Jeremiah 12
SIBVer. 5, 6. If you are so faint and impatient under the opposition of your own poor friends and neighbours at Anathoth, the place of your birth, how wilt thou bear through, when all the rulers of Judah shall persecute 8 Q you, and even your own relations and fellow priests stir up the common people to destroy you!
Jeremiah 12:7-13
I will quickly abandon my temple, and my people, which I once so dearly loved, into the band of the Chaldean destroyers. Instead of hearkening to my voice, as sheep to their shepherd, they blasphemously contradict my words, reject my government, abuse my messengers, and abandon themselves to rapine and oppression; therefore their heathen neighbours shall assemble in armies to destroy them; Nebuchadnezzar, and his princes, shall unhinge their constitution in church and state, and lay their whole country terribly desolate. While the crops shall be ruined, all their expensive attempts to save themselves by the help of the Egyptians shall but increase their misery
Jeremiah 12:14-17
I will also destroy, and carry captive out of their own countries, the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Egyptians, Philistines, Phenicians, Syrians, and Northern Arabs, who have injured my people; and will afterwards bring back my people, and even part of these nations, to their respective countries; and will even unite them into the same true church, especially in the apostolic and millennial periods. See Introduction; chap. iv. sect. 18, 19
REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XII.—The prosperity of wicked men has often been a stumbling-block to the godly. But, let God do as he will, it is certain he will never do what is unrighteous. His providences may be dark, but never unjust; nay, nor unkind to the upright. We may sit easy under men’s revilings, if we be conscious of God’s approbation of us. Yes, there is no reason to covet that prosperity which fattens men, particularly hypocritical professors, for the fearful slaughter of God’s wrath. Atheistical and prophet-murdering sinners are a great plague to their country. And yet, if ministers will be faithful, they must expect more and more opposition, especially from evil brethren. And very justly the Lord meres out heavier trials to such as rage and fret at lesser ones, even when the lesser kindly prepare for the greater. Dreadful are those sins which make God desert and defeat those ordinances and persons for which he has professed the greatest regard. But men’s furious rage against him and his ways must be punished with fearful judgments. And yet no judgments fail to harden and exasperate sinners when God has withdrawn his Spirit from them. They, who have tempted us to sin, ordinarily become our tormentors in punishing it. And, if judgment begin at the house of God, the wicked corrupters and abusers of it need not think long to escape. But the bitterest enemies may be reconciled by the gospel. And such as diligently learn the Lord’s ways shall share the blessings of his people; while ruin, dreadful ruin, in every age, shall await obstinate sinners