Jeremiah 15
ButlerGod as far away. Let me rather think of Him as still among us, for His name is called upon this people; and let me pray that He will never leave us. Such is his prayer. H. C.
The sinful nation confesses that in itself there is no hope, but as that conviction is arrived at, another asserts itself—viz., that God is the Hope of Israel, and that in His name or character there is the promise and potency of restoration. It is in spiritual transitions like these that the soul is lost and found again. Temptation is anticipated and overcome, sin is cast away and God is throned in the heart. It is better to make such honest discovery of ourselves to God, even in our weakness and lack of faith, than that we should carry these into the conduct of life. It is in these transitions of despair and hope reaching to and resting in restored faith and settled purpose of righteousness, that the overcoming of the world is already accomplished. M.
10-16. The dispute between God and His prophet, in this chapter, seems to be like that between the owner and the dresser of the vineyard concerning the barren fig-tree (Luke 13: 7). The justice of the owner condemns it to be cut down, the clemency of the dresser intercedes for a reprieve; Jeremiah had been earnest with God, in prayer, to return in mercy to this people. H.
10-12. The Lord replies that the people have wholly given up their heart to sin, have loved to wander from Him; that the time of retribution has now come, and He must punish. Therefore He cannot hear the prophet’s prayer, and requests Him to desist. Indeed, if the people themselves were now to pray even with fasting and sacrifice, the Lord could not hear their cry or accept their offerings.
14-16. The Lord can take no responsibility for their lies. But those very prophets shall be terribly destroyed by the very sword and famine which they declared should not come upon the land. And the people whom they had deceived could not be held innocent. They should have known better. They too must be cast out to lie unburied; for God will pour back upon them the fruit of their own great wickedness. H. C.
13-16. Attempts are constantly made to evolve religious truth out of the inner consciousness of the thinker. No idle dreams are more delusive, since men have not the materials out of which to build a theology of their own; they have not the faculties capable of using those materials—sin perverts the spiritual vision, prejudice and self-interest distort views of truth. False teaching in religion will be punished by fatal results. It ought to be clear to everybody that the first question concerning any teaching is whether it is true. Yet this question is often ignored. The prophet is eloquent; the doctrine is pleasing; the prediction is inviting. But what of all that if it is false? Then the false prophet will suffer by the fulfilment in himself of the prophecy he denied, and the people by the coming of the evil day they were too ready to hear discredited. P. C.
The great peril of the day is compromise, amalgamation and suppression of truth by mutual consent. Our most dangerous foes are not the decorative and monastic ritualist, nor the loud-barking atheist or sceptic; but the plausible, courteous, affiliating, “dearly-beloved brethren,” who would knit all the so-called churches in one patchwork quilt, which might cover them in a soft and downy bed of spiritual sleep, leaving them to dream of security and charity, while the noxious errors which prevail among them are eating out the vitals of true godliness, spiritual experience and sound doctrine. Dean of Carlisle.
17-22. It is plain by the prayers we find in these verses that the prophet did not understand it (verse 11) as a prohibition, but only as a discouragement, like that (1 John 5: 16), “I do not say he shall pray for that.” H.—The next chapter will show us that the Lord was firmly fixed in His purpose to hear no prayer for His sinning people. Yet it does not appear that He frowned on His weeping prophet for this imploring supplication in their behalf. Jeremiah did not take issue with God against His justice, but he did exceedingly desire of the Lord pardoning mercy for the guilty people. The Lord had therefore only to assure him that his request could not be granted.
Chap. 15. The subject continues from the previous chapter, the Lord reaffirming His purpose not to hear prayer for the people, but to go on to execute His threatening of sore judgments. Hence, we have the severity and certainty of these judgments discussed (verses 1-9); then mostly the mental trials, fears, prayers and anguish of the prophet, with the Lord’s reply to him in verses 10-21. H. C.
To the supplication at the close of the preceding chapter God replies by declaring that not even the intercession of His favored servants, Moses and Samuel, should divert Him from executing His purpose of vengeance against Judah, which is denounced in terms of great severity (verses 1-9). At verse 10 Jeremiah breaks out into a passionate exclamation, on account of the odium and persecution that was brought upon him. God reproves him for speaking slightly of the Divine aid, the benefit of which he had already experienced. The prophet deprecates the ill effects of God’s displeasure, representing the cheerful readiness with which he had obeyed the Divine call, and the continual uneasiness he had felt in contemplating the melancholy subject of his commission (verses 15-18). Assurances of protection and security are renewed to him, on condition of obedience and fidelity on his part (verse 19 to the end). Blayney.
1. Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me.** Moses obtained pardon for the people after their sin of making the golden calf (Ex. 32 : 34), and again, after their despising the promised land (Num. 14 : 20) ; Samuel’s intercession prevailed for their deliverance out of the hands of the Philistines (1 Sam. 7 : 9) ; and these two persons are mentioned together, as remarkably prevalent by their prayers (Ps. 99 : 6, 8). But here God saith, that if these very persons were alive, and in that near attendance to Him which they formerly enjoyed (for that is the import of the phrase “to stand before Him”—see verse 19 ; 18 : 20), yet even their prayers should not avert His judgments from His people. (Cf. Ezek. 14 : 14.) W. Lowth.
Imploring, fervent and, in the main, appropriate, as the prophet’s intercessions for his people were, the Lord having fully purposed to punish, He could not hear prayer for the reversal of that purpose. He must, therefore, give His servant to understand that this point is settled irreversibly. Hence He says, “Even if Moses and Samuel were here pleading before Me, My mind could not incline to mercy for this people. Cast them out of My sight”—as if the people themselves stood or were represented before Him. “Let them go” from My presence and favor. The reader who is familiar with the Scripture history of Moses and of Samuel will readily see why they are named in this connection as striking examples of prevailing, intercessory prayer. H. C.—Moses and Samuel were two as great favorites of Heaven as ever were the blessings of this earth, and were particularly famed for the success of their mediation between God and His offending people ; many a time they had been destroyed if Moses had not stood before Him in the breach ; and to Samuel’s prayers they owed their lives (1 Sam. 12 : 19) ; yet even their intercessions should not prevail. H.
The fact that such intercession is declared in this case to be vain implies that, under other conditions, it might be effectual. Moses and Samuel often stood before the Lord as mediators on behalf of the people whom they represented. Their power with God lay in the elevation of their character and the intimacy of their fellowship with Him. Every age has borne witness to the reality and efficacy of this power. “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” on behalf of his fellow-men. Who can tell how much it is owing to such intercession that a guilty world has been saved from hopeless abandonment ?
There are times when no human intervention is of any avail. Even the pleading of Moses and Samuel could not have averted the threatened judgments. “My mind could not be toward this people.” Why ? Simply because of the obstinacy of their unbelief and irreligion. It is not that God is not merciful and gracious and ready to forgive, or that the pleadings of good and holy men have no power with Him. It is that the inveterate obduracy of men nullifies all the persuasive influence alike of Divine and human love. God’s mind cannot be toward those who with obstinate impenitence refuse His grace. There is a limit beyond which even Divine patience cannot go. W.
4. I will cause them to be tossed to and fro among all the kingdoms of the earth.** Never was there a prophecy more literally fulfilled ; and it is still a standing monument of Divine truth. The Jews are scattered through every nation, and yet are not a nation ; nor do they form even a colony on any part of the face of the earth. A. C.
“For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth” (Amos 9 : 9). These are merely examples of many predictions which might be quoted ; they have the clearness of history, and they have now the emphasis of a fulfilment which is mysterious in its antecedent process, but clear as noonday in its results. By the laws of amalgamation or extinction, we cannot account for the changes which appear in the smaller as well as vaster nations of the world ; we can trace the causes by which Hungary and Poland have been prostrated, and by which Russia is still rising and extending in her colossal strength ; we can see in the ruin of France, in the triumph of Prussia and the gradual collapse of the Turkish Empire various forces at work which have often reappeared in history ; we can trace in the slow amalgamation of races in America and in the rapid disappearance of Indian tribes laws definite almost as those which regulate the planetary system; we have a sound philosophy of history, whose great aim is not the mere aggregate of many facts, but the exposition of their causes, and we are satisfied with the conclusions which have been reached; but in the Israelites we have a people which baffle historical adjustment, and whose characteristics are not reducible within any commonly recognized classification. They remain a marvellous isolation. In Britain, the distinctions of Norman and Celt and Saxon are fast disappearing; but the Jews are everywhere “scattered,” and yet everywhere retain not only their physical features, but their intellectual, moral and religious conformation. Apart from the Bible, unaided reason has failed to solve the problem of a people scattered and down-trodden by the nations for nearly two thousand years, yet universally preserved.
What a terrible past has been theirs! What a mysterious present! Adrian made it death to the Jew to set his foot amid the ruins of Jerusalem; Justinian abolished the synagogues; Mahomet sought the destruction of every Jew; the Church of Rome has done her best for their extirpation, and has failed. “The Jews” were everywhere the objects of popular insult, of almost intolerable oppression, and frequently of a general massacre. No mode of cruelty was deemed unjustifiable. Again and again were they banished from France; they were driven from Spain; England, during the Crusades, gathered her forces to destroy them; the barons, to win popular favor during their struggle with Henry III., slaughtered seven hundred of them, and plundered their houses; Edward I. seized all their property, and drove them in misery from the kingdom, and four hundred dreary years elapsed ere they ventured to return. There is no history which is not darkened by their wrongs, and there is none unstained by their blood. The Jew is, at this moment, a wanderer in every land, with a home in none. In no country is he unknown, from Norway to Japan, from Spain to Southern Africa; and no social grade in the East or the West is without his presence. Yet from obscurity and apparent helplessness, in our great cities they rise through every social stage, until they sit honored amid the proudest. In London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin they are the money-holders of Europe, deciding the questions of peace and war, and giving impulse or restraint to the commerce of the world. Although inwrought with the whole fabric of society, they are yet not of it; they are truly a “peculiar people,” resisting almost all those social, intellectual and moral agencies by which communities are changed. W. Fraser.
5. The object here is not to reflect upon the prophet for his bitter tears over the fall of his country, but rather to represent her guilt as so great that even Gentile nations and foreign cities would feel that she had richly deserved to bear her doom uncared for and unpitied.
6. Often and most kindly had the Lord called the people to Himself; but they had only gone backward from Him the more. He had repeatedly threatened, and then relaxed His purpose to punish; waited, borne and sometimes forgiven; but now He is weary of repenting in this sense, and is fully purposed not to yield to any plea in their behalf, but to go on forthwith to execute His long-threatened judgments. Years had passed since Manasseh’s long reign closed and he went to his grave. One more vigorous effort had been made under Josiah, sustained by such men as Habakkuk, Zephaniah and Jeremiah, to reclaim and save the nation. It had promised fairly for a season, but after Josiah’s death the people relapsed with terrific rapidity. They seemed to sink suddenly to a horrible depth of depravity, for only a three months’ reign intervened under Jehoahaz before Jehoiakim mounted the throne, and in his fourth year the first great deportation of captives took place. A considerable number of Jeremiah’s messages from the Lord bear date within this first four years of Jehoiakim, all showing that the state of morals was appalling, and that the spirit of idolatry was deep and apparently almost universal. H. C.
God may be weary of repenting. We may cease to repent of our sin; then God will cease to repent of His wrath. We may sin so deeply and so persistently that He may no longer find it possible to withhold His threatened punishment. God is long-suffering; He waits for the return of His children. Though the recompense of evil-doing is due, it is deferred; God spares the guilty for the sake of the intercession of the righteous. But this cannot be forever. We may sin away the grace of God. Though God’s mercy endureth forever the enjoyment of it by the impenitent cannot be perpetual. Eternal mercy may have to give place to eternal justice. Adeney.
10-14. Jeremiah is now retired into his closet; what passed between him and his God there we have an account of in these and the following verses, which he published afterward, to affect the people with the weight and importance of his messages to them. H.
10. The connecting link of suggestive thought between the doom of his people—which is the prophet’s theme in verses 1-9—and his own personal case, which is mostly the subject onward to the close of the chapter, seems to lie in the prominence given to the mothers of Jerusalem in the former portion, suggesting to the prophet the case of his own mother and of himself. The heart of the prophet has not come up to view since we closed chap. 14 till now. We may recollect that we left him there imploring mercy for his people, his very soul gushing forth in tenderest pity over their calamity. In this chapter the Lord absolutely shuts off his prayer, and then proceeds to give a very touching picture of the miseries that are to fall on young and old, on fathers and especially mothers in the general slaughter. Is it strange that the prophet’s mind should revert to himself and to his own lot, as one of almost insupportable trial and anguish? If his prayer might avail to save his people, he could bear any amount of persecution, hate, obloquy and peril of life. But to be shut off from prayer on the side toward God, and from all sympathy on the side toward men; to receive no messages from the Lord but those of doom and vengeance, and no response from the people but curses; to be thrown into some doubt whether his overflowing sympathies and his general work as a prophet were accepted before God, and to have such terrible assurance that it was in no sense well received by his fellow-countrymen—all these circumstances constitute a crucible of sevenfold heat to try his temper and to torture his soul. Let us aim to appreciate his circumstances as we proceed to note his words and study his spirit. His expressions here are by no means so extreme as those of Job (chap. 3) in that hour when, faltering under his almost crushing burden of woe, he cursed his birthday and all its surroundings, because they let him live through that birth-scene in which he so wished that he had died. Jeremiah’s words legitimately mean only this: Alas for me that I was born to be a man of strife and conflict to the whole earth! to live only to be a mark to be shot at; a man to be hated and cursed on every side! What have I done that should doom me to such odium? “I have neither lent to others on usury, nor have they so lent to me, yet they all curse me.” H. C.
The proper way of regarding the words is to take them as vividly indicating a position which no words could sufficiently describe. Jeremiah sometimes felt himself so hated and so isolated that there seemed but one way of accounting for his experience, and that was that he had been born to it. We know, indeed, that the truth was far otherwise. (See chap. 1:5.) There we see how Jehovah Himself reckoned Jeremiah to have come into this earthly existence not for suffering, but for a career of noble and useful action, which, rightly considered, was a high privilege. But a man who is constantly suffering from the sin of his fellow-men in all its shapes and all its degrees cannot be always looking at the bright side and speaking in harmony with such a view. Y.
12-14. It will be all in vain for the Jews, weak as they are when their God is against them, to break the power of their Chaldean invaders from the north. The double allusion to the north is forcible, the north being at once the quarter whence the hardest iron came, and the quarter whence the invincible Chaldeans came. The previous verse had intimated a time of sore calamity upon the Jews; this intimates the quarter whence it would come and its resistless power.
15. This language is abrupt and broken, in the tone of strong feeling. The prophet’s natural love of life and indignation against his persecutors demand and obtain utterance. The middle clause, “Take me not away in Thy long suffering,” seems to mean, Let not Thy long-suffering toward my enemies prove my ruin. Do not bear with them till they have taken my life. H. C.
O Lord, Thou knowest. It is a matter of comfort to us that whatever ails us we have a God to go to, before whom we may spread our case and to whose omniscience we may appeal, as the prophet here, “O Lord, Thou knowest; Thou knowest my sincerity, which men are resolved they will not acknowledge; Thou knowest my distress, which men disdain to take notice of.” H.
16. He means to say that as soon as he heard the words of the Lord given him to be published, he devoured them greedily—took them to his mind and heart as a hungry man seizes and eats food. This same figure reappears in Ezek. 2:8; 3:1, and in Rev. 10:9, 10. The prophet loved the words of God, and performed his prophetic work with a dutiful and warmly pious heart. Recognizing himself as bearing the name of the Lord and as devoted to his work, he made it his business and gave his whole heart to it. This is truly a noble record if true, and his history gives rich evidence of its truth. H. C.
There is intimated here: 1. The vital relation truth bears to the divinely enlightened soul. “I did eat it.” No physical image could be more suggestive of the intimacy of this spiritual relationship. It indicates: The soul’s preparation to welcome the truth. There is a divinely awakened appetite. The active participation of the powers of the soul in the process. It is more than a mere passive reception. The assimilation of the truth into the very being of the man. As food is transformed into the living fibre of the body, so that truth becomes a part of the very substance of his spiritual nature, the stay of his strength, the inspiration of his life. The word is translated into the form of holy character and godlike deed. 2. The gladdening effect of discovered truth. “Thy Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.” There can be no purer, nobler joy than that which springs from conscious communion with the mind of God. His Word admits us to the realities of a world undarkened by the shadows and undisturbed by the storms that trouble this. P. C.
They became to him the joy and rejoicing of his inward life. All words of God, apprehended in their real meaning, give strength, peace, satisfaction, harmony in the nobler parts of human nature. It was because these words were readily accepted and fully received that they became a joy and rejoicing to the heart, and then in the strength, fortitude, zeal, thus communicated, the prophet went forth to his arduous work. Here surely is the secret of his steadfastness. God had put His words in His servant’s mouth (chap. 1:9); but that was all He could do. It was for the prophet himself so to treat the words that he should give them with all the added force of his own sanctified personality. Y.
The words of God are not so hidden that they cannot be discovered by the earnest and prayerful seeker after truth. He that seeks shall find (Matt. 7:8). Many honest, earnest men pass through a season of doubt, but few such remain hopeless sceptics all their lives. Of those who never find the light probably some are suffering from some moral or intellectual perversity which distorts their vision, and others are not content to trust to the measure of light that has been given to them, and remain restless and questioning because they desire satisfaction in a direction wherein it cannot yet be afforded. But so long as all such men do not convert doubt into settled unbelief, and are not satisfied with doubt, we may be assured that ultimately the Father of lights will dispel the darkness that now troubles their souls.
The words of God are food for the soul. Christ, the “Word made flesh,” is the “Bread of life.” Truth is intended to feed our starving souls. The object of revelation is practical. The result of rightly using revelation is seen in an increase of spiritual vitality, in refreshment, heightened energy and growth in the inner life. If the words of God have not attained this end, they have failed of their object. They are food because they are not empty breath, but the vehicles of vital truths—of spirit and life (John 6:63). God is in His own words. They are inspired words. With the spoken words we receive the life-giving Spirit.
The words of God must be eaten to profit us. It is not enough that they are spoken, heard, understood, believed, remembered, admired; they must be eaten. We must apply them to ourselves. The starving man gains nothing by looking at food through a shop-window. The external, intellectual study of truth is profitless to the soul. We must hear the voice of God speaking directly to us and in regard to our immediate conduct. We must meditate over the words of God. Truth must be analyzed, ideas separated and compared, “inwardly digested,” hidden in the soul and quietly thought over. Our common habit is to treat it too superficially and hastily. We must abstract the vital ideas from the dry husk of words. Words are not profitable so long as they are regarded from the outside as mere language. We must break the shell and get at the kernel, casting aside the flesh that profiteth nothing and assimilating the spirit that quickeneth.
The words of God bring joy when they are found and eaten. To some they appear to be dull sayings, to some stern utterances of law, to some harsh messages of judgment. This is because they are not properly applied. They must first be truly found and eaten—applied, meditated on, spiritually assimilated. Then they lead to joy, for: 1. All truth is essentially noble, beautiful and glorious. 2. Even the darker truth is wholesome as a warning, like nauseous medicine that cures pain and restores the serenity of health. 3. The highest truth is a revelation of the love of God—a Gospel of good-will to men. Adeney.
Sanctification is the object of the entire volume. He who reads the Bible without experiencing in his heart, or evincing in his life, any sanctifying influence; he whose affections it never stirs, whose understanding it never enlightens, whose imagination it never exalts, whose will it never directs, whose conscience it never reaches, may be quite sure that, from whatever cause, he does not read aright. E. M. G.—The life is leavened by that which supports and nourishes it. The indwelling Word is a consecrating influence and withdraws men from the pursuits and fellowship of the world. In this way the saint becomes identified with his Lord; a child of grace; a worker in the same great cause; a subject of like opposition, and an heir of the same kingdom. By producing the character of holiness they inscribe the Divine Name upon the heart, and link the life and destiny of the saint with the cause of God. M.
It is a perfectly legitimate position to say, We hold a ground of certitude, from which none of this strife of tongues is able to dislodge us. We have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is the Christ. The Scriptures which we have received, not without knowledge of the grounds on which controversialists defend them, have proved themselves to us by their own witness. The light is its own proof. We have the experience of Christ and His law. He has saved our souls; He has changed our lives. We know whom we have believed; and we are neither irrational nor obstinate when we avow that we will not pretend to suspend these convictions on the issue of any debate. All the opposition will be broken into spray against that rock bulwark: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” A. M.
17. The Lord had given him such views of the case as between Himself and this wicked people, that his heart, like God’s, was burning with indignation against their sin. It seemed to him more than he could bear to think of such an abuse of the great and blessed God, and of such outrageous rebellion against Him. Why should not his soul be filled and fired with holy indignation?
18. This tone of complaint is strong—must we not say too strong, especially the implication in the last clause that God had not been altogether truthful and reliable. Was not this the prophet’s human infirmity—nature in the ascendant over grace? It slightly softens the severity of the language to translate as we may, not “as a failing brook, even as waters that fail.”
19. The passage is exceedingly rich in its instruction to ministers of the Gospel. How should they stand by and with the Lord their
God in unfaltering allegiance, with the firmest adherence to His truth and obedience to His behests! How should they be careful to expel all that is vile from their temper and character, and cultivate all the precious qualities that grace has implanted and would fain develop into vigorous and all-pervading vitality! H. C.—Faithful ministers are God’s mouth to us; they are so to look upon themselves, and to speak God’s mind, and as becomes the oracles of God; and we are so to look upon them, and to hear God speaking to us by them. Observe, if thou keep close to thine instructions, thou shalt be as My mouth, not otherwise; so far and no further God will stand by ministers, as they go by the written word, “Thou shalt be as My mouth, what thou sayest shall be made good, as if I Myself had said it.” H.
It is by the gracious words of Divine mercy that the hearts of men are to be subdued; these must always be the prime means of affecting and vanquishing the impenitent. The human mind is framed to be influenced far more by hope and tenderness than by terror and rebuke. This great truth may be assumed as one that is fully established and universally confessed. But the Christian ministry includes also an office of commination; and if the messengers of Heaven, when they go forth among outcasts and strangers, who, in utter ignorance of God, have gone far astray from virtue, are to speak much more of mercy than of wrath; it is also true that, when they stand up among those who, being well informed in matters of religion, use the grace of the Gospel to palliate their vices, it is especially the message of wrath, which they are called upon to proclaim. The abusers of the Gospel are not to be treated as men theologically wrong; but in the ostensible and common character of evil doers and open contemners of the awful authority of Heaven. I. Taylor.
20,21. The Lord could say to him as to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” So here in Old Testament phrase indeed, but in the very sense of our blessed Lord to Paul, Jehovah promises to make His prophet “a fortified brazen wall” which they might assail but could not overthrow, nor even breach. (See 1:18, 19, where the same promise was given him in the outset of his prophetic life.) Will it not always be true that the Lord stands by those who stand by Him; will make their strength as their day, and apportion grace to the measure of human infirmity and weakness? Only let His servants put their trust in Him, so shall their souls never be put to shame. H. C.