Jeremiah 13

13:1 Thus said the LORD unto me, Go, and buy thee a linen girdle, and put it upon thy 2 loins, and put it not in water. So I bought a girdle according to the word of the LORD, and 3 put it upon my loins. And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, 4 Take the girdle that thou hast bought, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, 5 and hide it there in a hole of the rock. So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the LORD 6 commanded me. And it came to pass after many days, that the LORD said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there. 7 Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the place where I had hid 8 it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing. Then the word of the 9 LORD came unto me, saying, Thus saith the LORD, After this manner will I mar the pride of 10 Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the stubbornness of their heart, and are gone after other gods to serve them, and 11 to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is profitable for nothing. For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, saith the LORD; that they might be unto me for a people, and for a 12 name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear. Therefore thou shalt speak unto them this word: Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Every bottle shall be filled with wine: and they shall say unto thee, Do we not know that every bottle shall be 13 filled with wine? Then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the kings that sit upon David’s throne, and the priests, 14 and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness. And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have compassion, that I should not destroy them. 15, 16 Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for the LORD hath spoken. Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains; and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it 17 gross darkness. But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret for your pride; and mine eyes shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the LORD’s flock is taken cap- 18 tive. Say thou unto the king and to the queen-mother, Humble yourselves, sit down: for 19 your headtires are come down, even the crown of your glory. The cities of the South are shut up, and there is none to open them: Judah is carried away captive all of it; it is wholly carried away captive. 20 Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the north: where is the flock that was 21 given thee, thy beautiful flock? What wilt thou say, when he shall set thy friends over thee as head, seeing thou thyself hast instructed them against thee? shall not sorrows take hold 22 of thee, as of a woman in travail? And if thou say in thine heart, Wherefore are these things come upon me? for the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy 23 heels suffer violence. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then 24 may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. Therefore will I scatter them, as the 25 stubble that passeth away, by the wind of the wilderness. This is thy lot, the portion meas- ured unto thee from me, saith the LORD: because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in 26 falsehood. Therefore will I also discover thy skirts upon thy face, and thy shame shall 27 appear. I have seen thine abominations, even thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewd- ness of thy whoredom, on the hills in the field. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! thou wilt not be made clean; how long shall it yet be?

Chap. 13. This chapter is obviously one entire message. It appears here without date. The allusions to the deep infatuation that pre- cedes destruction (verse 13); to the destruction itself (verses 14, 16); to the humiliation of the king and queen (verse 18); to being carried cap- tive (verses 17, 19)—all conspire to point to the short reign of Jehoiachin as the most probable date. (Cf. 2 K. 24:10-16.) The prominence given to the king’s mother in both this history

(2 K. 24 : 15) and this prophecy (verse 18) favors this date. The prophecy points significantly to pride as the fundamental sin of the people. To mar this pride was the thing specially signified by this “rotten girdle.” Over this pride the prophet would weep sore, as the procuring cause of their ruin (verse 17). It was this that hardened their heart against the efforts made by the Lord, through His prophet, to dissuade them from idolatry, and draw them back to true piety. H. C.

This chapter contains a single and distinct prophecy, which, under two symbols, a linen girdle left to rot, and all vessels being filled with wine, foretells the utter destruction that was destined to fall upon the whole Jewish nation, including individuals of every rank and denomination (verses 15–21); and the cause of all the evils is assigned in the general corruption and profligacy of manners that prevailed without a prospect of amendment (verse 22 to the end). The particular mention of the joint downfall of the king and queen (verse 18) seems to justify the opinion which ascribes this prophecy to the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, whose fate with that of his queen is, in like manner, noticed together. Blayney.

1–7. This statement is entirely plain. The great question discussed among critics is, whether this was a mere vision or a fact of actual life. I accept it is a fact, because it is affirmed to be a fact in most explicit terms; because mere visions are never put in such terms, but in terms of a very different sort—e.g., “I saw;” “the Lord showed me;” “I was in the Spirit and saw,” etc.; also because analogous cases in this prophet must be taken as actual facts—e.g., the breaking of a potter’s vessel in Tophet (19 : 1–10), and the making of symbolic yokes (27 : 2 and 28 : 10). H. C.

1. Put it not in water. God explains, at verse 11, what was meant by the symbol of the girdle or sash worn about the loins—viz., His people Israel, whom He purchased and redeemed of old, and attached to Himself by a special covenant; that as a girdle serveth for an ornament to the wearer, so they should be subservient to the honor and glory of His name. But, it is added, “they would not hear” or conform to His intentions; therefore being polluted with the guilt of their disobedience, they were in that state, and on that very account, to be carried into captivity; conformably to which the prophet was directed “not to put the girdle in water”—that is, not to wash it, but to leave it in that filthiness which it had contracted in wearing. Blayney.

7. It is expressly said, He did as the Lord commanded him, and thus gave a signal proof of his obedience, to shame the stubbornness of a disobedient people; the toil of his journey would be very proper to signify both the pains they took to corrupt themselves with their idolatries, and the sad fatigue of their captivity; and Euphrates being the river of Babylon, which was to be the place of their bondage, was a material circumstance in this sign. H.

8–11. In these verses the Lord gives the explanation of the symbolic act. It represented the fact that He would mar the pride of Judah, and hinted at the agencies He would employ for this purpose—e.g., sending them into captivity to the Euphrates. As a man puts on a girdle to bind his otherwise loose garments close to his person, so the Lord had put on His chosen people and bound them to Himself, and would joyfully have held them in this relation if they had honored and loved Him; but they would not. Hence, He had no alternative left Him but to tear off this girdle and hide it away by the Euphrates, till, humbled under their affliction, they should lie low before Him and plead for mercy. The phraseology (verse 11) shows vividly how much the Lord would have honored His people before the world with prosperity, and would have counted their prosperity an honor and a praise to Himself, if they had adhered to Him in fidelity, love and obedience. No blessings are too great for God to give to His willing, trustful people, provided only they are so humble that He can bless them safely, and so dutiful that He can bless them with honor to Himself.

12. All the people of the land, their king, princes, corrupt priests and false prophets especially, must be filled with drunkenness in the moral sense of mad infatuation. The main point of the verse, however, is to bring out the insulting retort of the people: Could not you tell us something that we do not already know?

13,14. This use of the idea of drunkenness to represent the analogous infatuation that both naturally and judicially precedes destruction occurs very frequently in the prophets, drawn out most fully by Jeremiah (chap. 25), but appearing in Isa. 51 : 17–21; 63 : 6 and often in the minor prophets. It is, indeed, a terrible fact in the providential government of God over nations, and sometimes over individuals as well, that when they scorn His wisdom and scoff at His word, He turns their wisest counsels into foolishness, gives up their heart to madness, and so lets them rush and reel on to the drunkard’s doom.

14. The last clause reads literally, “will not have mercy so as not to destroy”—i.e., the cherished mercy and kindness of His nature shall not prevent His destroying them—a startling truth, which heaven-defiant sinners, who rest their vain hope in the assumed mercy of God, would do well to heed. H. C.

15. “Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud.” Why should human beings be proud, seeing that all their clothing is second-hand, worn first by the lower animals before it is worn by them? The silken robe of a king’s daughter was woven by a worm, and the ermine that adorns the mantle of the noblest office originally protected an insignificant weasel from the cold. It is not the outward dress made by other creatures that dignifies the life, but that which truly belongs to the man himself—the inward clothing which he has formed by his own pure thoughts and lofty ideals, the habit of a saintly life. The cloak brought from fairyland in King Arthur’s court was a gift for the purest and fairest; and it is this cloak which expresses the inward nature, and is in harmony with it, that is of any value. The robe of Chosroes, made of cloth of gold and adorned with jewels of inestimable value, covered a base and despicable nature. The sheepskins and goatskins in which the early Christian confessors wandered about, destitute, afflicted, tormented, covered the noblest natures, of whom the world was not worthy. And Christ Himself wears the same robe in which His people imbibe His spirit and imitate His example. Macmillan.

Pride is a false estimate of one’s self. It lives “on the petty pre-eminences which here for a little lift one mortal an inch or two higher than another—an extra handful of gold, a better education, a longer pedigree, a title, a serener and less tempted life,” or official distinctions. But pride dies where “self-respect is born,” since self-respect teaches one to rightly estimate one’s self; to look on the inherent value of one’s immortal nature, on the soul’s immeasurable capacities, intellectual and moral, and on its relations to its Creator and Redeemer. It does not value itself on the magnitude of its merits, but because of its delightful and honorable relations to the Lord of the universe. It places its possessor in the balances of the sanctuary, weighing himself not by weights of human invention, but by those which bear the stamp of the court of heaven. And such self-respect is near akin to humility, since it perceives then no man’s worth is self-derived, but is all the gift of Him whose name is love. Dykes.

Truth provokes those whom it does not enlighten and convert. The proud man cannot bear to be told that God owes him nothing; and hereby he renders himself still more unworthy of His grace; he rises up against His Physician, instead of turning his anger against his pride and desiring the cure of it. Quesnel.

15, 16. The Lord hath spoken. Should not mortal man bend his ear to listen when God deigns to speak? Shall he suffer his pride to be his ruin, as if it were beneath his dignity to hear his Maker? “Give glory to the Lord your God,” by humbling yourselves before Him, by fully acknowledging His justice and His right to reign and by deeply repenting of your sins against Him. All this and more must be implied in giving glory to the Lord your God. A case in point, for illustration, occurs in the words of Joshua to Achan: “I pray thee, my son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him” (Josh. 7: 19). On the vital question of right and wrong between the sinner and God, the sinner gives due glory to God only when he humbles himself and confesses that the wrong is wholly on his side, the right wholly with God. The Lord enforces this appeal through His prophet by implying that a short time only remains ere, otherwise, judgment without mercy must be their doom. Hasten, “before He cause darkness,” in the sense of deeper calamity; “before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains”—lost wanderers through unknown mountain forests, daylight all gone, where pitfalls and precipices lie in wait, and there can be but a step between you and death. “And while ye look for light”—in vain hope, anticipating the break of day or some rift in the thick clouds that close in heavily on your path—God shall turn your darkness of night and of cloud into the darkness of death-shade, and make it utter blackness of darkness. This graphic picture of misery and woe coming on the proud sinners of His time had its eye upon that fearful war just then impending, with its fatal results. H. C.

16. Light and the day are here as elsewhere the emblems of those Divine influences which ensure safety, joy and life; darkness and the night, the absence of those influences, betokening peril, misery and death. The dark mountains, with their chasm-filled passes, represent the paths of the world, with its concealed and perilous abysses, in which the sinful soul is wandering. They are the places of temptation and danger, from which God’s presence is banished and in which there are chasms, into which the soul is liable to fall and perish. And it is these places, with which the world is filled, and through which the godless are groping in sin-blinded darkness looking for light—these places of peril that the prophet declares God will suddenly convert into the shadow of death by overturning the foot of the wanderer, and make a perpetual gross darkness by precipitating his fall into their dark and profound abysses. Under this effective figure is shadowed forth a momentous fact as a powerful inducement for the sinful soul at once to give glory to God by repentance and a return to the way of holiness—the fact of its momentary liability to fall into the fathomless depths and darkness of the second death. B.

When, overwhelmed with a sense of corruption, I see before me “dark mountains” of trouble and the terrors of the grave, the eye of infinite goodness, brighter than the Shekinah of old, glances upon me from the depths of eternity. It is the smile of the King Immortal from the throne of grace. I see in it free love, the infinite merits of Christ, riches of mercy and of grace, which compel me to look with amaze. I am made to listen to the still, small voice that follows—a voice such as Elijah heard. It announces to me the mysteries of the holy of holies. “Lo, I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of Me.” “I came to seek and to save that which is lost.” I rise from the depths of despair, and no longer “stumble upon the dark mountains.” C. Evans.

Let the beams of the Divine character be shed on the unholy mind, and its darkness would not only not comprehend, it would repel, that brightness; it would recoil from such a contrast to its own nature. But to come into immediate contact with a holy God, this must be, to those who love darkness, insufferable pain, in proportion to the fulness of that light! On the contrary, those who love holiness, those who war against sin, those who have repented a thousand times of the evil that dwells within them, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, to them holiness must be heaven; they will then reach the goal, rest in the haven where they would be, and, like the Psalmist who speaks their mind, “be satisfied when they awake in the likeness of God, and behold His face in righteousness!” R. Hall.

17. The spirit of this affectionate prophet stands before us here in exquisite beauty. He longed to have the people hear, but he could not compel them. All he could do to induce them he would most cheerfully and gladly.

But if his best endeavors fail, there is one resort left him; he can find some secret place to weep over their guilty pride. He understands full well the form which this ruin will assume; “the Lord’s flock carried away captive.” This public statement to the people, backed up, we must suppose, by his known character for a tender spirit and a tearful eye, was in place here as one hopeful means of making an impression upon the people. It was a testimony to his honest belief in their danger, and to the solicitude and even anguish of his heart in view of their certain ruin unless they should repent. H. C.

20. The Church of God is His flock, His “beautiful flock.” Its members are very dear to Him, “purchased with His own blood.” The Church is given, entrusted, to pastors. When Christ ascended up on high He gave some “pastors.” This method of ordering His Church is the one He has willed. His blessing has evidently rested on it. What does not the Church of God owe to her faithful pastors? But whatever their character they cannot but have great influence. They are trusted by the people. They have received special gifts for their work in the form of mental and moral endowments. They are much prayed for. They are specially set apart for the charge of the Church of God. They have every inducement to fidelity. Faithful, the love of their charge will gather round them; the fear of God will dwell within them; the crown of life awaits them. And these mighty motives, acting upon hearts already prepared by God’s grace and devoted to this high office, have for the most part secured a great degree of fidelity in it. But there has been at times great unfaithfulness. The Church has suffered in numbers, in purity of doctrine, in consistency of life, in spirituality of character. And if it has been through the negligence and unfaithfulness of the pastor, who shall deliver him from the charge of blood-guiltiness which will lie at his door? What will he answer when the question is addressed to him, as one day it surely will be, “Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?” C.

Christ has made over to each of us a special portion of His vineyard, to cultivate for immortality. For that definite allotment, and for every soul therein, we shall have to answer in the day of wrath. Those are awful words of the prophet: “Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock? What wilt thou say when He shall visit upon thee?” Hundreds, yea, thousands, have passed through the hands of some of us; what report of our ministry have they brought into the world of spirits? Oh, brethren! of a truth they are no slight matters, these souls of men with which we have to deal! Eternal destinies are suspended on our hourly work; every forgetful day is a robbery of Him whose chief reward for all “the travail of His soul” is in the multitude what we are to train for Him to glory. Shall we disappoint Him, and, as far as in us lies, neutralize the redeeming work of the cross? Called to be the stewards of His household, shall we lay waste His inheritance, or what is as criminal, suffer it to lie fallow and unproductive? He has promised us His unfailing help in prosecuting the work He began; He has promised us a glory eminent above others even in a world where all is glory—“rulers over many cities,” “the joy of our Lord,” “the brightness of the stars forever and ever.” May we daily see before us the crown, and willingly bear the cross we call upon others to carry! May we keep before our thoughts that great and final day of visitation, more awful far than all these its earthly images; “when the Chief Shepherd shall appear,” even the “Shepherd and Bishop of our souls,” to inspect the accounts of our stewardship, to scrutinize our fidelity, to require the blood of the unwarned sinner at the hand of the faithless watchman, to recompense with rest everlasting the humble and laborious minister of truth and peace! Archer Butler.

It will be seen that this was a question for flocks as well as for shepherds. Rulers are responsible for right leading, but subjects and followers are not altogether as sheep, that they should blindly follow those in formal authority. Truth has not been put within the formal shepherd’s exclusive protection. We must take care whom we follow. It is a delusion to suppose that we can hand ourselves over spiritually to the guidance of any one less than Christ. Others may help and suggest; only He can command. Paul came to his hearers with arguments and persuasions, laying before them the truth, which they were able to receive because it was the truth, not because the authority of the speaker made it true. All New Testament preaching goes on the assumption that every one can be fully persuaded in his own mind. The same Scriptures are open to reader as to preacher. None can have their eternal interests perilled except by their own negligence. Y.

21. The idea is, that they had accepted the gods of those foreign nations, and had thus brought themselves into relations of acknowledged inferiority and subjection, so that now they could in no wise complain if the Lord put the princes of those nations in power over their whole land. When they should come to experience this natural result of their idolatry, would not the pangs of travail seize upon them?

23. The stubbornness of their hearts; the strength and persistence of this spirit of idolatry; the extreme difficulty of effecting a moral change, and the entire failure of all efforts thus far made to reclaim the people—are tersely expressed by this analogy. H. C.

Then may ye also do good, etc. The meaning of this is, that they who are accustomed to do evil will find the work of repentance and reformation to be not indeed impossible, but extremely difficult. That the words are to be thus understood appears from the whole chapter, which contains terrible denunciations against the Jews of evils which should come upon them for their impiety. These threats are mixed with exhortations to repentance, and then follow the words, “Can the Ethiopian,” etc., which must not, therefore, be taken as a declaration that they could not possibly repent; for then the prophet ought not to have pressed them, in the same discourse, to amend their ways, and to give glory to the Lord, before He caused darkness, and before their feet stumbled, and they should fall to rise no more. Jortin.

To cease to do evil we have not only to stay the hand, but to purify the heart. To cease to do evil we must cease to think it, to feel it and to conceive it. So helpless is the sinner when he stands face to face with the problem of reformation. Effort after effort is made and fails. It is bound to fail because the source of the wrong-doing has not been rectified. To change himself—who is capable of this feat? M.

Men habituate themselves to sin. Habit is second nature. The sin which is wilfully chosen becomes a tyrannous habit. We are coloring our very being by the tone of our thoughts and actions. What we do to-day, that we will be to-morrow. We are the result of our own past deeds. He who speaks or acts a lie becomes a liar; he who indulges in impurity becomes an unclean being; he who follows selfish impulses becomes a creature of selfishness. Thus every man is building up a habitation for his soul by his own deeds. P. C.

Active habits are formed by the repetition of voluntary acts. It is an ultimate fact in our constitution, that repetition, practice, use, produces always facility in doing the acts repeated, and sometimes, in addition, a tendency to do them. M. H.—From our very faculty of habits, passive impressions, by being repeated, grow weaker. Thoughts, by often passing through the mind, are felt less sensibly; being accustomed to danger begets intrepidity—that is, lessens fear; to distress lessens the passion of pity; to instances of others’ mortality lessens the sensible apprehension of our own. And from these two observations together—that practical habits are formed and strengthened by repeated acts, and that passive impressions grow weaker by being repeated upon us—it must follow that active habits may be gradually forming and strengthening by a course of acting upon such and such motives and excitements, while these motives and excitements themselves are by proportionable degrees growing less sensible—that is, are continually less and less sensibly felt, even as the active habits strengthen. Bp. Butler.

Love increases the power of loving, just by continuance in loving. Hate grows malignantly venomous before one knows how much his better nature is overcome; so that, at the last moment, a wicked man discovers he is not under his own control. What he likes, he must continue to like; what he dislikes, he must continue to dislike. To will is present with him, perhaps, but how to perform that which is good, he finds not; the evil, which he would not do, he does; he recognizes, then, a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. He has educated and exercised his affections, until now they defy him: they are his despot, and he is their slave. C. S. Robinson.

Repeated acts become principles of action, and every man is the creature of his own past life. If nature alone—treacherous and degraded nature—is silent in denouncing sin—if she has no instinctive power to arouse herself, what shall she be when doubly and trebly indurated by habit; when the malformed limb becomes ossified; when that faculty which was destined to be, under Divine guidance, the antagonist of nature, “a second nature,” as it is truly called, to reform, and resist, and overlay the first, is perverted into the traitorous auxiliary of its corruption? We know not ourselves sinners, because from infancy we have breathed the atmosphere of sin; and we now breathe it, as we do the outward air, unceasingly, yet with scarcely a consciousness of the act! A man lives in the frigid formalism of external religion, ion, or in the habitual neglect of God (itself a sin, and the parent of all sin), until it seems almost impossible to separate the habit from life itself; to live at all is to live thus; and he as little dreams of asking himself, can it indeed be true that he is a sinner calmly travelling the pathway to ruin, as he does of seriously inquiring whether his heart beats, or whether his hair turns gray with years. The process has been so constant as to be forgotten, and has at length become almost equally independent of voluntary effort. He sins, so to speak, mechanically. The terrible power of irreligion, become thus habitual, to blind men to the momentous peril of their daily state, is above all evinced in this—that every form of exhortation or appeal is weak to break the lethargy; yet not at all from any unbelief of the facts or doctrines stated, but from an obstinate refusal or inability to imagine that they can have the remotest reference to the hearer himself. Archer Butler.

The disease that is inveterate is generally thought incurable. Those that have been long accustomed to sin have shaken off the restraints of fear and shame; their consciences are scared, the habits of sin are confirmed, it pleads prescription, and it is just with God to give those up to their own hearts’ lusts that have long refused to give up themselves to His grace. Sin is the blackness of the soul, the deformity of it; it is its spot, the discoloring of it; it is natural to us, we were shapen in it, so that we cannot get clear of it by any power of our own; but there is an almighty grace that is able to change the Ethiopian’s skin, and that grace shall not be wanting to those that in a sense of their need of it seek it earnestly, and improve it faithfully. H.

Observe that the impossibility referred to is a natural one. It is not said that under no circumstances whatever can a man accustomed to do evil be enabled to do good. The thing affirmed is that the power of habit and custom is so strong that he cannot turn himself. If we are inclined to doubt this, and indulge in that glorification of human nature which is at once so easy and so perilous, we have only to think of the illustrations here employed. It is vain to discuss with a man who is determined to magnify the power of the natural man toward that which is right and good. The better plan is to assure one’s own heart of the truth which God would make plain by these illustrations of His own giving. If any one asserted that an Ethiopian could change his skin or a leopard his spots, he would be reckoned a fool past arguing with. But there are multitudes who think it is very good advice to tell the poor slave of worldliness and passion to be a man and exert the strength of his will and turn away from evil. Now, what God says here by His prophet is that every such attempt must end in disappointment. No doubt there are certain times and stages in life when it is hard to accept such a view. It is a humbling and limiting view, one which exhibits in such an uncompromising way our weakness. But the sooner we come to take such a view—to take it practically and not in a mere speculative manner—to feel that the way of self-recovery and self-perfecting is closed against us, the better it will be for us.

The consequent need of a gracious intervention. This is not stated here, but we know that it is meant to be remembered. In all such emphatic assertions of human inability there lies the suggestion that we may look confidently and ought to look promptly for abundance of Divine help. God puts His hand on our mouths to stop all proud words, but at the same time He would lead us to lay hold of His promises and be filled with His strength. A clear vision of our own inability means a clear vision of the need of Divine intervention, and a clear vision of the need of Divine intervention may be expected to prepare for an equally clear vision of the reality of that intervention. That which measures the impossibilities in the corrupted natural man helps to measure the reasonable purposes and expectations of the man who is renewed by the Spirit of God. Y.

Self-reformation is impossible. Sin is not a mere defilement to be washed off. It is ingrained. It is in the blood, in the life, in the nature. Action is according to character. If the character is corrupt, so must be the action. It is true we are free to do as we will, but so long as our nature is corrupt we shall will to do evil, because the will is part of the nature. But apart from the vexed question of the freedom of the will, every man is conscious of the difficulty of overcoming opposing habits, even when his will is roused against them. When he would do good evil is present with him, and this evil is so strong that it can only be regarded as a law of (corrupted) nature (Rom. 7: 21-23). Adeney.

Sin not only corrupts the springs of a man’s moral life, but paralyzes all his nobler powers, robs him of the ability to act out the better inintents of his nature. The voice of natural conscience may not be wholly silenced, the natural heart may not be utterly destitute of good impulses; but there is no redeeming power in these. As well expect the darkness to give birth to light, and life to spring spontaneously out of death, as suppose that a sin-loving, sin-hardened man will of himself forsake his evil ways. He will never be able by his own hand “to pluck the vicious quitch of blood and custom wholly out of him.” The complete moral helplessness of humanity was made abundantly evident before the full revelation of Gospel grace. It was when we were “without strength” that Christ “died for the ungodly.”

The wondrous efficacy of the regenerating power of God. The most defiled and degraded nature may be transformed by the touch of Him who made it. Even the skin of the Ethiopian and the leopard’s spots must yield to the sovereignty of the Divine energy. Deep-rooted and habitual as the evil in a man’s heart and life may be, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth him from it, and when the Spirit of Christ moulds the substance of his being he becomes “a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5: 17). W.—A true sorrow for sin may be induced in answer to prayer, by the study of Scripture, and the contemplation of Christ; but it is always the work of the Holy Spirit. When that grace, however, has once been attained, it is open to the sinner to reverse the process by which he has been enslaved. After conversion evil habit will assert itself, and can only be met by constant dependence upon Divine grace and constant effort after holiness. The good habit formed by repeated and regular actions according to the law of God is the best antidote to the evil one. M.

26,27. These figures have occurred already (2: 23, 24 and 3: 2). They are fearfully significant of the shamelessness of her idolatries and the depth of moral corruption which they involved. Oh, if Jerusalem would only consent to be made clean! After how long shall it be? The prophet longs for the distant day when the processes of Divine judgment shall have taken effect, and the nation shall be once more washed clean of this great pollution, incurred by her worship of idol gods. H. C.