Jeremiah 9

Sin contains within itself no radical cure, no real reformation. Man is not led by sin into holiness. The means of recovery lie outside of the region of sin, beyond the reach of experience—they lie in the free grace of God, which sin very often opposes and rejects, when it comes with its healing medicines and its assurances of deliverance. The most which prudence can do, acting in view of the experienced consequences of sin, is to plaster over the exterior, to avoid dangerous habits, to choose deep-seated sins in lieu of such as lie on the surface. Exchanging thus Pharisaical pride for vice, respectable sin for vulgar sin, sin that does not injure for sin that injures body and good name, it seems to the unthinking to have worked a marvellous cure. But there is no true reformation, no giving of a new form to the soul, in the case. The physician has changed the seat of the malady, he has not driven it out of the constitution. T. D. W.

Balm was offered, and the physician’s skill to apply it, but they would not come to be healed. They preferred the pleasures of sin along with its risks and pains. That their state was bad they knew, but they believed it was not near so bad as the prophet made it out to be. Only physicians can tell how many cases of bodily disease might be cured if the sick were willing to go to the root of the matter, and mend their habits as to eating and drinking, working and playing. Ignorance, indifference, prejudice and unblushing lust of the flesh lie at the bottom of much bodily disease, explaining both how it originates and how it continues. And similar causes operate with regard to such ills as afflict the consciousness of the entire man. Sinners must have a will to go to Jesus if they expect healing and life, and then life more abundantly. Y.

Deep down in the nature of God, deep down in the nature of the world, the idea of healing lay. God needed to be a healer, as the world needed healing. Sin brought disease and disorder into the world; God brought healing and harmony. The Divine purpose in the creation of man was that he should become holy and blessed in the free service of God; and since man has fallen into sin through the abuse of his freedom, God carries out His original purpose under the new conditions which sin has produced. He works the painful consequences of sin into the plans of love, and thus makes them salutary instead of destructive. Toil teaches obedience, pain produces humility and death directs aspiration to a higher than a worldly hope. And thus the darkest human experiences enter as elements into the great redemptive process, and through the very evils that his sin has brought upon him man is healed and educated for the destiny for which he was created.

God as the healer is revealed to us by Christ Jesus. He manifested the Father in the special form of the Healer. The miracles performed by Him consisted chiefly in healing. He went about all Galilee healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people. And the reason of this was that bodily diseases represented the more dreadful diseases of the soul which He came to remove. Every cure which He wrought represented the deliverance of the soul from some particular kind of moral evil. . . . In the two great facts, that God has given His own Son as the Healer of the world, and has provided the means of healing from the foundation of the world, we have a guarantee that He will heal our Marah of trouble or disease, whatever it may be, if we seek His help. The individuality of human beings makes ordinary medicine always more or less empirical and tentative. When every organism is a separate problem, and no two constitutions are absolutely alike, it follows that the treatment of disease must necessarily be very uncertain. But the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin; and His salvation is the only universal panacea suited to all, sufficient for all and available to all. Macmillan.

Chap. 9. The connection of thought continues through this chapter unbroken. Hence, we can have no doubt as to its date and occasion. It is part of the same message as the two preceding chapters.

1,2. This beautiful and touching utterance of grief has been justly admired by all who know how to appreciate the sensibilities of a benevolent heart. To estimate its fitness and force, we need to consider carefully the circumstances that called it forth. Think what he has been saying, and also what he goes on to say. His prophetic eye sees his own beloved country laid desolate; a fierce and bloody foe comes in upon the land from the north; the neighing of his horses is heard from Dan; they sweep over the land, leaving it a waste of ruin—as if troops of serpents and vipers were let loose upon them, whom no magic skill could charm. He hears the wail of Zion’s sons and daughters coming up from their desolate wanderings in a strange land. They would fain ask, Why are we thus spoiled? Why does not Jehovah take care of His own city and Temple? The answer comes: Why have they provoked Me unto such judgments with their idols and their incorrigible wickedness? Alas! he hears them bewailing their wasted opportunities, and mourning that their day of hope and mercy is past forever! These are the things that oppress his heart so heavily. The fearful crisis is not yet past. These calamities have not already fallen (save only in part) upon the nation, but they are close at hand. H. C.

Such Christians as the “weeping prophet” represents are men and women of great spiritual power. The world does not like them, but cannot help respecting them. We love realities, after all. We feel the power of the man who knows the most of them, and feels them most profoundly. The man or woman who takes God’s views of things, interprets human life as God interprets it, looks out on eternity as God reveals it, and whose visage bears the marks of inward struggle of soul with the facts of human destiny as God declares them, is a power with us all. If we come into deep waters, and the billows go over our heads, we look around gasping for the friendly word or look or hand of such to cheer us. The very men we have laughed at, or shrunk from, are those whose experience we want then. Phelps.

5. There is a reflex influence from every tone and gesture of insincerity, which strikes back and debilitates the moral energies. Utter what you do not believe, and you will have less and less capacity for believing anything. Pretend what you do not feel, and feeling will die out. The retribution is dreadful, and sure, and works by an inevitable law. Or if you stifle the religious life that really wakes and rises within you, denying it air and light, you forfeit no less the blessing of the candid and sincere. F. D. H.

6. It is through the intrinsic deceitfulness of their hearts, their love of it and passion for it, that they refuse to know Me. That they live, not knowing God, is by no means their misfortune or their fate; it is truly and simply their fault and their crime. They choose to have it so. They might know the Lord, but they will not. H. C.

7. Such being their character, the Lord must deal with them in the way of judgment if He has any designs of mercy for them. He uses the furnace of affliction as the worker in metals uses the fire to purge away dross and all impurities from the ore. “How else should I do, because of the daughter of My people?” No other course is consistent with either God’s righteousness or His grace, inasmuch as the people are as they are and act as they do. W. H. G.—He will make trial of lesser afflictions, before He brings upon them utter destruction, for He desires not the death of sinners. They shall not be rejected as reprobate silver till the Founder has melted in vain (chap. 6: 29, 30). He speaks as one consulting with Himself what to do with them that might be for the best, and as one that could not find in His heart to cast them off and give them up to ruin, till He had first tried all means likely to bring them to repentance. H.

8. Pretences of the truth are a disadvantage; for they argue a conviction of the truth, and yet a refusal of it. It is a kind of practical blasphemy to veil an impure life under a profession of faith; for we do, as it were, tack on and fasten the errors and excesses of our lives upon religion. There is less dishonor brought to God by open opposition than by profession used as a cover and excuse for profaneness. Manton.

The assigning of pretexts and motives for our conduct which do not exist is a very common fault of our sinful nature. It takes place often in regard to actions of trifling importance. Little acts of selfishness are whitened into something better; excuses are pleaded which are unreal; by a series of petty deceptions unpleasant impressions concerning ourselves are brushed away from the minds of others. And the little deceptions pave the way for great. They blind us to ourselves. The pretexts we use to impose on others we half put faith in, and thus we weave a web of falsehood in which we ourselves are entangled. T. D. W.

10-22. The terrible threatenings of love. There are few more awful passages of Scripture than this. The doom denounced on the guilty people is indeed dreadful. Nevertheless that doom had not yet descended. There was a merciful pause, during which space was given for repentance. Meanwhile, the prophet was bidden to utter these threatenings. P. C.

15, 16. (See 8: 14.) God will give them a thoroughly bitter portion, a lot intensely afflictive and loathsome. This is tersely indicated by the bitterest things known, upon which they were to be fed, and which they must drink. Some of them were to be taken captives to a land before unknown; others must fall by the sword. Precisely these judgments had been threatened long before for these sins. (See Lev. 26: 33 and De. 28: 64.) Another prediction of this captivity, yet more full, may be seen (Jer. 25: 9-11). H. C.

17. The mourning women, cunning women. It was an ancient custom of the Hebrews, at funerals and on other like occasions, to make use of hired mourners, whose profession it was to exhibit in public all the signs and gestures of immoderate and frantic grief, and by their loud outcries and doleful songs to excite and stir up a real passion of sorrow in others. Women were chiefly employed in this office; and Jerome, in his comment upon this verse, says that the practice was continued in Judea down to his days. As it required a degree of skill to discharge this office, for that reason these “mourning women” are likewise called “cunning”—that is, skilful women. Frequent allusions to this custom are to be met with in Scripture. Nor was this practice peculiar to the Jews, as many instances of it occur in heathen writers. Blayney.—Every particular here alluded to is observed on funeral occasions at the present day. There are in every city and community women exceedingly cunning in this business. These are always sent for and kept in readiness. When a fresh company of sympathizers comes in, these women “make haste” to take up a wailing, that the newly come may the more easily unite their tears with the mourners. They know the domestic history of every person, and immediately strike up an impromptu lamentation, in which they introduce the names of their relatives who have recently died, touching some tender chord in every heart, and thus each one weeps for his own dead, and the performance, which would otherwise be difficult or impossible, comes easy and natural, and even this extemporaneous, artificial sorrow is thereby redeemed from half its hollow-heartedness and hypocrisy. Thomson.

23,24. These impressive words—good for all time and for all people—must of course be considered here in their special reference to the fearful ruin then impending over the city and nation of the Jews. In view of such perils, in an exigency so fearful, let not the wise statesman glory in his wisdom, as if his skill could save the nation. Let not the mighty chieftain glory in his military science, nor in the prowess and valor of his warriors. Let not the rich man glory in his riches; for what can gold avail toward the salvation of his country in this hour of her peril? but let him who would glory at all glory in this alone, that he understandeth and knoweth God, and of course that he adjusts himself to this knowledge of God as one who exercises loving-kindness indeed, but also judgment and righteousness in all the earth; for these qualities of his character are dear to God, and He will surely reign in harmony with them, and will give them absolute sway in His moral government over nations and over men. Hence, if they would penitently seek His favor, they might rely on His loving-kindness; otherwise they must expect naked judgment and righteousness, for the time had come to visit judgment on all the incorrigibly wicked. It was the ruin of the Jews of that age that they had reckoned without God. Their plans and hopes had left out the Almighty, and made no account of His great attributes of loving-kindness, justice and righteousness. They had trusted in their own wisdom, might and riches, and had made these their glory. H. C.

23. Strength, worldly wisdom or riches are totally inadequate to furnish any pledge of human happiness; and they provide not the least exemption from the evils to which we are exposed. They never, for a moment, can confer on us the approbation of our own minds; and unless man approve himself, he never can enjoy the suffrage of his fellow-creatures. Tranquillity of mind, especially in the prospect of futurity, can never be the portion of these endowments separately or combined; that peace of mind which passeth all understanding can never be the result of these qualities; on the contrary, they have a tendency to destroy it by engaging us in new schemes and enterprises, which continually occupy the mind. Nor did any man on his elevation to riches, or any distinction, ever arrive at such a condition as that he felt himself happy and able to look around him, and to reflect on the future or the past with composure and satisfaction. Nor is there protection in riches, strength and wisdom of a worldly kind, against the attacks of enemies, against the complaints of discontent, against the perturbations of ungovernable passions, against the canker of corrupt principles. And they are of a very transient duration and possession. Some of them are extinguished in a moment. The least derangement of the nervous system may throw into desolation the most magnificent fabric of the human frame. And with respect to riches, do they not make themselves wings, and leave their possessors behind? And it is likely that, if prudence were left to determine, the probability of success would not be equal to the probability of failure. But even suppose they could be carried forward to the end of life, how short is that period when compared to that vast duration which awaits us beyond it! R. Hall.

You cannot truly live and merely possess. You are out of line and out of touch with God’s great order if you keep yourself and its belongings to yourself. If you merely accumulate, if you merely grow big in fortune, knowledge, culture, deftness, or anything else you are a monstrosity, a deformity.

And so it is with knowledge. Suppose you heap up knowledge. You know all the languages, and all the philosophies, and all the sciences. What then? If that is all—if your knowledge and culture do not go out from you, are not worked at their highest power to form and stimulate society’s thought, to lift its ignorance, to expose and fight its popular fallacies—you are nothing better than an unloaded lumber-wagon. Remember that intellectual power is not unselfishness. Remember that literary and artistic pursuits, while they may be beautiful ministers to humanity, may be only ministers to self. Remember that there may be an intellectual and aesthetic sensuality, no less than a physical and gross sensuality. You are debtors. The worse the world is, the more it needs the good man. The more ignorant it is, the louder is the demand on the Christian scholar. The place of the true man to-day is in the world, not above it. Vincent.

24. But let him that glorieth.** To glory in a thing, is to depend on it as the means or cause of procuring happiness. But there can be no happiness but in being experimentally acquainted with that God who exercises loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth. A. C.—The true glory of the worst of men is that he can be regenerated. The glory of the best of men is that he has been regenerated. The great end to be aimed at is that every man should exult in his having been made a partaker of the Divine nature. Y.

To know God denotes not merely an acquaintance with His character, but a suitable state of mind toward Him; the terms see and know denote their appropriate affections; they indicate the state of the heart. To know God is to feel affected toward Him in a manner suited to His character, to be submissive to His government, willing to be dealt with by His administration, to be in subjection to His authority, to yield obedience to His will. It is, in fact, another expression for that religion which unites the heart of the creature to the Creator. Now this, the prophet tells us, is a ground of boasting. The principles of true religion supply the deficiencies that belong to the former acquisitions, and what is denied to those is with the greatest propriety transferred to true religion. R. Hall.

The knowledge of God and personal fellowship with Him are immeasurably more worth our seeking and rejoicing in than all those endowments which to the carnal eye are so full of charm. There is a natural tendency in men to rejoice unduly in the good that they derive by birth, or education, or the favor of providence, forgetting that the chief good is something of a different kind, something that must come to them in a different way. Nothing that tends to enrich and adorn and gladden our life in this world is to be despised; but if we measure things by a true standard, and esteem them according to their real and relative value, we shall place everything else that men call good or great beneath that which connects us directly with God and heaven and immortality. This higher good is more truly our own than anything else ever can be. Unlike other forms of good, it is incapable of abuse. It enables us, as nothing else can, to appreciate all that is true and good in this world. And it gives us the power to confer the greatest benefits on our fellow-creatures. W.

Imitation of God will spring from the knowledge of Him. The more we know of Him the more we must love Him, and admiration will lead to resemblance in spirit and in life. “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Knowledge depends on and leads to obedience (John 7:17). The knowledge of God sheds light upon the universe and life, and directs the soul and body into the channels of health, happiness and usefulness. It is connected with and culminates in Divine fellowship. In this way the character and presence of God are brought into closest contact with the spirit of man, his character is moulded into the image of the Divine original, and the joys of communion deepen and enlarge into the blessedness of heaven. “This is life eternal [even now], to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” M.

“This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent;” and it is life temporal also, for godliness hath the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come. The revelation of God—the Gospel of Christ—is our hope for future good, as it is the ground

of the blessings from which we give public and united thanks. It is so, because it places us under the government of a just, omniscient, almighty and good Sovereign, to whom all our acts are known; to whom all hearts are open, and all thoughts are naked, and from whose dominions and administration no one can escape. It sets before us the highest possible motives to a virtuous life in the allurements of everlasting glory and joy in paradise; and it dissuades from vice by all that is dreadful in eternal pain; and thus it addresses our hopes and fears with a force which has no parallel. It provides for sinners pardon at the cross; and by a love passing knowledge subdues them to penitence. In the Redeemer’s life we have a perfect example, in His precepts a guide for our conduct invariably safe, and so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. The Scriptures assure us that the