‘Flee! Run for your lives! Become like a juniper in the desert.’
Parallel translations
- WEB Flee! Save your lives! Be like the juniper bush in the wilderness.
- KJV Flee, save your lives, and be like the heath in the wilderness.
- NKJV “Flee, save your lives! And be like the juniper in the wilderness.
- NASB “Flee, save yourselves, So that you may be like a juniper in the wilderness.
- NLT Flee for your lives! Hide in the wilderness!
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Flee and save your lives, becoming like a solitary bush in the wilderness.
Overview
The urgent call is to escape into the barren wilderness, stripped of comfort and security. Survival means bare existence, like a lone shrub in the desert. The verse shows how judgment reduces the proud to desperate refugees, underscoring the emptiness of life cut off from God and the need for the refuge He provides.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Jer 17:6He will be like a shrub in the desert; he will not see when prosperity comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
- Job 30:3–7Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night.
- Jer 51:6Flee from Babylon! Escape with your lives! Do not be destroyed in her punishment. For this is the time of the LORD’s vengeance; He will pay her what she deserves.
- Gen 19:17As soon as the men had brought them out, one of them said, “Run for your lives! Do not look back, and do not stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away!”
- Ps 11:1For the choirmaster. Of David. In the LORD I take refuge. How then can you say to me: “Flee like a bird to your mountain!
- Heb 6:18Thus by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be strongly encouraged.
- Luke 3:7Then John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
- Prov 6:4–5Allow no sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids.
- Matt 24:16–18then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
- Luke 17:31–33On that day, let no one on the housetop come down to retrieve his possessions. Likewise, let no one in the field return for anything he has left behind.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Against the failure of false shepherds Jeremiah promises the Righteous Branch, 'The LORD our righteousness,' and the new covenant written on the heart and sealed in the blood of Christ.
How Jeremiah 48:6 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.