Jeremiah 11

11:1, 2 THE word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and 3 say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Cursed be the man that heareth 4 not the words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your 5 God: that I may establish the oath which I swore unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day. Then answered I, and said, Amen, O LORD. 6 And the LORD said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the 7 streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them. For I earnestly protested unto your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of 8 Egypt, even unto this day, rising early and protesting, saying, Obey my voice. Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the stubbornness of their evil heart: therefore I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did them not. 9 And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among 10 the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words; and they are gone after other gods to serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their 11 fathers. Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and they shall cry unto me, but I will not hearken unto them. 12 Then shall the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem go and cry unto the gods unto whom they offer incense; but they shall not save them at all in the time of their 13 trouble. For according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to the shameful thing, even 14 altars to burn incense unto Baal. Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for their trouble. 15 What hath my beloved to do in mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many, 16 and the holy flesh is passed from thee? when thou doest evil, then thou rejoicest. The LORD called thy name, A green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit: with the noise of a great 17 tumult he hath kindled fire upon it, and the branches of it are broken. For the LORD of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee, because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have wrought for themselves in provoking me to anger by offering incense unto Baal.

18. And the LORD gave me knowledge of it, and I knew it; then thou shewedst me their 19 doings. But I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter; and I knew not that they 20 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. 20 But O LORD of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart, let me see 21 thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I revealed my cause. Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the men of Anathoth, that seek thy life, saying, Thou shalt not prophesy 22 in the name of the LORD, that thou die not by our hand: therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and 23 their daughters shall die by famine; and there shall be no remnant unto them: for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, even the year of their visitation.

12:1 Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet would I reason the cause with thee: wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they at 2 ease that deal very treacherously? Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root; they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far from their 3 reins. But thou, O LORD, knowest me; thou seest me, and triest mine heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter. 4 How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole country wither? for the wicked- ness of them that dwell therein, the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they said, 5 He shall not see our latter end. If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and though in a land of peace thou art 6 secure, yet how wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan? For even thy brethren, and the house of thy father, even they have dealt treacherously with thee; even they have cried aloud after thee: believe them not, though they speak fair words unto thee.

7. I have forsaken mine house, I have cast off mine heritage; I have given the dearly be- 8 loved of my soul into the hand of her enemies. Mine heritage is become unto me as a lion 9 in the forest: she hath uttered her voice against me; therefore I have hated her. Is mine heritage unto me as a speckled bird of prey? are the birds of prey against her round about? 10 go ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, bring them to devour. Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleas- 11 ant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it a desolation; it mourneth unto me, 12 being desolate; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart. Spoil- ers are come upon all the bare heights in the wilderness: for the sword of the LORD devour- 13 eth from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land: no flesh hath peace. They have sown wheat, and have reaped thorns; they have put themselves to pain, and profit nothing: and ye shall be ashamed of your fruits, because of the fierce anger of the LORD. 14 Thus saith the LORD against all mine evil neighbours, that touch the inheritance which I have caused my people Israel to inherit: Behold, I will pluck them up from off their land, 15 and will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. And it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them up, I will return and have compassion on them; and I will bring 16 them again, every man to his heritage, and every man to his land. And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, As the LORD liveth; even as they taught my people to swear by Baal; then shall they be built up in the 17 midst of my people. But if they will not hear, then will I pluck up that nation, plucking up and destroying it, saith the LORD.

Chaps. 11, 12. These chapters are closely connected, the persecution of the prophet by his fellow-townsmen and relatives of Anathoth constituting a connecting bond. (Cf. 11:19-23 with 12:6.) The message of chap. 11 appears without any date; but the points made in it, especially the conspiracy found in Judah and Jerusalem to apostatize from God, and the violent efforts upon the prophet’s life, show that it must have been later than Josiah’s reign, and, in all probability, soon after Jehoiakim’s accession to the throne. Persecution against the prophet became virulent during this king’s reign. (See Vol. VII., Sections 44-47.) H. C.

3. Cursed be the man that obeyeth not.** After the reading, the prophet appears to sum up the things contained in what was read to them; as if he had said, “Ye hear what the Lord saith unto you: remember, the sum of it is this—the man is cursed who obeyeth not; and he is blessed who obeys. From these declarations God will not depart.” A. C.

5. Only those who are in communion with God can truly understand and approve His judgments. The commandment is intelligently alluded to, and its penalty stated. The correspondence of Judah’s condition with that anticipated in the original passage is pregnantly suggested. All the more so that the transgressors did not feel or admit the correspondence. The prophet alone could say, “Amen;” but he said it emphatically and representatively. How many of God’s people find a similar difficulty in acquiescing in His dispensations? They do not examine themselves, or their conscience is not sufficiently awakened, and consequently they fail to recognize His judgments and to profit by them as was intended. M.

6, 7. “Protesting” is a solemn form of attestation. The Hebrew word is used for witnessing, giving or taking testimony under solemn sanctions. So the Lord had announced to the people the terms of this covenant often and in methods of the greatest solemnity, all along from the day they came out of Egypt unto the time then present. The expression “rising early” is specially significant, and in our prophet quite frequent. (See 7:13; 25:3, 4; 35:15.) The command, “Proclaim these words, not only in the streets of Jerusalem, but in the cities of Judah,” indicates the wide range of his mission and the solemn earnestness of this attempted reform. H. C.

11-17. This paragraph, which contains so much of God’s wrath, might very well be expected to follow upon that which goes next before, which contained so much of His people’s sin. When God found so much evil among them, we cannot think it strange if it follows, “Therefore I will bring evil upon them” (verse 11); the evil of punishment for the evil of sin; and there is no remedy, no relief; the decree is gone forth, and the sentence will be executed. H.

12. This gives us a vivid view of the extent of idolatry at this time—idol gods in every city throughout all the land and in every street of Jerusalem. Very concise and expressive is the original—“altars to that shame”—that shameful thing, Baal. H. C.

11-13. Idolatry confounded. Trouble is a touchstone for religious truth. The idolatry that is played with in prosperity is found to be useless in adversity. The Jews had regarded mere stocks and stones as their gods. But in the season of real distress they turn from these and cry to the true God to arise and save them. The ground of confidence which gives way in the hour of need is worse than useless; it is treacherous and ruinous, and the discovery of its true character confounds those who have relied on it. A religion which will not stand the test of trouble is a mockery. Trouble reveals the vanity of an insincere faith. In trouble we need the true, the real; all false religiousness, all playing at devotion, breaks down then. If our religion has been vain and ill founded, we are then discovered and made to be ashamed, “like a thief when he is found” (chap. 2:26). There is a deep instinct which cries out for the true God in the hour of distress. Old memories then revive, scouted faiths reassert themselves, the first cry of the child to his Parent breaks out again involuntarily, and the godless man in his agony groans, “O my God!”

If we have forsaken God in prosperity we have no right to expect Him to save us in adversity. The religion which we accept in our general life is that to which we should justly look in our hours of need. Here is the natural irony of religion. A man is punished by being left to the protection of the creed of his own choice. It must always be remembered, indeed, that whenever we truly repent and seek God spiritually He will receive and save us (Hos. 6:1). But the mere cry for God’s help in distress is not repentance, nor is it a spiritual return to God. It is a selfish utterance, and may be made while the heart is still far from God, and the sins which drove us from Him still unrepented of. It would be neither just nor good for us that God should respond to so degraded and unspiritual a prayer. P. C.

14. Jeremiah’s prayer shall not help them; what God had said to him before (chap. 7:16) He here says again: “Pray not thou for this people.” This is not designed for a command to the prophet so much as for a threatening to the people, that they should have no benefit by the prayers of their friends for them. H.—When judgment continues to rest upon the transgressor, it is not mere vengeance which is represented, but mercy working on the lines of severity. It is God’s emphasis upon His commandment which must be heeded. The blessing that is latent in it waits the appearance of a repentance not to be repented of. Like pent-up waters, it will flow in an overwhelming stream when once the barriers of law have been removed by the sinner’s return to God. M.

15. Nothing could be more offensive to God than to see His people polluting His temple with their idol altars and idol worship, thinking to atone for the wickedness of their idolatry by bringing it into God’s Temple and for the immorality of their life by keeping up some of the Mosaic ritual services. It was enough to seal their doom that they found their chief joy in doing wickedness. H. C.

16. The Lord called thy name, A green olive tree.** Paul plainly alludes to this verse (Rom. 11 : 17). The Jewish nation in its flourishing state is sometimes compared to a vine, sometimes to an olive tree, chiefly because of the fruits of good works which God might justly expect from them, after all the care and pains He had bestowed upon them to make them thrive and fructify. W. Lowth.

16, 17. The fated olive tree. God’s comparison of His people to the olive tree. There would have been force in the comparison if applied to any flourishing and fruitful tree, but there was peculiar propriety in directing the thoughts of the people to the olive. The olive was already associated in sacred history with the return of hope after the flood, and doubtless, in the time of Jeremiah, it was one of the most valuable of trees, as it still is, for the richness of its produce and the variety of ways in which that produce meets the common wants of men. The extensive olive groves, composed of trees that reach no great height, and unattractive to a mere casual glance, were yet more to the people than all the cedars of Lebanon. And as the people were led to consider these olive trees, full of vigor, abounding in blossoms, many of which never came to fruit, and yet, after all, left abundance of fruit behind; as they recollected all the use of the olive—for food, for light, for anointing, for soap-making—the thoughtful among them would feel that God could have employed no better figure to suggest how full Israel was of productivity of the most practical sort.

The destruction of this olive tree. All the wealth that came from this olive tree was being used for bad purposes. The fatness of the soil went into the olive, but the fatness of the olive did not come back to God in grateful and proportionate service. Nay, rather, it was used against Him; and the harm it did was to some extent measurable by the good it might have done. The axe is laid not only at the root of the tree that brings forth no fruit, but also at the root of the tree that brings forth its fruit to be used in hostility against Him who planted the tree. Y.

18. The passage (verses 18–23) treats of a new subject, and enters upon it abruptly, as men are wont to speak or write when excited by a sense of danger, and of merciful deliverance. While the prophet was living quietly in his native Anathoth, suspecting no danger, all suddenly the Lord reveals to him that his fellow-citizens there, and even some of his relatives (12 : 6), were plotting his murder. With these facts before us, the sense will be plain. Literally, “The Lord caused me to know, and then I knew; then He made me see their doings.” H. C.

19. We cannot wonder that many of the fathers saw in Jeremiah a type of Christ. His bodily and mental agonies; his entire subjection to the will of God, though the prophet had to overpower the revoltings of his human will; his lamentations over the coming troubles of his country, the general opposition to his teaching and the union of priest and people in seeking his death—all form an interesting parallel; and the idea was naturally suggested by his describing himself as “a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter.” No doubt he was emphatically “a man of sorrows.” But the comparison must not be pressed too far. Still, this we may say, that of all the prophets, none rises to a higher or more spiritual elevation than Jeremiah, and none is more worthy of such a comparison; and yet even more true would it be to say that he is an exemplification of the Gospel principle that “God’s grace is sufficient” for a man, because God’s “strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12 : 9). R. P. S.

20. The Hebrew is not necessarily a prayer, a malediction. It is the simple future, “I shall see;” I am sure of it, because I have laid open my case before Thee [my God], and so have committed it to thee. The committal is the thing implied. The laying open to God is all that the verb legitimately expresses. But, in such a case, the laying open before God is the preliminary act, and implies the committal. The fact that the Lord had specially apprised him of his danger might well be taken as a guarantee that he would also take care to deal righteously with those wicked persecutors.

21–23. And here the Lord assures His prophet, and directs him to write it out for a warning to other persecutors, that He would terribly punish and utterly exterminate those wicked men of Anathoth who had sought to seal his lips, that he should not speak truthfully the word of the Lord.

Chap. 12. The first six verses treat of one subject, analogous to that of the next preceding passage (11 : 18-23), only that this passage (12 : 1-6) seems to touch the history of which both treat at a point somewhat earlier than that. For this represents the prophet as troubled by the prosperity of the wicked (verses 1, 2), as annoyed by their wickedness, and, perhaps, by their opposition to him as the Lord’s prophet, and still as not having yet seen the worst, and especially as not yet aware that his own brethren and nearest relatives are plotting his destruction (verses 5, 6). The former passage (11 : 18-23), as we have seen, touches the history at a point further on, where the Lord reveals to him the treachery of his friends, puts him in a way to escape their plot, and announces their doom of utter destruction. The rest of the chapter (verses 7-17) seems to have no special connection with the first six verses. H. C.

1-4. Moral difficulties with the providence of God.** The tone of this address to Jehovah is strikingly contrasted with that to the men of Anathoth. To them he is as a lion or a brazen wall. To Jehovah he is as a fretful child, ignorant, wilful, perverse, and requiring to be corrected. The tone of the prophet’s prayer appears reasonable, considering the character and position of those to whom he refers. And there is a recognition of the righteousness of God to begin with. It is evident, too, that the conscience of the prophet is without offence in the sight of God, and yet there can be no doubt that the language he adopts is not to be justified. He is carried away by excess of zeal, but it is zeal without knowledge, and he himself will be the first bitterly to regret his presumption. It is a perilous thing for any man to attempt to judge his fellows by infallible standards. One thing in the behavior of the prophet was to be commended. He did not conceal these thoughts within himself. He says, “Let me talk with Thee,” conscious that in this openness of soul lay his moral safety. A few minutes’ honest communion with God will tap many a festering sore and correct many a subtle error of spirit and life. The last lesson of Divine revelation is not severity, but love. M.

Jeremiah sees the difficulty, but it does not drive him from faith in the justice of God. Religion makes constant demands on faith—the personal faith of trust in the character of God where appearances are against what we believe that character to be. Confidence in the unwavering righteousness of God will help us to look for certain indications of a solution of the difficulty occasioned by the prosperity of the wicked. Right must and will be done, and if it is not yet accomplished it will be ultimately. From the character of God we may thus reason to His certain action (Gen. 18 : 25). Hence we have an argument in favor of future rectification. Jeremiah expects it to come even in this life, though it is long deferred (verse 3). The Christian looks for it in the great judgment, and the fruits of this in the life to come. The difficulty may be lessened even for the present by the reflection that material prosperity is not real prosperity. It may be well for a good man to suffer. Prosperity may be an evil. True welfare consists not in success, not in security from calamity, but in inward peace, in progress in the Divine life. Adency.

2. Grow, bring forth fruit.** There is in this world a perpetual progress of character. God must interpose violently to prevent this principle in the nature of things, to prevent this law of a moral being from being accomplished. Everything, both good and evil, hastens to its perfection. In depravity there is no standing still, no amelioration, no change, as to the pith of the character and destiny, but a constant, ceaseless approximation, amid all apparent forms and changes, to the one final result. There is everlasting growth. Evil cannot stop any more than good can stop. A depraved being goes on to the perfection of his character by just as sure a law, and with just as certain a progress as a good being to the perfection of his. It cannot be otherwise. Cheever.

Personal religion involves growth in grace; so that where there is no growth, although there may be interest in religious subjects, and keenness about controversies, and a perception of the importance of Divine truth, and a warm defence of orthodoxy, there personal religion is unknown. To say that personal religion is characterized by growth is only another form of saying that the man who has it is spiritually alive. There is no organic life without growth in nature; and there is no spiritual life without growth in grace, no continuous state of life. The question whether any of us has personal religion resolves itself into a question whether he has in him a principle of spiritual growth; and spiritual growth implies spiritual life. E. M. G.

Christian steadfastness means, at bottom, the augmenting supremacy of the personal Christ in the soul; growing convictions of His supreme worth, deepening attachment to His person, enlarging drafts upon his Spirit for vitality, progressive enfranchisement from set rule and form that bind the flesh: “For me to live is Christ.” “The kingdom of God is not meat

and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” We are sons not of the bondwoman, but of the free, having a career before us, a destiny to work at which transcends the boundaries of fleshly virtues and rises into the dignity of free and conscious sonship with God. The Christian impulse must organize into Christian living and growth, or it will either evaporate or degenerate into mechanical conformity to a man-made code, a mere slavery to form and rule, while the devil holds the whip, drives Christ out of our lives and leaves us hollow shapes of pretentious godliness, a ghastly mockery of true righteousness. W. W. Furis.