Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 11:19

"But I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, [saying], Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered." — Jeremiah 11:19 (ASV)

Like a lamb or an ox. — Better, as a tame lamb, i.e., one like the ewe-lamb of Nathan’s parable (2 Samuel 12:3), brought up in the home of its master. There is no “or” in the Hebrew, and the translators seem to have mistaken the adjective (tame) for a noun. The Septuagint, Vulgate, and Luther agree in this rendering. Assuming the earlier date of Isaiah 53:7, the words seem to have been an allusive reference to the sufferer described there.

The tree with the fruit thereof. — Literally, the tree with its bread, here taken to mean its “fruit.” Some scholars, however, render the word as “sap,” or adopt a reading that gives that meaning. The phrase seems to be proverbial for total destruction, not of the man only, but also of his work. While the prophet’s life had been innocent and unsuspecting, his own townspeople were conspiring to crush him and to bury his name and work in oblivion. The sufferings of the prophet, in this matter, present a parallel to those of the Christ (Luke 4:29).