Jeremiah’s curse on trusting in man

Jeremiah’s curse on trusting in man is a recurring scriptural refrain in the novel, warning that reliance on human strength can leave a person exposed and spiritually barren. Its appearances frame both Job’s total dispossession and Franz Biberkopf’s betrayal by Reinhold, while the surrounding biblical scenes set human vulnerability against the possibility of divine intervention and preservation.

The Curse and Its Counter-image

The passage gives the warning in stark terms: “Cursed is the man, says Jeremiah, that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” The cursed person is likened to heath in the desert, shut away from good and inhabiting “the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited.” The passage then supplies its opposite: “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” That person is compared to a tree rooted beside water, able to remain green through heat and drought. The contrast is not simply between hardship and comfort; it distinguishes dependence on human power from a hope placed beyond it.

The biblical language continues with a diagnosis of the heart as “deceitful above all things,” making trust itself a source of danger when its object is another person. The novel does not present the saying as a detached maxim: it places the warning amid scenes of need, betrayal, and uncertain help, where the difference between depending on someone and being abandoned by them becomes painfully concrete.

Job in the Cabbage Patch

The conversation with Job introduces the problem through a figure who has lost everything. The narration places him in a cabbage patch beside a dog’s kennel, just beyond the watchdog’s reach. The Dog’s barking, chain, and snapping jaws make his exclusion physical: Job is not only bereft but unable to rise without facing danger. The cabbage patch, watchdog, and goats that graze nearby once belonged to him, yet he no longer recognizes them as his own.

This tableau turns dispossession into a scene of estrangement from former possessions and status. Job is addressed as though he could choose whether to accept help, but the accompanying question—whether he simply does not want it—leaves that refusal unresolved. His plight therefore sharpens the curse’s concern with the limits of human assistance: the scene shows suffering, while withholding any easy assurance that another person can repair it.

Reinhold’s Betrayal

The warning returns in abbreviated form before the attack on Franz. In the car, Franz looks back toward the pursuing vehicle and recognizes that the gang has swindled him. Reinhold gives a secret signal, moves his hand to the door handle, and joins the other man in forcing Franz through the open door. The scriptural lines about trusting in man and the deceitful heart immediately precede this sudden violence, making betrayal feel like the lived instance of the warning rather than a merely abstract illustration.

The earlier appearance of Jeremiah’s words follows a different but related image of human dependence. After the others have left the pub, Reinhold remains alone among empty pop bottles, a half-full glass, and his coffee cup. The curse follows this solitary, brooding scene. Together, the pub passage and the attack place the saying near the gang’s unstable dealings, but do not turn it into a simple verdict on one character: the passage’s broader force is that trust between people is vulnerable to deception, while the narrative repeatedly tests what, if anything, can stand beyond that vulnerability.

Sacrifice and the Possibility of Preservation

Elsewhere, a dreamlike biblical scene of a father and son walking toward an altar develops a related problem of obedience and human vulnerability. The son fears the knife and resists being killed; the father says the sacrifice is commanded, but also acknowledges that the act must be willing. At the moment of surrender, the Lord calls for them to cease, and both are spared. This is not Jeremiah’s curse, but it offers a striking counterpoint: the narrative stages dependence on divine command as a scene in which the threatened death is stopped, rather than as a guarantee that human beings will protect one another.

Late in the narrative, Death describes his task as more than reaping or sowing: “here I have to be because my task is to preserve.” That claim resonates with the spared son’s survival and complicates the desolate image of the cursed person in the wilderness. The recurring biblical language does not erase the novel’s scenes of betrayal or suffering; it places them beside competing possibilities—abandonment, obedience, intervention, and preservation—without making human trust safe or divine help automatic.