Jeremiah 6
Butler22. This representation of Jehovah as terrible in the greatness of His power is surpassingly grand. When the waters of the vast deep are driven fiercely by the tempest, they toss wildly about the largest ships ever built by man, and even lift and bear away rocks vast and ponderous; yet, when they reach that low line of sand-beach where God has set their limit, they seem marvellously shorn of their power. The tiny sands build up the mighty breakwater, because God sets them there to mark the bounds beyond which the furious waves may not pass. And shall not that God be feared who is so great, and who is clothed with power so transcendently sublime? Shall not mortal man tremble before Him? H. C.
Just so completely under God’s control, at His bidding and for the accomplishment of His purposes, are all events set in motion in our world, all arrangements ordered, all tides of circumstance and influence. It is determined just how high they shall rise, just what provinces they shall cover, just what lines they shall reach, beyond what measurement they shall not go, and within what limits they shall retire. Every movement among the nations, every revolution in the empires of the world, every change in the phases of human destiny, all plans and all accomplishments are exactly limited of God. All things are in His hands, and He securely keeps the soul of every creature that trusts in His mercy. Surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh unto him. They may rise, and rage, and threaten to overflow his habitation and carry him away; but in God he is safe; nothing hurtful can reach him. Cheever.
31. Throughout this corrupt age of the nation, there were numerous false prophets, pretending to have messages from God, but of all living men most wicked and most palpably led by Satan. The priests themselves, horribly corrupt, made common cause with them, and availed themselves of their aid to augment their own influence. The people enjoyed their delusive promises of peace and prosperity. Hence, the Lord fitly asks, What will they all do in the latter end, the final issue of such a course of horrible wickedness?
Chap. 6. The same general strain continues through this chapter. Judging from its scope, we must assign it to the same date as the two next preceding. It paints the sins of the people; rebukes their hypocrisy; and repeats the fearful threatenings of the Chaldean invasion. H. C.
1. Jerusalem was in the lot of the tribe of Benjamin (Josh. 18:28), on which account the inhabitants are addressed by the name of “the children of Benjamin,” and are directed to leave the city, which God was about to destroy, and to take refuge in the mountains. Tekoa, according to Jerome, was a little town about twelve miles from Jerusalem, and Beth-hacerem (probably so called from the vineyards round about it) another little town on the same side, but nearer Jerusalem; and both of them in the mountainous parts of Judah, south of the capital.
4,5. The alacrity and eagerness with which the Chaldeans undertake and execute the commission with which they were charged, is described in this and the following verse in a beautiful vein of poetry. Though it was late in the day before they received their orders, they are for beginning their march immediately; and though it was night before they got to the place, they are unwilling to put off the assault till morning. Blayney.
6,7. The ancient mode of besieging walled cities was by raising a high mount outside, around the city, as high or even higher than the city walls. In this work, as well as in their machinery, trees and timber would be used. This visitation of judgment on the city was due her for her oppression of her poor and of her servants. (See chap. 34:8-22.) Oppression had become her ruling passion. Her wickedness poured forth its developments and manifestations as a fountain does its waters. H. C.
8. Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem. Take warning by the many threatenings and judgments I have denounced against thee; amend thy ways and doings, lest if thou persist in thy wickedness my mind and affection be utterly alienated from thee (see Ezek. 23:17, 18; Hos. 9:12), and I give thee up to ruin and desolation. This threatening God fulfilled afterward when He suffered the city and nation to be utterly ruined and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar; but it still received a further completion in that final desolation brought upon them by the Romans, under Titus and Vespasian. W. Lowth.
10,11. The prophet sees and feels the solemn urgency of the case, and therefore personally longs to have his messages reach the hearts of the people and bring them to repentance. But he meets only resistance, hard hearts scorning his words and hating his Divine Master. Where can he find a man to hear? “To whom shall I speak and bear this testimony? Who will hear it?” An “uncircumcised ear” opens not itself to God and has never been consecrated to Him—circumcision being the ancient rite of consecration. They cannot hear, because they do not love and choose to hear. They intensely hate and loathe the word of God.
13. Covetousness (the passion for unrighteous gain is the sense of the original) was one of the crying and damning sins of the people. Prophet and priest alike were false, pretending to speak for God, but really speaking only for the “father of lies.” That the fearful degeneracy of the people was largely due to the influence of false prophets and corrupt priests is repeatedly intimated in the records of those times. But for their influence, the true prophets would very probably have been heard to purpose, and the people have been saved. H. C.
Of covetousness, cunning is the chosen counsellor and guide. It finds its way, as by instinct, through all the intricacies of the great labyrinth of fraud. It parts with no company and refuses no aid through fear of contamination. Blood is not too sacred for it to buy, nor religion too Divine for it to sell. From the first step in fraud to the dreadful consummation of apostasy or murder, covetousness is familiar with every step of the long, laborious and fearful path. Could we only see it embodied, what a monster should we behold! Its eyes have no tears. With more than the fifty hands of the fabled giant, it grasps at everything around. In its march through the world it has been accompanied by artifice and fraud, rapine and injustice, cruelty and murder; while behind it have dragged heavily its swarm of victims—humanity bleeding, justice in chains, and religion expiring under its heavy burdens; orphans and slaves and oppressed hirelings, a wailing multitude, reaching to the skirts of the horizon; and thus dividing the earth between them (for how small the number of those who were not to be found either triumphing in its van or suffering in its train), it has, more than any other conqueror, realized the ambition of gaining the whole world, of establishing a universal empire. J. Harris.
An absorbing master passion, like covetousness or ambition, when it has grown so great as to domineer over the enslaved soul, although it may exclude some other inconsistent passion,
does not reign alone, but has around and behind it a gloomy train of satellites, which are little tyrants in turn. Covetousness—let it sway the soul, and suspicion, fraud, falsehood, discontent, envy, malice, will get as firm a foothold as the master demon himself, and no power of his can afterward drive them from his company. The miser cannot be also a prodigal, but he must have spirits of hate and death in his soul. So ambition may exclude covetousness from the throne, but it has another train of its own familiars, as greedy, if not as base as those of covetousness. T. D. W.
It never strikes men of this sort that there is a more excellent way to satisfy and exhilarate the heart. God’s eye is upon this universal desire for large possessions, and He can make a Divine and truly wise use of the desire. He turns our thoughts to the heavenly, the unseen, the eternal. Man does well in having the largest views as to possessions; he does well in looking to an immense increase of goods. It is a grand thing when he can pull down his barns and build greater, if it is only spiritual wealth that he is heaping up. In this gathering of goods there is no spoiling of the brethren, leaving them hungry, naked and unsheltered. The spiritual wealth of the godly man makes poverty to none. Nay, rather—beautiful contrast!—the richer he becomes, the richer he makes all with whom he comes in living contact. Y.
14. This case should be an admonition against this form of sin in all ages and under all circumstances. When God is using His agencies of discipline and affliction for good moral ends, let us take care lest we counteract His efforts! It is fearful at such a time to whisper comfort to smitten hearts by saying, “For no sin of yours;” “No hand of God in this;” “Bear up under your inevitable fate, and make as little of it as possible.” It were infinitely better to say nothing than to speak at random, or to speak without noticing or understanding what God aims to accomplish. H. C.
15. He who, after the commission of great sins, can look God, his conscience and the world in the face without blushing, gives a sad demonstration that he is too far gone in the ways of sin and death to be reclaimed to God or recovered to himself without a miracle. For having lost not only the substance of virtue, but the very color of it too (as the philosopher called blushing), and the principles of morality having, upon the same account, lost all hold of him, he now seems to claim a place in the highest rank of sinners; and from the condition of the actually disobedient and (as yet) impenitent, to have passed into the unspeakably worse estate of the desperate and incurable. For though Almighty God is very free and forward in the addresses of His grace to the souls of men, yet still there must be something in them for grace to work upon—to wit, something of natural spiritual sense and tenderness; which, if once extinct and gone (as they may be, and God knows too often are), the Spirit of God will find nothing in such a soul to receive His impressions. South.
The sin against the Holy Ghost is set forth here. For the sin is no one definite act, but a condition of mind which renders repentance hopeless and persistence in sin certain (cf. Revised Version, Mark 3:29, where the true reading is as there given, “is guilty of an eternal sin”). But is not this the condition described in the text, described vividly, accurately? They had hardened themselves till repentance, yea, even shame, on account of “abomination” was utterly absent from them. “‘They were not at all ashamed,’ no tinge of it, not the least ‘blush’ was visible. Was it not certain that such people who would go on, as they did, in sin, were in danger of eternal sin?” Hence they had never forgiveness, and the prophet was forbidden (see chap. 7:16) even to pray for them. P. C.
Custom in sinning never fails in the issue to take away the sense and shame of sin. And the shameless person cannot but add iniquity to iniquity, until his recovery becomes utterly impossible. For where there is no place for shame, there can be none for repentance. Shamelessness naturally and necessarily seals a man up under impenitence, and impenitence seals him up to destruction. South.
16,17. The “old paths” were the ways of their early fathers, who walked humbly with God, and adhered zealously to His worship as opposed to the worship of idols. So walking, they would find rest and peace. This pending invasion need not alarm them. They would also have peace of soul, a consciousness of right-doing, and a sense of God’s favor. But they said, “No, we will not walk in those ways.” The “watchmen,” set of God over the people, were the true prophets, their spiritual shepherds. The same figure is drawn out more fully, Ezek. 3:17 and 33:7. H. C.
16. The old path which men with the word of God in their hands and His grace in their hearts took to serve Him in this world, and to dwell with Him in heaven in the next, is the right one. By abiding in their old path, we are most likely to abide in the true faith. Such is the very counsel which God expresses by the prophet in a figure drawn from pastoral life, and intelligible to all who are in any measure familiar with the scenery of our glens and the habits of the sheep. Wherever they have to skirt a precipice, or wind through the black morass, they march in single file, and stick to the old, beaten path, trodden down and marked even on scattered stones and outlying rock by the feet of generations that have gone before; and referring to this, God addresses His people thus—“Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” And so shall we, in the old faith of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” safely and sweetly sheltered from every storm in the clefts of that Rock of Ages. Guthrie.
The case assumed is that of a traveller, who, on his journey, finds himself at the opening of many ways, and knows not with any assurance which of them leads to his resting-place, or which of them will bring him thither by the most direct and the safest road. The place which he seeks is a most ancient city, the way to which men have traversed in all ages. That fresh foot-path through the flowery meadows, that bridle-path round by the marshes, this fresh cutting through the hills—these will not do for him; he must ask for the old path. But there may be more old paths than one. The broad and pleasant way that leadeth to destruction is as old as and far better frequented than the straight road that leadeth unto life. It is, therefore, necessary to seek not only “the old path,” but “the good way.” Although every old way may not be good, the good way is certainly old; if, therefore, the traveller finds and follows the way that is both old and good, he is safe—he shall without fail reach his home at last, and “find rest to his soul.” As this last expression occurs only in one other place, the mind is carried forward to our Saviour’s invitation: “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, . . . and ye shall find rest to your souls.” And to come is not to come to Him, but by Him; for again He says, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.”
There was never yet found, and never will be found, any way of rest or safety for the soul, but by Him. And this is the old way. The apostle, indeed, calls it “a new and living way” (Heb. 10:20), as having then received new and fuller illustration; yet it is a way as old as the fall, as old as the creation; and indeed, in the purpose and foreknowledge of God, older than the creation. It was not then, when the apostle wrote, a way newly opened, for it existed before all time; nor was it then newly revealed, for it had been made known to man so soon as he had fallen; nor was it then newly made use of, for all the Old Testament saints were saved by the same grace of Christ, and justified by His righteousness, and their sins pardoned through His blood, and expiated by His sacrifice, the same as those who have lived under the New Testament. In those latter days this ancient path had been more clearly shown and more fully opened up—just as now many an old road is opened up to the sun and air by the removal of the dense foliage that grew on either side and met overhead, admitting only here and there some stray beams of the sun, and allowing only a few glimpses of the clear blue sky. In all time there is but one way of salvation; there never was any other, and never will be. It is therefore our course, as it was formerly, still to inquire for the old path, the good old way, the pleasant way of Christ. Kitto.
The course of life should be determined after thoughtful deliberation. Jeremiah is to “stand in the ways and see.” It is foolish to go with the multitude without individual convictions of what is right, or to follow our own private impulses blindly and aimlessly. The choice should fall on a good way. Other ways may be smooth, pleasant, flowery at the starting, only to lose themselves in the pathless wilderness, while this may look more rugged and steep at first; but it should not be the present attractiveness, but the direction, the whole course and the end of a way, which should determine our choice of it. There are old paths of right. Religion has not to be made anew. It is not left for the latest saint to discover the way of holiness. Having found the right way, we should forthwith “walk therein.” Knowledge is useless without practice; nay, guilt is aggravated if, knowing the right, we follow the wrong. In the right way is rest for the soul. Even while on the earthly pilgrimage many quiet resting-places may be found (Ps. 23:2), through all the course an inward peace may be enjoyed (Prov. 3:17), and at the end will be found the perfect rest of the home of God (Heb. 4:9). Adeney.
“Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein.” Asking and acting, inquiry after the right way, and a resolute determination to follow it—when these conditions are supplied there can be little doubt as to the issue. A life of practical godliness, based on faith in revealed truth, springing from the inspiration of the spirit of truth and purity in the secret soul—this is the way. It is the “old way.” New as regards the light Christianity has shed upon it, new as regards the revelation of Him in whose redeeming work its deep foundations have been laid, it is “old” as regards its essential principles of faith and righteousness. The martyrs, prophets and holy men of every age have left their glowing footprints upon it. Elijah ascended from it in his chariot of fire. David made the statutes of the Lord his delight as he pursued his pilgrimage along it. Abraham trod the same path, led on by the star of promise. Upon it Enoch walked in lowly fellowship with God. P. C.
The law of the Christian life is continuous increase in the knowledge of the depths that lie in the old truths, and of their far-reaching applications. We are to grow in knowledge of the Christ by coming ever nearer to Him, and learning more of the infinite meaning of our earliest lesson that He is the Son of God who has died for us. The constellations that burn in our nightly sky looked down on Chaldean astronomers; but though these are the same, how much more is known about them at Greenwich than was dreamed at Babylon! A. M.
Love, joy, humility, heavenly-mindedness, godly sorrow for sin and holy resolutions against it, are not promoted so much by novel speculations, as by placing in a just and affecting light the acknowledged truths of the Gospel, and thereby stirring up the mind by way of remembrance. “While I am in this tabernacle,” said Peter, “I will not be negligent to put you in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the present truth.” We appeal to the experience of every real Christian, whether the sweetest and most profitable seasons he has enjoyed have not been those in which he is conscious of having learned no new truth, strictly speaking, but was indulged with spiritual and transforming views of the plain, unquestionable discoveries of the Gospel. As the word of God is the food of souls, so it corresponds to that character in this respect among others—that the strength and refreshment it imparts depend not upon its novelty, but upon the nutritious properties it possesses. It is a sickly appetite only which craves incessant variety. R. Hall.
Christianity is not a religion of sentiment, or philosophy, or speculation, or vague, glittering generalities, or merely negative teachings, but of definite, positive, fundamental, sharply defined principles of faith and living, which cannot be ignored, or questioned, or trifled with, and not jeopardize all that is vital to man’s highest interest, in this world and the next. Doctrine is the rock on which the Church is built. Doctrine is the main weapon of her defence and aggressive power. Doctrine is the vital life of every believer. The Church is weak to-day, and sickly, and has not power to prevail with God or man, because not “rooted and grounded” in the knowledge and spirit of the distinctive, fundamental teachings of God’s revealed Word. “The good old way” of apostolic faith, the old way of martyrs and reformers, and of a “great cloud of witnesses,” who have testified for God, is widely departed from at many points. Sherwood.
The theology which is pre-eminently needed in our times is that whose substance and manner have met the needs of men in all times. This, in its essential principles, is the old, time-honored theology of the Christian Church, with its two foci of sin and redemption, all viewed as dependent on God. It is based upon the solid granite rock (the only true petra) and built up of living stones in massive proportions, rising ever upward until its aspiring lines fade away in the bosom of the infinite, whither it leads us that there we may rest. That old theology—older than our schools, older than the earth and the stars—coeval with the Godhead; alway yet never old, never yet ever new; it is dateless and deathless as the Divine decree, yet fresh as the dawning light of a new day in every new-born soul; it has been known from the beginning to all penitent and believing souls; it is uttered in every humble prayer; it has been sung in such melodious and rapturous strains as have nowhere else found voice. Some one has said that it is a theology which can never be sung; but it is the only theology which has called forth the tenderest and loftiest tones of human feeling; which finds its full expression equally in that saddest of human music, the woful miserere which recalls the sacred, awful passion of our dying Lord, and the jubilant and triumphant anthem which celebrates His accomplished victory. That old theology, the living essence of our sacred Scriptures, abiding substance of our creed, the sense of our confessions, and the consensus of our schools, has been held and taught by the most piercing and soaring intellects of our Christian times—Athanasius and Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, Turretine and Edwards; and through them it has taught and fashioned the most vigorous and advancing churches and nations of modern times. H. B. Smith.
20. The people still kept up the routine of the temple-worship. In this they made use of incense obtained from Sheba, a province of Arabia Felix, celebrated for its rich spices. But of what use were those costly spices of which God speaks? The people had no heart in their worship of God, and hence He could have no pleasure in their sacrifices. This last statement should be taken in its strongest sense. So far from merely taking no pleasure, He loathed and abhorred them. So it must be evermore when worship is offered to God in which the offerer gives not his heart.
24,25. The “fame” is the report, the tidings of the Chaldean approach. It unnerved the nation. They were utterly unable to cope with such a power. They knew that help from the God of their fathers could not be reasonably expected, because they had revolted from Him. Indeed, they had good cause to know that this invasion was the scourge of God on them for their sins. H. C.
27-30. The prophet a spiritual assayer. Of interest as a description of process of refining precious metals among ancient peoples. The grinding and washing of the ore to discover and separate the precious metals, the fusing of the silver with lead in order to its further purification, and the repetition of this under severer heat, are processes which are used to illustrate the influence of the words of revelation upon the human heart. M.
To try the ways of the nation and its leaders by their conformity to the injunctions of the Divine covenant; to insist with inexorable severity upon the dignity and sole sovereignty of Jehovah; to testify unreservedly before high and low, and especially before the theocratic office-bearers, against every declension from Him and from His law; to proclaim the Divine judgments against the obdurately disobedient, and to be in some circumstances themselves the executioners thereof, and, on the other hand, to promise, when needful, deliverance and blessing—such were the duties which constituted the political agency of the prophets. Oehler.
28. “Grievous revolters” is, in the original, intensely strong—the superlative degree of revolt, corruption and wickedness. They are only brass and copper, when they should be gold and silver. They make others corrupt, marring all they touch. H. C.
29,30. The words refer to the office of an assayer of silver and gold; and the manner of assaying here intended is by the cupel. To separate the alloy from the silver, they add a portion of lead; and when all is fused together, and brought into a state of ebullition, the cupel absorbs the lead, and with it the dross or alloy; and the silver is left pure and motionless on the top of the cupel. The people are here represented under the notion of alloyed silver. They are full of impurities; and they are put in the hands of the prophet, the assayer, to be purified. The bellows are placed, the fire is lighted up, but all to no purpose; so intensely commixed is the alloy with the silver, that it cannot be separated. The nozzle of the bellows is even melted with the intensity of the fire used to effect the refinement; and the lead is carried off by the action of the heat; and the assayer melteth in vain, for the alloy still continues in union with the metal. The assayer gives up the process, will not institute one more expensive or tedious, pronounces the mass unfit to be coined, and denominates it reprobate silver (verse 30). Thus, the evil habits and dispositions of the Israelites were so ingrained that they would not yield to either the ordinary or extraordinary means of salvation. God pronounces them reprobate silver, not sterling, full of alloy, having neither the image nor the superscription of the Great King either on their hearts or on their conduct. Thus He gave them up as incorrigible, and their adversaries prevailed against them. This should be a warning to other nations, and indeed to the Christian Church; for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare these. A. C.
29. The idea of the verse is, that the people, being assayed as ores from the mine, cannot be purified; they afford no precious metal. Everything passes off in dross, and the process proves the utter worthlessness of the material subjected to this trial. The people are all and only dross. H. C.—The wicked are not plucked away. Or, “the bad are not separated.” By “the bad” are meant, according to the metaphor, “the base ingredients;” that is, the bad principles and habits, which prevail so much and adhere so closely, that all the endeavors and pains used by the refiner to purge them away and get clear of them are frustrated, and prove ineffectual; so that, as it follows in the next verse, nothing remains but to throw them aside, as a metal disallowed and cried down by authority, counterfeiting silver, but not capable of being brought to the sterling standard. Blayney.
The dross of society, permitted thus to remain and flourish, spoils the social progress, even under the best instrumentalities, because they are not separated, the vile from the good. But this is a part of God’s administration under the atonement, in order that character should be thoroughly tried and developed, with its tendency and power; that of the evil, to do evil, and prevent good; that of the good, to do good, and be purified and perfected. Cheever.
30. Refuse silver shall men call them. As base money is refused by every one because it cannot bear the touchstone, so shall these hypocrites and evildoers be rejected both by God and by man; for none of their actions will bear the test of God’s laws, or abide His severe trial. The Greek word which is rendered “reprobate” in the New Testament has an allusion to this place; and, in pursuance of the same metaphor, the laws and judgments of God are often compared to a refiner’s fire. (See Prov. 17:3; Isa. 1:25; Zech. 13:9; Mal. 3:2, 3; 1 Pet. 1:7.) W. Lowth.
This is the conclusion of the whole matter. The world will be compelled to call this people of Judah and Jerusalem “rejected silver;” refuse matter; proved to be good for nothing. The Lord hath assayed them, hath found them worthless, and hath rejected them. H. C.