“Flee, save yourselves, So that you may be like a juniper in the wilderness.
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.
- 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.
- 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 a bush in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited.
- Job 30:3–7They are gaunt from lack and famine. They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation.
- Jer 51:6“Flee out of the middle of Babylon! Everyone save his own life! Don’t be cut off in her iniquity; for it is the time of Yahweh’s vengeance. He will render to her a recompense.
- Gen 19:17It came to pass, when they had taken them out, that he said, “Escape for your life! Don’t look behind you, and don’t stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed!”
- Ps 11:1For the Chief Musician. By David. In Yahweh, I take refuge. How can you say to my soul, “Flee as a bird to your mountain!”
- Heb 6:18that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before us.
- Luke 3:7He said therefore to the multitudes who went out to be baptized by him, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
- Prov 6:4–5Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids.
- Matt 24:16–18then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
- Luke 17:31–33In that day, he who will be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away. Let him who is in the field likewise not turn 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.