Jeremiah 1

1: 1 THE words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin: to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah; unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month. 4, 5 Now the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid because of them: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD. Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth; and the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth: see, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to overthrow; to build, and to plant. 11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree. Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I watch over my word to perform it. And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething caldron; and the face 14 thereof is from the north. Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north evil shall break 15 forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. For, lo, I will call all the families of the king- doms of the north, saith the LORD; and they shall come, and they shall set every one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof round 16 about, and against all the cities of Judah. And I will utter my judgements against them touching all their wickedness; in that they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto 17 other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands. Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at them, 18 lest I dismay thee before them. For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. 19 And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.

THIS chapter introduces the name of the author of this book of prophecies, the period of time which they cover, the call and commission of the prophet, and a succinct statement of the work assigned him. Its consideration should be preceded by a careful reading of the preceding introductory section, as well as a general review of Sections 44-49 in Vol. VII. of this Work, which contain the history of events collateral with Jeremiah’s life. B.

1-3. The prophet’s life and labors really continued somewhat later than the eleventh year and fifth month of Zedekiah. The prophecies and events recorded (chaps. 40-45) are manifestly subsequent to that. But probably it was not deemed important to be more specific in this brief introduction. The thirteenth year of Josiah was B.C. 629. From this date till the final destruction of the city (588 B.C.) was forty-one years. Jeremiah’s ministry continued on yet further; how long is not known.

4, 5. “Sanctified” here means set apart to a special service, and not simply and strictly cleansed from sin. To “set apart” is the primary sense of the word. The word “ordained” Hebrew usage currently employs in the sense of appoint, make, so that “I gave thee to the service and work of a prophet for the nations” means I appointed thee to this service. The object of the Lord in saying to Jeremiah, “I had My eye on thee for My prophet to the nations before thou wast born,” was to give him the greater assurance of his call, and to impress the more strongly on his mind that God had a work for him to do from which he could not be excused. The reader should not assume that God’s foreknowledge was any greater or His antecedent plans any more fixed in the case of Jeremiah than in every other case. It comes not of any specialty in respect to particular individuals, but of God’s essenessential nature, that He knows and plans the course of human life before its existence begins. As this knowing and planning in no-wise lessened either the personal freedom of action or the moral responsibility of Jeremiah, so neither can it overrule or in the least disturb the perfectly free agency of any other being—human, angelic, or diabolic. H. C.

5. Before I formed thee I had destined thee to the prophetic office before thou wert born: I had formed My plan, and appointed thee to be My envoy to this people. Paul speaks of his own call to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles in similar terms (Gal. 1: 15, 16). A. C.—How much of this spirit of certitude and conviction is needed for the ordinary life of the Christian? Have we the measure of it we require? or are we inefficient and useless because of our lack of it? There can be no question that such a spirit is inculcated by Christianity, and that reasonable grounds are afforded us all upon which to be thoroughly persuaded in our own mind. Acting upon our deepest convictions and most unalterable certainties is the only way to attain to a sound apprehension of Divine things and an efficient condition of service.

5-19. How He constrained Jeremiah to undertake this work. He gave him certainty as to his being called to the prophetic work. To know that we are indeed called of God to any work is an unfailing source of strength therein (verse 5). He made him feel that necessity was laid upon him; “thou shalt go;” “thou shalt speak” (verse 7). So Jeremiah himself afterward says (chap. 20: 9) God’s word was like “a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.” What a help to the preacher of God’s truth is such a conviction as this! He promised His presence and delivering grace (verse 8).

Consciousness of security and safety in God will give a dauntless courage in the face of any and of all opposition. He gave him special qualifications for his work. Words and power of speech (verse 9). Immovable and unflinching strength of will, a determination and resolve that would not waver (verse 18). He showed him that the rooting up and the destruction were not ends in themselves, but to lead on to planting and to building afresh (verse 10). To know that we are working on to a good and blessed end is no small encouragement to us in working through all manner of difficulty to reach that end. He made him vividly realize the nature and nearness of the judgments he foretold. This was the purpose of the visions of the rod of the almond tree and the seething pot (verses 11-15). The first vision told of God’s judgment close at hand. The second, of the quarter whence these judgments come, and of the fierce, furious character of the foes who should come upon them. Jeremiah was enabled to “see well” the visions—that is, to realize very forcibly what they meant. Oh, if we could but more vividly realize what the anger of God is against sin; if we could have a vision of the wrath of God; with how much more power and urgency should we plead with men to flee from the wrath to come! He reminds Jeremiah of the sins that called for these judgments (verse 16). A deep sense of sin is indispensable to those who would earnestly warn of the doom of sin. And (verse 19) God again gives His servant the blessed assurance, “They shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee to deliver thee.” Thus did God equip the prophet and prepare him for his work. His God supplied all his need. It was a stern warfare on which he was to go, but he went not at his own charges. If we be summoned to difficult duty, we shall be supplied with all-sufficient strength. Only let us be careful to avail ourselves of the help assured, lest (verse 17) we be dismayed and God confound us before our enemies. Dread, therefore no commission that God entrusts thee with, for along with it will ever be found the grace, all the grace, needed for its successful discharge. P. C.

6-8. The Lord gave him to understand that He knew his qualifications, and had the grace and help of His own presence to set off against His young servant’s conscious insufficiency. Hence He answered, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go against all to whom I send thee”—against rather than “to,” as implying their foreseen antagonism to His message. H. C.

When he was shown that the strength in which he was to act and speak was not his own, and that he might always reckon upon supplies of grace and strength to discharge the high duties to which he was called, he no longer sought to evade them; and although the influence of his natural temper breaks out at times in complaints that he, of all men most unsuited, as he thought, had been chosen for the place he filled, and in sighings for that retired and peaceful life he must know no more—he fulfilled his tasks with unremitting diligence and unswerving fidelity for at least forty-two years, reckoning from the thirteenth year of King Josiah. In the course of his ministry he met with much opposition and ill-treatment from his countrymen of all classes, especially of the highest. The exigencies of the times constrained him, as the commissioned prophet of the Lord, to exercise an important influence upon the public policy of the time; and the part he took, though based on the most enlarged views of true patriotism and on the most exact apprehension of the nation’s only safe and wise course in the circumstances of the times, was offensive to its natural pride; and the great ones, seeing how adverse his counsels were to their own plans of aggrandizement, affected to discredit his mission, and strove to destroy his influence. His keen susceptibility to injustice and misconstruction; his deep sense of the wickedness, perversity and ungodliness of men; his consciousness that the leaders of the people were, with wilful blindness, hurrying the nation with headlong speed to its ruin, together with his painful perception of the unpopularity to which his faithful denunciations exposed him, and the general dislike with which he was regarded—all this occasionally drew from him, in the bitterness of his soul, expressions which some have found it hard to reconcile with his religious principles and his near intercourse with heaven; but which considered with due regard to his natural temper, and all the circumstances of his position, will be found far more to demand our pity than our censure. Nay, there is none of the prophets with whom we contract an acquaintance so close and sympathizing, by virtue of those very indications of the natural temper and spirit of the man, which are permitted to ripple the surface of his prophetic career, and which enables us to recognize, in one so gifted from heaven, a man and a brother. The cries by which he attests the frequent anguish of his spirit find a response in our hearts. We pity him, feel for him, love him, and this is more than can be said with regard to Isaiah, whose prophetic rapture more absorbed the individual man, and left no room for any other than feelings of admiration and awe toward him; whereas Jeremiah enlists our personal interests toward him by his starts of natural passion, and speaks to our hearts in his wails of human pain. Kitto.

It is plausibly supposed that Jeremiah was at this time not far from twenty years of age. H. C.

7. He must speak all that he is charged with: “Speak all that I command thee.” He must forget nothing as minute, or foreign, or not worth mentioning; every word of God is weighty. He must conceal nothing for fear of offending; he must alter nothing under pretence of making it more fashionable or more palatable, but without addition or diminution “declare the whole counsel of God.” H.

9. As if to meet very significantly the point of Jeremiah’s plea, “I cannot speak,” the Lord puts forth His hand and touches His mouth, as if He would say, “Trust Me for grace adapted to your wants—grace to help in all your need.” It had also this further significance—viz., that the young man need not be forethoughtful about words to say or messages to deliver. The Lord was to provide both the things to be said and the words in which to say them. The prophet was simply to deliver the message which the Lord might give him.

10. This is a strong yet very palpable case in which the prophet is said to do what he merely proclaims the purpose of God to do. In chap. 31:28 the Lord says of Himself, “It shall come to pass that like as I have watched over them to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them to build and to plant.” This is the work of God in His providence, and it is His alone. H. C.

I have—set thee over the nations. God represents His messengers the prophets as doing what He commanded them to declare should be done. In this sense they rooted up, pulled down and destroyed; declared God’s judgments: they builded up and planted; declared the promises of His mercy. Thus God says to Isaiah (6:10), Make the heart of this people fat—and shut their eyes. Show them that they are stupid and blind; and that, because they have shut their eyes and hardened their hearts, God will in His judgments leave them to their hardness and darkness. A. C.

God here appoints Jeremiah to declare His purposes concerning the overthrow or restoration tion of kingdoms and nations, according as they should persist in or repent of their sins (cf. chap. 18:7). In pursuance of these directions, some of the following prophecies foretell the destruction of the Jewish and other nations (see chap. 25:15, etc.); and others predict their restoration (see chaps. 30; 31; 48:47; 49:6, 39). W. Lowth.

10-19. There is no glorious vision as in Isaiah’s case; nothing of that awful and superhuman grandeur which characterizes Ezekiel’s summons to the prophetic dignity. The images are tame and simple; but there is a strength of purpose indicated by them and a decisiveness in action, which were the real secret of Jeremiah’s strength. In age probably just arrived at manhood—for forty years of active labor were before him, and finally, as is too probable, a martyr’s death—called thus in the early beauty of youth, he sees first a branch of an almond-tree (chap. 1:11), and next a pot boiling upon a fire of thorns, and just ready to overturn from the unequal consumption of the blazing fuel. But the words that accompany these ordinary images are of startling strength. Jeremiah is set over kingdoms and nations as God’s deputy on earth, with authority to “root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, and to build, and to plant;” and because in the execution of these awful powers he would have to confront the whole land, its king, its princes and people, God promises to make him firm and defiant as a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls. Young in years, despondent in temper, God yet gives him a commission of wider and fuller authority than any ever conferred before, except it be that of Moses. But even to Moses the commission was to build up and form the Jewish nation; Jeremiah’s is one chiefly of condemnation and destruction. Four verbs of ruin come first in his instructions, and then two only of restoration. For such a commission nothing less seems necessary than the energy and self devotion of a Paul; but Jeremiah proved not unworthy of it. No man ever felt difficulties more; no man ever faced them with braver resolution, or more unflinchingly did his duty. R. P. S.

11,12. To teach the youthful prophet yet further concerning his work, the Lord proceeds to give him two successive visions—the first, of an almond tree, to show that the judgments to be predicted would come soon; the second, of a seething pot, to show from what quarter they would come. This of an almond-tree might indicate its own significance to Jeremiah by the sense of the Hebrew word which means the waker, the tree that wakes earliest in spring from the repose of winter. Pliny says of it that it begins to blossom in January and sometimes matures its fruit in March. Hence it becomes an expressive figure for what is to be done soon and with wakeful earnestness. But the Lord added His own interpretation: “I will hasten My word to perform it.”

13-15. As said above, this second vision indicated the quarter from which these judgments should come. This “seething pot” is a pot under which the fire is blown up. We must think of this pot as out-of-doors, exposed to all winds. Its open face was from the north, so that its steam and smoke seemed to come from that quarter. Thus it indicated that the elements in that region were in commotion, and that calamity would soon open itself a way and come rushing forth from that direction. The Lord would rouse up all the families of those northern kingdoms, the assemblage of tribes and nations that were grouped together under the rule of the king of Babylon, and they should come and set up each his throne in the gates of Jerusalem. This language fitly describes the constitution of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom—a group of those powerful States which he had subjected to his sway. (See Dan. 3:29 and 4:1, 22.) It is noticeable that though Chaldea and Babylon lay east of Judah, yet their armies are said—not here alone, but usually elsewhere—to come from the north. The reason of this is that they entered Palestine from the north, going high up the valley of the Euphrates in a northwestern direction, and then coming into the land by way of Riblah and Hamath, on the north. This circuit was made to avoid the great Arabian desert which lay directly between Palestine and Chaldea. H. C.

From verse 14 it appears that the evil was to come from the north; and therefore the steam, which was designed for an emblem of that evil, must have issued from that quarter. The pot denoted the empire of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, lying to the north of Judea, and pouring forth its multitudes, like a thick vapor, to overspread the land. Blayney.

These comparisons had no appearance of meanness among a people accustomed to see in the temple of the Lord victims, the flesh of which was dressed in caldrons, for the use of the priests, and of the individuals who came thither to offer sacrifice. Calmet.

15. All the families of the kingdoms of the north. There were inferior kings and princes, who were either allies or tributaries to the Babylonian empire (cf. chaps. 34:1; 50:41; 51:27). God saith all these shall join their forces with the Chaldean army, in order to the conquest of Judea. The word “family” is equivalent to people here, and in chaps. 8:3; 10:25. W. Lowth.

16. This was pre-eminently the mission of Jeremiah. It was proper that here, in the outset of his work, the Lord should show him what it was to be, and prepare his mind to expect resistance and persecution.

17-19. Forewarning the prophet of an arduous and perilous work, the Lord admonished him to gird himself for the conflict and put his trust in the Lord his God. Correspondingly the Lord promises to make him strong to bear and to withstand opposition, even as a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a brazen wall are firm against whatever may assail or smite them. This call at once opened a new life before this young man. It promised nothing on the score of comfort, competence, ease or honor (of the sort that comes from men). On the contrary, the Lord plainly assumed that his life-work would be bitter, toilsome, thankless, repulsive—resisted at all points by those to whom he was sent with the word of the Lord; and the only consideration presented to offset so much hardship and suffering was, “I am with thee.” H. C.

Jeremiah was the last of those gifted seers who combined their prophetic teaching with the active public life of statesmen and counsellors of the nation. Against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes, against the priests, against the prophets, against the people of the land, he was “to gird up his loins, and arise and speak;” he was to be the solitary fortress, the column of iron, the wall of brass, fearless, undismayed, unconfounded—the one grand, immovable figure which alone redeems the miserable downfall of his country from triviality and shame—for forty years, day by day, at early morning, standing to deliver his mournful warnings, his searching rebukes, in the royal chamber or in the Temple court. He was the prophet of unwelcome, unpalatable truth, from whose clear vision all illusions had vanished away; in whom the high poetic aspirations of former times were transformed into the hard prose of common life; yet a prose which itself becomes more poetical than poetry, because of its own exceeding tragical simplicity. Stanley.

It was his mission to tell the people of their sins, to rebuke the nobles for their oppression, the humbler orders for their vileness, the priesthood for their falseness, even his fellow-prophets for their infidelity to the living God. The whole nation, from prince to beggar, had reached the very bottom of national depravity; and this lone man was set to tell them of it, and to forewarn them of the frightful doom which was impending. He was the prophet of unwelcome truth. He had to face the facts of an age of retribution. He had to tear away the illusions with which people were deceiving themselves. Phelps.