( Jeremiah 6:14).

The people of Judah trusted in three things to save them: their wisdom (political scheming, alliances with Egypt), their military strength, and their wealth (the temple treasury, trade). They also leaned hard on their circumcision — the sign of being God's covenant people — as if the physical mark alone guaranteed protection, when the very next verses (25-26) show God putting Judah in the same basket as pagan nations because their hearts weren't circumcised at all. Jeremiah has just spent the first half of chapter 9 wailing — literally calling for professional mourning women to come and grieve, because the coming destruction was that certain and that close ( Jeremiah 9:17-20). Into that wreckage, God doesn't say "trust your army" or "trust your temple." He says: the only boast worth having is knowing me. This was a gut-punch to a nation whose entire security system — political, military, economic, religious — was about to be proven worthless.

The word for "boast" is הָלַל (hâlal, H1984) — the same root behind "hallelujah." It literally means to shine, to make a show of something Strong's. So the question isn't whether you'll shine about something — everyone does — it's what you'll let shine.

"Understands and knows" pairs two different Hebrew words on purpose: שָׂכַל (sâkal, H7919), meaning to be perceptive, to grasp with insight, and יָדַע (yâda, H3045), meaning to know by experience, the way you know a person you've lived alongside Strong's. Head and heart, together.

Then the three-word cluster that's the heart of the verse: חֶסֶד (chêçêd, H2617) — covenant loyalty, the kind of love that keeps showing up even when it's not deserved Strong's. מִשְׁפָּט (mishpâṭ, H4941) — a verdict, a ruling, justice done in the concrete, not the abstract Strong's. צְדָקָה (tsᵉdâqâh, H6666) — rightness, moral integrity that holds up under scrutiny Strong's. These three words show up together elsewhere in the Old Testament as almost a summary of God's whole character.

Finally, חָפֵץ (châphêts, H2654) — "I delight" — means to lean toward something, to be genuinely pleased by it, not grudgingly tolerate it Strong's. God isn't gritting his teeth doing justice and mercy. It's his joy.

Paul quotes this verse twice, almost word for word — in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17 — and both times he redirects the boast toward Jesus. "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." For Paul, knowing the Lord in Jeremiah's sense and knowing Christ crucified are the same act. That's a staggering claim: the God whose loving devotion, justice, and righteousness Jeremiah says are worth boasting in has shown up in a person you can actually know.

Because here's the problem this verse quietly raises: how do you "know" an invisible God intimately? Jeremiah says that's the one boast worth having, but he doesn't tell you how to get there. John's Gospel answers it directly: "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent" ( John 17:3). Jesus is how the knowing happens — not information about God, but God himself, walkable-with, touchable, crucifiable.

And notice: the three things God delights in — loving devotion, justice, righteousness — all converge at the cross. The cross is where God's chesed (love that won't let you go) and his mishpat (justice that won't let sin slide) meet without either one canceling the other out. Paul's other boast-verse, Galatians 6:14, makes this explicit: "may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." The boast Jeremiah names in the abstract — knowing the God of loyal love and justice — gets a face and a name and a wooden beam in the New Testament. If Jeremiah's audience needed to stop trusting wisdom, strength, and wealth, Paul's readers needed to stop trusting religious performance — but the target is the same: quit boasting in yourself, and boast in the God who has shown you exactly who he is in Christ.

Ask yourself honestly: what's your actual boast? Not what you'd say in church, but what you quietly rest your identity on when no one's watching — your competence at work, your bank account, how put-together your life looks, how right your opinions are. Those aren't evil things necessarily. But God says none of them get to be your foundation. The only thing worth building your sense of self on is that you know him — really know him, the way you know someone you've stayed up late talking to, not the way you know a fact you memorized.

Here's the cost: that kind of knowing takes time you'd rather spend elsewhere, and it takes admitting you don't already have it. It's much easier to boast in your smarts or your paycheck because those are measurable and you can update your resume. Knowing God is slower, murkier, and it requires you to actually sit with him — in prayer, in his word, in the mess of real obedience — instead of just accumulating facts about him.

And notice what you're supposed to find when you get there: not a distant judge, but a God who delights — actively, joyfully — in loving devotion, justice, and righteousness. If you know him, that should start rubbing off. Are you someone who delights in mercy toward people who don't deserve it? In justice for people who get overlooked? In doing what's right even when it costs you? If knowing God doesn't reshape what you delight in, you might have information, but you don't yet have him. That's the uncomfortable mirror this verse holds up.

• Lord, forgive me for the boasts I quietly carry — my competence, my security, my reputation — and teach me to boast only in knowing you.
• Give me the patience to actually know you, not just to know things about you — slow me down enough to sit with you.
• Let me delight in what you delight in: loving devotion, justice, and righteousness — not as duties, but as joys.
• Where I've trusted wisdom, strength, or wealth to keep me safe, show me how flimsy that trust really is.
• Root my identity so deeply in you that I stop needing anything else to prop it up.

• If someone watched your calendar and your bank statement for a month, what would they conclude you actually boast in?
• Is your knowledge of God more like memorized facts or more like the knowledge you have of someone you love? Be honest.
• Where in your life do you delight in justice or mercy toward people who've done nothing to deserve it from you?
• What would it cost you, specifically, to stop trusting your wisdom, strength, or wealth and start resting in God instead?
• When was the last time you were surprised by God's loving devotion in a way that changed how you treated someone else?