Flee, save your lives, and be like the heath in the wilderness.
Parallel translations
- WEB Flee! Save your lives! Be like the juniper bush in the wilderness.
- BSB ‘Flee! Run for your lives! Become like a juniper in the desert.’
- 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 17:6For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.
- Job 30:3–7For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.
- Jer 51:6Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD’s vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence.
- Gen 19:17And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
- Ps 11:1In the LORD put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?
- Heb 6:18That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
- Luke 3:7Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
- Prov 6:4–5Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids.
- Matt 24:16–18Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
- Luke 17:31–33In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
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.