INTRODUCTION 1. THE TIMES OF JEREMIAH It was in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, B.C. 629, that Jeremiah was called to be a prophet. At that time the kingdom of Judah enjoyed unbroken peace. Since the miraculous destruction of Sennacherib’s host before the gates of Jerusalem in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, B.C. 714, Judah had no longer had much to fear from the imperial power of Assyria. The reverse then sustained before Jerusalem, just eight years after the overthrow of the kingdom of Israel, had terribly crushed the might of the great empire. It was but a few years after that disaster till the Medes under Deïoces asserted their independence against Assyria; and the Babylonians too, though soon reduced to subjection again, rose in insurrection against Sennacherib. Sennacherib’s energetic son and successor Esarhaddon did indeed succeed in re-establishing for a time the tottering throne.

While holding Babylon, Elam, Susa, and Persia to their allegiance, he restored the ascendency of the empire in the western provinces, and brought lower Syria, the districts of Syria that lay on the sea coast, under the Assyrian yoke. But the rulers who succeeded him, Samuges and the second Sardanapalus, were wholly unable to offer any effective resistance to the growing power of the Medes, or to check the steady decline of the once so mighty empire. Cf. M. Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. i. S. 707ff. of 3 Aufl. Under Esarhaddon an Assyrian marauding army again made an inroad into Judah, and carried King Manasseh captive to Babylon; but, under what circumstances we know not, he soon regained his freedom, and was permitted to return to Jerusalem and remount his throne (2 Chron 33:11-13). From this time forward the Assyrians appeared no more in Judah. Nor did it seem as if Judah had any danger to apprehend from Egypt, the great southern empire; for the power of Egypt had been greatly weakened by intestine dissensions and civil wars.

It is true that Psammetichus, after the overthrow of the dodecarchy, began to raise Egypt’s head amongst the nations once more, and to extend his sway beyond the boundaries of the country; but we learn much as to his success in this direction from the statement of Herodotus (ii. 157), that the capture of the Philistine city of Ashdod was not accomplished until after a twenty-nine years’ siege. Even if, with Duncker, we refer the length of time here mentioned to the total duration of the war against the Philistines, we are yet enabled clearly to see that Egypt had not then so far recovered her former might as to be able to menace the kingdom of Judah with destruction, had Judah but faithfully adhered to the Lord its God, and in Him sought its strength. This, unhappily, Judah utterly filed to do, notwithstanding all the zeal wherewith the godly King Josiah laboured to secure for his kingdom that foremost element of its strength.

In the eighth year of his reign, “while he was yet young,” i.e., when but a lad of sixteen years of age, he began to seek the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year of his reign he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places and Astartes, and the carved and molten images (2 Chron 34:3). He carried on the work of reforming the public worship without intermission, until every public trace of idolatry was removed, and the lawful worship of Jahveh was re-established. In the eighteenth year of his reign, upon occasion of some repairs in the temple, the book of the law of Moses was discovered there, was brought and read before him. Deeply agitated by the curses with which the transgressors of the law were threatened, he then, together with the elders of Judah and the people itself, solemnly renewed the covenant with the Lord. To set a seal upon the renewal of the covenant, he instituted a passover, to which not only all Judah was invited, but also all remnants of the ten tribes that had been left behind in the land of Israel (2 Kings 22:3-23:24; 2 Chron 34:4-35:19).

To Josiah there is given in 2 Kings 23:25 the testimony that like unto him there was no king before him, that turned to Jahveh with all his heart, all his soul, and all his might, according to all the law of Moses; yet this most godly of all the kings of Judah was unable to heal the mischief which his predecessors Manasseh and Amon had by their wicked government created, or to crush the germs of spiritual and moral corruption which could not fail to bring about the ruin of the kingdom. And so the account of Josiah’s reign and of his efforts towards the revival of the worship of Jahveh, given in 2 Kings 23:26, is concluded: “Yet Jahveh ceased not from His great wrath wherewith He was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations wherewith Manasseh provoked Him; and Jahveh said: Judah also will I put away from my face as I have put away Israel, and will cast off this city which I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall dwell there.”

The kingdom of Israel had come to utter ruin in consequence of its apostasy from the Lord its God, and on account of the calf-worship which had been established by Jeroboam, the founder of the kingdom, and to which, from political motives, all his successors adhered. The history of Judah too is summed up in a perpetual alternation of apostasy from the Lord and return to Him. As early as the time of heathen-hearted Ahaz idolatry had raised itself to all but unbounded ascendency; and through the untheocratic policy of this wicked king, Judah had sunk into a dependency of Assyria. It would have shared the fate of the sister kingdom even then, had not the accession of Hezekiah, Ahaz’s godly son, brought about a return to the faithful covenant God. The reformation then inaugurated not only turned aside the impending ruin, but converted this very ruin into a glorious deliverance such as Israel had not seen since its exodus from Egypt. The marvellous overthrow of the vast Assyrian host at the very gates of Jerusalem, wrought by the angel of the Lord in one night by means of a sore pestilence, abundantly testified that Judah, despite its littleness and inconsiderable earthly strength, might have been able to hold its own against all the onsets of the great empire, if it had only kept true to the covenant God and looked for its support from His almighty hand alone.

But the repentant loyalty to the faithful and almighty God of the covenant hardly lasted until Hezekiah’s death. The heathen party amongst the people gained again the upper hand under Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, who ascended the throne in his twelfth year; and idolatry, which had been only outwardly suppressed, broke out anew and, during the fifty-five years’ reign of this most godless of all the kings of Israel, reached a pitch Judah had never yet known. Manasseh not only restored the high places and altars of Baal which is father had destroyed, he built altars to the whole host of heaven in both courts of the temple, and went so far as to erect an image of Asherah in the house of the Lord; he devoted his son to Moloch, practised witchcraft and soothsaying more than ever the Amorites had done, and by his idols seduced Israel to sin.

Further, by putting to death such prophets and godly persons as resisted his impious courses, he shed very much innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem therewith from end to end (2 Kings 21:1-16; 2 Chron 33:1-10).

His humbling himself before God when in captivity in Babylon, and his removal of the images out of the temple upon his return to Jerusalem and to his throne (2 Chron 33:11ff., 15ff.), passed by and left hardly a trace behind; and his godless son Amon did but continue his father’s sins and multiply the guilt (2 Kings 21:19-23; 2 Chron 33:21-23). Thus Judah’s spiritual and moral strength was so broken that a thorough-going conversion of the people at large to the Lord and His law was no longer to be looked for. Hence the godly Josiah accomplished by his reformation nothing more than the suppression of the grosser forms of idol-worship and the restoration of the formal temple-services; he could neither put an end to the people’s estrangement at heart from God, nor check with any effect that moral corruption which was the result of the heart’s forsaking the living God. And so, even after Josiah’s reform of public worship, we find Jeremiah complaining: “As many as are thy cities, so many are thy gods, Judah; and as many as are the streets in Jerusalem, so many altars have ye made to shame, to burn incense to Baal” (Jer 2:28; 11:13).

And godlessness showed itself in all classes of the people. “Go about in the streets of Jerusalem,” Jeremiah exclaims, “and look and search if there is one that doeth right and asks after honesty, and I will pardon her (saith the Lord). I thought, it is but the meaner sort that are foolish, for they know not the way of Jahveh, the judgment of their God. I will then get me to the great, and will speak with them, for they know the way of Jahveh, the right of their God. But they have all broken the yoke, burst the bonds” (Jer 5:1- 5). “Small and great are greedy for gain; prophet and priest use deceit” (6:13). This being the spiritual condition of the people, we cannot wonder that immediately after the death of Josiah, unblushing apostasy appeared again as well in public idolatry as in injustice and sin of every kind.

Jehoiakim did that which was evil in the eyes of Jahveh even as his fathers had done (2 Kings 23:37; 2 Chron 36:6). His eyes and his heart were set upon nothing but on gain and on innocent blood, to shed it, and on oppression and on violence, to do it, Jer 22:17. And his successors on the throne, both his son Jehoiachin and his brother Zedekiah, walked in his footsteps (2 Kings 24:5,19; 2 Chron 36:9,12), although Zedekiah did not equal his brother Jehoiakim in energy for carrying out evil, but let himself be ruled by those who were about him. For Judah’s persistence in rebellion against God and His law, the Lord ceased not from His great wrath; but carried out the threatening proclamation to king and people by the prophetess Hulda, when Josiah sent to consult her for himself, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of the newly found book of the law: “Behold, I bring evil in this place, and upon its inhabitants, all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read: because that they have forsaken me, and burnt incense to other gods, to provoke me with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath is kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched” (2 Kings 22:16ff.).

This evil began to fall on the kingdom in Jehoiakim’s days. Josiah was not to see the coming of it. Because, when he heard the curses of the law, he humbled himself before the Lord, rent his raiment and wept before Him, the Lord vouchsafed to him the promise that He would gather him to his fathers in peace, that his eyes should not look on the evil God would bring on Jerusalem (2 King Jer 22:19f.); and this pledge God fulfilled to him, although they that were to execute God’s righteous justice were already equipped, and though towards the end of his reign the storm clouds of judgment were gathering ominously over Judah.

While Josiah was labouring in the reformation of public worship, there had taken place in Central Asia the events which brought about the fall of the Assyrian empire. the younger son of Esarhaddon, the second Sardanapalus, had been succeeded in the year 626 by his son Saracus. Since the victorious progress of the Medes under Cyaxares, his dominion had been limited to the cradle of the empire, Assyria, to Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Cilicia. To all appearance in the design of preserving Babylonia to the empire, Saracus appointed Nabopolassar, a Babylonian by birth and sprung from the Chaldean stock, to be governor of that province. This man found opportunity to aggrandize himself during a war between the Medes and the Lydians. An eclipse of the sun took place on the 30th September 610, while a battle was going on.

Both armies in terror gave up the contest; and, seconded by Syennesis, who governed Cilicia under the Assyrian supremacy, Nabopolassar made use of the favourable temper which the omen had excited in both camps to negotiate a peace between the contending peoples, and to institute a coalition of Babylonia and Media against Assyria. To confirm this alliance, Amytis, the daughter of Cyaxares, was given in marriage to Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar; and the war against Assyria was opened without delay by the advance against Nineveh in the spring of of the allied armies of Medes and Babylonians. But two years had been spent in the siege of that most impregnable city, and two battles had been lost, before they succeeded by a night attack in utterly routing the Assyrians, pursuing the fugitives to beneath the city walls.

The fortification would long have defied their assaults, had not a prodigious spring flood of the Tigris, in the third year of the war, washed down a part of the walls lying next the river, and so made it possible for the besiegers to enter the city, to take it, and reduce it to ashes. The fall of Nineveh in the year 607 overthrew the Assyrian empire; and when the conquerors proceeded to distribute their rich booty, all the land lying on the western bank of the Tigris fell to the share of Nabopolassar of Babylon.

But the occupation by the Babylonians of the provinces which lay west of the Euphrates was contested by the Egyptians. Before the campaign of the allied Medes and Babylonians against Nineveh, Pharaoh Necho, the warlike son of Psammetichus, had advanced with his army into Palestine, having landed apparently in the bay of Acco, on his way to war by the Euphrates with Assyria, Egypt’s hereditary enemy.

To oppose his progress King Josiah marched against the Egyptian; fearing as he did with good reason, that if Syria fell into Necho’s power, the end had come to the independence of Judah as a kingdom. A battle was fought in the plain near Megiddo; the Jewish army was defeated, and Josiah mortally wounded, so that he died on the way to Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:29f.; 2 Chron 35:20f.). In his stead the people of the land raised his second son Jehoahaz to the throne; but Pharaoh came to Jerusalem, took Jehoahaz prisoner, and had him carried to Egypt, where he closed his life in captivity, imposed a fine on the country, and set up Eliakim, Josiah’s eldest son, to be king as his vassal under the name of Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:30-35; 2 Chron 36:1-4). Thereafter Necho pursued his march through Syria, and subject to himself the western provinces of the Assyrian empire; and he had penetrated to the fortified town of Carchemish (Kirkesion) on the Euphrates when Nineveh succumbed to the united Medes and Babylonians.-Immediately upon the dissolution of the Assyrian empire, Nabopolassar, now an old man no longer able to sustain the fatigues of a new campaign, entrusted the command of the army to his vigorous son Nebuchadnezzar, to the end that he might wage war against Pharaoh Necho and wrest from the Egyptians the provinces they had possessed themselves of (cf. Berosi fragm. in Joseph. Antt. x. 11. 1, and c. Ap. i. 19).

In the year 607, the third year of Jehoiakim’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar put the army entrusted to him in motion, and in the next year, the fourth of Jehoiakim’s reign, B.C. 606, he crushed Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish on the Euphrates. Pursuing the fleeing enemy, he pressed irresistibly forwards into Syria and Palestine, took Jerusalem in the same year, made Jehoiakim his dependant, and carried off to Babel a number of the Jewish youths of highest rank, young Daniel amongst them, together with part of the temple furniture (2 Kings 24:1; 2 Chron 36:6f.; Dan 1:1f.). He had done as far on his march as the boundaries of Egypt when he heard of the death of his father Nabopolassar at Babylon. In consequence of this intelligence he hastened to Babylon the shortest way through the desert, with but few attendants, with the view of mounting the throne and seizing the reins of government, while he caused the army to follow slowly with the prisoners and the booty (Beros. l.c.).

This, the first taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, is the commencement of the seventy years of Judah’s Chaldean bondage, foretold by Jeremiah in Jer 25:11, shortly before the Chaldeans invaded Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim; and with the subjection of Judah to Nebuchadnezzar’s supremacy the dissolution of the kingdom began. For three years Jehoiakim remained subject to the king of Babylon; in the fourth year he rebelled against him. Nebuchadnezzar, who with the main body of his army was engaged in the interior of Asia, lost no time in sending into the rebellious country such forces of Chaldeans as were about the frontiers, together with contingents of Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites; and these troops devastated Judah through out the remainder of Jehoiakim’s reign (2 Kings 24:1-2). But immediately upon the death of Jehoiakim, just as his son had mounted the throne, Nebuchadnezzar’s generals advanced against Jerusalem with a vast army and invested the city in retribution for Jehoiakim’s defection.

During the siege Nebuchadnezzar joined the army. Jehoiachin, seeing the impossibility of holding out any longer against the besiegers, resolved to go out to the king of Babylon, taking with him the queen-mother, the princes of the kingdom, and the officers of the court, and to make unconditional surrender of himself and the city. Nebuchadnezzar made the king and his train prisoners; and, after plundering the treasures of the royal palace and the temple, carried captive to Babylon the king, the leading men of the country, the soldiers, the smiths and artisans, and, in short, every man in Jerusalem who was capable of bearing arms. He left in the land only the poorest sort of the people, from whom no insurrectionary attempts were to be feared; and having taken an oath of fealty from Mattaniah, the uncle of the captive king, he installed him, under the name of Zedekiah, as vassal king over a land that had been robbed of all that was powerful or noble amongst its inhabitants (2 Kings 24:8-17; 2 Chron 36:10).

Nor did Zedekiah either keep true to the oath of allegiance he had sworn and pledged to the king of Babylon. In the fourth year of his reign, ambassadors appeared from the neighbouring states of Edom, Ammon, Moab, Tyre, and Sidon, seeking to organize a vast coalition against the Chaldean supremacy (Jer 27:3; 28:1). Their mission was indeed unsuccessful; for Jeremiah crushed the people’s hope of a speedy return of the exiles in Babylon by repeated and emphatic declaration that the Babylonian bondage must last seventy years (Jer 27-29). In the same year Zedekiah visited Babylon, apparently in order to assure his liege lord of his loyalty and to deceive him as to his projects (Jer 51:59). But in Zedekiah’s ninth year Hophra (Apries), the grandson of Necho, succeeded to the crown of Egypt; and when he was arming for war against Babylon, Zedekiah, trusting in the help of Egypt (Ezek 17:15), broke the oath of fealty he had sworn (Ezek 17:16), and tried to shake off the Babylonian yoke.

But straightway a mighty Chaldean army marched against Jerusalem, and in the tenth month of that same year established a blockade round Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:1). The Egyptian army advanced to relieve the beleaguered city, and for a time compelled the Chaldeans to raise the siege; but it was in the end defeated by the Chaldeans in a pitched battle (Jer 37:5ff.), and the siege was again resumed with all rigour. For long the Jews made stout resistance, and fought with the courage of despair, Zedekiah and his advisers being compelled to admit that this time Nebuchadnezzar would show no mercy. The Hebrew slaves were set free that they might do military service; the stone buildings were one after another torn down that their materials might serve to strengthen the walls; and in this way for about a year and a half all the enemy’s efforts to master the strong city were in vain.

Famine had reached its extremity when, in the fourth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the Chaldean battering rams made a breach in the northern wall, and through this the besiegers made their way into the lower city. The defenders withdrew to the temple hill and the city of Zion; and, when the Chaldeans began to storm these strongholds during the night, Zedekiah, under cover of darkness, fled with the rest of his soldiers by the door between the two walls by the king’s garden. He was, however, overtaken in the steppes of Jericho by the pursuing Chaldeans, made prisoner, and carried to Riblah in Coele-Syria. Here Nebuchadnezzar had his headquarters during the siege of Jerusalem, and here he pronounced judgment on Zedekiah. His sons and the leading men of Judah were put to death before his eyes; he was then deprived of eyesight and carried in chains to Babylon, where he remained a prisoner till his death (2 Kings 25:3-7; Jer 39:2-7; 52:6-11).

A month later Nebuzar-adan, the captain of the king of Babylon’s guard, came to Jerusalem to destroy the rebellious city. The principal priests and officers of the kingdom and sixty citizens were sent to the king at Riblah, and executed there. Everything of value to be found amongst the utensils of the temple was carried to Babylon, the city with the temple and palace was burnt to the ground, the walls were destroyed, and what able-bodied men were left amongst the people were carried into exile. Nothing was left in the land but a part of the poorer people to serve as vinedressers and husbandmen; and over this miserable remnant, increased a little in numbers by the return of some of those who had fled during the war into the neighbouring countries, Gedaliah the son of Ahikam was appointed governor in the Chaldean interest. Jeremiah chose to stay with him amidst his countrymen. But three months afterwards Gedaliah was murdered, at the instigation of Baalis the king of the Ammonites, by one Ishmael, who was sprung from the royal stock; and thereupon a great part of the remaining population, fearing the vengeance of the Chaldeans, fled, against the prophet’s advice, into Egypt (Jer 40-43). And so the banishment of the people was now a total one, and throughout the whole period of the Chaldean domination the land was a wilderness.

Judah was now, like the ten tribes, cast out amongst the heathen out of the land the Lord had given them for an inheritance, because they had forsaken Jahveh, their God, and had despised His statutes. Jerusalem, the city of the great King over all the earth, was in ruins, the house which the Lord had consecrated to His name was burnt with fire, and the people of His covenant had become a scorn and derision to all peoples. But God had not broken His covenant with Israel. Even in the law-Lev. 26 and Deut 30-He had promised that even when Israel was an outcast from his land amongst the heathen, He would remember His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not utterly reject the exiles; but when they had borne the punishment of their sins, would turn again their captivity, and gather them together out of the nations. 2. THE PERSON OF THE PROPHET Concerning the life and labours of the prophet Jeremiah, we have fuller information than we have as to those of many of the other prophets. The man is very clearly reflected in his prophecies, and his life is closely interwoven with the history of Judah. We consider first the outward circumstances of the prophet’s life, and then his character and mental gifts. a. His Outward Circumstances Jeremiah hy;m]r]yi , contracted hy;m]r]yi , Aieremi’as, Jeremias) was the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests belonging to the priest-city Anathoth, situated about five miles north of Jerusalem, now a village called Anâta. This Hilkiah is not the high priest of that name, mentioned in 2 Kings 22:4ff. and 2 Chron 34:9, as has been supposed by some of the Fathers, Rabbins, and recent commentators. This view is shown to be untenable by the indefinite ˆheKo ˆmi , Jer 1:1. Besides, it is hardly likely that the high priest could have lived with his household out of Jerusalem, as was the case in Jeremiah’s family (Jer 32:8; 37:12ff.); and we learn from 1 Kings 2:26 that it was priests of the house of Ithamar that lived in Anathoth, whereas the high priests belonged to the line of Eleazar and the house of Phinehas (1 Chron 24:3).

Jeremiah, called to be prophet at an early age r[ænæ , Jer 1:6), laboured in Jerusalem from the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign (B.C. 629) until the fall of the kingdom; and after the destruction of Jerusalem he continued his work for some years longer amidst the ruins of Judah, and in Egypt amongst those of his countrymen who had fled thither (1:2f., Jeremiah 25:3,40-44). His prophetic ministry falls, consequently, into the period of the internal dissolution of the kingdom of Judah, and its destruction by the Chaldeans. He had himself received a mission from the Lord to peoples and kingdoms, as well to break down and destroy, as to build and plant (1:10).

He was to fulfil this mission, in the first place, in the case of Judah, and then to the heathen peoples, in so far forth as they came in contact with the kingdom of God in Judah. The scene of his labours was Jerusalem. Here he proclaimed the word of the Lord in the courts of the temple (e.g., 7:2; 26:1); at the gates of the city (17:19); in the king’s palace (32:1; 37:17); in the prison (32:1); and in other places (18:1ff., 19:1ff., 27:2).

Some commentators think that he first began as prophet in his native town of Anathoth, and that he wrought there for some time ere he visited Jerusalem; but this is in contradiction to the statement of Jer 2:2, that he uttered almost his very first discourse “before the ears of Jerusalem.” Nor does this assumption find any support from 11:21; 12:5ff. All that can be gathered from these passages is, that during his ministry he occasionally visited his native town, which lay so near Jerusalem, and preached the word of the Lord to his former fellow-citizens.

When he began his work as prophet, King Josiah had already taken in hand the extirpation of idolatry and the restoration of the worship of Jahveh in the temple; and Jeremiah was set apart by the Lord to be a prophet that he might support the godly king in this work. His task was to bring back the hearts of the people to the God of their fathers by preaching God’s word, and to convert that outward return to the service of Jahveh into a thorough turning of the heart to Him, so as to rescue from destruction all who were willing to convert and be saved. Encouraged by Manasseh’s sins, backsliding from the Lord, godlessness, and unrighteousness had reached in Judah such a pitch, that it was no longer possible to turn aside the judgment of rejection from the face of the Lord, to save the backsliding race from being delivered into the power of the heathen. Yet the faithful covenant God, in divine long-suffering, granted to His faithless people still another gracious opportunity for repentance and return to Him; He gave them Josiah’s reformation, and sent the prophets, because, though resolved to punish the sinful people for its stiff-necked apostasy, He would not make an utter end of it. This gives us a view point from which to consider Jeremiah’s mission, and looking hence, we cannot fail to find sufficient light to enable us to understand the whole course of his labours, and the contents of his discourses.

Immediately after his call, he was made to see, under the emblem of a seething caldron, the evil that was about to break from out of the north upon all the inhabitants of the land: the families of the kingdoms of the north are to come and set their thrones before the gates of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, and through them God is to utter judgment upon Judah for its idolatry (Jer 1:13-16). Accordingly, from the beginning of his work in the days of Josiah onwards, the prophet can never be driven from the maintenance of his position, that Judah and Jerusalem will be laid waste by a hostile nation besetting them from the north, that the people of Judah will fall by the enemy’s sword, and go forth into captivity; cf. 4:5 ff, 13ff., 27ff.; 5:15ff., 6:22ff., etc. This nation, not particularly specified in the prophecies of the earlier period, is none other than that of the Chaldeans, the king of Babylon and his hosts.

It is not the nation of the Scythians, as many commentators suppose; see the comm. on Jer 4:5ff. Nevertheless he unremittingly calls upon all ranks of his people to repent, to do away with the abominable idols, and to cease from its wickedness; to plough up a new soil and not sow among thorns, lest the anger of the Lord break forth in fire and burn unquenchably (4:1-4; cf. 6:8,16; 7:3f., etc.). He is never weary of holding up their sins to the view of the people and its leaders, the corrupt priests, the false prophets, the godless kings and princes; this, too, he does amidst much trial both from within and from without, and without seeing any fruit of his labours (cf. 25:3-8). After twenty-three years of indefatigable expostulation with the people, the judgment of which he had so long warned them burst upon the incorrigible race.

The fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign (B.C. 606) forms a turning point not only in the history of the kingdom, but also in Jeremiah’s work as prophet.

In the year in which Jerusalem was taken for the first time, and Judah made tributary to the Chaldeans, those devastations began with which Jeremiah had so often threatened his hardened hearers; and together with it came the fulfilment of what Jeremiah had shortly before foretold, the seventy years’ dominion of Babylon over Judah, and over Egypt and the neighbouring peoples (Jer 25:19). For seventy years these nations are to serve the king of Babylon; but when these years are out, the king and land of the Chaldeans shall be visited, Judah shall be set free from its captivity, and shall return into its own land (25:11f., 37:6f., 29:10).

The progressive fulfilment of Jeremiah’s warning prophecies vindicated his character as prophet of the Lord; yet, notwithstanding, it was now that the sorest days of trial in his calling were to come. At the first taking of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar had contented himself with reducing Jehoiakim under his sway and imposing a tribute on the land, and king and people but waited and plotted for a favourable opportunity to shake off the Babylonian yoke. In this course they were encouraged by the lying prophecies of the false prophets, and the work done by these men prepared for Jeremiah sore controversies and bitter trials. At the very beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, the priests, the prophets, and the people assembled in the temple, laid hands on Jeremiah, because he had declared that Zion should share the fate of Shiloh, and that Jerusalem should be destroyed.

He was by them found worthy of death, and he escaped from the power of his enemies only by the mediation of the princes of Judah, who hastened to his rescue, and reminded the people that in Hezekiah’s days the prophet Micah had uttered a like prophecy, and yet had suffered nothing at the hand of the king, because he feared God. At the same time, Uriah, who had foretold the same issue of affairs, and who had fled to Egypt to escape Jehoiakim’s vengeance, was forced back thence by an envoy of the king and put to death (Jer 26). Now it was that Jeremiah, by command of God, caused his assistant Baruch to write all the discourses he had delivered into a roll-book, and to read it before the assembled people on the day of the fast, observed in the ninth month of the fifty year of Jehoiakim’s reign.

When the king had word of it, he caused the roll to be brought and read to him. But when two or three passages had been read, he cut the roll in pieces and cast the fragments into a brasier that was burning before him.

He ordered Jeremiah and Baruch to be brought; but by the advice of the friendly princes they had concealed themselves, and God hid them so that they were not found (ch. 36). It does not appear that the prophet suffered any further persecution under Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin. Two years after the fast above mentioned, Jehoiakim rose against Nebuchadnezzar. The result was, that Jerusalem was besieged and taken for the second time in the reign of the next king; Jehoiakim, the leading men, and the flower of the nation were carried into exile to Babylon; and so Jeremiah’s prophecy was yet more strikingly affirmed.

Jerusalem was saved from destruction this time again, and in Zedekiah, the uncle of the exiled king, who had, of course, to take the oath of fealty, the country had again a king of the old stock. Yet the heavy blow that had now fallen on the nation was not sufficient to bend the stiff neck of the infatuated people and its leaders. Even yet were found false prophets who foretold the speedy overthrow of Chaldean domination, and the return, ere long, of the exiles (ch. 28). In vain did Jeremiah lift up his voice in warning against putting reliance on these prophets, or on the soothsayers and sorcerers who speak like them (Jer 27:9f., 14). When, during the first years of Zedekiah’s reign, ambassadors had come from the bordering nations, Jeremiah, in opposition to the false prophets, declares to the king that God has given all these countries into the hand of the king of Babylon, and that these peoples shall serve him and his son and his grandson.

He cries to the king, “Put your necks into the yoke of the king of Babylon, and ye shall live; he that will not serve him shall perish by sword, famine, and pestilence” (Jer 27:12ff.). This announcement had repeated before the people, the princes, and the king, during the siege by the Chaldeans, which followed on Zedekiah’s treacherous insurrection against his liege lord, and he chose for it the particular time at which the Chaldeans had temporarily raised the siege, in order to meet the Egyptian king in the field, Pharaoh Hophra having advanced to the help of the Jews (Jer 34:20ff.). It was then that, when going out by the city gate, Jeremiah was laid hold of, beaten by the magistrates, and thrown into prison, on the pretext that he wanted to desert to the Chaldeans. After he had spent a long time in prison, the king had him brought to him, and inquired of him secretly for a word of Jahveh; but Jeremiah had no other word from God to give him but, “Thou shalt be given into the hand of the king of Babylon.” Favoured by this opportunity, he complained to the king about his imprisonment.

Zedekiah gave order that he should not be taken back to the prison, but placed in the court of the prison, and that a loaf of bread should be given him daily until all the bread in Jerusalem was consumed (ch. 37). Shortly thereafter, however, some of the princes demanded of the king the death of the prophet, on the ground that he was paralysing the courage of soldiers and people by such speeches as, “He that remains in this city shall die by sword, famine, and pestilence; but he that goeth out to the Chaldeans shall carry off his life as a prey from them.” They alleged he was seeking the hurt and not the weal of the city; and the feeble king yielded to their demands, with the words: “Behold, he is in your hand, for the king can do nothing against you.” Upon this he was cast into a deep pit in the court of the prison, in the slime of which he sank deep, and would soon have perished but for the noble-minded Ethiopian Ebed-melech, a royal chamberlain, who made application to the king on his behalf, and procured his removal out of the dungeon of mire.

When consulted privately by the king yet again, he had none other than his former answer to give him, and so he remained in the court of the prison until the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans (ch. 38). After this he was restored to freedom by Nebuzar-adan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s guard, at the command of the king; and being left free to choose his place of residence, he decided to remain at Mizpah with Gedaliah, appointed governor of the land, amongst his own people (Jer 39:11-14, and 40:1-6).

Now it was that he composed the Lamentations upon the fall of Jerusalem and Judah.

After the foul murder of Gedaliah, the people, fleeing through fear of Chaldean vengeance, compelled him to accompany them to Egypt, although he had expressly protested against the flight as a thing displeasing to God (Jer 41:17-43:7). In Egypt he foretold the conquest of the land by Nebuchadnezzar (43:8-13); and, further on, the judgment of God on his countrymen, who had attached themselves to the worship of the Queen of Heaven (44). Beyond this we are told nothing else about him in Bible records. Neither the time, the place, nor the manner of his death is known.

We cannot confidently assert from ch. 44 that he was still living in B.C. 570, for this last discourse of the prophet does not necessarily presume the death of King Hophra (B.C. 570). Only this much is certain, that he lived yet for some years in Egypt, till about 585 or 580; that his labours consequently extended over some fifty years, and so that, presuming he was called to be prophet when a youth of 20 to 25 years old, he must have attained an age of 70 to 75 years. As to his death, we are told in the fathers Jerome, Tertull, Epiph., that he was stoned by the people at Tahpanhes (Daphne of Egypt), and accordingly his grave used to be pointed out near Cairo. But a Jewish tradition, in the Seder ol. rabb. c. 26, makes him out to have been carried off with Baruch to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar at the conquest of Egypt, in the 27th year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

Isidor Pelusiota, epist. i. 298, calls him polupathe’statos too’n profeetoo’n; but the greater were the ignominy and suffering endured by Jeremiah in life, the higher was the esteem in which he was held by posterity, chiefly, doubtless, because of the exact fulfilment of his prophecy as to the seventy years’ duration of the Babylonian empire (cf. Dan 9; 2; 2 Chron 36:20f., Ezra 1:1). Jesus Sirach, in his Praise of the Prophets, Ecclus. c. xlix. 7, does not go beyond what we already know from Jer 1:10; but was early as the second book of the Maccabees, we have traditions and legends which leave no doubt of the profound veneration in which he was held, especially by the Alexandrian Jews.f1 b. His Character and Mental Qualities If we gather together in one the points of view that are discovered in a summary glance over Jeremiah’s work as a prophet, we feel the truth of Ed. Vilmar’s statement at p. 38 of his essay on the prophet Jeremiah in the periodical, Der Beweis des Glaubens. Bd. v. Gütersloh 1869. “When we consider the prophet’s faith in the imperishableness of God’s people, in spite of the inevitable ruin which is to overwhelm the race then living, and his conviction, firm as the rock, that the Chaldeans are invincible until the end of the period allotted to them by Providence, it is manifest that his work is grounded in something other and higher than mere political sharpsightedness or human sagacity.” Nor is the unintermitting stedfastness with which, amidst the sorest difficulties from without, he exercised his office to be explained by the native strength of his character.

Naturally of a yielding disposition, sensitive and timid, it was with trembling that he bowed to God’s call (Jer 1:6); and afterwards, when borne down by the burden of them, he repeatedly entertained the wish to be relieved from his hard duties. “Thou hast persuaded me, Lord,” he complains in 20:7ff., “and I let myself be persuaded; Thou hast laid hold on me and hast prevailed. I am become a laughing-stock all the day long: the word of Jahveh is become a reproach and a derision. And I thought: I will think no more of Him nor speak more in His name; and it was in my head as burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I become weary of bearing up, and cannot.” Though filled with glowing love that sought the salvation of his people, he is compelled, while he beholds their moral corruptness, to cry out: “O that I had in my wilderness a lodging-place of wayfarers! then would I leave my people, and go from them; for they are all adulterers, a crew of faithless men” (9:1).

And his assurance that the judgment about to burst on the land and people could not be turned aside, draws from him the sigh: “O that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears! then would I weep day and night for the slain of my people” (8:23). “He was no second Elijah,” as Hgstbg. Christol. ii. p. 370 happily puts it. “He had a soft nature, a susceptible temperament; his tears flowed readily. And he who was so glad to live in peace and love with all men, must needs, because he has enlisted in the service of truth, become a second Ishmael, his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him; he whose love for his people was so glowing, was doomed to see that love misconstrued, to see himself branded as a traitor by those who were themselves the traitors to the people.”

Experiences like these raised bitter struggles in his soul, repeatedly set forth by him, especially in 12 and 20. Yet he stands immovably stedfast in the strife against all the powers of wickedness, like “a pillar of iron and a wall of brass against the whole land, the kings of Judah, its rulers and priests, and against the common people,” so that all who strove against him could effect nothing, because the Lord, according to His promise, Jer 1:18f., was with him, stood by his side as a terrible warrior (20:11), and showed His power mighty in the prophet’s weakness.

This character of Jeremiah is also reflected in his writings. His speech is clear and simple, incisive and pithy, and, though generally speaking somewhat diffuse, yet ever rich in thought. If it lacks the lofty strain, the soaring flight of an Isaiah, yet it has beauties of its own. It is distinguished by a wealth of new imagery which is wrought out with great delicacy and deep feeling, and by “a versatility that easily adapts itself to the most various objects, and by artistic clearness” (Ewald). In the management of his thoughts Jeremiah has more recourse than other prophets to the law and the older sacred writings (cf. Koenig, das Deuteronom u. der Proph.

Jeremia, Heft ii. of the Alttstl. Studien; and A Küper, Jeremias librorum sacrr. interpres atque vindex). And his style of expression is rich in repetitions and standing phrases.

These peculiarities are not, however, to be regarded as signs of the progressive decline of the prophetic gift (Ew.), but are to be derived from deeper foundations, from positive and fundamental causes. The continual recurrence to the law, and the frequent application of the prophetic parts of Deuteronomy, was prompted by the circumstances of the time. The wider the people’s apostasy from God’s law extended itself, so much the greater became the need for a renewed preaching of the law, that should point to the sore judgments there threatened against hardened sinners, now about to come into fulfilment. And as against the guile of false prophets whose influence with the infatuated people became ever greater, the true witnesses of the Lord could have no more effective means of showing and proving the divineness of their mission and the truth of their testimony than by bringing strongly out their connection with the old prophets and their utterances. On this wise did Jeremiah put in small compass and preserve the spiritual inheritance which Israel had received from Moses a thousand years before, and thus he sent it with the people into exile as its better self (E. Vilm. as above). The numerous repetitions do unquestionably produce a certain monotony, but this monotony is nothing else than the expression of the bitter grief that penetrates the soul; the soul is full of the one thought which takes entire possession of its elastic powers, and is never weary of ever crying out anew the same truth to the people, so as to stagger their assurance by this importunate expostulation (cf. Haevern. Introd. p. 196).

From the same cause comes the negligence in diction and style, on which Jerome in Prol. in Jer. passed this criticism: Jeremias propheta sermone apud Hebraeos Jesaia et Osea et quibusdam aliis prophetis videtur esse rusticior, sed sensibus par est; and further in the Proaem. to lib. iv. of the Comment.: quantum in verbis simplex et facilis, tantum in majestate sensuum profundissimus. And unadorned style is the natural expression of a heart filled with grief and sadness. “He that is sad and downcast in heart, whose eyes run over with tears (Lam 2:2), is not the man to deck and trick himself out in frippery and fine speeches” (Hgstb. as above, p. 372).

Finally, as to the language, the influence of the Aramaic upon the Hebrew tongue is already pretty evident. 3. THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH a. Contents and Arrangement.

The prophecies of Jeremiah divide themselves, in accordance with their subjects, into those that concern Judah and the kingdom of God, and those regarding foreign nations. The former come first in the book, and extend from ch. 1-45; the latter are comprised in ch. 46-51. The former again fall into three groups, clearly distinguishable by their form and subjects. So that the whole book may be divided into four sections; while ch. 1 contains the account of the prophet’s consecration, and ch. 52 furnishes an historical supplement.

The first section occupies ch. 2-20, and comprises six lengthy discourses which contain the substance of Jeremiah’s oral preaching during the reign of Josiah. In these the people is brought face to face with its apostasy from the Lord into idolatry; its unrighteousness and moral corruption is set before it, the need of contrition and repentance is brought home, and a race of hardened sinners is threatened with the devastation of their land by a barbarous people coming from afar: while to the contrite the prospect of a better future is opened up. By means of headings, these discourses or compilations of discourses are marked off from one another and gathered into continuous wholes. The first discourse, Jer 2:1-3:5, sets forth, in general terms, the Lord’s love and faithfulness towards Israel. The second, Jer 3:6-6:30, presents in the first half of it (3:6-4:2) the fate of the ten tribes, their dispersion for their backsliding, and the certainty of their being received again in the event of their repentance, all as a warning to faithless Judah; and in the second half (4:3-6:30), announces that if Judah holds on in its disloyalty, its land will be ravaged, Jerusalem will be destroyed, and its people cast out amongst the heathen.

The third discourse, ch. 6-10, admonishes against a vain confidence in the temple and the sacrifices, and threatens the dispersion of Judah and the spoliation of the country (Jer 7:1-8:3); chides the people for being obstinately averse to all reformation (8:4-9:21); shows wherein true wisdom consists, and points out the folly of idolatry (9:22-10:25). The fourth discourse, ch. 11-13, exhibits the people’s disloyalty to the covenant (11:1-17); shows by concrete examples their utter corruptness, and tells them that the doom pronounced is irrevocable (11:18-12:17); and closes with a symbolical action adumbrating the expulsion into exile of the incorrigible race (13). The fifth, ch. 14-17, “the word concerning the droughts,” gives illustrative evidence to show that the impending judgment cannot be turned aside by any entreaties; that Judah, for its sins, will be driven into exile, but will yet in the future be brought back again (14:1- 17:4); and closes with general animadversions upon the root of the mischief, and the way by which punishment may be escaped (17:5-27).

The sixth discourse, ch. 18-20, contains two oracles from God, set forth in symbolical actions, which signify the judgment about to burst on Judah for its continuance in sin, and which drew down persecution, blows, and harsh imprisonment on the prophet, so that he complains of his distress to the Lord, and curses the day of his birth. All these discourses have this in common, that threatening and promise are alike general in their terms.

Most emphatically and repeatedly is threatening made of the devastation of the land by enemies, of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of Judah amongst the heathen; and yet nowhere is it indicated who are to execute this judgment. Not until the threatening addressed to Pashur in Jer 20:4 are we told that it is the king of Babylon into whose hand all Judah is to be given, that he may lead them away to Babylon and smite them with the sword.

And beyond the general indication, Jer 3:6, “in the days of Josiah,” not even the headings contain any hint as to the date of the several prophecies or of portions of them, or as to the circumstances that called them forth.

The quite general character of the heading, 3:6, and the fact that the tone and subject remain identical throughout the whole series of chapters that open the collected prophecies of Jeremiah, are sufficient to justify Hgstbg. (as above, p. 373) in concluding that “we have here before us not so much a series of prophecies which were delivered precisely as we have them, each on a particular occasion during Josiah’s reign, but rather a resume of Jeremiah’s entire public work as prophet during Josiah’s reign; a summary of all that, taken apart from the special circumstances of the time, had at large the aim of giving deeper stability to the reformatory efforts Josiah was carrying on in outward affairs.” This view is not just, only it is not to be limited to ch. 2-7, but is equally applicable to the whole of the first section of the collected prophecies.

The second section, ch. 21-32, contains special predictions; on the one hand, of the judgment to be executed by the Chaldeans (27-29); on the other, of Messianic salvation (30-33). The predictions of judgment fall into three groups. The central one of these, the announcement of the seventy years’ dominion of the Chaldeans over Judah and all nations, passes into a description of judgment to come upon the whole world. As introductory to this, we have it announced in 21 that Judah and its royal family are to be given into the hands of the king of Babylon; we have in 22 and 23 the word concerning the shepherds and leaders of the people; while in 24 comes the statement, illustrated by the emblem of two baskets of figs, as to the character and future fortunes of the Jewish people. The several parts of this group are of various dates.

The intimation of the fate awaiting Judah in 21 is, according to the heading, taken from the answer given to Zedekiah by Jeremiah during the last siege of Jerusalem, when the king had inquired of him about the issue of the war; the denunciation of the people’s corrupt rulers, the wicked kings and false prophets, together with the promise that a righteous branch is yet to be raised to David, belongs, if we may judge from what is therein said of the kings, to the times of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin; while the vision of the two baskets of figs in 24 dates from the first part of Zedekiah’s reign, shortly after Jehoiachin and the best part of the nation had been carried off to Babylon. As this group of prophecies is a preparation for the central prediction of judgment in 25, so the group that follows, 26-29, serves to show reason for the universal judgment, and to maintain it against the contradiction of the false prophets and of the people deluded by their vain expectations.

To the same end we are told in 26 of the accusation and acquittal of Jeremiah on the charge of his having foretold the destruction of Jerusalem: this and the supplementary notice of the prophet Urijah fall within the reign of Jehoiakim. The same aim is yet more clearly to be traced in the oracle in 27, regarding the yoke of the king of Babylon, which God will lay on the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Phoenicia, on King Zedekiah, the priests and people of Judah; in the threatening against the lying prophet Hananiah in 28; and in Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon in 29, dating from the earlier years of Zedekiah’s reign. From the dark background of these threatenings stands out in ch. 30-33 the comforting promise of the salvation of Israel. The prediction of grace and glory yet in store for Israel and Judah through the Messiah occupies two long discourses.

The first is a complete whole, both in matter and in form. It begins with intimating the recovery of both houses of Israel from captivity and the certainty of their being received again as the people of God (Jer 30:1-22), while the wicked fall before God’s wrath; then 31 promises grace and salvation, first to the ten tribes (vv. 1-22), and then to Judah (vv. 23-36); lastly, we have (vv. 27-40) intimation that a new and everlasting covenant will be concluded with the whole covenant people. The second discourse in chs. 32 and 33 goes to support the first, and consists of two words of God communicated to Jeremiah in the tenth year of Zedekiah, i.e., in prospect of the destruction of Jerusalem; one being in emblematic shape (32), the other is another explicit prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of blessings yet in store for the race of David and for the Levitical priesthood (23).

The third section of the book, ch. 34-44, has, in the first place, brief utterances of the prophet, dating from the times of Zedekiah and Jehoiachin, together with the circumstances that called them forth, in 34- 36; secondly, in 37-39, notice of the prophet’s experiences, and of the counsels given by him during the siege in Zedekiah’s reign up till the taking of the city; finally, in 40-45 are given events that happened and prophecies that were delivered after the siege. So that here there is gathered together by way of supplements all that was of cardinal importance in Jeremiah’s efforts in behalf of the unhappy people, in so far as it had not found a place in the previous sections.

In the fourth section, ch. 46-51, follow prophecies against foreign nations, uttered partly in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, or rather later, partly in the first year of Zedekiah. And last of all, the conclusion of the whole collective book is formed by ch. 52, an historical supplement which is not the work of Jeremiah himself. In it are notices of the destruction of the city, of the number of the captives taken to Babylon, and of what befell King Jehoiachin there. b. Origin of the Compilation or Book of the Prophecies of Jeremiah.

Regarding the composition of the book, all sorts of ingenious and arbitrary hypotheses have been propounded. Almost all of them proceed on the assumption that the longer discourses of the first part of the book consist of a greater or less number of addresses delivered to the people at stated times, and have been arranged partly chronologically, but partly also without reference to any plan whatever. Hence the conclusion is drawn that in the book a hopeless confusion reigns. In proof of this, see the hypotheses of Movers and Hitzig. From the summary of contents just given, it is plain that in none of the four sections of the book has chronological succession been the principle of arrangement; this has been had regard to only in so far as it fell in with the plan chiefly kept in view, which was that of grouping the fragments according to their subjectmatter.

In the three sections of the prophecies concerning Israel, a general chronological order has to a certain extent been observed thus far, namely, that in the first section (2-20) are the discourses of the time of Josiah; in the second (21-33), the prophecies belonging to the period between the fourth year of Jehoiakim and the siege of Jerusalem under Zedekiah; in the third (34-45), events and oracles of the time before and after the siege and capture of the city. But even in those passages in the second and third sections which are furnished with historical references, order in time is so little regarded that discourses of the time of Zedekiah precede those of Jehoiakim’s time. And in the first section the date of the several discourses is a matter of no secondary importance that, beyond the indefinite intimation in Jer 3:6, there is not to be found in any of the headings any hint of the date; and here, upon the whole, we have not the individual discourses in the form in which they were under various circumstances delivered to the people, but only a resume of his oral addresses arranged with reference to the subject-matter.

The first notice of a written collection of the prophecies occurs in 36. Here we are told that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign, Jeremiah, by divine command, caused his assistant Baruch to write in a roll all the words he had spoken concerning Israel and Judah and all nations from the day he was called up till that time, intending them to be read by Baruch to the assembled people in the temple on the approaching fast. And after the king had cut up the roll and cast it into the fire, the prophet caused the words Baruch had taken down to his dictation to be written anew in a roll, with the addition of many words of like import. This fact suggests the idea that the second roll written by Baruch to Jeremiah’s dictation formed the basis of the collected edition of all Jeremiah’s prophecies.

The history makes it clear that till then the prophet had not committed his prophecies to writing, and that in the roll written by Baruch they for the first time assumed a written form. The same account leads us also to suppose that in this roll the prophet’s discourses and addresses were not transcribed in the precise words and in the exact order in which he had from time to time delivered them to the people, but that they were set down from memory, the substance only being preserved. The design with which they were committed to writing was to lead the people to humble themselves before the Lord and turn from their evil ways (Jer 36:3,7), by means of importunately forcing upon their attention all God’s commands and warnings. And we may feel sure that this parenetic aim was foremost not only in the first document (burnt by the king), but in the second also; it was not proposed here either to give a complete and authoritative transcription of all the prophet’s sayings and speeches.

The assumption of recent critics seems justifiable, that the document composed in Jehoiakim’s reign was the foundation of the book handed down to us, and that it was extended to the compass of the canonical book by the addition of revelations vouchsafed after that time, and of the historical notices that most illustrated Jeremiah’s labours. But, however great be the probability of this view, we are no longer in a position to point out the original book in that which we have received, and as a constituent part of the same. At first sight, we might indeed be led to look on the first twenty chapters of our book as the original document, since the character of these chapters rather favours the hypothesis. For they are all lengthy compositions, condensed from oral addresses with the view of reporting mainly the substance of them; nor is there in them anything that certainly carries us beyond the time of Josiah and the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, except indeed the heading of the book, Jer 1:1-3, and this was certainly prefixed only when the book was given forth as a whole. But according to the statement in 36:2, the original manuscript prepared by Baruch contained not only the words of the prophet which he had up to that time spoken concerning Israel and Judah, but also his words concerning all nations, that is, doubtless, all the prophecies concerning the heathen he had till now uttered, viz., Jer 25:15-31; 46:1-49:33.

Nor can the most important discourse, ch. 25, belonging to the beginning of the fourth year of Jehoiakim, have been omitted from the original manuscript; certainly not from the second roll, increased by many words, which was put together after the first was burnt. For of the second manuscript we may say with perfect confidence what Ewald says of the first, that nothing of importance would be omitted from it. If then we may take for granted that the discourse of ch. 25 was included in the book put together by Baruch, it follows that upon the subsequent expansion of the work that chapter must have been displaced from its original position by the intercalation of ch. 21 and 24, which are both of the time of Zedekiah.

But the displacement of 25 by prophecies of Zedekiah’s time, and the arrangement of the several fragments which compose the central sections of the book now in our hands, show conclusively that the method and nature of this book are incompatible with the hypothesis that the existing book arose from the work written down by Baruch to Jeremiah’s dictation by the addition and interpolation of later prophetic utterances and historical facts (Ew., Graf). The contents of ch. 21-45 were unmistakeably disposed according to a definite uniform plan which had regard chiefly to the subject-matter of those chapters, even though we are no longer in a position confidently to discriminate the several constituent parts, or point out the reason for the place assigned to them. The same plan may be traced in the arrangement of the longer compositions in ch. 2-20.

The consistency of the plan goes to show that the entire collection of the prophecies was executed by one editor at one time. Ew., Umbr., and Graf conclude that the original book attained its final form by a process of completion immediately after the destruction of the city and the deportation of the people; but it is impossible to admit their conclusion on the grounds they give, namely, the heading at Jer 1:3: “until the carrying away of Jerusalem in the fifth month;” and the fact that what befell the prophet, and what was spoken by him after the city was destroyed, have found a place immediately after ch. 39 in ch. 40-44. Both circumstances are sufficiently explained by the fact that with the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah’s work as a prophet, though not absolutely finished, had yet anticipatively come to an end.

His later labours at Mizpah and in Egypt were but a continuation of secondary importance, which might consequently be passed over in the heading of the book. See the Comment. on Jer 1:3. We are not sure that the period between the fifth and seventh months, 41:1, during which Jeremiah and Baruch remained with the governor Gedaliah at Mizpah, was more suitable than any other for looking back over his work which had now extended over more than forty-one years, and by expanding the book he had at an earlier period written, for leaving behind him a monument for posterity in the record of his most memorable utterances and experiences-a monument that might serve to warn and instruct, as well as to comfort in present suffering means of the treasure of hopes and promises which he has thus laid up (Graf). But, judging from Jeremiah’s habit of mind, we imagine that at that time Jeremiah would be disposed rather to indite the Lamentations than to edit his prophecies.

Arguments for repeated editings and transformations of particular chapters have been founded partly on the subject-matter, partly on peculiarities in the form of certain passages, e.g., the alternation, in the headings, of the formulas rmæa; lae hwO;hy] rb;d; hy;h; or lae rmæa; and rmæa; hy;m]r]yi lae hwO;hy] rb;d; hy;h; ; and the title aybin; hy;m]r]yi , which occurs only in certain chapters, Jer 20:2; 25:2; 28:5-6, and often, 29:1,29; 32:2.

But on deeper investigation these arguments appear inconclusive. If we are desirous not to add by new and uncertain conjectures to the already large number of arbitrary hypotheses as to the compilation and origin of the book before us, we must abide by what, after a careful scrutiny of its subject-matter and form, proves to be certainly established. And the result of our examination may be epitomized in the following propositions:-1.

The book in its canonical form has been arranged according to a distinct, self-consistent plan, in virtue of which the preservation of chronological order has been made secondary to the principle of grouping together cognate subjects. 2.

The book written by Baruch in the fifth year of Jehoiakim’s reign, which contained the oracles spoken by Jeremiah up till that time, is doubtless the basis of the book as finally handed down, without being incorporated with it as a distinct work; but, in accordance with the plan laid down for the compilation of the entire series, was so disposed that the several portions of it were interspersed with later portions, handed down, some orally, some in writing, so that the result was a uniform whole.

For that prophecies other than those in Baruch’s roll were straightway written down (if they were not first composed in writing), is expressly testified by Jer 30:2; 29:1, and 51:60. 3. The complete edition of the whole was not executed till after the close of Jeremiah’s labours, probably immediately after his death. This work, together with the supplying of the historical notice in ch. 52, was probably the work of Jeremiah’s colleague Baruch, who may have survived the last event mentioned in the book, Jer 52:31ff., the restoration of Jehoiakim to freedom after Nebuchadnezzar’s death, B.C. 563. 4. THE GENUINENESS OF THE BOOK AND THE INTEGRITY OF THE MASORETIC TEXT Jeremiah’s prophecies bear everywhere so plainly upon the face of them the impress of this prophet’s strongly marked individuality, that their genuineness, taken as a whole, remains unimpugned even by recent criticism. Hitzig, e.g., holds it to be so undoubted that in the prolegomena to his commentary he simply takes the matter for granted. And Ewald, after expounding this view of the contents and origin of the book, observes that so striking a similarity in expression, attitude, and colouring obtains throughout every portion that from end to end we hear the same prophet speak. Ewald excepts, indeed, the oracle against Babylon in ch. 50 and 51, which he attributes to an anonymous disciple who had not confidence to write in his own name, towards the end of the Babylonian captivity. He admits that he wrote after the manner of Jeremiah, but with this marked difference, that he gave an entirely new reference to words which he copied from Jeremiah; for example, according to Ewald, the description of the northern enemies, who were in Jeremiah’s view first the Scythians and then the Chaldeans, is applied by him to the Medes and Persians, who were then at war with the Chaldeans. But with Ewald, as with his predecessors Eichh., Maur., Knobel, etc., the chief motive for denying the genuineness of this prophecy is to be found in the dogmatic prejudice which leads them to suppose it impossible for Jeremiah to have spoken of the Chaldeans as he does in ch. 50f., since his expectation was that the Chaldeans were to be the divine instruments of carrying out the judgment near at hand upon Judah and the other nations.

Others, such as Movers, de Wette, Hitz., have, on the contrary, proposed to get rid of what seemed to them out of order in this prediction by assuming interpolations. These critics believe themselves further able to make out interpolations, on a greater or less scale, in other passages, such as 10, 25, 27, 29, 30, 33, yet without throwing doubt on the genuineness of the book at large. See details on this head in my Manual of Introduction, 75; and the proof of the assertions in the commentary upon the passages in question.

Besides this, several critics have denied the integrity of the Hebrew text, in consideration of the numerous divergencies from it which are to be found in the Alexandrine translation; and they have proposed to explain the discrepancies between the Greek and the Hebrew text by the hypothesis of two recensions, an Alexandrine Greek recension and a Babylonian Jewish.

J. D. Mich., in the notes to his translation of the New Testament, i. p. 285, declared the text of the LXX to be the original, and purer than the existing Hebrew text; and Eichh., Jahn, Berthdolt, Dahler, and, most confident of all, Movers (de utriusque recensionis vaticiniorum Jer. graecae Alexandr. et hebraicae Masor., indole et origine), have done what they could to establish this position; while de Wette, Hitz., and Bleek (in his Introd.) have adopted the same view in so far that they propose in many places to correct the Masoretic text from the Alexandrine. But, on the other hand, Küper (Jerem. librorum ss. interpres), Haevern. (Introd.), J. Wichelhaus (de Jeremiae versione Alexandr.), and finally, and most thoroughly, Graf, in his Comment. p. 40, have made comparison of the two texts throughout, and have set the character of the Alexandrine text in a clear light; and their united contention is, that almost all the divergencies of this text from the Hebrew have arisen from the Greek translator’s free and arbitrary way of treating the Hebrew original.

The text given by the Alexandrine is very much shorter. Graf says that about 2700 words or the Masoretic text, or somewhere about the eighth part of the whole, have not been expressed at all in the Greek, while the few additions that occur there are of very trifling importance. The Greek text very frequently omits certain standing phrases, forms, and expressions often repeated throughout the book: e.g., hwO;hy] µaun] is dropped sixty-four times; instead of the frequently recurring ab;x; hwO;hy] or laer;c]yi µyhila’ ac;n; hwO;hy] there is usually found but hwO;hy] . In the historical portions the name of the father of the principal person, regularly added in the Hebrew, is often not given; so with the title aybin; , when Jeremiah is mentioned; in speaking of the king of Babylon, the name Nebuchadnezzar, which we find thirty-six times in the Hebrew text, appears only thirteen times.

Such expressions and clauses as seemed synonymous or pleonastic are often left out, frequently to the destruction of the parallelism of the clauses, occasionally to the marring of the sense; so, too, longer passages which had been given before, either literally or in substance. Still greater are the discrepancies in detail; and they are of such a sort as to bring plainly out on all hands the translator’s arbitrariness, carelessness, and want of apprehension. All but innumerable are the cases in which gender, number, person, and tense are altered, synonymous expressions interchanged, metaphors destroyed, words transposed; we find frequently inexact and false translations, erroneous reading of the unpointed text, and occasionally, when the Hebrew word was not understood, we have it simply transcribed in Greek letters, etc. See copious illustration of this in Küper, Wichelh., and Graf, il. cc., and in my Manual of Introd. 175, N. 14.

Such being the character of the Alexandrine version, it is clearly out of the question to talk of the special recension on which it has been based. As Hgstb. Christol. ii. p. 461 justly says: “Where it is notorious that the rule is carelessness, ignorance, arbitrariness, and utterly defective notions as to what the translator’s province is, then surely those conclusions are beside the mark that take the contrary of all this for granted.” None of those who maintain the theory that the Alexandrine translation has been made from a special recension of the Hebrew text, has taken the trouble to investigate the character of that translation with any minuteness, not even Ewald, though he ventures to assert that the mass of slight discrepancies between the LXX and the existing text shows how far the MSS of this book diverged from one another at the time the LXX originated.

He also holds that not infrequently the original reading has been preserved in the LXX, though he adds the caveat: “but in very many, or indeed most of these places, the translator has but read and translated too hastily, or again, has simply abbreviated the text arbitrarily.” Hence we can only subscribe the judgment passed by Graf at the end of his examination of the Alexandr. translation of the present book: “The proofs of self-confidence and arbitrariness on the part of the Alexandrian translator being innumerable, it is impossible to concede any critical authority to his version-for it can hardly be called a translation-or to draw from it conclusions as to a Hebrew text differing in form from that which has been handed down to us.”

We must maintain this position against Nägelsbach’s attempt to explain, by means of discrepancies amongst the original Hebrew authorities, the different arrangement of the prophecies against foreign nations adopted in the LXX, these being here introduced in ch. 25 between v. 12 and v. 14.

For the arguments on which Näg., like Movers and Hitz., lays stress in his dissertations on Jeremiah in Lange’s Bibelwerk, p. 13, and in the exposition of Jer 25:12; 27:1; 49:34, and in the introduction to ch. 46-51, are not conclusive, and rest on assumptions that are erroneous and quite illegitimate. In the first place, he finds in vv. 12-14, which, like Mov., Hitz., etc., he takes to be a later interpolation (see table below), a proof that the Book against the Nations must have stood in the immediate neighbourhood of ch. 25.

To avoid anticipating the exposition, we must here confine ourselves to remarking that the verses adduced give no such proof: for the grounds for this assertion we must refer to the comment. on Jer 25:12-14. But besides, it is proved, he says, that the prophecies against the nations must once have come after ch. 25 and before ch. 27, by the peculiar expression ta> Aila>m at the end of Jer 25:13 (Septuag.), by the omission of 27:1 in the Sept., and by the somewhat unexpected date given at 49:34. Now the date, “in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah,” in the heading of the prophecy against Elam, 49:34, found not only in the Masoretic text, but also in the Alexandr. version (where, however, it occurs as a postscript at the end of the prophecy in 26:1), creates a difficulty only if the prophecy be wrongly taken to refer to a conquest of Elam by Nebuchadnezzar. The other two arguments, founded on the ta> Ailam of 25:13, and the omission of the heading at 27:1 (Heb.) in the LXX, stand and fall with the assumption that the Greek translator adhered closely to the Hebrew text and rendered it with literal accuracy, the very reverse of which is betrayed from one end of the translation to the other. The heading at Jer 27:1, “In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, came this word to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,” coincides word for word with the heading of 26:1, save that in the latter the words “to Jeremiah” do not occur; and this former heading the Greek translator has simply omitted-holding it to be incorrect, since the prophecy belongs to the time of Zedekiah, and is addressed to him. On the other hand, he has appended ta> Aila>m to the last clause of 25:13, “which Jeremiah prophesied against the nations,” taking this clause to be the heading of Jeremiah’s prophecies against the nations; this appears from the ta> Aila>m , manifestly imitated from the epi> ta> e>qnh . His purpose was to make out the following oracle as against Elam; but he omitted from its place the full title of the prophecy against Elam, because it seemed to him unsuitable to have it come immediately after the (in his view) general heading, aJ> eprofh>teuse IJeremi>av epi> ta> e>qnh , while, however, he introduced it at the end of the prophecy.

It is wholly wrong to suppose that the heading at Jer 27:1 of the Hebrew text, omitted in the LXX, is nothing but the postscript to the prophecy against Elam (26:1 in the LXX and 49:34 in the Heb.); for this postscript runs thus: en arch> basileu>ontov Sedeki>ou basile>wv ege>neto k . t . l , and is a literal translation of the heading at 49:34 of the Heb. It is from this, and not from 27:1 of the Heb., that the translator has manifestly taken his postscript to the prophecy against Elam; and if so, the postscript is, of course, no kind of proof that in the original text used by the Greek translator of the prophecies against the nations stood before ch. 27. The notion we are combating is vitiated, finally, by the fact that it does not in the least explain why these prophecies are in the LXX placed after 25:13, but rather suggests for them a wholly unsuitable position between 26 and 27, where they certainly never stood, nor by any possibility ever could have stood. From what has been said it will be seen that we can seek the cause for the transposition of the prophecies against the nations only in the Alexandrian translator’s arbitrary mode of handling the Hebrew text.

For the exegetical literature on the subject of Jeremiah’s prophecies, see my Introduction to Old Testament, vol. i. p. 332, English translation (Foreign Theological Library). Besides the commentaries there mentioned, there have since appeared: K. H. Graf, der Proph. Jeremia erklärt, Leipz. 1862; and C. W. E. Naegelsbach, der Proph. Jeremia, Theologischhomiletisch bearbeitet, in J. P. Lange’s Bibelwerk, Bielefeld and Leipz. 1868; translated in Dr. Schaff’s edition of Lange’s Bibelwerk, and published by Messrs. Clark. BOOK OF JEREMIAH CALL AND CONSECRATION OF JEREMIAH TO BE PROPHET.

JEREMIAH 1:1-3 Verses 1-3 contain the heading to the whole book of the prophecies of Jeremiah. The heading runs thus: “Sayings of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests at Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin, to whom befell the word of Jahveh in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign, and in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah king of Judah, until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.”

The period mentioned in these verses includes the time of Jeremiah’s principal labours, while no reference is here made to the work he at a later time wrought amidst the ruins of Judah and in Egypt; this being held to be of but subordinate importance for the theocracy. Similarly, when the names of the kings under whom he laboured are given, the brief reigns of Jehoahaz and of Jehoiachin are omitted, neither reign having lasted over three months.

His prophecies are called rb;d; , words or speeches, as in Jer 36:10; so with the prophecies of Amos, Amos 1:1. More complete information as to the person of the prophet is given by the mention made of his father and of his extraction. The name hy;m]r]yi , “Jahveh throws,” was in very common use, and is found as the name of many persons; cf. 1 Chron 5:24; 12:4,10,13; Kings 23:31; Jer 35:3; Neh 10:3; 12:1. Hence we are hardly entitled to explain the name with Hengstb. by Ex 15:1, to the effect that whoever bore it was consecrated to the God who with almighty hand dashes to the ground all His foes, so that in his name the nature of our prophet’s mission would be held to be set forth. His father Hilkiah is taken by Clem. Alex., Jerome, and some Rabbins, for the high priest of that name who is mentioned in 2 Chron 22:4; but without sufficient grounds. For Hilkiah, too, is a name that often occurs; and the high priest is sure to have had his home not in Anathoth, but in Jerusalem. But Jeremiah and his father belonged to the priests who lived in Anathoth, now called Anâta, a town of the priests, lying 1 1/4 hours north of Jerusalem (see on Josh 21:18), in the land, i.e., the tribal territory, of Benjamin. In v. 2 lae belongs to rv,a : “to whom befell (to whom came) the word of Jahveh in the days of Josiah,...in the thirteenth year of his reign.”

This same year is named by Jeremiah in Jer 25:3 as the beginning of his prophetic labours. hy;h; in v. 3 is the continuation of hy;h; in v. 2, and its subject is hwO;hy] rb;d; : and then (further) it came (to him) in the days of Jehoiakim,...to the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, etc. In the fifth month of the year named, the eleventh of the reign of Zedekiah, Jerusalem was reduced to ashes by Nebuzar-adan, and its inhabitants carried away to Babylon; cf. 52:12ff., 2 Kings 25:8ff. Shortly before, King Zedekiah, captured when in flight from the Chaldeans during the siege of Jerusalem, had been deprived of eyesight at Riblah and carried to Babylon in chains.

And thus his kingship was at an end, thought the eleventh year of his reign might not be yet quite completed.

JEREMIAH 1:4-5 The Call and Consecration of Jeremiah to be a Prophet of the Lord.

The investiture of Jeremiah with the prophetic office follows in four acts: the call on the part of the Lord, vv. 4-8; Jeremiah’s consecration for his calling in vv. 9-10; and in two signs, by means of which the Lord assures him of certain success in his work and of powerful support in the exercise of his office (vv. 11-19). The call was given by a word of the Lord which came to him in this form:

V. 5. “Before I formed thee in the womb I have known thee, and before thou wentest forth from the belly have I consecrated thee, to be prophet to the nations have I set thee.

V. 6. Then said I, Ah, Lord Jahveh! behold, I know not how to speak; for I am too young. V. 7. Then said Jahveh to me, Say not, I am too young; but to all to whom I send thee shalt thou go, and all that I command thee shalt thou speak.

V. 8. Fear not before them: for I am with thee, to save thee, saith Jahveh.

This word came to Jeremiah by means of inspiration, and is neither the product of a reflective musing as to what his calling was to be, nor the outcome of an irresistible impulse, felt within him, to come forward as a prophet. It was a supernatural divine revelation vouchsafed to him, which raised his spiritual life to a state of ecstasy, so that he both recognised the voice of God and felt his lips touched by the hand of God (v. 9). Further, he saw in spirit, one after another, two visions which God interpreted to him as confirmatory tokens of his divine commission (vv. 11-19).

Jeremiah’s appointment to be a prophet for the nations follows upon a decree of God’s, fixed before he was conceived or born. God in His counsel has not only foreordained our life and being, but has predetermined before our birth what is to be our calling upon this earth; and He has accordingly so influenced our origin and our growth in the womb, as to prepare us for what we are to become, and for what we are to accomplish on behalf of His kingdom.

This is true of all men, but very especially of those who have been chosen by God to be the extraordinary instruments of His grace, whom He has appointed to be instruments for the carrying out of the redemptive schemes of His kingdom; cf. Jer 44:2,24; 49:5; Gal 1:15. Thus Samson was appointed to be a Nazarite from the womb, this having been revealed to his mother before he was conceived, Judg 13:3ff. To other men of God such divine predestination was made known for the first time when they were called to that office to which God had chosen them. So was it with our prophet Jeremiah. In such a case a reminder by God of the divine counsel of grace, of old time ordained and provided with means for its accomplishment, should be accepted as an encouragement willingly to take upon one the allotted calling. For the man God has chosen before his birth to a special office in His kingdom He equips with the gifts and graces needed for the exercise of his functions.

The three clauses of v. 5 give the three moments whereof the choosing consists: God has chosen him, has consecrated him, and has installed him as prophet. The reference of the words “I have known thee,” Calvin limited to the office, quasi diceret, priusquam te formarem in utero, destinavi te in hunc usum, nempe ut subires docendi munus in populo meo. Divine knowing is at the same time a singling out; and of this, choosing is the immediate consequence. But the choosing takes place by means of vdæq; , sanctifying, i.e., setting apart and consecrating for a special calling, and is completed by institution to the office. “To be prophet for the nations have I set thee” ˆtæn; , ponere, not only appoint, but install). The sense has been briefly put by Calv. thus: (Jer.) fuisse hac lege creatum hominem, ut suo tempore manifestaretur propheta. ywOG, to the nations = for the nations; not for Judah alone, but for the heathen peoples too; cf. vv. 10, Jer 25:9,46ff.

The Chethibh Ërwxa should apparently be read Ër]Wxa\ , from rWx , equivalent to rxæy; ; the root-form rWx , being warranted by Ex 32:4; Kings 7:15, and being often found in Aramaic. It is, however, possible that the Chet. may be only scriptio plena of rxæn; , a radice rxæy; , since the scriptio pl. is found elsewhere, e.g., Hos 8:12; Jer 44:17; Ezek 21:28, etc.

JEREMIAH 1:6 The divine call throws Jeremiah into terror.

Knowing well his too great weakness for such an office, he exclaims: Ah, Lord Jahveh! I know not how to speak; for I am r[ænæ , i.e., young and inexperienced; cf. 1 Kings 3:7. This excuse shows that rbæd; [dæy; alo means something else than rb;d; vyai alo , by which Moses sought to repel God’s summons. Moses was not ready of speech, he lacked the gift of utterance; Jeremiah, on the other hand, only thinks himself not yet equal to the task by reason of his youth and want of experience.

JEREMIAH 1:7 This excuse God holds of no account.

As prophet to the nations, Jeremiah was not to make known his own thoughts or human wisdom, but the will and counsel of God which were to be revealed to him. This is signified by the clauses: for to all to whom I send thee, etc. The `l[æ belonging to Ëlæy; stands for lae , and does not indicate a hostile advance against any one. lKo after `l[æ is not neuter, but refers to persons, or rather peoples; since to the relative rv,a in this connection, `l[æ is quite a natural completion; cf. Isa 8:12, and Ew. §331, c.

Only to those men or peoples is he to go to whom God sends him; and to them he is to declare only what God commands him. And so he needs be in no anxiety on this head, that, as a youth, he has no experience in the matter of speaking.

JEREMIAH 1:8 Just as little needs youthful bashfulness or shy unwillingness to speak before high and mighty personages stand as a hindrance in the way of his accepting God’s call. The Lord will be with him, so that he needs have no fear for any man. The suffix in µynip; refers to all to whom God sends him (v. 7). These, enraged by the threatenings of punishment which he must proclaim to them, will seek to persecute him and put him to death (cf. v. 19); but God promises to rescue him from every distress and danger which the fulfilment of his duties can bring upon him. Yet God does not let the matter cease with this pledge; but, further, He consecrates him to his calling.

JEREMIAH 1:9-10 The Consecration.

V. 9. “And Jahveh stretched forth His hand, and touched my mouth, and Jahveh said to me, Behold, I put my words into thy mouth.

V. 10. Behold, I set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root up and to ruin, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.” In order to assure him by overt act of His support, the Lord gives him a palpable pledge. He stretches out His hand and causes it to touch his mouth (cf. Isa 6:7); while, as explanation of this symbolical act, He adds: I have put my words in thy mouth. The hand is the instrument of making and doing; the touching of Jeremiah’s mouth by the hand of God is consequently an emblematical token that God frames in his mouth what he is to speak. It is a tangible pledge of e>mpneusiv , inspiratio, embodiment of that influence exercised on the human spirit, by means of which the holy men of God speak, being moved by the Holy Ghost, 2 Peter 1:21 (Nägelsb.). The act is a real occurrence, taking place not indeed in the earthly, corporeal sphere, but experienced in spirit, and of the nature of ecstasy.

By means of it God has consecrated him to be His prophet, and endowed him for the discharge of his duties; He may now entrust him with His commission to the peoples and kingdoms, and set him over them as His prophet who proclaims to them His word. The contents of this proclaiming are indicated in the following infinitive clauses. With the words of the Lord he is to destroy and to build up peoples and kingdoms. The word of God is a power that carries out His will, and accomplishes that whereto He sends it, Isa 55:10ff. Against this power nothing earthly can stand; it is a hammer that breaks rocks in pieces, Jer 23:29. What is here said of the word of Jahveh to be preached by Jeremiah is said of Jahveh Himself in 31:28. Its power is to show itself in two ways, in destroying and in building up. The destroying is not set down as a mere preliminary, but is expressed by means of four different words, whereas the building is given only in two words, and these standing after the four; in order, doubtless, to indicate that the labours of Jeremiah should consist, in the first place and for the most part, in proclaiming judgment upon the nations. The assonant verbs vtæn; and xtæn; are joined to heighten the sense; for the same reason sræh; is added to dbæa; , and in the antithesis [fæn; is joined with tBæ . f3 JEREMIAH 1:11-12 The Confirmatory Tokens.

The first is given in vv. 11 and 12: “And there came to me the word of Jahveh, saying, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, I see an almond rod. Then Jahveh said to me, Thou hast seen aright: for I will keep watch over my word to fulfil it.” With the consecration of the prophet to his office are associated two visions, to give him a surety of the divine promise regarding the discharge of the duties imposed on him. First, Jeremiah sees in spirit a rod or twig of an almond tree. God calls his attention to this vision, and interprets it to him as a symbol of the swift fulfilment of His word. The choice of this symbol for the purpose given is suggested by the Hebrew name for the almond tree, dqev; , the wakeful, the vigilant; because this tree begins to blossom and expand its leaves in January, when the other trees are still in their winter’s sleep (florat omnium prima mense Januario, Martio vero poma maturat. Plin. h. n. xvi. 42, and Von Schubert, Reise iii.

S. 14), and so of all trees awakes earliest to new life. Without any sufficient reason Graf has combated this meaning for dqev; , proposing to change dqev; into dqæv; , and, with Aquil., Sym., and Jerome, to translate dqæv; lQemæ watchful twig, virga vigilans, i.e., a twig whose eyes are open, whose buds have opened, burst; but he has not even attempted to give any authority for the use of the verb dqæv; for the bursting of buds, much less justified it. In the explanation of this symbol between the words, thou hast seen aright, and the grounding clause, for I will keep watch, there is omitted the intermediate thought: it is indeed a dqev; . The twig thou hast seen is an emblem of what I shall do; for I will keep watch over my word, will be watchful to fulfil it. This interpretation of the symbol shows besides that lQemæ is not here to be taken, as by Kimchi, Vatabl., Seb. Schmidt, Nägelsb., and others, for a stick to beat with, or as a threatening rod of correction.

The reasons alleged by Nägelsb. for this view are utterly inconclusive. For his assertion, that lQemæ always means a stick, and never a fresh, leafy branch, is proved to be false by Gen 30:37; and the supposed climax found by ancient expositors in the two symbols: rod-boiling caldron, put thus by Jerome: qui noluerint percutiente virga emendari, mittentur in ollam aeneam atque succensam, is forced into the text by a false interpretation of the figure of the seething pot. The figure of the almond rod was meant only to afford to the prophet surety for the speedy and certain fulfilment of the word of God proclaimed by him. It is the second emblem alone that has anything to do with the contents of his preaching.

JEREMIAH 1:13-14 The Seething Pot.

V. 13. “And there came to me the word of Jahveh for the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said: I see a seething-pot; and it looketh hither from the north.

V. 14. Then said Jahveh to me: From the north will trouble break forth upon all inhabitants of the land.

V. 15. For, behold, I call to all families of the kingdoms towards the north, saith Jahveh; that they come and set each his throne before the gates of Jerusalem, and against all her walls round about, and against all cities of Judah. V. 16. And I will pronounce judgment against them for all their wickedness, in that they have forsaken me, and have offered odours to other gods, and worshipped the work of their hands.” rysi is a large pot or caldron in which can be cooked vegetables or meat for many persons at once; cf. 2 Kings 4:38ff., Ezek 24:3ff. jpæn; , fanned, blown upon, used of fire, Ezek. 21:36; 22:20f.; then by transference, seething, steaming, since the caldron under which fire is fanned steams, its contents boil; cf. Job 41:12.

The µynip; of the pot is the side turned to the spectator (the prophet), the side towards the front. This is turned from the north this way, i.e., set so that its contents will run thence this way. ˆwOpx; , properly: towards the north; then, that which lies towards the north, or the northerly direction. In the interpretation of this symbol in v. 14, jtæp; , assonant to jpæn; , is introduced, just as in Amos 8:2 xyiqæ is explained by xqe ; so that there was no occasion for the conjecture of Houbig. and Graf: tupach, it is fanned up; and against this we have Hitzig’s objection that the Hophal of naapach never occurs. Equally uncalled for is Hitzig’s own conjecture, taapuwach, it will steam, fume, be kindled; while against this we have the fact, that as to naapach no evidence can be given for the meaning be kindled, and that we have no cases of such a mode of speaking as: the trouble is fuming, steaming up.

The Arabian poetical saying: their pot steams or boils, i.e., a war is being prepared by them, is not sufficient to justify such a figure. We hold then jtæp; for the correct reading, and decline to be led astray by the paraphrastic ekkauthee’setai of the LXX, since jtæp; gives a suitable sense.

It is true, indeed, that jtæp; usually means open; but an opening of the caldron by the removal of the lid is not (with Graf) to be thought of. But, again, jtæp; has the derived sig. let loose, let off (cf. tyiBæ jtæp; , Isa 14:17), from which there can be no difficulty in inferring for the Niph. the sig. be let loose, and in the case of trouble, calamity: break forth. That which is in the pot runs over as the heat increases, and pours itself on the hearth or ground. If the seething contents of the pot represent disaster, their running over will point to its being let loose, its breaking out. xr,a, bvæy; are the inhabitants of the land of Judah, as the interpretation in v. 15 shows. In v. 15 reference to the figure is given up, and the further meaning is given in direct statement. The Lord will call to all families of the kingdoms of the north, and they will come (= that they are to come). The kingdoms of the north are not merely the kingdoms of Syria, but in general those of Upper Asia; since all armies marching from the Euphrates towards Palestine entered the land from the north. hj;p;v]mi , families, are the separate races of nations, hence often used in parallelism with ywOG; cf. Jer 10:25; Nah 3:4.

We must not conclude from this explanation of the vision seen that the seething pot symbolizes the Chaldeans themselves or the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar; such a figure would be too unnatural. The seething pot, whose contents boil over, symbolizes the disaster and ruin which the families of the kingdoms of the north will pour out on Judah.

JEREMIAH 1:15 V. 15 is not the precise interpretation of the picture seen, but a direct statement of the afflictions about to fall on the inhabitants of Judah. “They will set each his throne.” The representatives of the kingdoms are meant, the kings and generals. To set one’s throne ˆtæn; or µWc ; cf. Jer 43:10; 49:38) is a figure for the establishing of sovereignty. aSeKi , seat or throne, is not the seat of judgment, but the throne of the sovereign; cf. the expression: set the throne upon these stones, 43:10; where a passing of judgment on the stones being out of the question, the only idea is the setting up of dominion, as is put beyond doubt by the parallel clause; to spread out his state carpet upon the stones. “Before the gates of Jerusalem:” not merely in order to besiege the city and occupy the outlets from it (Jerome and others), but to lord it over the city and its inhabitants.

If we take the figurative expression in this sense, the further statement fits well into it, and we have no need to take refuge in Hitzig’s unnatural view that these clauses are not dependent on wgw’ ˆtæn; but on awOB. For the words: they set up their dominion against the calls of Jerusalem, and against all cities of Judah, give the suitable sense, that they will use violence against the walls and cities.

JEREMIAH 1:16 God holds judgment upon the inhabitants of Judah in this very way, viz., by bringing these nations and permitting them to set up their lordship before the gates of Jerusalem, and against all cities of Judah. The suffix in tae refers to xr,a, bvæy; , v. 14, and tae stands by later usage for tae , as frequently in Jer.; cf. Ew. §264, b. pAta, µyfip;v]mi rB,Di , speak judgment, properly, have a lawsuit with one, an expression peculiar to Jeremiah-cf. 4:12; 12:1; 39:5; 52:9, and 2 Kings 25:6-is in substance equivalent to tae fpæv; , plead with one, cf. Jer 12:1 with 2:35, Ezek 20:35ff., and signifies not only remonstrating against wrong doing, but also the passing of condemnation, and so comprehends trial and sentencing; cf. Jer 39:5; 42:9. “All their wickedness” is more exactly defined in the following relative clauses; it consists in their apostasy from God, and their worship of heathen gods and idols made by themselves; cf. 19:4, Kings 11:33, 2 Kings 22:17. rfæq; , offer odours, cause to rise in smoke, used not of the burning of incense alone, but of all offerings upon the altar, bloody offerings and meat-offerings; hence frequently in parallelism with jbæz, ; cf. Hos 4:13; 11:2, etc. In the Pentateuch the Hiphil is used for this sense. Instead of the plural hc,[mæ , many MSS give the singular hc,[mæ as the ordinary expression for the productions of the hand, handiwork; cf. Jer 25:6-7,14; 32:30; 2 Kings 22:17, etc.; but the plural too is found in Jer 44:8; 2 Chron 34:25, and is approved by these passages. The sense is no way affected by this variation.

JEREMIAH 1:17-19 The interpretation of the symbols is followed by a charge to Jeremiah to address himself stoutly to his duties, and to discharge them fearlessly, together with still further and fuller assurance of powerful divine assistance.

V. 17. “But thou, gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak to them all that I command thee: be not dismayed before them, lest I dismay thee before them.

V. 18. And I, behold I make thee this day a strong city, an iron pillar, a brazen wall against the whole land, the kings of Judah its princes, its priests, and the people of the land.

V. 19. They shall strive against thee, but not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith Jahveh, to save thee.” To gird up the loins, i.e., to fasten or tuck up with the girdle the long wide garment, in order to make oneself fit and ready for labour, for a journey, or a race (Ex 12:11; 1 Kings 18:46; 2 Kings 4:29; 9:1), or for battle (Job 38:3; 40:7). Meaning: equip thyself and arise to preach my words to the inhabitants of the land. In m tjæTeAlaæ and alo ttæj; there is a play on words. The Niph. sig. broken in spirit by terror and anxiety; the Hiph. to throw into terror and anguish.

If Jer. appears before his adversaries in terror, then he will have cause to be terrified for them; only if by unshaken confidence in the power of the word he preaches in the name of the Lord, will he be able to accomplish anything. Such confidence he has reason to cherish, for God will furnish him with the strength necessary for making a stand, will make him strong and not to be vanquished. This is the meaning of the pictorial statement in v. 18. A strong city resists the assaults of the foes; the storm cannot shatter an iron pillar; and walls of brass defy the enemy’s missiles. Instead of the plural hm;wOj , the parallel passage Jer 15:20 has the sing. hm;wOj , the plural being used as frequently as the singular to indicate the wall encircling the city; cf. 2 Kings 25:10 with 1 Kings 3:1; Neh 2:13; 4:1 with 1:3, and 2:17; 4:10. With such invincible power will God equip His prophet “against the whole land,” i.e., so that he will be able to hold his own against the whole land.

The mention of the component parts of “all the land,” i.e., the several classes of the population, is introduced by Ël,m, , so that “the kings,” etc., is to be taken as an apposition to “against all the land.” Kings in the plural are mentioned, because the prophet’s labours are to extend over several reigns. rcæ are the chiefs of the people, the heads of families and clans, and officers, civil and military. “The people of the land” is the rest of the population not included in these three classes, elsewhere called men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Jer 17:25; 32:32, and frequently. lae for `l[æ ; so in 15:20, and often. With the promise in v. 19b, cf. v. 8.

I. GENERAL ADMONITIONS AND REPROOFS BELONGING TO THE TIME OF JOSIAH If we compare the six longer discourses in these chapters with the sayings and prophecies gathered together in the other portions of the book, we observe between them this distinction in form and matter, that the former are more general in their character than the latter. Considered as to their form, these last prophecies have, with few exceptions, headings in which we are told both the date of their composition and the circumstances under which they were uttered; while in the headings of these six discourses, if we except the somewhat indefinite notice, “in the days of Josiah” (Jer 3:6), we find nowhere mentioned either their date or the circumstances which led to their composition. Again, both the shorter sayings and the lengthier prophecies between ch. 21 and the end of the book are unmistakeably to be looked upon as prophetic addresses, separately rounded off; but the discourses of our first part give us throughout the impression that they are not discourses delivered before the people, but treatises compiled in writing from the oral addresses of the prophet.

As to their matter, too, we cannot fail to notice the difference that, whereas from ch. 21 onwards the king of Babylon is named as the executor of judgment upon Judah and the nations, in the discourses of ch. 2-20 the enemies who are to execute judgment are nowhere defined, but are only generally described as a powerful and terrible nation coming from the north. And so, in rebuking the idolatry and the prevailing sins of the people, no reference is made to special contemporary events; but there are introduced to a great extent lengthy general animadversions on their moral degeneracy, and reflections on the vanity if idolatry and the nature of true wisdom. From these facts we infer the probable conclusion that these discourses are but comprehensive summaries of the prophet’s labours in the days of Josiah. The probability becomes certainty when we perceive that the matters treated in these discourses are arranged according to their subjects.

The first discourse (Jer 2:1-3:5) gives, so to speak, the programme of the subjects of all the following discourses: that disloyal defection to idolatry, with which Israel has from of old requited the Lord for His love and faithfulness, brings with it sore chastening judgments. In the second discourse (Jer 3:6-6:30) faithless Judah is shown, in the fall of the ten tribes, what awaits itself in case of stiff-necked persistence in idolatry. In the third (ch. 7-10) is torn from it the support of a vain confidence in the possession of the temple and in the offering of the sacrifices commanded by the law. In the fourth (ch. 11-13) its sins are characterized as a breach of the covenant; and rejection by the Lord is declared to be its punishment. In the fifth (ch. 14-17) the hope is destroyed that the threatened chastisement can be turned aside by intercession. Finally, in the sixth (ch. 18-20) the judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the kingdom of Judah is exhibited in symbolical acts.

In this arrangement and distribution of what the prophet had to announce to the people in his endeavours to save them, if possible, from destruction, we can recognise a progression from general admonitions and threatenings to more and more definite announcement of coming judgments; and when, on the other hand, we see growing greater and bitterer the prophet’s complaints against the hatreds and persecutions he has to endure (cf. Jer 12:1-6; 15:10-11,15-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23,20), we can gather that the expectation of the people’s being saved from impending destruction was growing less and less, that their obduracy was increasing, and that judgment must inevitably come upon them. These complaints of the prophet cease with ch. 20, though later he had much fiercer hatred to endure.

None of these discourses contains any allusions to events that occurred after Josiah’s death, or stand in any relation to such events. Hence we believe we are safe in taking them for a digest of the quintessence of Jeremiah’s oral preaching in the days of Josiah, and this arranged with reference to the subject-matter. It was by this preaching that Jeremiah sought to give a firm footing to the king’s reformatory efforts to restore and inspire new life into the public worship, and to develope the external return to the legal temple worship into an inward conversion to the living God. And it was thus he sought, while the destruction of the kingdom was impending, to save all that would let themselves be saved; knowing as he did that God, in virtue of His unchangeable covenant faithfulness, would sharply chastise His faithless people for its obstinate apostasy from Him, but had not determined to make an utter end of it.

THE LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS OF THE LORD, AND ISRAEL’S DISLOYALTY AND IDOLATRY JEREMIAH 2:1-3 The Lord has loved Israel sincerely (Jer 2:2-3), but Israel has fallen from the Lord its God and followed after imaginary gods (vv. 4-8); therefore He will yet further punish it for this unparalleled sin (vv. 9-19). From of old Israel has been renegade, and has by its idolatry contracted fearful guilt, being led not even by afflictions to return to the Lord (vv. 20-30); therefore must the Lord chastise (vv. 31-37), because they will not repent (3:1-5). This discourse is of a quite general character; it only sketches the main thoughts which are extended in the following discourses and prophecies concerning Judah. So that by most critics it is held to be the discourse by which Jeremiah inaugurated his ministry; for, as Hitzig puts it, “in its finished completeness it gives the impression of a first-uttered outpouring of the heart, in which are set forth, without restraint, Jahveh’s list of grievances against Israel, which has long been running up.” It unquestionably contains the chief of the thoughts uttered by the prophet at the beginning of his ministry.

Verse 1-3. “And then came to me the word of Jahveh, saying: Go and publish in the ears of Jerusalem, saying: I have remembered to thy account the love of thy youth, the lovingness of thy courtship time, thy going after me in the wilderness, in a land unsown. Holy was Israel to the Lord, his first-fruits of the produce: all who would have devoured him brought guilt upon themselves: evil came upon him, is the saying of Jahveh.” The vv. and 3 are not “in a certain sense the text of the following reproof” (Graf), but contain “the main idea which shows the cause of the following rebuke” (Hitz.): The Lord has rewarded the people of Israel with blessings for its love to Him. rkæz; with l] pers. and accus. rei means: to remember to one’s account that it may stand him in good stead afterwards-cf. Neh 5:19; 13:22,31; Ps 98:3; 106:45, etc.-that it may be repaid with evil, Neh 6:14; 13:29; Ps 79:8, etc.

The perfect rkæz; is to be noted, and not inverted into the present. It is a thing completed that is spoken of; what the Lord has done, not what He is going on with. He remembered to the people Israel the love of its youth. dseje , ordinarily, condescending love, graciousness and favour; here, the self-devoting, nestling love of Israel to its God. The youth of Israel is the time of the sojourn in Egypt and of the exodus thence (Hos 2:17; 11:1); here the latter, as is shown by the following: lovingness of the courtship.

The courtship comprises the time from the exodus out of Egypt till the concluding of the covenant at Sinai (Ex 19:8). When the Lord redeemed Israel with a strong hand out of the power of Egypt, He chose it to be His spouse, whom He bare on eagles’ wings and brought unto Himself, Ex 19:4. The love of the bride to her Lord and Husband, Israel proved by its following Him as He went before in the wilderness, the land where it is not sown, i.e., followed Him gladly into the parched, barren wilderness. “Thy going after me” is decisive for the question so much debated by commentators, whether dseje and hb;haæ stand for the love of Israel to its God, or God’s love to Israel. The latter view we find so early as Chrysostom, and still in Rosenm. and Graf; but it is entirely overthrown by the rjæaæ Ëlæh; , which Chrysost. transforms into poiee’sas exakolouthee’sai mou, while Graf takes no notice of it. The reasons, too, which Graf, after the example of Rosenm. and Dathe, brings in support of this and against the only feasible exposition, are altogether valueless. The assertion that the facts forbid us to understand the words of the love of Israel to the Lord, because history represents the Israelites, when vixdum Aegypto egressos, as refractarios et ad aliorum deorum cultum pronos, cannot be supported by a reference to Deut 9:6,24; Isa 48:8; Amos 5:25f., Ps 106:7.

History knows of no apostasy of Israel from its God and no idolatry of the people during the time from the exodus out of Egypt till the arrival at Sinai, and of this time alone Jeremiah speaks. All the rebellions of Israel against its God fall within the time after the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, and during the march from Sinai to Canaan. On the way from Egypt to Sinai the people murmured repeatedly, indeed, against Moses; at the Red Sea, when Pharaoh was pursuing with chariots and horsemen (Ex 14:11ff.); at Marah, where they were not able to drink the water for bitterness (15:24); in the wilderness of Sin, for lack of bread and meat (16:2ff.); and at Massah, for want of water (Jer 17:2ff.). But in all these cases the murmuring was no apostasy from the Lord, no rebellion against God, but an outburst of timorousness and want of proper trust in God, as is abundantly clear from the fact that in all these cases of distress and trouble God straightway brings help, with the view of strengthening the confidence of the timorous people in the omnipotence of His helping grace.

Their backsliding from the Lord into heathenism begins with the worship of the golden calf, after the covenant had been entered into at Sinai (Ex 32), and is continued in the revolts on the way from Sinai to the borders of Canaan, at Taberah, at Kibroth-hattaavah (Num 11), in the desert of Paran at Kadesh (Num 13; 20); and each time it was severely punished by the Lord.

Neither are we to conclude, with J. D. Mich., that God interprets the journey through the desert in meliorem partem, and makes no mention of their offences and revolts; nor with Graf, that Jeremiah looks steadily away from all that history tells of the march of the Israelites through the desert, of their discontent and refractoriness, of the golden calf and of Baal Peor, and, idealizing the past as contrasted with the much darker present, keeps in view only the brighter side of the old times. Idealizing of this sort is found neither elsewhere in Jeremiah nor in any other prophet; nor is there anything of the kind in our verse, if we take up rightly the sense of it and the thread of the thought. It becomes necessary so to view it, only if we hold the whole forty years’ sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness to be the espousal time, and make the marriage union begin not with the covenanting at Sinai, but with the entrance of Israel into Canaan. Yet more entirely without foundation is the other assertion, that the words rightly given as the sense is, “stand in no connection with the following, since then the point in hand is the people’s forgetfulness of the divine benefits, its thanklessness and apostasy, not at all the deliverances wrought by Jahveh in consideration of its former devotedness.”

For in v. 2 it is plainly enough told how God remembered to the people its love. Israel was so shielded by Him, as His sanctuary, that whoever touched it must pay the penalty. vd,qo are all gifts consecrated to Jahveh.

The Lord has made Israel a holy offering consecrated to Him in this, that He has separated it to Himself for a hL;gus] , for a precious possession, and has chosen it to be a holy people: Ex 19:5f.; Deut 7:6; 14:2. We can explain from the Torah of offering the further designation of Israel: his first-fruits; the first of the produce of the soil or yield of the land belonged, as vd,qo , to the Lord: Ex 23:19; Num 8:8, etc. Israel, as the chosen people of God, as such a consecrated firstling. Inasmuch as Jahveh is Creator and Lord of the whole world, all the peoples are His possession, the harvest of His creation. But amongst the peoples of the earth He has chosen Israel to Himself for a firstling-people ywOG tyviare , Amos 6:1), and so pronounced it His sanctuary, not to be profaned by touch.

Just as each laic who ate of a firstling consecrated to God incurred guilt, so all who meddled with Israel brought guilt upon their heads. The choice of the verb lkæa; is also to be explained from the figure of firstling-offerings.

The eating of firstling-fruit is appropriation of it to one’s own use.

Accordingly, by the eating of the holy people of Jahveh, not merely the killing and destroying of it is to be understood, but all laying of violent hands on it, to make it a prey, and so all injury or oppression of Israel by the heathen nations. The practical meaning of µvæa; is given by the next clause: mischief came upon them. The verbs µvæa; and awOB are not futures; for we have here to do not with the future, but with what did take place so long as Israel showed the love of the espousal time to Jahveh. Hence rightly Hitz.: “he that would devour it must pay the penalty.” An historical proof of this is furnished by the attack of the Amalekites on Israel and its result, Ex 17:8-15.

JEREMIAH 2:4-8 But Israel did not remain true to its first love; it has forgotten the benefits and blessings of its God, and has fallen away from Him in rebellion.

V. 4. “Hear the word of Jahveh, house of Jacob, and all families of the house of Israel.

V. 5. Thus saith Jahveh, What have your fathers found in me of wrongfulness, that they are gone far from me, and have gone after vanity, and are become vain?

V. 6. And they said not, Where is Jahveh that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us in the wilderness, in the land of steppes and of pits, in the land of drought and of the shadow of death, in a land that no one passes through and where no man dwells?

V. 7. And I brought you into a land of fruitful fields, to eat its fruit and its goodness: and ye came and defiled my land, and my heritage ye have made an abomination.

V. 8. The priests said not, Where is Jahveh? and they that handled the law knew me not: the shepherds fell away from me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and after them that profit not are they gone.” The rebuke for ungrateful, faithless apostasy id directed against the whole people.

The “house of Jacob” is the people of the twelve tribes, and the parallel member, “all families of the house of Israel,” is an elucidative apposition.

The “fathers” in v. 5 are the ancestors of the now living race onwards from the days of the Judges, when the generation arising after the death of Joshua and his contemporaries forsook the Lord and served the Baals (Judg 2:10ff.). `lw,[, , perversity, wrongfulness, used also of a single wicked deed in Ps 7:4, the opposite to acting in truth and good faith. Jahveh is a God of faithfulness hn;Wma’ ); in Him is no iniquity `lw,[, ˆyiaæ ), Deut 32:4.

The question, what have they found...? is answered in the negative by v. 6.

To remove far from me and follow after vanity, is tantamount to forsaking Jahveh and serving the false gods (Baals), Judg 2:11. lb,h, , lit., breath, thence emptiness, vanity, is applied so early as the song of Moses, Deut 32:21, to the false gods, as being nonentities. Here, however, the word means not the gods, but the worship of them, as being groundless and vain; bringing no return to him who devotes himself to it, but making him foolish and useless in thought and deed. By the apostle in Rom 1:21 lbæh; is expressed by emataiw>qhsan . Cf. 2 Kings 17:15, where the second hemistich of our verse is applied to the ten tribes.

Verse 6. They said not, Where is Jahveh? i.e., they have no longer taken any thought of Jahveh; have not recalled His benefits, though they owed to Him all they had become and all they possessed. He has brought them out of Egypt, freed them from the house of bondage (Mic 6:4), and saved them from the oppression of the Pharaohs, meant to extirpate them (Ex 3:7ff.).

He has led them through pathless and inhospitable deserts, miraculously furnished them with bread and water, and protected them from all dangers (Deut 8:15). To show the greatness of His benefits, the wilderness is described as parched unfruitful land, as a land of deadly terrors and dangers. `bre[ xr,a, , land of steppes or heaths, corresponds to the land unsown of v. 2. “And of pits,” i.e., full of dangerous pits and chasms into which one may stumble unawares. Land of drought, where one may have to pine through thirst. And of the shadow of death: so Sheol is named in Job 10:21 as being a place of deep darkness; here, the wilderness, as a land of the terrors of death, which surround the traveller with darkness as of death: Isa 8:22; 9:1; Job 16:16. A land through which no one passes, etc., i.e., which offers the traveller neither path nor shelter. Through his frightful desert God has brought His people in safety.

Verse 7-8. And He has done yet more. He has brought them into a fruitful and well-cultivated land. lm,r]Kæ , fruitful fields, the opposite of wilderness, Jer 4:26; Isa 29:17. To eat up its fruit and its good; cf. the enumeration of the fruits and useful products of the land of Canaan, Deut 8:7-9. And this rich and splendid land the ungrateful people have defiled by their sins and vices (cf. Lev 18:24), and idolatry (cf. Ezek 36:18); and the heritage of Jahveh they have thus made an abomination, an object of horror. The land of Canaan is called “my heritage,” the especial domain of Jahveh, inasmuch as, being the Lord of the earth, He is the possessor of the land and has given it to the Israelites for a possession, yet dwells in the midst of it as its real lord, Num. 25:34.-In v. 8 the complaint briefly given in v. 6 is expanded by an account of the conduct of the higher classes, those who gave its tone to the spirit of the people.

The priests, whom God had chosen to be the ministers of His sanctuary, asked not after Him, i.e., sought neither Him nor His sanctuary. They who occupy themselves with the law, who administer the law: these too are the priests as teachers of the law (Mic 3:11), who should instruct the people as to the Lord’s claims on them and commandments (Lev 10:11; Deut 33:10).

They knew not Jahveh, i.e., they took no note of Him, did not seek to discover what His will and just claims were, so as to instruct the people therein, and press them to keep the law. The shepherds are the civil authorities, princes and kings (cf. Jer 23:1ff.): those who by their lives set the example to the people, fell away from the Lord; and the prophets, who should have preached God’s word, prophesied l[æBæ , by Baal, i.e., inspired by Baal. Baal is here a generic name for all false gods; cf. 23:13. l[æyæ alo , those who profit not, are the Baals as unreal gods; cf. Isa 44:9; 1 Sam 12:21. The utterances as to the various ranks form a climax, as Hitz. rightly remarks. The ministers of public worship manifested no desire towards me; those learned in the law took no knowledge of me, of my will, of the contents of the book of the law; the civil powers went the length of rising up against my law; and the prophets fairly fell away to false gods, took inspiration from Baal, the incarnation of the lying spirit.

JEREMIAH 2:9-13 Such backsliding from God is unexampled and appalling.

V. 9. “Therefore will I further contend with you, ad with your children’s children will I contend.

V. 10. For go over to the islands of the Chittim, and see; and send to Kedar, and observe well, and see if such things have been; V. 11. whether a nation hath changed it gods, which indeed are no gods? but my people hath changed its glory for that which profits not.

V. 12. Be horrified, ye heavens, at this, and shudder, and be sore dismayed, saith Jahveh.

V. 13. For double evil hath my people done; me have they forsaken, the fountain of living waters, to hew out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, the hold no water.” In the preceding verses the fathers were charged with the backsliding from the Lord; in v. 9 punishment is threatened against the now-living people of Israel, and on their children’s children after them. For the people in its successive and even yet future generations constitutes a unity, and in this unity a moral personality. Since the sins of the fathers transmit themselves to the children and remoter descendants, sons and grandsons must pay the penalty of the fathers’ guilt, that is, so long as they share the disposition of their ancestors. The conception of this moral unity is at the foundation of the threatening. That the present race persists in the fathers’ backsliding from the Lord is clearly expressed in v. 17ff. In “I will further chide or strive,” is intimated implicite that God had chidden already up till now, or even earlier with the fathers. byri , contend, when said of God, is actual striving or chastening with all kinds of punishment.

This must God do as the righteous and holy one; for the sin of the people is an unheard of sin, seen in no other people. “The islands of the Chittim” are the isles and coast lands of the far west, as in Ezek 27:6; Kittiy having originally been the name for Cyprus and the city of Cition, see in Gen 10:4.

In contrast with these distant western lands, Kedar is mentioned as representative of the races of the east. The Kedarenes lived as a pastoral people in the eastern part of the desert between Arabia Petraea and Babylonia; see in Gen 25:13 and Ezek 27:21. Peoples in the two opposite regions of the world are individualizingly mentioned instead of all peoples. ˆyBi , give good heed, serves to heighten the expression. ˆhe = µai introduces the indirect question; cf. Ew. §324, c. The unheard of, that which has happened amongst no people, is put interrogatively for rhetorical effect.

Has any heathen nation changed its gods, which indeed are not truly gods?

No; no heathen nation has done this; but the people of Jahveh, Israel, has exchanged its glory, i.e., the God who made Himself known to it in His glory, for false gods that are of no profit. dwObK; is the glory in which the invisible God manifested His majesty in the world and amidst His people.

Cf. the analogous title given to God, laer;c]yi ˆwOaG; , Amos 8:7; Hos 5:5.

The exact antithesis to dwObK; would be tv,B, cf. Jer 3:24; 11:13; but Jeremiah chose l[æyæ alo to represent the exchange as not advantageous.

God showed His glory to the Israelites in the glorious deeds of His omnipotence and grace, like those mentioned in vv. 5 and 6. The Baals, on the other hand, are not µyhila’ , but ‘eliyliym, nothings, phantoms without a being, that bring no help or profit to their worshippers.

Before the sin of Israel is more fully set forth, the prophet calls on heaven to be appalled at it. The heavens are addressed as that part of the creation where the glory of God is most brightly reflected. The rhetorical aim is seen in the piling up of words. brej; , lit., to be parched up, to be deprived of the life-marrow. Israel has committed two crimes: a. It has forsaken Jahveh, the fountain of living water. yjæ µyimæ , living water, i.e., water that originates and nourishes life, is a significant figure for God, with whom is the fountain of life (Ps 36:10), i.e., from whose Spirit all life comes.

Fountain of living water (here and Jer 17:13) is synonymous with well of life in Prov 10:11; 13:14; 14:27, Sir. 21:13. b. The other sin is this, that they hew or dig out wells, broken, rent, full of crevices, that hold no water.

The delineation keeps to the same figure.

The dead gods have no life and can dispense no life, just as wells with rents or fissures hold no water. The two sins, the forsaking of the living God and the seeking out of dead gods, cannot really be separated. Man, created by God and for God, cannot live without God. If he forsake the living God, he passes in spite of himself into the service of dead, unreal gods. Forsaking the living God is eo ipso exchanging Him for an imaginary god. The prophet sets the two moments of the apostasy from God side by side, so as to depict to the people with greater fulness of light the enormity of their crime. The fact in v. 11 that no heathen nation changes its gods for others, has its foundation in this, that the gods of the heathen are the creations of men, and that the worship of them is moulded by the carnal-mindedness of sinful man; so that there is less inducement to change, the gods of the different nations being in nature alike. But the true God claims to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and does not permit the nature and manner of His worship to depend on the fancies of His worshippers; He makes demands upon men that run counter to carnal nature, insisting upon the renunciation of sensual lusts and cravings and the crucifixion of the flesh, and against this corrupt carnal nature rebels. Upon this reason for the fact adduced, Jeremiah does not dwell, but lays stress on the fact itself.

This he does with the view of bringing out the distinction, wide as heaven, between the true God and the false gods, to the shaming of the idolatrous people; and in order, at the same time, to scourge the folly of idolatry by giving prominence to the contrast between the glory of God and the nothingness of the idols.

JEREMIAH 2:14-15 By this double sin Israel has drawn on its own head all the evil that has befallen it. Nevertheless it will not cease its intriguing with the heathen nations.

V. 14. “Is Israel a servant? is he a home-born slave? why is he become a booty?

V. 15. Against him roared the young lions, let their voice be heard, and made his land a waste; his cities were burnt up void of inhabitants.

V. 16. Also the sons of Noph and Tahpanes feed on the crown of thy head.

V. 17. Does not this bring it upon thee, thy forsaking Jahveh thy God, at the time when He led thee on the way?

V. 18. And now what hast thou to do with the way to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Nile? and what with the way to Assur, to drink the waters of the river?

V. 19. Thy wickedness chastises thee, and thy backslidings punish thee; then know and see that it is evil and bitter to forsake Jahveh thy God, and to have no fear of me, saith the Lord Jahveh of hosts.” The thought from vv. 14-16 is this: Israel was plundered and abused by the nations like a slave.

To characterize such a fate as in direct contradiction to its destiny is the aim of the question: Is Israel a servant? i.e., a slave or a house-born serf. `db,[, is he who has in any way fallen into slavery, tyiBæ dykiy; a slave born in the house of his master. The distinction between these two classes of salves does not consist in the superior value of the servant born in the house by reason of his attachment to the house. This peculiarity is not here thought of, but only the circumstance that the son of a salve, born in the house, remained a slave without any prospect of being set free; while the man who has been forced into slavery by one of the vicissitudes of life might hope again to acquire his freedom by some favourable turn of circumstances.

Another failure is the attempt of Hitz. to interpret `db,[, as servant of Jahveh, worshipper of the true God; for this interpretation, even if we take no account of all the other arguments that make against it, is rendered impossible by tyiBæ dykiy; .

That expression never means the son of the house, but by unfailing usage the slave born in the house of his master. Now the people of Israel had not been born as serf in the land of Jahveh, but had become `db,[, , i.e., slave, in Egypt (Deut 5:15); but Jahveh has redeemed it from this bondage and made it His people. The questions suppose a state of affairs that did not exist. This is shown by the next question, one expressing wonder: Why then is he it become a prey? Slaves are treated as a prey, but Israel was no slave; why then has such treatment fallen to his lot? Propheta per admirationem quasi de re nova et absurda sciscitatur. An servus est Israel? atqui erat liber prae cunctis gentibus, erat enim filius primogenitus Dei; necesse est igitur quaerere aliam causam, cur adeo miser sit (Calv.). Cf. the similar turn of the thought in v. 31. How Israel became a prey is shown in vv. 15 and 16.

These verses do not treat of future events, but of what has already happened, and, according to vv. 18 and 19, will still continue. The imperff. gaæv; and h[;r; alternate consequently with the perff. ˆtæn; and txæy; , and are governed by zBæ hy;h; , so that they are utterances regarding events of the past, which have been and are still repeated. Lions are a figure that frequently stands for enemies thirsting for plunder, who burst in upon a people or land; cf. Mic 5:7; Isa 5:29, etc. Roared `l[æ , against him, not, over him: the lion roars when he is about to rush upon his prey, Amos 3:4,8; Ps 104:21; Judg 14:5; when he has pounced upon it he growls or grumbles over it; cf. Isa 31:4.-In v. 15b the figurative manner passes into plain statement. They made his land a waste; cf. Jer 4:7; 18:16, etc., where instead of tyvi we have the more ordinary µWc . The Cheth. txæy; from txæy; , not from the Ethiop. hx;n; (Graf, Hitz.), is to be retained; the Keri here, as in 22:6, is an unnecessary correction; cf. Ew. §317, a. In this delineation Jeremiah has in his eye chiefly the land of the ten tribes, which had been ravaged and depopulated by the Assyrians, even although Judah had often suffered partial devastations by enemies; cf. 1 Kings 14:25.

JEREMIAH 2:16 Israel has had to submit to spoliation at the hands of the Egyptians too.

The present reference to the Egyptians is explained by the circumstances of the prophet’s times-from the fact, namely, that just as Israel and Judah had sought the help of Egypt against the Assyrians (cf. Hos 7:11; 2 Kings 17:4, and Isa 30:1-5,1) in the time of Hezekiah, so now in Jeremiah’s times Judah was expecting and seeking help from the same quarter against the advancing power of the Chaldeans; cf. Jer 37:7. Noph and Tahpanes are two former capitals of Egypt, here put as representing the kingdom of the Pharaohs. ãnO, in Hos 9:6 ãmo contracted from m¦nop, Manoph or Menoph, is Memphis, the old metropolis of Lower Egypt, made by Psammetichus the capital of the whole kingdom. Its ruins lie on the western bank of the Nile, to the south of Old Cairo, close by the present village of Mitrahenny, which is built amongst the ruins; cf.

Brugsch Reiseberichte aus Egypten, §60ff., and the remarks on Hos 9:6 and Isa 19:13. tchpnc, elsewhere spelt as here in the Keri sjen]pæj]Tæ -cf. Jer 43:7ff., 44:1; 46:14, Ez. 30:18-was a strong border city on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, called by the Greeks Da>fnai (Herod. ii. 20), by the LXX Ea>fnai ; see in Ezek 30:18. A part of the Jews who had remained in the land fled hither after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jer 43:7ff. dqod]q; h[;r; , feed upon thy crown (lit., feed on thee in respect of thy crown), is a trope for ignominious devastation; for to shave one bald is a token of disgrace and sorrow, cf. 47:5; 48:37, Isa 3:17; and with this Israel is threatened in Isa 7:20. [ræ , to eat up by grazing, as in Job 20:26 and 24:21; in the latter passage in the sense of depopulari. We must then reject the conjectures of J. D. Mich., Hitz., and others, suggesting the sense: crush thy head for thee; a sense not at all suitable, since crushing the head would signify the utter destruction of Israel.-The land of Israel is personified as a woman, as is shown by the fem. suffix in h[;r; . Like a land closely cropped by herds, so is Israel by the Egyptians. In Jer 6:3 also the enemies are represented as shepherds coming with their flocks against Jerusalem, and pitching their tents round about the city, while each flock crops its portion of ground. In 12:10 shepherds lay the vineyard waste.

JEREMIAH 2:17-19 In v. 17 the question as to the cause of the evil is answered. tazO is the above-mentioned evil, that Israel had become a prey to the foe. This thy forsaking of Jahveh makes or prepares for thee. `hc;[; is neuter; the infin. `bzæ[; is the subject of the clause, and it is construed as a neuter, as in 1 Sam 18:23. The fact that thou hast forsaken Jahveh thy God has brought this evil on thee. At the time when He led thee on the way. The participle Ëlæy; is subordinated to `t[e in the stat. constr. as a partic. standing for the praeterit. durans; cf. Ew. §337, c. Ër,D, is understood by Ros. and Hitz. of the right way (Ps 25:8); but in this they forget that this acceptation is incompatible with the `t[e , which circumscribes the leading within a definite time. God will lead His people on the right way at all times.

The way on which He led them at the particular time is the way through the Arabian desert, cf. v. 6, and Ër,D, is to be understood as in Deut 1:33; Ex 18:8; 23:20, etc. Even thus early their fathers forsook the Lord: At Sinai, by the worship of the golden calf; then when the people rose against Moses and Aaron in the desert of Paran, called a rejecting xaæn; ) of Jahveh in Num 14:11; and at Shittim, where Israel joined himself to Baal Peor, Num 25:1-3. The forsaking of Jahveh is not to be limited to direct idolatry, but comprehends also the seeking of help from the heathen; this is shown by the following 18th verse, in which the reproaches are extended to the present bearing of the people. wgw Ër,d,l] ËL;Ahm , lit., what is to thee in reference to the way of Egypt (for the expression, see Hos 14:9), i.e., what hast thou to do with the way of Egypt? Why dost thou arise to go into Egypt, to drink the water of the Nile? rwOjyvi , the black, turbid stream, is a name for the Nile, taken from its dark-grey or black mud.

The Nile is the life-giving artery of Egypt, on whose fertilizing waters the fruitfulness and the prosperity of the country depend. To drink the waters of the Nile is as much as to say to procure for oneself the sources of Egypt’s life, to make the power of Egypt useful to oneself. Analogous to this is the drinking the waters of the river, i.e., the Euphrates. What is meant is seeking help from Egyptians and Assyrians. The water of the Nile and of the Euphrates was to be made to furnish them with that which the fountain of living water, i.e., Jahveh (v. 14), supplied to them. This is an old sin, and with it Israel of the ten tribes is upbraided by Hosea (Hos 7:11; 12:2). From this we are not to infer “that here we have nothing to do with the present, since the existing Israel, Judah, was surely no longer a suitor for the assistance of Assyria, already grown powerless” (Hitz.). The limitation of the reproach solely to the past is irreconcilable with the terms of the verse and with the context (v. 19). Ër,d,l] ËL;Ahmæ cannot grammatically be translated: What hadst thou to do with the way; just as little can we make rsæy; hath chastised thee, since the following: know and see, is then utterly unsuitable to it. rsæy; and jkæy; are not futures, but imperfects, i.e., expressing what is wont to happen over again in each similar case; and so to be expressed in English by the present: thy wickedness, i.e., thy wicked work, chastises thee.

The wickedness was shown in forsaking Jahveh, in the twObvum] , backslidings, the repeated defection from the living God; cf. Jer 3:22; 5:6; 14:7. As to the fact, we have no historical evidence that under Josiah political alliance with Egypt or Assyria was compassed; but even if no formal negotiations took place, the country was certainly even then not without a party to build its hopes on one or other of the great powers between which Judah lay, whenever a conflict arose with either of [dæy; , with the Vav of consecution (see Ew. §347, a): Know then, and at last comprehend, that forsaking the Lord thy God is evil and bitter, i.e., bears evil and bitter fruit, prepares bitter misery for thee. “To have no fear of me” corresponds “to forsake,” lit., thy forsaking, as second subject; lit.,: and the no fear of me in thee, i.e., the fact that thou hast no awe of me. hD;j]pæ , awe of me, like djæpæ in Deut 2:25.

JEREMIAH 2:20-25 All along Israel has been refractory; it cannot and will not cease from idolatry.

V. 20. “For of old time thou hast broken thy yoke, torn off thy bands; and hast said: I will not serve; but upon every high hill, and under every green tree, thou stretchedst thyself as a harlot. V. 21. And I have planted thee a noble vine, all of genuine stock: and how hast thou changed thyself to me into the bastards of a strange vine?

V. 22. Even though thou washedst thee with natron and tookest much soap, filthy remains thy guilt before me, saith the Lord Jahveh.

V. 23. How canst thou say, I have not defiled me, after the Baals have I not gone? See thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done-thou lightfooted camel filly, entangling her says.

V. 24. A wild she-ass used to the wilderness, that in her lust panteth for air; her heat, who shall restrain it? all that seek her run themselves weary; in her month they will find her.

V. 25. Keep thy foot from going barefoot, and thy throat from thirst; but thou sayest, It is useless; no; for I have loved strangers, and after them I go.” Verse 20. `µl;wO[ , from eternity, i.e., from immemorial antiquity, has Israel broken the yoke of the divine law laid on it, and torn asunder the bands of decency and order which the commands of God, the ordinances of the Torah, put on, to nurture it to be a holy people of the Lord; torn them as an untamed bullock (Jer 31:18) or a stubborn cow, Hos 4:16. rsewOm , bands, are not the bands or cords of love with which God drew Israel, Hos 11:4 (Graf), but the commands of God whose part it was to keep life within the bounds of purity, and to hold the people back from running riot in idolatry.

On this head see Jer 5:5; and for the expression, Ps 2:3. The Masoretes have taken ytrbv and ytqtn for the 1st person, pointing accordingly, and for `dbæ[; , as unsuitable to this, they have substituted `rbæ[; . Ewald has decided in favour of these readings; but he is thus compelled to tear the verse to pieces and to hold the text to be defective, since the words from rmæa; onwards are not in keeping with what precedes. Even if we translate:

I offend transgress not, the thought does not adapt itself well to the preceding; I have of old time broken thy yoke, etc.; nor can we easily reconcile with it the grounding clause; for on every high hill,...thou layest a whoring, where Ew. is compelled to force on yKi the adversative sig. Most commentators, following the example of the LXX and Vulg., have taken the two verbs for 2nd person; and thus is maintained the simple and natural thought that Israel has broken the yoke laid on it by God, renounced allegiance to Him, and practised idolatry on every hand.

The spelling rbæv; , qtæn; , i.e., the formation of the 2nd pers. perf. with y, is frequently found in Jer.; cf. 5:33; Jer 3:4; 4:19; 13:21, etc. It is really the fuller original spelling tiy which has been preserved in Aramaic, though seldom found in Hebrew; in Jer. it must be accounted an Aramaism; cf.

Ew. §190, c; Gesen. §44, 2, Rem. 4. With the last clause, on every high hill, etc., cf. Hos 4:13 and Ezek 6:13 with the comm. on Deut 12:2.

Stretchest thyself as a harlot or a whoring, is a vivid description of idolatry. h[;x; , bend oneself, lie down ad coitum, like katakli>nesqai , inclinari.

Verse 21. In this whoring with the false gods, Israel shows its utter corruption. I have planted thee a noble vine; not, with noble vines, as we translate in Isa 5:2, where Israel is compared to a vineyard. Here Israel is compared to the vine itself, a vine which Jahveh has planted; cf. Ps 80:9; Hos 10:1. This vine was all lKo , in its entirety, referred to qrewOc , as collect.) genuine seed; a proper shoot which could bear good grapes (cf.

Ezek 17:5); children of Abraham, as they are described in Gen 18:19. But how has this Israel changed itself to me ttK; , dativ. incommodi) into bastards! rWs is accus., dependent on Ëpæh; ; for this constr. cf. Lev 13:25; Ps 114:8. rWjB; sig. not shoots or twigs, but degenerate sprouts or suckers. The article in ˆp,G, is generic: wild shoots of the species of the wild vine; but this is not the first determining word; cf. for this exposition of the article Jer 13:4; 2 Sam 12:30, etc., Ew. §290, a3); and for the omission of the article with yrik]n; , cf. Ew. §§293, a. Thus are removed the grammatical difficulties that led Hitz. to take wgw’ rWs quite unnaturally as vocative, and Graf to alter the text. “A strange vine” is an interloping vine, not of the true, genuine stock planted by Jahveh (v. 10), and which bears poisonous berries of gall. Deut 32:32.

Verse 22. Though thou adoptedst the most powerful means of purification, yet couldst thou not purify thyself from the defilement of thy sins. rt,n, , natron, is mineral, and tyriBo vegetable alkali. µtæK] introduces the apodosis; and by the participle a lasting condition is expressed. This word, occurring only here in the O.T., sig. in Aram. to be stained, filthy, a sense here very suitable. µynip; , before me, i.e., before my eyes, the defilement of thy sins cannot be wiped out. On this head see Isa 1:18; Ps 51:4,9.

Verse 23. And yet Judah professes to be pure and upright before God. This plea Jeremiah meets by pointing to the open practising of idolatrous worship. The people of Judah personified as a hn;z; in v. 20-is addressed. Ëyae is a question expressing astonishment. nid¦mee’tiy, of defilement by idolatry, as is shown by the next explanatory clause: the Baals I have not followed. l[æBæ is used generically for strange gods, Jer 1:16. The public worship of Baal had been practised in the kingdom of Judah under Joram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah only, and had been extirpated by Jehu, 2 Kings 10:18ff. Idolatry became again rampant under Ahaz (by his instigation), Manasseh, and Amon, and in the first year of Josiah’s reign. Josiah began to restore the worship of Jahveh in the twelfth year of his reign; but it was not till the eighteenth that he was able to complete the reformation of the public services.

There is then no difficulty in the way of our assuming that there was yet public worship of idols in Judah during the first five years of Jeremiah’s labours. We must not, however, refer the prophet’s words to this alone.

The following of Baal by the people was not put an end to when the altars and images were demolished; for this was sufficient neither to banish from the hearts of the people the proneness to idolatry, nor utterly to suppress the secret practising of it. The answer to the protestation of the people, blinded in self-righteousness, shows, further, that the grosser publicly practised forms had not yet disappeared. “See thy way in the valley.” Way, i.e., doing and practising. ay]Gæ with the article must be some valley known for superstitions cultivated there; most commentators suggest rightly the valley of Ben or Bne-Hinnom to the south of Jerusalem, where children were offered to Moloch; see on Jer 7:31.

The next words, “and know what thou hast done,” do not, taken by themselves, imply that this form of idol-worship was yet to be met with, but only that the people had not yet purified themselves from it. If, however, we take them in connection with what follows, they certainly do imply the continued existence of practices of that sort. The prophet remonstrates with the people for its passionate devotion to idolatry by comparing it to irrational animals, which in their season of heat yield themselves to their instinct. The comparison gains in pointedness by his addressing the people as a camel-filly and a wild she-ass. q’ hr;k]Bi is vocative, co-ordinate with the subject of address, and means the young filly of the camel. lqæ , running lightly, nimbly, swiftly. dr’ Ëræc; , intertwining, i.e., crossing her says; rushing right and left on the paths during the season of heat.

Thus Israel ran now after one god, now after another, deviating to the right and to the left from the path prescribed by the law, Deut 28:14. To delineate yet more sharply the unruly passionateness with which the people rioted in idolatry, there is added the figure of a wild ass running herself weary in her heat. Hitz. holds the comparison to be so managed that the figure of the she-camel is adhered to, and that this creature is compared to a wild ass only in respect of its panting for air. But this view could be well founded only if the Keri vp,n, were the original reading. Then we might read the words thus: (like) a wild ass used to the wilderness she (the shecamel) pants in the heat of her soul for air. But this is incompatible with the Cheth. vp,n, , since the suffix points back to ar,p, , and requires vp,n, hW;aæ to be joined with alo ar,p, , so that ãaæv; must be spoken of the latter.

Besides, taken on its own account, it is a very unnatural hypothesis that the behaviour of the she-camel should be itself compared to the gasping of the wild ass for breath; for the camel is only a figure of the people, and v. 24 is meant to exhibit the unbridled ardour, not of the camel, but of the people.

So that with the rest of the comm. we take the wild ass to be a second figure for the people. ar,p, differs only orthographically from ar,p, , the usual form of the word, and which many codd. have here. This is the wood ass, or rather wild ass, since the creature lives on steppes, not in woods. It is of a yellowish colour, with a white belly, and forms a kind of link between the deer species and the ass; by reason of its arrow-like speed not easily caught, and untameable. Thus it is used as an emblem of boundless love of freedom, Gen 16:12, and of unbridled licentiousness, see on Job 24:5 and 39:5. ar,p, as nom. epicaen. has the adj. next it, dWMli , in the masc., and so too in the apposition vp,n, hW;aæ ; the fem. appears first in the statement as to its behaviour, ãaæv; : she pants for air to cool the glow of heat within. hn;aTæ sig. neither copulation, from ˆa; , approach (Dietr.), nor aestus libidinosus (Schroed., Ros.). The sig. approach, meet, attributed to ˆa; , Dietr. grounds upon the Ags. gelimpan, to be convenient, opportune; and the sig. slow is derived from the fact that Arab. ‘ny is used of the boiling of water. The root meaning of ˆa; , Arab. ‘ny, is, according to Fleischer, tempestivus fuit, and the root indicates generally any effort after the attainment of the aim of a thing, or impulse; from which come all the meanings ascribed to the word, and for hn;aTæ in the text before us the sig. heat, i.e., the animal instinct impelling to the satisfaction of sexual cravings.

Verse 24-25. In v. 24b vd,jo is variously interpreted. Thus much is beyond all doubt, that the words are still a part of the figure, i.e., of the comparison between the idolatrous people and the wild ass. The use of the 3rd person stands in the way of the direct reference of the words to Israel, since in what precedes and in what follows Israel is addressed (in 2nd pers.). vd,jo can thus mean neither the new moon as a feast (L. de Dieu, Chr. B. Mich.), still less tempus menstruum (Jerome, etc.), but month; and the suffix in vd,jo is to be referred, not with Hitz. to hn;aTæ , but to ar,p, . The suffixes in vqæB; and ax;m; absolutely demand this. “Her month” is the month appointed for the gratification of the wild ass’s natural impulse, i.e., as Bochart rightly explains it (Hieroz. ii. p. 230, ed. Ros.) mensis quo solent sylvestres asinae maris appetitu fervere. The meaning of the comparison is this: the false gods do not need anxiously to court the favour of the people; in its unbridled desires it gives itself up to them; cf. Jer 3:2; Hos 2:7,15.

With this is suitably coupled the warning of v. 25: hold back, i.e., keep thy foot from getting bare (yaaheep is subst. not adjective, which would have had to be fem., since lg,r, is fem.), and thy throat from thirst, viz., by reason of the fever of running after the idols. This admonition God addresses by the prophet to the people. It is not to wear the sandals off its feet by running after amours, nor so to heat its throat as to become thirsty.

Hitz. proposes unsuitably, because in the face of the context, to connect the going barefoot with the visiting of the sanctuary, and the thirsting of the throat (1 Kings 18:26) with incessant calling on the gods. The answer of the people to this admonition shows clearly that it has been receiving an advice against running after the gods. The Chet. wgwrnk is evidently a copyists’s error for ˆwOrG; . The people replies: vaæy; , desperatum (est), i.e., hopeless; thy advice of all in vain; cf. Jer 18:12, and on Isa 57:10. The meaning is made clearer by alo : no; for I love the aliens, etc. rWz are not merely strange gods, but also strange peoples. Although idolatry is the matter chiefly in hand, yet it was so bound up with intriguing for the favour of the heathen nations that we cannot exclude from the words some reference to this also.

JEREMIAH 2:26-28 And yet idolatry brings to the people only disgrace, giving no help in the time of need.

V. 26. “As a thief is shamed when he is taken, so is the house of Israel put to shame; they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets.

V. 27. Because they say to the wood, Thou art my father; and to the stone, Thou hast borne me: for they have turned to me the back and not the face; but in the time of their trouble they say, Arise, and help us.

V. 28. Where then are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can help thee in the time of thy trouble; for as many as are thy cities, so many are thy gods, Judah.” The thought in vv. 26 and 27a is this, Israel reaps from its idolatry but shame, as the thief from stealing when he is caught in the act. The comparison in v. 26 contains a universal truth of force at all times. The perf. vWB is the timeless expression of certainty (Hitz.), and refers to the past as well as to the future.

Just as already in past time, so also in the future, idolatry brings but shame and confusion by the frustration of the hopes placed in the false gods. The “house of Israel” is all Israel collectively, and not merely the kingdom of the ten tribes. To give the greater emphasis to the reproaches, the leading ranks are mentioned one by one. rmæa; , not: who say, but because (since) they say to the wood, etc., i.e., because they hold images of wood and stone for the gods to whom they owe life and being; whereas Jahveh alone is their Creator or Father and Genitor, Deut 32:6,18; Isa 64:7; Mal 2:10. ˆb,a, is fem., and thus is put for mother. The Keri dlæy; is suggested solely by the preceding rmæa; , while the Chet. is correct, and is to be read dlæy; , inasmuch as each one severally speaks thus.-With “for they have turned” follows the reason of the statement that Israel will reap only shame from its idolatry. To the living God who has power to help them they turn their back; but when distress comes upon them they cry to Him for help [væy; µWq as in Ps 3:8). But then God will send the people to their gods (idols); then will it discover they will not help, for all so great as their number is. The last clause of v. 28 runs literally: the number of thy cities are thy gods become, i.e., so great is the number of thy gods; cf. Jer 11:13. Judah is here directly addressed, so that the people of Judah may not take for granted that what has been said is of force for the ten tribes only. On the contrary, Judah will experience the same as Israel of the ten tribes did when disaster broke over it.

JEREMIAH 2:29-32 Judah has refused to let itself be turned from idolatry either by judgments or by the warnings of the prophets; nevertheless it holds itself guiltless, and believes itself able to turn aside judgment by means of its intrigues with Egypt.

V. 29. “Wherefore contend ye against me? ye are all fallen away from me, saith Jahveh.

V. 30. In vain have I smitten your sons; correction have they not taken: your sword hath devoured your prophets, like a devouring lion.

V. 31. O race that ye are, mark the word of Jahveh. Was I a wilderness to Israel, or a land of dread darkness? Why saith my people, We wander about, come no more to thee?

V. 32. Does a maiden forget her ornaments, a bride her girdle? but my people hath forgotten me days without number.

V. 33. How finely thou trimmest thy ways to seek love! therefore to misdeeds thou accustomest thy ways.

V. 34. Even in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the innocent poor ones; not at housebreaking hast thou caught them, but by reason of all this.

V. 35. And thou sayest, I am innocent, yea His wrath hath turned from me: behold, I will plead at law with thee for that thou hast said, I have not sinned. V. 36. Why runnest thou so hard to change thy way? for Egypt too thou shalt come to shame, as thou wast put to shame for Asshur.

V. 37. From this also shalt thou come forth, beating thy hands upon thy head; for Jahveh rejecteth those in whom thou trustest, and thou shalt not prosper with them.” The question in v. 29, Wherefore contend ye against me? implies that the people contended with God as to His visitations, murmured at the divine chastisements they had met with; not as to the reproaches addressed to them on account of their idolatry (Hitz., Graf). byri with lae , contend, dispute against, is used of the murmuring of men against divine visitations, Jer 12:1; Job 33:13. Judah has no ground for discontent with the Lord; for they have all fallen away from Him, and (v. 31) let themselves be turned to repentance neither by afflictions, nor by warnings, nor by God’s goodness to them. ad]v; , to vanity, i.e., without effect, or in vain.

Hitz. and Graf wish to refer “your sons” to the able-bodied youth who had at different times been slain by Jahveh in war. The LXX seem to have taken it thus, expression jqæl; by ede>xasqe ; for the third pers. of the verb will not agree with this acceptation of “your sons,” since the reproach of not having taken correction could not apply to such as had fallen in war, but only to those who had escaped. This view is unquestionably incorrect, because, as Hitz. admits the subject, those addressed in jqæl; , must be the people. Hence it follows of necessity that in ˆBe too the people is meant.

The expression is similar to `µ[æ ˆBe , Lev 19:18, and is used for the members of the nation, those who constitute the people; or rather it is like hd;Why] ˆBe , Joel 4:6, where Judah is looked on by the prophet as a unity, where sons are the members of the people. hk;n; , too, is not to be limited to those smitten or slain in war.

It is used of all the judgments with which God visits His people, of sword, pestilence, famine, failure of crops, drought, and of all kinds of diseases; cf.

Lev 26:24ff., Deut 28:22,27ff. rs;Wm is instruction by word and by warning, as well as correction by chastisement. Most comm. take the not receiving of correction to refer to divine punitive visitations, and to mean refusal to amend after such warning; Ros., on the other hand, holds the reference to be to the warnings and reproofs of the prophets rs;Wm hic instructionem valet, ut Prov 5:12,23 cet.). But both these references are one-sided. If we refer “correction have they not taken” to divine chastisement by means of judgments, there will be no connection between this and the following clause: your sword devoured your prophets; and we are hindered from restraining the reference wholly to the admonitions and rebukes of the prophets by the close connection of the words with the first part of the verse, a connection indicated by the omission of all particles of transition.

We must combine the two references, and understand rs;Wm both of the rebukes or warnings of the prophets and of the chastisements of God, holding at the same time that it was the correction of the people by the prophets that Jer. here chiefly kept in view. In administering this correction the prophets not only applied to the hearts of the people as judgments from God all the ills that fell upon them, but declared to the stiff-necked sinners the punishments of God, and by their words showed those punishments to be impending: e.g., Elijah, 1 Kings 17 and 18, 2 Kings 1:9ff.; Elisha, Kings 2:23; the prophet at Bethel, 1 Kings 13:4. Thus this portion of the verse acquires a meaning for itself, which simplifies the transition from the first to the third clause, and we gain the following thought: I visited you with punishments, and made you to be instructed and reproved by prophets, but ye have slain the prophets who were sent to you. Nehemiah puts it so in Neh 9:26; but Jeremiah uses a much stronger expression, Your sword devoured your prophets like a lion which destroys, in order to set full before the sinners’ eyes the savage hatred of the idolatrous people against the prophets of God. Historical examples of this are furnished by Kings 18:4,13; 19:10; 2 Chron 24:21ff., 2 Kings 21:16; Jer 26:23.

The prophet’s indignation grows hotter as he brings into view God’s treatment of the apostate race, and sets before it, to its shame, the divine long-suffering and love. hT;aæ rwOD, O generation ye! English: O generation that ye are! (cf. Ew. §327, a), is the cry of indignation; cf. Deut 32:5, where Moses calls the people a perverse foolish generation. ha;r; : see, observe, give heed to the word of the Lord. This verb is often used of perceptions by any sense, as expressive of that sense by which men apprehend most of the things belonging to the outward world. Have I been for Israel a wilderness, i.e., an unfruitful soil, offering neither means of support nor shelter? This question contains a litotes, and is as much as to say: have not I richly blessed Israel with earthly goods? Or a land of dread darkness? hy;l]peamæ , lit., a darkness sent by Jahveh; cf. the analogous form hy;t]b,h,l]væ , Song 8:6. f4 The desert is so called not merely because it is pathless (Job 3:23), but as a land in which the traveller is on all sides surrounded by deadly dangers; cf. v. 6 and Ps. 655:5. Why then will His people insist on being quit of Him?

We roam about unfettered (as to dWr , see on Hos 12:1), i.e., we will no longer bear the yoke of His law; cf. v. 20. By a comparison breathing love and longing sadness, the prophet seeks to bring home to the heart of the people a feeling of the unnaturalness of their behaviour towards the Lord their God. Does a bride, then, forget her ornaments? etc. qishuriym, found besides in Isa 3:20, is the ornamental girdle with which the bride adorns herself on the wedding-day; cf. Isa 3:20 with 49:18. God is His people’s best adornment; to Him it owes all the precious possessions it has. It should keep fast hold of Him as its most priceless treasure, should prize Him more highly than the virgin her jewels, than the bride her girdle. but instead of this it has forgotten its God, and that not for a brief time, but throughout countless days. µwOy is accus. of duration of time. Jeremiah uses this figure besides, as Calv. observed, to pave the way for what comes next. Volebat enim Judaeos conferre mulieribus adulteris, quae dum feruntur effreni sua libidine, rapiuntur post suos vagos amores.

JEREMIAH 2:33-34 In v. 33 the style of address is ironical. How good thou makest thy way! i.e., how well thou knowest to choose out and follow the right way to seek love. Ër,D, bfæy; sig. usually: strive after a good walk and conversation; cf.

Jer 7:3,5; 18:11, etc.; here, on the other hand, to take the right way for gaining the end in view. “Love” here is seen from the context to be love to the idols, intrigues with the heathen and their gods. Seek love = strive to gain the love of the false gods. To attain this end thou hast taught thy ways misdeeds, i.e., accustomed thy ways to misdeeds, forsaken the commandments of thy God which demand righteousness and the purifying of one’s life, and accommodated thyself to the immoral practices of the heathen. [ræ , with the article as in 3:5, the evil deeds which are undisguisedly visible; not: the evils, the misfortunes which follow thee closely, as Hitz. interprets in the face of the context. For in v. 34 we have indisputable evidence that the matter in hand is not evils and misfortunes, but evil deeds or misdemeanours; since there the cleaving of the blood of innocent souls to the hems of the garments is mentioned as one of the basest “evils,” and as such is introduced by the µGæ of gradation. The “blood of souls” is the blood of innocent murdered men, which clings to the skirts of the murderers’ clothes. ãn;K; are the skirts of the flowing garment, Ezek 5:3; 1 Sam 15:27; Zech 8:23. The plural ax;m; before µD; is explained by the fact that vp,n, is the principal idea. ˆwOyb]a, are not merely those who live in straitened circumstances, but pious oppressed ones as contrasted with powerful transgressors and oppressors; cf. Ps. 40:18; 72:13f., 86:1-2, etc. By the next clause greater prominence is given to the fact that they were slain being innocent.

The words: not tr,T,j]mæ , at housebreaking, thou tookest them, contain an allusion to the law in Ex 22:1 and onwards; according to which the killing of a thief caught in the act of breaking in was not a cause of bloodguiltiness.

The thought runs thus: The poor ones thou hast slain were no thieves or robbers whom thou hadst a right to slay, but guiltless pious men; and the killing of them is a crime worthy of death. Ex 21:12. The last words hL,aeAlK; l[æ yKi are obscure, and have been very variously interpreted. Changes upon the text are not to the purpose. For we get no help from the reading of the LXX, of the Syr. and Arab., which seem to have read hL,ae as hl;ai , and which have translated drui’ oak or terebinth; since “upon every oak” gives no rational meaning. Nor from the connection of the words with the next verse (Venem., Schnur., Ros., and others): yet with all this, or in spite of all this, thou saidst; since neither does yKi mean yet, nor can the w before rmæa; , in this connection, introduce the sequel thought.

The words manifestly belong to what goes before, and contain a contrast: not in breaking in by night thou tookest them, but upon, or on account of all this. `l[æ in the sig. upon gives a suitable sense only if, with Abarb., Ew., Näg., we refer hL,ae to ãn;K; and take ax;m; as 1st pers.: I found it (the blood of the slain souls) not on the place where the murder took place, but upon all these, sc. lappets of the clothes, i.e., borne openly for display. But even without dwelling on the fact that tr,T,j]mæ does not mean the scene of a murder or breaking in, this explanation is wrecked on the unmistakeably manifest allusion to the law, bN;Gæ ax;m; tr,T,j]mæ µai , Ex 21:1, which is ignored, or at least obscured, by that view. The allusion to this passage of the law shows that ax;m; is not 1st but 2nd pers., and that the suffix refers to the innocent poor who were slain.

Therefore, with Hitz. and Graf, we take hL,ae lKo `l[æ in the sig. “on account of all this,” and refer the “all this” to the idolatry before mentioned. Consequently the words bear this meaning: Not for a crime thou killedst the poor, but because of thine apostasy from God and thy fornication with the idols, their blood cleaves to thy raiment. the words seem, as Calv. surmised, to point to the persecution and slaying of the prophets spoken of in v. 30, namely, to the innocent blood with which the godless king Manasseh filled Jerusalem, 2 Kings 21:16; 24:4; seeking as he did to crush out all opposition to the abominations of idolatry, and finding in his way the prophets and the godly of the land, who by their words and their lives lifted up their common testimony against the idolaters and their abandoned practices.

JEREMIAH 2:35 Yet withal the people holds itself to be guiltless, and deludes itself with the belief that God’s wrath has turned away from it, because it has for long enjoyed peace, and because the judgment of devastation of the land by enemies, threatened by the earlier prophets, had not immediately received its fulfilment. For this self-righteous confidence in its innocence, God will contend with His people tae for tae as in Jer 1:16).

JEREMIAH 2:36 Yet in spite of its proud security Judah seeks to assure itself against hostile attacks by the eager negotiation of alliances. This thought is the link between v. 35 and the reproach of v. 36. Why runnest thou to change thy way? lzæa; for lzæa; , from lzæa; , go, with daom] , go impetuously or with strength, i.e., go in haste, run; cf. 1 Sam 20:19. To change, shift hn;v; ) one’s way, is to take another way than that on which one has hitherto gone. The prophet’s meaning is clear from the second half of the verse: “for Egypt, too, wilt thou come to shame, as for Assyria thou hast come to shame.” Changing they way, is ceasing to seek help from Assyria in order to form close relations with Egypt. The verbs vWB and vWB show that the intrigues for the favour of Assyria belong to the past, for the favour of Egypt to the present.

Judah was put to shame in regard to Assyria under Ahaz, 2 Chron 28:21; and after the experience of Assyria it had had under Hezekiah and Manasseh, there could be little more thought of looking for help thence.

But what could have made Judah under Josiah, in the earlier days of Jeremiah, to seek an alliance with Egypt, considering that Assyria was at that time already nearing its dissolution? Graf is therefore of opinion that the prophet is here keeping in view the political relations in the days of Jehoiakim, in which and for which time he wrote his book, rather than those of Josiah’s times, when the alliance with Asshur was still in force; and that he has thus in passing cast a stray glance into a time influenced by later events. But the opinion that in Josiah’s time the alliance with Asshur was still existing cannot be historically proved. Josiah’s invitation to the passover of all those who remained in what had been the kingdom of the ten tribes, does not prove that he exercised a kind of sovereignty over the provinces that had formerly belonged to the kingdom of Israel, a thing he could have done only as vassal of Assyria; see against this view the remarks on 2 Kings 23:15ff.

As little does his setting himself against the now mighty Pharaoh Necho at Mediggo show clearly that he remained faithful to the alliance with Asshur in spite of the disruption of the Assyrian empire; see against this the remarks on 2 Kings 23:29f. Historically only thus much is certain, that Jehoiakim was raised to the throne by Pharaoh Necho, and that he was a vassal of Egypt. During the period of this subjection the formation of alliances with Egypt was for Judah out of the question. Such a case could happen only when Jehoiakim had become subject to the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar, and was cherishing the plan of throwing off the Chaldean yoke. But the reference of the words to this design is devoid of the faintest probability, vv. 35 and 36; and the discourse throughout is far from giving the impression that Judah had already lost its political independence; they rather imply that the kingdom was under the sway neither of Assyrians nor Egyptians, but was still politically independent.

We may very plausibly refer to Josiah’s time the resolution to give up all trust in the assistance of Assyria and to court the favour of Egypt. We need not seek for the outward inducement to this in the recognition of the beginning decline of the Assyrian power; it might equally well lie in the growth of the Egyptian state. that the power of Egypt had made considerable progress in the reign of Josiah, is made clear by Pharaoh Necho’s enterprise against Assyria in the last year of Josiah, from Necho’s march towards the Euphrates. Josiah’s setting himself in opposition to the advance of the Egyptians, which cost him his life at Megiddo, neither proves that Judah was then allied with Assyria nor excludes the possibility of intrigues for Egypt’s favour having already taken place. It is perfectly possible that the taking of Manasseh a captive to Babylon by Assyrian generals may have shaken the confidence in Assyria of the idolatrous people of Judah, and that, their thoughts turning to Egypt, steps may have been taken for paving the way towards an alliance with this great power, even although the godly king Josiah took no part in these proceedings. The prophets’ warning against confidence in Egypt and against courting its alliance, is given in terms so general that it is impossible to draw any certain conclusions either with regard to the principles of Josiah’s government or with regard to the circumstances of the time which Jeremiah was keeping in view.

JEREMIAH 2:37 Also from this, i.e., Egypt, shalt thou go away (come back), thy hands upon thy head, i.e., beating them on thy head in grief and dismay (cf. for this gesture 2 Sam 13:19). hz, refers to Egypt, thought of as a people as in Jer 46:8; Isa 19:16,25; and thus is removed Hitz.’s objection, that in that case we must have tazO. µyjifib]mi , objects of confidence. The expression refers equally to Egypt and to Assyria. As God has broken the power of Assyria, so will He also overthrow Egypt’s might, thus making all trust in it a shame. ttæK; , in reference to them.

JEREMIAH 3:1-2 As a divorced woman who has become another man’s wife cannot return to her first husband, so Judah, after it has turned away to other gods, will not be received again by Jahveh; especially since, in spite of all chastisement, it adheres to its evil ways.

V. 1. “He saith, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, can he return to her again? would not such a land be polluted? and thou hast whored with many partners; and wouldst thou return to me? saith Jahveh. V. 2. Lift up thine eyes unto the bare-topped hills and look, where hast thou not been lien with; on the ways thou sattest for them, like an Arab in the desert, and pollutedst the land by thy whoredoms and by thy wickedness.

V. 3. And the showers were withheld, and the latter rain came not; but thou hadst the forehead of an harlot woman, wouldst not be ashamed.

V. 4. Ay, and from this time forward thou criest to me, My father, the friend of my youth art thou.

V. 5. Will he always bear a grudge and keep it up for ever?

Behold, thou speakest thus and dost wickedness and carriest it out.” This section is a continuation of the preceding discourse in ch. 2, and forms the conclusion of it. That this is so may be seen from the fact that a new discourse, introduced by a heading of its own, begins with v. 6. The substance of the fifth verse is further evidence in the same direction; for the rejection of Judah by God declared in that verse furnishes the suitable conclusion to the discourse in ch. 2, and briefly shows how the Lord will plead with the people that holds itself blameless (Jer 2:35). f5 But it is somewhat singular to find the connection made by means of rmæa; , which is not translated by the LXX or Syr., and is expressed by Jerome by vulgo dicitur. Ros. would make it, after Rashi, possem dicere, Rashi’s opinion being that it stands for rmyl yl vy . In this shape the assumption can hardly be justified. It might be more readily supposed that the infinitive stood in the sense: it is to be said, one may say, it must be affirmed; but there is against this the objection that this use of the infinitive is never found at the beginning of a new train of thought. The only alternative is with Maur. and Hitz. to join rmæa; with what precedes, and to make it dependent on the verb saæm; in Jer 2:37: Jahveh hath rejected those in whom thou trustest, so that thou shalt not prosper with them; for He says:

As a wife, after she has been put away from her husband and has been joined to another, cannot be taken back again by her first husband, so art thou thrust away for thy whoredom.

The rejection of Judah by God is not, indeed, declared expressis verbis in vv. 1-5, but is clearly enough contained there in substance. Besides, “the rejection of the people’s sureties (Jer 2:37) involves that of the people too” (Hitz.). rmæa; , indeed, is not universally used after verbis dicendi alone, but frequently stands after very various antecedent verbs, in which case it must be very variously expressed in English; e.g., in Josh 22:11 it comes after [mæv; , they heard: as follows, or these words; in 2 Sam 3:12 we have it twice, once after the words, he sent messengers to David to say, i.e., and cause them say to him, a second time in the sense of namely; in 1 Sam 27:11 with the force of: for he said or thought. It is used here in a manner analogous to this: he announces to thee, makes known to thee.-The comparison with the divorced wife is suggested by the law in Deut 24:1-4.

Here it is forbidden that a man shall take in marriage again his divorced wife after she has been married to another, even although she has been separated from her second husband, or even in the case of the death of the latter; and re-marriage of this kind is called an abomination before the Lord, a thing that makes the land sinful. The question, May he yet return to her? corresponds to the words of the law: her husband may not again bWv ) take her to be his wife. The making of the land sinful is put by Jer. in stronger words: this land is polluted; making in this an allusion to Lev 18:25,27, where it is said of similar sins of the flesh that they pollute the land.

With “and thou hast whored” comes the application of this law to the people that had by its idolatry broken its marriage vows to its God. hn;z; is construed with the accus. as in Ezek 16:28. [ære , comrades in the sense of paramours; cf. Hos 3:1. bræ , inasmuch as Israel or Judah had intrigued with the gods of many nations. lae bWv is infin. abs., and the clause is to be taken as a question: and is it to be supposed that thou mayest return to me?

The question is marked only by the accent; cf. Ew. §328, a, and Gesen. §131, 4, b. Syr., Targ., Jerome, etc. have taken bWv as imperative: return again to me; but wrongly, since the continuity is destroyed. This argument is not answered by taking w copul. adversatively with the sig. yet: it is on the contrary strengthened by this arbitrary interpretation.

The call to return to God is incompatible with the reference in v. 2 to the idolatry which is set before the eyes of the people to show it that God has cause to be wroth. “Look but to the bare-topped hills.” ypiv] , bald hills and mountains (cf. Isa 41:18), were favoured spots for idolatrous worship; cf.

Hos 4:13. When hast not thou let thyself be ravished? i.e., on all sides. For T]l]Gævu the Masoretes have here and everywhere substituted lgæv; , see Deut 28:30; Zech 14:2, etc. The word is here used for spiritual ravishment by idolatry; here represented as spiritual fornication. Upon the roads thou sattest, like a prostitute, to entice the passers-by; cf. Gen 38:14; Prov 7:12.

This figure corresponds in actual fact to the erection of idolatrous altars at the corners of the streets and at the gates: 2 Kings 23:8; Ezek 16:25. Like an Arab in the desert, i.e., a Bedouin, who lies in wait for travellers, to plunder them. The Bedouins were known to the ancients, cf. Diod. Sic. 2:48, Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 28, precisely as they are represented to this day by travellers.-By this idolatrous course Israel desecrated the land. The plural form of the suffix with the singular tWnz] is to be explained by the resemblance borne both in sound and meaning (an abstract) by the termination uwt to the plural owt; cf. v. 8, Zeph 3:20, and Ew. §259, b. [ræ refers to the moral enormities bound up with idolatry, e.g., the shedding of innocent blood, Jer 2:30,35. The shedding of blood is represented as defilement of the land in Num 35:33.

JEREMIAH 3:3 But the idolatrous race was not to be brought to reflection or turned from its evil ways, even when judgment fell upon it. God chastised it by withholding the rain, by drought; cf. Jer 14:1ff., Amos 4:7ff. bybir; , rainshowers (Deut 32:2), does not stand for the early rain hr,wOy ), but denotes any fall of rain; and the late rain (shortly before harvest) is mentioned along with it, as in Hos 6:3; Zech 10:1. But affliction made no impression. The people persisted in its sinful courses with unabashed effrontery; cf. Jer 5:3; Ezek 3:7f.

JEREMIAH 3:4-5 Henceforward, forsooth, it calls upon its God, and expects that His wrath will abate; but this calling on Him is but lip-service, for it goes on in its sins, amends not its life. µwOlv; , nonne, has usually the force of a confident assurance, introducing in the form of a question that which is held not to be in the least doubtful. `hT;[æ , henceforward, the antithesis to `µl;wO[ , Jer 2:20,27, is rightly referred by Chr. B. Mich. to the time of the reformation in public worship, begun by Josiah in the twelfth year of his reign, and finally completed in the eighteenth year, 2 Chron 34:3-33. Clearly we cannot suppose a reference to distress and anxiety excited by the drought; since, in v. 3, it is expressly said that this had made no impression on the people. On ba; , cf. Jer 2:27. rW[n; ãWLaæ (cf. Prov 2:17), the familiar friend of my youth, is the dear beloved God, i.e., Jahveh, who has espoused Israel when it was a young nation (Jer 2:2).

Of Him it expects that He will not bear a grudge for ever. rfæn; , guard, then like threi>n , cherish ill-will, keep up, used of anger; see on Lev 19:18; Ps 103:9, etc. A like meaning has rmæv; , to which ãaæ , iram, is to be supplied from the context; cf. Amos 1:11.-Thus the people speaks, but it does evil. rbæd; , like ar;q; in v. 4, is 2nd pers. fem.; see in Jer 2:20. Hitz. connects rbæd; so closely with `hc;[; as to make [ræ the object to the former verb also: thou hast spoken and done the evil; but this is plainly contrary to the context. “Thou speakest” refers to the people’s saying quoted in the first half of the verse: Will God be angry for ever? What they do is the contradiction of what they thus say. If the people wishes that God be angry no more, it must give over its evil life. [ræ , not calamity, but misdeeds, as in 2:33. lkoy; , thou hast managed it, properly mastered, i.e., carried it through; cf. 1 Sam 26:25; 1 Kings 22:22. The form is 2nd pers. fem., with the fem. ending dropped on account of the Vav consec. at the end of the discourse, cf. Ew. §191, b. So long as this is the behaviour of the people, God cannot withdraw His anger.

THE REJECTION OF IMPENITENT ISRAEL These four chapters form a lengthy prophetic discourse of the time of Josiah, in which two great truths are developed: that Israel can become a partaker of promised blessing only through conversion to the Lord, and that by perseverance in apostasy it is drawing on itself the judgment of expulsion amongst the heathen. In the first section, Jer 3:6-4:2, we have the fate of the ten tribes displayed to the faithless Judah, and the future reception again and conversion of Israel announced. In the second section, Jer 4:3-31, the call to Judah to repent is brought home to the people by the portrayal of the judgment about to fall upon the kingdom, the destruction of Jerusalem and the devastation of the land. In the third section, ch. 5, a further description is given of the people’s persistence in unrighteousness and apostasy. And in the fourth section, ch. 6, the impending judgment and its horrors are yet more fully exhibited to a generation blinded by its selfrighteous confidence in the external performance of the sacrificial worship.

Eichhorn and Hitz. have separated Jer 3:6-4:2 from what follows as being a separate oracle, on the ground that at Jer 4:3 a new series of oracles begins, extending to 10:25. These oracles, they say, “are composed under the impressions created by an invasion of a northern nation, looked for with dread and come at last in reality;” while they find no trace of this invasion in Jer 3:6-4:2. This latter section they hold rather to be the completion to Jer 2:1-3:5, seeing that the severe retort (3:5) upon repentant Judah is justified here (3:10) by the statement that this is no true repentance; that the harsh saying: thou hast thyself wrought out thy misfortunes, cannot be the prophet’s last word; and that the final answer to rfæn; `µl;wO[ in v. 5 is not found before `µl;wO[ rfæn; alo in v. 12. By Dahler, Umbreit, Neumann, ch. 3 is taken as an independent discourse; but they hold it to extend to 4:4, because yKi in 4:3 cannot introduce a new discourse. The two views are equally untenable. It is impossible that a new discourse should begin with “for thus saith Jahveh;” and it is as impossible that the threatening of judgment beginning with 4:5, “declare ye in Jahveh,” should be torn apart, separated from the call: “plow up a new soil; circumcise the foreskins of your hearts, that my wrath go not forth like fire and burn,” etc. (4:3-4). Against the separation and for the unity we have arguments in the absence of any heading and of any trace of a new commencement in ch. 4, and in the connection of the subject-matter of all the sections of these chapters. f6 We have no ground for the disjunction of one part of the discourse from the other in the fact that in Jer 3:6-4:2 apostate Israel (of the ten tribes) is summoned to return to the Lord, and invited to repentance by the promise of acceptance and rich blessing for those who in penitence return again to God; while in 4:3-6 the devastation of the land and dispersion among the heathen are held out as punishment of a people (Judah) persisting in apostasy (see comment. on 3:6ff.). The supposed connection between the discourse, 3:6-4:2 and 2:1-3:5, is not so close as Hitz. would have it. The relation of Jer 3:6ff. to 2:1ff. is not that the prophet desires in ch. 3:6-4:2 to explain or mitigate the harsh utterance in 3:5, because his own heart could not acquiesce in the thought of the utter rejection of his people, and because the wrath of the seer was here calming down again. This opinion and the reference of the threatened judgment in ch. 4-6 to the Scythians are based on unscriptural views of the nature of prophecy. But even if, in accordance with what has been said, these four chapters form one continuous prophetic discourse, yet we are not justified by the character of the whole discourse as a unity in assuming that Jeremiah delivered it publicly in this form before the people at some particular time. Against this tells the indefiniteness of the date given; in the days of Josiah; and of still greater weight is the transition, which we mark repeated more than once, from the call to repentance and the denunciation of sin, to threatening and description of the judgment about to fall on people and kingdom, city and country; cf. 4:3 with 5:1 and 6:1,16. From this we can see that the prophet continually begins again afresh, in order to bring more forcibly home to the heart what he has already said. The discourse as we have it is evidently the condensation into one uniform whole of a series of oral addresses which had been delivered by Jeremiah in Josiah’s times.

JEREMIAH 3:6-10 The Rejection and Restoration of Israel (of the Ten Tribes).

Hgstb. speaks of this passage as the announcement of redemption in store for Israel. And he so speaks not without good cause; for although in Jer 3:6-9 the subject is the rejection of Israel for its backsliding from the Lord, yet this introduction to the discourse is but the historical foundation for the declaration of good news (3:12-4:2), that rejected Israel will yet return to its God, and have a share in the glory of the Messiah. From the clearly drawn parallel between Israel and Judah in 3:8-11 it is certain that the announcement of Israel’s redemption can have no other aim than “to wound Judah.” The contents of the whole discourse may be summed up in two thoughts: 1. Israel is not to remain alway rejected, as pharisaic Judah imagined; 2. Judah is not to be alway spared.

When Jeremiah entered upon his office Israel had been in exile for years, and all hope for the restoration of the banished people seemed to have vanished. But Judah, instead of taking warning by the judgment that had fallen upon the ten tribes, and instead of seeing in the downfall of the sister people the prognostication of its own, was only confirmed by it in its delusion, and held its own continued existence to be a token that against it, as the people of God, no judgment of wrath could come. This delusion must be destroyed by the announcement of Israel’s future reinstatement. Israel’s backsliding and rejection a warning for Judah.

V. 6. “And Jahveh spake to me in the days of King Josiah, Hast thou seen what the backsliding one, Israel, hath done? she went up on every high mountain, and under every green tree, and played the harlot there.

V. 7. And I thought: After she hath done all this, she will return to me; but she returned not. And the faithless one, her sister Judah, saw it.

V. 8. And I saw that, because the backsliding one, Israel, had committed adultery, and I had put her away, and had given her a bill of divorce, yet the faithless one, Judah, her sister, feared not even on this account, and went and played the harlot also.

V. 9. And it befell that for the noise of her whoredom the land was defiled, and she committed adultery with stone and wood.

V. 10. And yet with all this, the faithless one, her sister Judah, turned not to me with her whole heart, but with falsehood, saith Jahveh.” The thought of these verses is this: notwithstanding that Judah has before its eyes the lot which Israel (of the ten tribes) has brought on itself by its obdurate apostasy from the covenant God, it will not be moved to true fear of God and real repentance.

Viewing idolatry as spiritual whoredom, the prophet developes that train of thought by representing the two kingdoms as two adulterous sisters, calling the inhabitants of the ten tribes hb;Wvm] , the backsliding, those of Judah dwOgB; , the faithless. On these names Venema well remarks: “Sorores propter unam eandemque stirpem, unde uterque populus fuit, et arctam ad se invicem relationem appellantur. Utraque fuit adultera propter idololatriam et faederis violationem; sed Israel vocatur uxor aversa; Juda vero perfida, quia Israel non tantum religionis sed et regni et civitatis respectu, adeoque palam erat a Deo alienata, Juda vero Deo et sedi regni ac religionis adfixa, sed nihilominus a Deo et cultu ejus defecerat, et sub externa specie populi Dei faedus ejus fregerat, quo ipso gravius peccaverat .” This representation Ezekiel has in ch. 23 expanded into an elaborate allegory.

The epithets hb;Wvm] and dwOgB; or dgæB; (v. 11) are coined into proper names. This is shown by their being set without articles before the names; as mere epithets they would stand after the substantives and have the article, since Israel and Judah as being nomm. propr. are definite ideas. hb;Wvm] is elsewhere an abstract substantive: apostasy, defection (Jer 8:5; Hos 11:7, etc.), here concrete, the apostate, so-called for her many m¦shubowt, v. 22 and Jer 2:19. dwOgB; , the faithless, used of perfidious forsaking of a husband; cf. v. 20, Mal 2:14. aWh Ëlæy; , going was she, expressing continuance. Cf. the same statement in Jer 2:20. hn;z; , 3rd pers. fem., is an Aramaizing form for hn;z; or hn;z; ; cf. Isa 53:10.

Verse 7. And I said, sc. to myself, i.e., I thought. A speaking by the prophets (Rashi) is not to be thought of; for it is no summons, turn again to me, but only the thought, they will return. It is true that God caused backsliding Israel to be ever called again to repentance by the prophets, yet without effect. Meantime, however, no reference is made to what God did in this connection, only Israel’s behaviour towards the Lord being here kept in view. The Chet. ha,r]Tiwæ is the later usage; the Keri substitutes the regular contracted form ha;r; . The object, it (the whoredom of Israel), may be gathered from hat precedes.

Verse 8. Many commentators have taken objection to the ha;r; , because the sentence, “I saw that I had therefore given Israel a bill of divorce,” is as little intelligible as “and the faithless Judah saw it, and I saw it, for,” etc.

Thus e.g., Graf, who proposes with Ew. and Syr. to read ha;r; , “and she saw,” or with Jerome to omit the word from the text. Against both conjectures it is decisive that the LXX translates kai> ei>don , and so must have read ha;r; . To this we may add, that either the change or the omission destroys the natural relation to one another of the clauses. In either case we would have this connection: “and the faithless one, her sister Judah, saw that, because the backslider Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away...yet the faithless one feared not.” But thus the gist of the thing, what Judah saw, namely, the repudiation of Israel, would be related but cursorily in a subordinate clause, and the 7th verse would be shortened into a half verse; while, on the other hand, the 8th verse would be burdened with an unnaturally long protasis.

Ros. is right in declaring any change to be unnecessary, provided the two halves of vv. 7 and 8 are connected in this sense: vidi quod quum adulteram Israelitidem dimiseram, tamen non timeret ejus perfida soror Juda. If we compare vv. 7 and 8 together, the correspondence between the two comes clearly out. In the first half of either verse Israel is spoken of, in the second Judah; while as to Israel, both verses state how God regarded the conduct of Israel, and as to Judah, how it observed and imitated Israel’s conduct. ha;r; corresponds to rmæa; in v. 7. God thought the backsliding Israel will repent, and it did not, and this Judah saw. Thus, then, God saw that even the repudiation of the backsliding Israel for her adultery incited no fear in Judah, but Judah went and did whoredom like Israel. The true sense of v. 8 is rendered obscure or difficult by the external co-ordination to one another of the two thoughts, that God has rejected Israel just because it has committed adultery, and, that Judah nevertheless feared not; the second thought being introduced by Vav. In reality, however, the first should be subordinated to the second thus: that although I had to reject Israel, Judah yet feared not.

What God saw is not the adultery and rejection or divorce of Israel, but that Judah nevertheless had no fear in committing and persisting in the selfsame sin. The yKi belongs properly to arey; alo , but this relation is obscured by the length of the prefixed grounding clause, and so arey; alo is introduced by w] wgw twOdaOAlK;Al[æ , literally: that for all the reasons, because the backslider had committed adultery, I put her away and gave her a bill of divorce; yet the faithless Judah feared not. In plain English: that, in spite of all my putting away the backsliding Israel, and my giving her...because she had committed adultery, yet the faithless Judah feared not. On tWtyriK] rp,se , cf. Deut 24:1,3.

Verse 9. In v. 9 Judah’s fornication with the false gods is further described.

Here tWnz] lwOq is rather stumbling, since ob vocem scortationis cannot well be simply tantamount to ob famosam scortationem; for lwOq , voice, tone, sound, din, noise, is distinct from µve or [mæv, , fame, rumour. All ancient translators have taken qol from qll, as being formed analogously to µjo , µTo , `z[o ; and a Masoretic note finds in the defective spelling qol an indication of the meaning levitas. Yet we occasionally find lwOq , vox, written defectively, e.g., Ex 4:8; Gen 27:22; 45:16. And the derivation from qll gives no very suitable sense; neither lightness nor despisedness is a proper predicate for whoredom, by which the land is polluted; only shame or shameful would suit, as it is put by Ew. and Graf. But there is no evidence from the usage of the language that qol has the meaning of ˆwOlq; .

Yet more inadmissible is the conjecture of J. D. Mich., adopted by Hitz., that of reading lQemæ , stock, for lwOq , a stock being the object of her unchastity; in support of which, reference is unfairly made to Hos 4:12. For there the matter in hand is rhabdomancy, with which the present passage has evidently nothing to do. The case standing thus, we adhere to the usual meaning of qol: for the noise or din of her whoredom, not, for her crying whoredom (de Wette). Jeremiah makes use of this epithet to point out the open riotous orgies of idolatry. ãnej; is neither used in the active signification of desecrating, nor is it to be pointed watachanip (Hiph.). On the last clause cf. Jer 2:27.

Verse 10. But even with all this, i.e., in spite of this deep degradation in idolatry, Judah returned not to God sincerely, but in hypocritical wise. “And yet with all this,” Ros., following Rashi, refers to the judgment that had fallen on Israel (v. 8); but this is too remote. The words can bear reference only to that which immediately precedes: even in view of all these sinful horrors the returning was not “from the whole heart,” i.e., did not proceed from a sincere heart, but in falsehood and hypocrisy. For (the returning being that which began with the abolition of idolatrous public worship in Josiah’s reformation) the people had returned outwardly to the worship of Jahveh in the temple, but at heart they still calve to the idols.

Although Josiah had put an end to the idol-worship, and though the people too, in the enthusiasm for the service of Jahveh, awakened by the solemn celebration of the passover, had broken in pieces the images and altars of the false gods throughout the land, yet there was imminent danger that the people, alienated in heart from the living God, should take the suppression of open idolatry for a true return to God, and, vainly admiring themselves, should look upon themselves as righteous and pious. Against this delusion the prophet takes his stand.

JEREMIAH 3:11-12 Israel’s return, pardon, and blessedness. V. 11. “And Jahveh said to me, The backsliding one, Israel, is justified more than the faithless one, Judah.

V. 12. Go and proclaim these words towards the north, and say, Turn, thou backsliding one, Israel, saith Jahveh; I will not look darkly on you, for I am gracious, saith Jahveh; I will not always be wrathful.

V. 13. Only acknowledge thy guilt, for from Jahveh thy God art thou fallen away, and hither and thither hast thou wandered to strangers under every green tree, but to my voice ye have not hearkened, saith Jahveh.

V. 14. Return, backsliding sons, saith Jahveh; for I have wedded you to me, and will take you, one out of a city and two out of a race, and will bring you to Zion; V. 15. And will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they will feed you with knowledge ad wisdom.

V. 16. And it comes to pass, when ye increase and are fruitful in the land, in those days, saith Jahveh, they will no more say, ‘The ark of the covenant of Jahveh;’ and it will no more come to mind, and ye will not longer remember it or miss it, and it shall not be made again.

V. 17. In that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jahveh; and to it all peoples shall gather themselves, because the name of Jahveh is at Jerusalem: and no longer shall they walk after the stubbornness of their evil heart.

V. 18. In those days shall the house of Judah go along with the house of Israel, and together out of the land of midnight shall they come into the land which I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.” In v. 11, from the comparison of the faithless Judah with the backsliding Israel, is drawn the conclusion: Israel stands forth more righteous than Judah. The same is said in other words by Ezek; 16:51f.; cf. (Ezek.) Jer 23:11. qdæx; in Piel is to show to be righteous, to justify. vp,n, , her soul, i.e., herself. Israel appears more righteous than Judah, not because the apostasy and idolatry of the Israelites was less than that of the people of Judah; in this they are put on the same footing in vv. 6-10; in the like fashion both have played the harlot, i.e., stained themselves with idolatry (while by a rhetorical amplification the apostasy of Judah is in v. represented as not greater than that of Israel). But it is inasmuch as, in the first place, Judah had the warning example of Israel before its eyes, but would not be persuaded to repentance by Israel’s punishment; then again, Judah had more notable pledges than the ten tribes of divine grace, especially in the temple with its divinely-ordained cultus, in the Levitical priesthood, and in its race of kings chosen by God. Hence its fall into idolatry called more loudly for punishment than did that of the ten tribes; for these, after their disruption from Judah and the Davidic dynasty, had neither a lawful cultus, lawful priests, nor a divinely-ordained kingship.

If, then, in spite of these privileges, Judah sank as far into idolatry as Israel, its offence was greater and more grievous than that of the ten tribes; and it was surely yet more deserving of punishment than Israel, if it was resolved neither to be brought to reflection nor moved to repentance from its evil ways by the judgment that had fallen upon Israel, and if, on the contrary, it returned to God only outwardly and took the opus operatum of the templeservice for genuine conversion. For “the measure of guilt is proportioned to the measure of grace.” Yet will not the Lord utterly cast off His people, v. 12ff. He summons to repentance the Israelites who had now long been living in exile; and to them, the backsliding sons, who confess their sin and return to Him, He offers restoration to the full favours of the covenant and to rich blessings, and this in order to humble Judah and to provoke it to jealousy.

The call to repentance which the prophet is in v. 12 to proclaim towards the region of midnight, concerns the ten tribes living in Assyrian exile. ˆwOpx; , towards midnight, i.e., into the northern provinces of the Assyrian empire the tribes had been carried away (2 Kings 17:6; 18:11). bWv , return, sc. to thy God. Notwithstanding that the subject which follows, hb;Wvm] , is fem., we have the masculine form here used ad sensum, because the faithless Israel is the people of the ten tribes. µynip; lpæn; alo , I will not lower my countenance, is explained by Gen 4:5; Job 29:24, and means to look darkly, frowningly, as outward expression of anger; and this without our needing to take µynip; for ka`aciy as Kimchi does. For I am dysij; , gracious; cf. Ex 34:6. As to rfæn; , see on v. 5. JEREMIAH 3:13-15 An indispensable element of the return is: Acknowledge thy guilt, thine offence, for grievously hast thou offended; thou art fallen away [væp; ), and Ëyikær;D]Ata, yriZ]pæT] , lit., hast scattered thy ways for strangers; i.e., hither and thither, on many a track, hast thou run after the strange gods: cf. Jer 2:23.

The repeated call bWv , v. 14, is, like that in v. 12, addressed to Israel in the narrower sense, not to the whole covenant people or to Judah. The “backsliding sons” are “the backsliding Israel” of vv. 7, 8, 11f., and of v. 22. In v. 18 also Judah is mentioned only as it is in connection with Israel. µyrit;a l[æB; , here and in Jer 31:32, is variously explained. There is no evidence for the meaning loathe, despise, which Ges. and Diet. in the Lex., following the example of Jos. Kimchi, Pococke, A Schultens, and others, attribute to the word l[æBæ ; against this, cf. Hgstb. Christol. ii. p. 375; nor is the sig. “rule” certified (LXX dio>ti egw> katakurieu>sw uJmw>n ); it cannot be proved from Isa 26:13. l[æBæ means only, own, possess; whence come the meanings, take to wife, have oneself married, which are to be maintained here and in Jer 31:32. In this view Jerome translates, quia ego vir vester; Luther, denn ich will euch mir vertrauen; Hgstb., denn ich traue euch mir an;-the reception anew of the people being given under the figure of a new marriage. This acceptation is, however, not suitable to the perf. l[æB; , for this, even if taken prophetically, cannot refer to a renewal of marriage which is to take place in the future. The perf. can be referred only to the marriage of Israel at the conclusion of the covenant on Sinai, and must be translated accordingly: I am your husband, or: I have wedded you to me. This is demanded by the grounding yKi ; for the summons to repent cannot give as its motive some future act of God, but must point to that covenant relationship founded in the past, which, though suspended for a time, was not wholly broken up. f7 The promise of what God will do if Israel repents is given only from jqæl; (with w consec.) onwards. The words, I take you, one out of a city, two out of a race, are not with Kimchi to be so turned: if even a single Israelite dwelt in a heathen city; but thus: if from amongst the inhabitants of a city there returns to me but one, and if out of a whole race there return but two, I will gather even these few and bring them to Zion. Quite aside from the point is Hitz.’s remark, that in Mic 5:1, too, a city is called ãl,a, , and is equivalent to hj;p;v]mi . The numbers one and two themselves show us that hj;p;v]mi is a larger community than the inhabitants of one town, i.e., that it indicates the great subdivisions into which the tribes of Israel were distributed. The thought, then, is this: Though but so small a number obey the call to repent, yet the Lord will save even these; He will exclude from salvation no one who is willing to return, but will increase the small number of the saved to a great nation. This promise is not only not contradictory of those which declare the restoration of Israel as a whole; but it is rather a pledge that God will forget no one who is willing to be saved, and shows the greatness of the divine compassion.

As to the historical reference, it is manifest that the promise cannot be limited, as it is by Theodrt. and Grot., to the return from the Assyrian and Babylonian exile; and although the majority of commentators take it so, it can as little be solely referred to the Messianic times or to the time of the consummation of the kingdom of God. The fulfilment is accomplished gradually. It begins with the end of the Babylonian exile, in so far as at that time individual members of the ten tribes may have returned into the land of their fathers; it is continued in Messianic times during the lives of the apostles, by the reception, on the part of the Israelites, of the salvation that had appeared in Christ; it is carried on throughout the whole history of the Church, and attains its completion in the final conversion of Israel. This Messianic reference of the words is here the ruling one. This we may see from “bring you to Zion,” which is intelligible only when we look on Zion as the seat of the kingdom of God; and yet more clearly is it seen from the further promise, vv. 15-17, I will give you shepherds according to my heart, etc.

By shepherds we are not to understand prophets and priests, but the civil authorities, rulers, princes, kings (cf. Jer 2:8,26). This may not only be gathered from the parallel passage, Jer 23:4, but is found in the ble , which is an unmistakeable allusion to 1 Sam 13:14, where David is spoken of as a man whom Jahveh has sought out for Himself after His heart bb;le ), and has set to be prince over His people. They will feed you lkæc; h[;De . Both these words are used adverbially. h[;De is a noun, and lkæc; an infin.: deal wisely, possess, and show wisdom; the latter is as noun generally lkæc; , Dan 1:17; Prov 1:3; 21:16, but is found also as infin. absol. Jer 9:23. A direct contrast to these shepherds is found in the earlier kings, whom Israel had itself appointed according to the desire of its heart, of whom the Lord said by Hosea, They have set up kings (to themselves), but not by me (Hos 8:4); kings who seduced the people of God to apostasy, and encouraged them in it. “In the whole of the long series of Israelitish rulers we find no Jehoshaphat, no Hezekiah, no Josiah; and quite as might have been expected, for the foundation of the throne of Israel was insurrection” (Hgstb.). But if Israel will return to the Lord, He will give it rulers according to His heart, like David (cf. Ezek 34:23; Hos 3:5), who did wisely lkæc; ) in all his ways, and with whom Jahveh was (1 Sam 18:14f.; cf. 1 Kings 2:3). The knowledge and wisdom consists in the keeping and doing of the law of God, Deut 4:6; 29:8. As regards form, the promise attaches itself to the circumstances of the earlier times, and is not to be understood of particular historical rulers in the period after the exile; it means simply that the Lord will give to Israel, when it is converted to Him, good and faithful governors who will rule over it in the spirit of David. But the Davidic dynasty culminates in the kingship of the Messiah, who is indeed named David by the prophets; cf.

Jer 22:4.

JEREMIAH 3:16-17 In vv. 16 and 17 also the thought is clothed in a form characteristic of the Old Testament. When the returned Israelites shall increase and be fruitful in the land, then shall they no more remember the ark of the covenant of the Lord or feel the want of it, because Jerusalem will then be the throne of the Lord. The fruitfulness and increase of the saved remnant is a constant feature in the picture of Israel’s Messianic future; cf. Jer 23:3; Ezek 36:11; Hos 2:1. This promise rests on the blessing given at the creation, Gen 1:28.

God as creator and preserver of the world increases mankind together with the creatures; even so, as covenant God, He increases His people Israel.

Thus He increased the sons of Israel in Egypt to be a numerous nation, Ex 1:12; thus, too, He will again make fruitful and multiply the small number of those who have been saved from the judgment that scattered Israel amongst the heathen.

In the passages which treat of this blessing, hr;p; generally precedes bræ ; here, on the contrary, and in Ezek 36:11, the latter is put first. The words wgw’ rmæa; alo must not be translated: they will speak no more of the ark of the covenant; rmæa; c. accus. never has this meaning. They must be taken as the substance of what is said, the predicate being omitted for rhetorical effect, so that the words are to be taken as an exclamation. Hgstb. supplies:

It is the aim of all our wishes, the object of our longing. Mov. simply: It is our most precious treasure, or the glory of Israel,1 Sam 4:21f.; Ps 78:61.

And they will no more remember it. Ascend into the heart, i.e., come to mind, joined with rkæz; here and in Isa 65:17; cf. Jer 7:31; 32:35; 51:50; Cor 2:9. rqæp] alo , and they will not miss it; cf. Isa 34:16; 1 Sam 20:6, etc.

This meaning is called for by the context, and especially by the next clause: it will not be made again. Hitz.’s objection against this, that the words cannot mean this, is an arbitrary dictum. Non fiet amplius (Chr. B. Mich.), or, it will not happen any more, is an unsuitable translation, for this would be but an unmeaning addition; and the expansion, that the ark will be taken into the battle as it formerly was, is such a manifest rabbinical attempt to twist the words, that it needs no further refutation. Luther’s translation, nor offer more there, is untenable, since `hc;[; by itself never means offer.

The thought is this: then they will no longer have any feeling of desire or want towards the ark. And wherefore? The answer is contained in v. 17a:

At that time will they call Jerusalem the throne of Jahveh. The ark was the throne of Jahveh, inasmuch as Jahveh, in fulfilment of His promise in Ex 25:22, and as covenant God, was ever present to His people in a cloud over the extended wings of the two cherubim that were upon the covering of the ark of the law; from the mercy-seat too, between the two cherubs, He spake with His people, and made known to them His gracious presence: Lev 16:2; cf. 1 Chron 13:6; Ps 80:2; 1 Sam 4:4. The ark was therefore called the footstool of God,1 Chron 28:2; Ps 99:5; 132:7; Lam 2:1. But in future Jerusalem is to be, and to be called, the throne of Jahveh; and it is in such a manner to take the place of the ark, that the people will neither miss it nor make any more mention of it.

The promise by no means presumes that when Jeremiah spoke or wrote this prophecy the ark was no longer in existence; “was gone out of sight in some mysterious manner,” as Movers, Chron. S. 139, and Hitz. suppose, f8 but only that it will be lost or destroyed.

This could happen only at and along with the destruction of Jerusalem; and history testifies that the temple after the exile had no ark. Hence it is justly concluded that the ark had perished in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and that upon the rebuilding of the temple after the exile, the ark was not restored, because the nucleus of it, the tables of the law written by the finger of God, could not be constructed by the hand of man.

Without the ark the second temple was also without the gracious presence of Jahveh, the Shechinah or dwelling-place of God; so that this temple was no longer the throne of God, but only a seeming temple, without substance or reality. And thus the Old Testament covenant had come to an end. “We have here then before us,” Hgstb. truly observes, “the announcement of an entire overthrow of the earlier form of the kingdom; but it is such an overthrow of the form that it is at the same time the highest perfection of the substance-a process like that in seed-corn, which only dies in order to bring forth much fruit; like that in the body, which is sown a corruptible that it may rise an incorruptible.”

For the dwelling and enthronement of the Lord amidst His people was again to come about, but in a higher form. Jerusalem is to become the throne of Jahveh, i.e., Jerusalem is to be for the renewed Israel that which the ark had been for the former Israel, the holy dwelling-place of God.

Under the old covenant Jerusalem had been the city of Jahveh, of the great King (Ps 48:3); because Jerusalem had possessed the temple, in which the Lord sat enthroned in the holy of holies over the ark. If in the future Jerusalem is to become the throne of the Lord instead of the ark, Jerusalem must itself become a sanctuary of God; God the Lord must fill all Jerusalem with His glory dwObK; ), as Isaiah prophesied He would in ch. 60, of which prophecy we have the fulfilment portrayed in Apoc. 21 and 22.

Jeremiah does not more particularly explain how this is to happen, or how the raising of Jerusalem to be the throne of the Lord is to be accomplished; for he is not seeking in this discourse to proclaim the future reconstitution of the kingdom of God. His immediate aim is to clear away the false props of their confidence from a people that set its trust in the possession of the temple and the ark, and further to show it that the presence of the temple and ark will not protect it from judgment; that, on the contrary, the Lord will reject faithless Judah, destroying Jerusalem and the temple; that nevertheless He will keep His covenant promises, and that by receiving again as His people the repentant members of the ten tribes, regarded by Judah as wholly repudiated, with whom indeed He will renew His covenant.

As a consequence of Jerusalem’s being raised to the glory of being the Lord’s throne, all nations will gather themselves to her, the city of God; cf.

Zech. 2:15. Indeed in the Old Testament every revelation of the glory of God amongst His people attracted the heathen; cf. Josh 9:9ff. hwO;hy] µve , not, to the name of Jahveh towards Jerusalem (Hitz.), but, because of the name of Jahveh at Jerusalem (as in Josh 9:9), i.e., because Jahveh reveals His glory there; for the name of Jahveh is Jahveh Himself in the making of His glorious being known in deeds of almighty power and grace. µlæv;Wry] , prop. belonging to Jerusalem, because the name makes itself known there; cf. Jer 16:19; Mic 4:2; Zech 8:22.-The last clause, they will walk no more, etc., refers not to the heathen peoples, but to the Israelites as being the principal subject of the discourse (cf. Jer 5:16), since ble tWryriv] is used of Israel in all the cases (7:24; 9:13; 11:8; 13:10; 16:12; 18:12; 23:17, and Ps 81:13), thus corresponding to the original in Deut 29:18, whence it is taken. tWryriv] prop. firmness, but in Hebr. always sensu malo: obstinacy, obduracy of heart, see in Deut. l.c.; here strengthened by the adjective [ræ belonging to ble .

JEREMIAH 3:18 In those days when Jerusalem is glorified by being made the throne of the Lord, Judah along with Israel will come out of the north into the land which the Lord gave to their fathers. As the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple is foretold implicite in v. 16, so here the expulsion of Judah into exile is assumed as having already taken place, and the return not of Israel, only, but of Judah too is announced, as in Hos 2:2, and more fully in Ezek 27:16ff. We should note the arrangement, the house of Judah with `l[æ , prop. on) the house of Israel; this is as much as to say that Israel is the first to resolve on a return and to arise, and that Judah joins itself to the house of Israel. Judah is thus subordinated to the house of Israel, because the prophet is here seeking chiefly to announce the return of Israel to the Lord. It can surely not be necessary to say that, as regards the fulfilment, we are not entitled hence to infer that the remnant of the ten tribes will positively be converted to the Lord and redeemed out of exile sooner than the remnant of Judah. For more on this point see on Jer 31:8.

JEREMIAH 3:19-25 The return of Israel to its God.

V. 19. “I thought, O how I will put thee among the sons, and give thee a delightful land, a heritage of the chiefest splendour of the nations! and thought, ‘My Father,’ ye will cry to me, and not turn yourselves away from me.

V. 20. truly as a wife faithlessly forsakes her mate, so are ye become faithless towards me, house of Israel, saith Jahveh.

V. 21. A voice upon the bare-topped hills is heard, suppliant weeping of the sons of Israel; for that they have made their way crooked, forsaken Jahveh their God.

V. 22. ‘Return, ye backsliding sons, I will heal your backsliding,’ Behold, we come to thee; for Thou Jahveh art our God.

V. 23. Truly the sound from the hills, from the mountains, is become falsehood: truly in Jahveh our God is the salvation of Israel.

V. 24. And shame hath devoured the gains of our fathers from our youth on; their sheep and their oxen, their sons and their daughters.

V. 25. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our disgrace cover us; for against Jahveh our God have we sinned, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not listened to the voice of our God.” Hitz. takes vv. 18 and 19 together, without giving an opinion on rmæa; ykinOa; . Ew. joins v. 19 to the preceding, and begins a new strophe with v. 21. Neither assumption can be justified. With v. 18 closes the promise which formed the burden of the preceding strophe, and in v. 19 there begins a new train of thought, the announcement as to how Israel comes to a consciousness of sin and returns penitent to the Lord its God (vv. 21-25).

The transition to this announcement is formed by vv. 19 and 20, in which the contrast between God’s fatherly designs and Israel’s faithless bearing towards God is brought prominently forward; and by rmæa; ykinOa; it is attached to the last clause of the 18th verse.

His having mentioned the land into which the Israelites would again return, carries the prophet’s thoughts back again to the present and the past, to the bliss which Jahveh had designed for them, forfeited by their faithless apostasy, and to be regained only by repentant return (Graf). “I thought,” refers to the time when God gave the land to their fathers for an inheritance. Then spake, i.e., thought, I; cf. Ps 31:23. How I will set thee or place thee among the sons! i.e., how I will make thee glorious among the sons tyvi c. accus. and b] , as in 2 Sam 19:29). No valid objection against this is founded by Hitz.’s plea that in that case we must read tyvi , and that by Jeremiah, the teacher of morals, no heathen nation, or any but Israel, can ever be regarded as a son of God (Jer 31:9,20). The fem. tyvi is explained by the personification of Judah and Israel as two sisters, extending throughout the whole prophecy.

The other objection is erroneous as to the fact. In Jer 31:9 Jahveh calls Ephraim, = Israel, his first-born son, as all Israel is called by God in Ex 4:22. But the conception of first-born has, as necessary correlate, that of other “sons.” Inasmuch as Jahveh the God of Israel is creator of the world and of all men, all the peoples of the earth are His ˆBe ; and from amongst all the peoples He has made choice of Israel as hL;gus] , or chosen him for His first-born son. Hitz.’s translation: how will I endow thee with children, is contrary to the usage of the language.-The place which God willed to give Israel amongst His children is specified by the next clause: and I willed to give thee a delightful land hD;m]j, xr,a, as in Zech 7:14; Ps 106:24). ab;x; ybix] , ornament of ornaments, i.e., the greatest, most splendid ornament.

For there can be no doubt that ab;x; does not come from ab;x; , but, with Kimchi after the Targum, is to be derived from ybix] ; for the plural µyyib;x] from ybix] may pass into µyaib;x] , cf. Gesen. §93. 6b, as Ew., too, in §186, c, admits, though he takes our ab;x; from ab;x; , and strains the meaning into: an heirloom-adornment amidst the hosts of heathen. After such proofs of a father’s love, God expected that Israel would by a true cleaving to Him show some return of filial affection. To cry, “My father,” is a token of a child’s love and adherence. The Chet. ar;q; and bWv are not to be impugned; the Keris are unnecessary alterations.

Verse 20-21. But Israel did not meet the expectation. Like a faithless wife from her husband, Israel fell away from its God. The particle of comparison rv,a is omitted before the verb, as in Isa 55:9, cf. 10 and 11. [ære does not precisely mean husband, nor yet paramour, but friend and companion, and so here is equal to wedded husband. dgæB; c. ˆmi , withdraw faithlessly from one, faithlessly forsake-c. b¦, be faithless, deal faithlessly with one. Yet Israel will come to a knowledge of its iniquity, and bitterly repent it, v. 21. From the heights where idolatry was practised, the prophet already hears in spirit the lamentations and supplications of the Israelites entreating for forgiveness. ypiv] `l[æ points back to v. 2, when the naked heights were mentioned as the scenes of idolatry. From these places is heard the supplicating cry for pardon. `hw;[; yKi , because (for that) they had made their way crooked, i.e., had entered on a crooked path, had forgotten their God.

Verse 22. The prophet further overhears in spirit, as answer to the entreaty of the Israelites, the divine invitation and promise: Return, ye backsliding children (cf. v. 14), I will heal your backslidings. ap;r; for ap;r; .

Backslidings, i.e., mischief which backsliding has brought, the wounds inflicted by apostasy from God; cf. Hos 14:5, a passage which was in the prophet’s mind; and fore the figure of healing, cf. Jer 30:17; 33:6. To this promise they answer: Behold, we come to Thee ht;a; for ht;a; from awOB, Isa 21:12, for hT;aæ ), for Thou art Jahveh, art our God. Of this confession they further state the cause in vv. 23-25.

Verse 23. From the false gods they have gained but disgrace; the salvation of Israel is found only in Jahveh their God. The thought now given is clearly expressed in the second clause of the verse; less clear is the meaning of the first clause, which tells what Israel had got from idolatry. The difficulty lies in rhæ ˆwOmh; , which the early commentators so joined together as to make hmwn stat. constr. ˆwOmh; ). LXX: eiv yeu>dov h>san oiJ bounoi> kai> hJ du>namiv tw>n ore>wn . Jerome: mendaces erant colles et multitudo (s. fortitudo) montium. Similarly Hitz. and Graf: from the hills the host (or tumult) of the mountains is (for) a delusion; Hitz. understanding by the host of the mountains the many gods, or the numerous statues of them that were erected at the spots where they were worshipped, while Graf takes the tumult of the mountains to mean the turmoil of the pilgrims, the exulting cries of the celebrants.

But it is as impossible that “the sound of the hills” should mean the multitude of the gods, as that it should mean the tumult of the pilgrims upon the mountains. Besides, the expression, “the host or tumult of the mountains comes from the hills,” would be singularly tautological. These reasons are enough to show that rhæ cannot be a genitive dependent on hmwn, but must be taken as coordinate with h[;B;g]mi , so that the preposition ˆmi will have to be repeated before rhæ . But ˆwOmh; must be the subject of the clause, else where would be no subject at all. ˆwOmh; means bustle, eager crowd, tumult, noise, and is also used of the surging mass of earthly possessions or riches, Ps 37:16; Isa 60:5. Schnur., Ros., Maur., de W., have preferred the last meaning, and have put the sense thus: vana est ex collibus, vana ex montibus affluentia, or: delusive is the abundance that comes from the hills, from the mountains.

This view is not to be overthrown by Graf’s objection, that we cannot here entertain the idea of abundance, however, imaginary, acquired by the Israelites through idolatry, seeing that in the next verses it is declared that the false gods have devoured the wealth which the Israelites had inherited and received from God. For in the present connection the abundance would be not a real but expected or imagined abundance, the delusiveness of which would be shown in the next verse by the statement that the false gods had devoured the acquisitions of Israel. But to take ˆwOmh; in the sense of affluentia seems questionable here, when the context makes no reference to wealth or earthly riches, and where the abundance of the hills and mountains cannot be understood to mean their produce; the abundance is that which the idolatry practised upon the hills and mountains brought or was expected to bring to the people. Hence, along with Ew., we take this word in the sig. tumult or noise, and by it we understand the wild uproarious orgies of idolatry, which, according to vv. 2 and 6, were practised on the hills and mountains ( Ht;Wnz] lqo , v. 9). Thus we obtain the sense already given by the Targ.: in vanum coluimus super collibus et non in utilitatem congregavimus nos ( an;v]ygir]t]ai , prop. tumultuati sumus) super montibus, i.e., delusive and profitless were our idolatrous observances upon the heights.

Verse 24. In v. 24 we are told in what particulars idolatry became to them rq,v, . tv,B, the shame, opprobrious expression for l[æBæ , equal to shamegod, cf. Jer 11:13 and Hos 9:10; since the worship of Baal, i.e., of the false gods, resulted in disgrace to the people. He devoured the wealth of our fathers, namely, their sheep and oxen, mentioned as a specimen of their wealth, and their sons and daughters. The idols devoured this wealth, to in respect that sheep and oxen, and, on Moloch’s altar, children too, were sacrificed, for sheep and oxen were offered to Jahveh; but because idolatry drew down judgments on the people and brought about the devastation of the land by enemies who devoured the substance of the people, and slew sons and daughters, Deut 28:30,33. From our youth on;-the youth of the people is the period of the judges.

Verse 25. The people does not repudiate this shame and disgrace, but is willing to endure it patiently, since by its sin it has fully deserved it. bkæv; , not: we lie, but: we will lay us down in our shame, as a man in pain and grief throws himself on the ground, or on his couch (cf. 2 Sam 12:16; 13:31; 1 Kings 21:4), in order wholly to give way to the feelings that crush him down. And let our disgrace cover us, i.e., enwrap us as a mourning robe or cloak; cf. Ps 35:26; 109:29; Mic 7:10, Obad. v. 10.

JEREMIAH 4:1-2 The answer of the Lord.

V. 1. “If thou returnest, Israel, saith Jahveh, returnest to me; and if thou puttest away thine abominations from before my face, and strayest not, V. 2. and swearest, As Jahveh liveth, in truth, with right, and uprightness; then shall the nations bless themselves in Him, and in Him make their boast.” Graf errs in taking these verses as a wish: if thou wouldst but repent...and swear...and if they blessed themselves. His reason is, that the conversion and reconciliation with Jahveh has not yet taken place, and are yet only hoped for; and he cites passages for µai with the force of a wish, as Gen 13:3; 28:13, where, however, an; or aWl is joined with it. But if we take all the verbs in the same construction, we get a very cumbrous result; and the reason alleged proceeds upon a prosaic misconception of the dramatic nature of the prophet’s mode of presentation from Jer 3:21 onwards.

Just as there the prophet hears in spirit the penitent supplication of the people, so here he hears the Lord’s answer to this supplication, by inward vision seeing the future as already present. The early commentators have followed the example of the LXX and Vulg. in construing the two verses differently, and take bWv lae and dWn alo as apodoses: if thou returnest, Israel, then return to me; or, if thou, Israel, returnest to me, then shalt thou return, sc. into thy fatherland; and if thou puttest away thine abominations from before mine eyes, then shalt thou no longer wander; and if thou swearest...then will they bless themselves. But by reason of its position after hwO;hy] µaun] it is impossible to connect lae with the protasis. It would be more natural to take bWv lae as apodosis, the lae being put first for the sake of emphasis.

But if we take it as apodosis at all, the apodosis of the second half of the verse does not rightly correspond to that of the first half. dWn alo would need to be translated, “then shalt thou no longer wander without fixed habitation,” and so would refer to the condition of the people as exiled. but for this dWn is not a suitable expression. Besides, it is difficult to justify the introduction of µai before [bæv; , since an apodosis has already preceded.

For these reasons we are bound to prefer the view of Ew. and Hitz., that vv. 1 and 2a contain nothing but protases. The removal of the abominations from before God’s face is the utter extirpation of idolatry, the negative moment of the return to the Lord; and the swearing by the life of Jahveh is added as a positive expression of their acknowledgment of the true God. dWn is the wandering of the idolatrous people after this and the other false god, Jer 2:23 and 3:13. “And strayest not” serves to strengthen “puttest away thine abominations.”

A sincere return to God demanded not only the destruction of images and the suppression of idol-worship, but also the giving up of all wandering after idols, i.e., seeking or longing after other gods. Similarly, swearing by Jahveh is strengthened by the additions: tm,a, , in truth, not deceptively rq,v, , Jer 5:2), and with right and uprightness, i.e., in a just cause, and with honest intentions.-The promise, “they shall bless themselves,” etc., has in it an allusion to the patriarchal promises in Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14, but it is not, as most commentators, following Jerome, suppose, a direct citation of these, and certainly not “a learned quotation from a book” (Ew.), in which case µyrit;a would be referable, as in those promises, to Israel, the seed of Abraham, and would stand for µyrit;a .

This is put out of the question by the parallel llæh; µyrit;a , which never occurs but with the sense of glorying in God the Lord; cf. Isa. 41:16, Ps. 34:3; 64:11; 105:3, and Jer 9:22. Hence it follows that µyrit;a must be referred, as Calv. refers it, to hwO;hy] , just as in Isa 65:16: the nations will bless themselves in or with Jahveh, i.e., will desire and appropriate the blessing of Jahveh and glory in the true God. Even under this acceptation, the only one that can be justified from an exegetical point of view, the words stand in manifest relation to the patriarchal blessing. If the heathen peoples bless themselves in the name of Jahveh, then are they become partakers of the salvation that comes from Jahveh; and if this blessing comes to them as a consequence of the true conversion of Israel to the Lord, as a fruit of this, then it has come to them through Israel as the channel, as the patriarchal blessings declare disertis verbis. Jeremiah does not lay stress upon this intermediate agency of Israel, but leaves it to be indirectly understood from the unmistakeable allusion to the older promise.

The reason for the application thus given by Jeremiah to the divine promise made to the patriarchs is found in the aim and scope of the present discourse. The appointment of Israel to be the channel of salvation for the nations is an outcome of the calling grace of God, and the fulfilment of this gracious plan on the part of God is an exercise of the same grace-a grace which Israel by its apostasy does not reject, but helps onwards towards its ordained issue. The return of apostate Israel to its God is indeed necessary ere the destined end be attained; it is not, however, the ground of the blessing of the nations, but only one means towards the consummation of the divine plan of redemption, a plan which embraces all mankind. Israel’s apostasy delayed this consummation; the conversion of Israel will have for its issue the blessing of the nations.

JEREMIAH 4:3-31 Threatening of Judgment upon Jerusalem and Judah.

If Judah and Jerusalem do not reform, the wrath of God will be inevitably kindled against them (vv. 3, 4). Already the prophet sees in spirit the judgment bursting in upon Judah from the north, to the dismay of all who were accounting themselves secure (vv. 5-10). Like a hot tempest-blast it rushes on, because of the wickedness of Jerusalem (vv. 11-18), bringing desolation and ruin on the besotted people, devastating the whole land, and not to be turned aside by any meretricious devices (vv. 19-31).

V. 3. “For thus hath Jahveh spoken to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: Break up for yourselves new ground, and sow not among thorns.

V. 4. Circumcise yourselves to Jahveh, and take away the foreskins of your heart, men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury break forth like fire and burn unquenchably, because of the evil of your doings.” The exhortation to a reformation of life is attached by yKi , as being the ground of it, to the preceding exhortation to return. The bWv µai , v. 1, contained the indirect call to repent. In v. 1 this was addressed to Israel. In v. 3 the call comes to Judah, which the prophet had already in his eye in ch. 3; cf. Jer 3:7-8,10-11. The transition from Israel to Judah in the phrase: for thus saith Jahveh, is explained by the introduction of a connecting thought, which can without difficulty be supplied from the last clause of v. 2; the promise that the nations bless themselves in Jahveh will come to be fulfilled.

The thought to be supplied is: this conversion is indispensable for Judah also, for Judah too must begin a new life. Without conversion there is no salvation. The evil of their doings brings nought but heavy judgments with it. vyai , as often, in collective sense, since the plural of this word was little in use, see in Josh 9:6. ryni ttæK; ryni , as in Hos 10:12, plough up new land, to bring new untilled soil under cultivation-a figure for the reformation of life; as much as to say, to prepare new ground for living on, to begin a new life. Sow not among thorns. The seed-corns are the good resolutions which, when they have sunk into the soil of the mind, should spring up into deeds (Hitz.). The thorns which choke the good seed as it grows (Matt 13:7) are not mala vestra studia (Ros.), but the evil inclinations of the unrenewed heart, which thrive luxuriantly like thorns. “Circumcise you to the Lord” is explained by the next clause: remove the foreskins of your heart. The stress lies in lyhwh; in this is implied that the circumcision should not be in the flesh merely. In the flesh all Jews were circumcised. If they then are called to circumcise themselves to the Lord, this must be meant spiritually, of the putting away of the spiritual impurity of the heart, i.e., of all that hinders the sanctifying of the heart; see in Deut 10:16. The plur. `hl;r][; is explained by the figurative use of the word, and the reading `hl;r][; , presented by some codd., is a correction from Deut 10:16. The foreskins are the evil lusts and longings of the heart. Lest my fury break forth like fire; cf. Jer 7:20; Amos 5:6; Ps 89:47. m’ [æro µynip; as in Deut 28:20. This judgment of wrath the prophet already in spirit sees breaking on Judah. Verse 5-7. From the north destruction approaches.

V. 5. “Proclaim in Judah, and in Jerusalem let it be heard, and say, Blow the trumpet in the land; cry with a loud voice, and say, Assemble, and let us go into the defenced cities.

V. 6. Raise a standard toward Zion: save yourselves by flight, linger not; for from the north I bring evil and great destruction.

V. 7. A lion comes up from his thicket, and a destroyer of the nations is on his way, comes forth from his place, to make they land a waste, that thy cities be destroyed, without an inhabitant.

V. 8. For this gird you in sackcloth, lament and howl, for the heat of Jahveh’s anger hath not turned itself from us.

V. 9. And it cometh to pass on that day, saith Jahveh, the heart of the king and the heart of the princes shall perish, and the priests shall be confounded and the prophets amazed.” The invasion of a formidable foe is here represented with poetic animation; the inhabitants being called upon to publish the enemy’s approach throughout the land, so that every one may hide himself in the fortified cities. f9 The w before [qæT; in the Chet. has evidently got into the text through an error in transcription, and the Keri, according to which all the old versions translate, is the only correct reading. “Blow the trumpet in the land,” is that which is to be proclaimed or published, and the blast into the far-sounding rp;wOv is the signal of alarm by which the people was made aware of the danger that threatened it; cf. Joel 2:1; Hos 5:8. The second clause expresses the same matter in an intensified form and with plainer words.

Cry, make full (the crying), i.e., cry with a full clear voice; gather, and let us go into the fortified cities; cf. Jer 8:14. This was the meaning of the trumpet blast. Raise a banner pointing towards Zion, i.e., showing the fugitives the way to Zion as the safest stronghold in the kingdom. sne , a lofty pole with a waving flag (Isa 33:23; Ezek 27:7), erected upon mountains, spread the alarm farther than even the sound of the pealing trumpet; see in Isa 5:26. `zW[ , secure your possessions by flight; cf. Isa 10:31. The evil which Jahveh is bringing on the land is specified by lwOdG; rb,v, , after Zeph 1:10, but very frequently used by Jeremiah; cf. Jer 6:1; 48:3; 50:22; 51:54. rb,v, , breaking (of a limb), Lev 21:19, then the upbreaking of what exists, ruin, destruction. In v. 7 the evil is yet more fully described.

A lion is come up from his thicket Ëb,so with dag. forte dirim., from Ëb,so Ëb,wOc , 2 Sam 18:9, or from Ëbos] , Ps 74:5; cf. Ew. §255, d, and Olsh. §155, b), going forth for prey. This lion is a destroyer of the nations (not merely of individual persons as the ordinary lion); he has started [sæn; , or striking tents for the march), and is come out to waste the land and to destroy the cities. The infin. is continued by the temp. fin. hx;n; , and the Kal of xaæn; is here used in a passive sense: to be destroyed by war.

Verse 8. For this calamity the people was to mourn deeply. For the description of the mourning, cf. Joel 1:13; Mic 1:8. For the wrath of the Lord has not turned from us, as in blind self-delusion ye imagine, Jer 2:35.

The heath of Jahveh’s anger is the burning wrath on account of the sins of Manasseh, with which the people has been threatened by the prophets. This wrath has not turned itself away, because even under Josiah the people has not sincerely returned to its God.

Verse 9. When this wrath bursts over them, the rulers and leaders of the people will be perplexed and helpless. The heart, i.e., the mind, is lot. For this use of ble , cf. Job 12:3; 34:10; Prov 7:7, etc. µmev; , be paralyzed by terror, like the Kal in Jer 2:12. The prophets are mentioned last, because v. 10 cites a word of prophecy whereby they seduced the people into a false security.

Verse 10. “Then said I, Ah, Lord Jahveh, truly Thou hast deceived this people and Jerusalem in saying, Peace shall be to you, and the sword is reaching unto the soul.” This verse is to be taken as a sign addressed to God by Jeremiah when he heard the announcement of the judgment about to fall on Judah, contained in vv. 5-9. The Chald. has well paraphrased rmæa; thus: et dixi: suscipe deprecationem meam, Jahveh, Deus. but Hensler and Ew. wish to have rmæa; changed to rmæa; , “so that they say,” quite unnecessarily, and indeed unsuitably, since av;n; , thou hast deceived, is out of place either in the mouth of the people or of the lying prophets. That the word quoted, “Peace shall be to you,” is the saying of the false prophets, may be gathered from the context, and this is directly supported by Jer 14:13; 23:17. The deception of the people by such discourse from the false prophets is referred back to God: “Lord, Thou hast deceived,” inasmuch as God not only permits these lying spirits to appear and work, but has ordained them and brought them forth for the hardening of the people’s heart; as He once caused the spirit of prophecy to inspire as a lying spirit the prophets of Ahab, so that by promises of victory they prevailed upon him to march to that war in which, as a punishment for his godlessness, he was to perish; 1 King 22:20-23. Umbr. takes the words less correctly as spoken in the name of the people, to whom the unexpected turn affairs had now taken seemed a deception on the part of God; and this, although it was by itself it had been deceived, through its revolt from God. For it is not the people’s opinion that Jeremiah expresses, but a truth concerning which his wish is that the people may learn to recognise it, and so come to reflect and repent before it be too late. On the use of the perf. consec. [gæn; , see Ew. §342, b. As to the fact, cf. 5:18, Ps 69:2.

Verse 11-13. Description of the impending ruin, from which nothing can save but speedy repentance.

V. 11. “At that time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem, A hot wind from the bleak hills in the wilderness cometh on the way toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow and not to cleanse.

V. 12. A wind fuller than for this shall come to me; now will I also utter judgments upon them.

V. 13. Behold, like clouds it draws near, and like the storm are it chariots, swifter than eagles its horses. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled.

V. 14. Wash from wickedness thy heart, Jerusalem, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thine iniquitous thoughts lodge within thee?

V. 15. For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from the Mount Ephraim.

V. 16. Tell it to the peoples; behold, publish it to Jerusalem:

Besiegers come from a far country, and let their voice ring out against the cities of Judah. V. 17. As keepers of a field, they are against her round about; for against me hath she rebelled, saith Jahveh.

V. 18. Thy way and thy doings have wrought thee this. This is thy wickedness; yea, it is bitter, yea, it reacheth unto thine heart.” A more minute account of the impending judgment is introduced by the phrase: at that time. It shall be said to this people; in other words, it shall be said of this people; substantially, that shall fall upon it which is expressed by the figure following, a hot wind blowing from the naked hills of the wilderness. jæWr is stat. constr., and ypiv] its genitive, after which latter the adjective jxæ should be placed; but it is interpolated between the nomen regens and the n. rectum by reason of its smallness, and partly, too, that it may not be too far separated from its nomen, while rB;d]mi belongs to ypiv] . The wind blowing from the bleak hills in the wilderness, is the very severe east wind of Palestine. It blows in incessant gusts, and cannot be used for winnowing or cleansing the grain, since it would blow away chaff and seed together; cf.

Wetzst. in Del., Job, S. 320. Ër,D, is universally taken adverbially: is on the way, i.e., comes, moves in the direction of the daughter of Zion. The daughter of Zion is a personification of the inhabitants of Zion or Jerusalem. This hot blast is a figure for the destruction which is drawing near Jerusalem. It is not a chastisement to purify the people, but a judgment which will sweep away the whole people, carry away both wheat and chaff-a most effective figure for the approaching catastrophe of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the carrying away captive of its inhabitants.

Hitz. and Graf have, however, taken Ër,D, as subject of the clause: the path, i.e., the behaviour of my people, is a keen wind of the bare hills in the wilderness. Thus the conduct of the people would be compared with that wind as unprofitable, inasmuch as it was altogether windy, empty, and further as being a hurtful storm.

But the comparison of the people’s behaviour with a parched violent wind is a wholly unnatural one, for the justification of which it is not sufficient to point to Hos 8:7: sow wind and reap storm. Besides, upon this construction of the illustration, the description: not to winnow and not to cleanse, is not only unmeaning, but wholly unsuitable. Who is to be winnowed and cleansed by the windy ways of the people? Jahveh?! V. is indeed so managed by Hitz. and Graf that the tempestuous wind blows against God, “is directed against Jahveh like a blast of defiance and hostility.” But this argument is sufficient to overthrow that unnatural view of the figure, which, besides, obtains no support from v. 12. hL,ae cannot refer to yFi[æAtBæ : a full wind from these, i.e., the sons of my people; and ttæK; awOB, in spite of the passages, Jer 22:23; 50:26; 51:48; Job 3:25, does not mean: comes towards me, or: blows from them on me; for in all these passages ttæK; is dativ commodi or incommodi. Here, too, ttæK; is dative, used of the originator and efficient cause.

The wind comes for me-in plainer English: from me. Properly: it comes to God, i.e., at His signal, to carry out His will. hL,ae alem; is comparative: fuller than these, namely, the winds useful for winnowing and cleansing.

Now will I too utter. The intensifying µGæ does not point to a contrast in the immediately preceding clause: because the people blows against God like a strong wind, He too will utter judgment against it. The µGæ refers back to the preceding ttæK; : the storm comes from me; for now will I on my side hold judgment with them. The contrast implied in µGæ lies in the wider context, in the formerly described behaviour of the people, particularly in the sayings of the false prophets mentioned in v. 10, that there will be peace. On fp;v]mi rbæd; , cf. Jer 1:16.

These judgments are already on the way in v. 13. “Like clouds it draws near.” The subject is not mentioned, but a hostile army is meant, about to execute God’s judgments. “Like clouds,” i.e., in such thick dark masses; cf.

Ezek 38:16. The war-chariots drive with the speed of the tempest; cf. Isa 5:28; 66:15. The running of the horses resembles the flight of the eagle; cf.

Hab 1:8, where the same is said of the horsemen of the hostile people.

Both passages are founded on Deut 28:49; but Jeremiah, while he had the expression sWs rmen; llæq; , Hab 1:8, in his mind, chose rv,n, instead of leopards rmen; ), in this following the original in Deut.; cf. 2 Sam 1:23 and Lam 4:19. Already is heard the cry of woe: we are spoiled, cf. v. 20, Jer 9:18; 48:1.

Verse 14. If Jerusalem wishes to be saved, it must thoroughly turn from its sin, wash its heart clean; not merely abstain outwardly from wickedness, but renounce the evil desires of the heart. In the question: How long shall...remain? we have implied the thought that Jerusalem has already only too long cherished and indulged wicked thoughts. ˆWl is 3rd pers. imperf. Kal, not 2nd pers. Hiph.: wilt thou let remain (Schnur. and others). For the Hiphil of ˆWl is not in use, and besides, would need to be ˆWl . The ˆw,a; hb;v;jmæ , as in Prov 6:18; Isa 59:7, refer chiefly to sins against one’s neighbour, such as are reckoned up in 7:5f., 8f.

Verse 15-18. It is high time to cleanse oneself from sin, periculum in mora est; for already calamity is announced from Dan, even from the Mount Ephraim. dgæn; lwOq , the voice of him who gives the alarm, sc. [mæv; , is heard; cf. Jer 3:21; 31:15. That of which the herald gives warning is not given till the next clause. ˆw,a; , mischief, i.e., calamity. [mæv; is still dependent on lwOq . “From Dan,” i.e., the northern boundary of Palestine; see on Judg 20:1. “From Mount Ephraim,” i.e., the northern boundary of the kingdom of Judah, not far distant from Jerusalem. The alarm and the calamity draw ever nearer. “The messenger comes from each successive place towards which the foe approaches” (Hitz.). In v. 16 the substance of the warning message is given, but in so animated a manner, that a charge is given to make the matter known to the peoples and in Jerusalem. Tell to the peoples, behold, cause to be heard.

The hNehi in the first clause points forward, calling attention to the message in the second clause. A similar charge is given in v. 5, only “to the peoples” seems strange here. “The meaning would be simple if we could take ‘the peoples’ to be the Israelites,” says Graf. But since ywOG in this connection can mean only the other nations, the question obtrudes itself: to what end the approach of the besiegers of Jerusalem should be proclaimed to the heathen peoples. Jerome remarks on this: Vult omnes in circuitu nationes Dei nosse sententiam, et flagelatâ Jerusalem cunctos recipere disciplinam.

In like manner, Chr. B. Mich., following Schmid: Gentibus, ut his quoque innotescat severitatis divinae in Judaeos exemplum. Hitz. and Gr. object, that in what follows there is no word of the taking and destruction of Jerusalem, but only of the siege; that this could form no such exemplum, and that for this the issue must be awaited.

But this objection counts for little. After the description given of the enemies (cf. v. 13), there can be no doubt as to the issue of the siege, that is, as to the taking of Jerusalem. But if this be so, then the warning of the heathen as to the coming catastrophe, by holding the case of Jerusalem before them, is not so far-fetched a thought as that it should be set aside by Hitz.’s remark: “So friendly an anxiety on behalf of the heathen is utterly unnatural to a Jew, especially seeing that the prophet is doubly absorbed by anxiety for his own people.” Jeremiah was not the narrow-minded Jew Hitz. takes him for. Besides, there is no absolute necessity for holding “Tell to the peoples” to be a warning of a similar fate addressed to the heathen.

The charge is but a rhetorical form, conveying the idea that there is no doubt about the matter to be published, and that it concerned not Jerusalem alone, but the nations too.

This objection settled, there is no call to seek other interpretations, especially as all such are less easily justified. By changing the imper. rkæz; and [mæv; into perfects, Ew. obtains the translation: “they say already to the peoples, behold, they come, already they proclaim in Jerusalem,” etc.; but Hitz. and Graf have shown the change to be indefensible. Yet more unsatisfactory is the translation, “declare of the heathen,” which Hitz. and Graf have adopted, following the LXX, Kimchi, Vat., and others. This destroys the parallelism, it is out of keeping with the hNehi , and demands the addition (with the LXX) of awOB thereto to complete the sense. Graf and Hitz. have not been able to agree upon the sense of the second member of the verse. If we make ywOG de gentibus, then wgw’ [mæv; ought to be: proclaim upon (i.e., concerning) Jerusalem. Hitz., however, translates, in accordance with the use of [mæv; in vv. 5 and 15: Cry it aloud in Jerusalem (prop. over Jerusalem, Ps 49:12; Hos 8:1); but this, though clearly correct, does not correspond to the first part of the verse, according to Hitz.’s translation of it.

Graf, on the other hand, gives: Call them (the peoples) out against Jerusalem-a translation which, besides completely destroying the parallelism of the two clauses, violently separates from the proclamation the thing proclaimed: Besiegers come, etc. Nor can [mæv; be taken in the sense: call together, as in Jer 50:29; 51:27; 1 Kings 15:22; for in that case the object could not be omitted, those who are to be called together would need to be mentioned; and it is too much to assume ywOG from the ywOG for an object. The warning cry to Jerusalem runs: rxæn; , besiegers, (acc. to Isa 1:8) come from the far country (cf. Jer 5:15), and give their voice (cf. 2:15); i.e., let the tumult of a besieging army echo throughout the cities of Judah.

These besiegers will be like field-keepers round about Jerusalem `l[æ refers back to Jerus.), like field-keepers they will pitch their tents round the city (cf. 1:15) to blockade it. For against me (Jahveh) was she refractory hr;m; c. acc. pers., elsewhere with b] , Hos 14:1; Ps 5:11, or with ypiAta, , Num 20:24, and often). This is expanded in v. 18. Thy way, i.e., they behaviour and thy doings, have wrought thee this (calamity). This is thy wickedness, i.e., the effect or fruit of thy wickedness, yea, it is bitter, cf. Jer 2:19; yea, it reacheth unto thine heart, i.e., inflicts deadly wounds on thee.

Verse 19-26. Grief at the desolation of the land the infatuation of the people.

V. 19. “My bowels, my bowels! I am pained! the chambers of my heart-my heart rages within me! I cannot hold my peace! for thou hearest (the) sound of the trumpet, my soul, (the) war-cry.

V. 20. Destruction upon destruction is called; for spoiled is the whole land; suddenly are my tents spoiled, my curtains in a moment.

V. 21. How long shall I see (the) standard, hear (the) sound of the trumpet?

V. 22. For my people is foolish, me they know not; senseless children are they, and without understanding; wise are they to do evil, but to do good they know not.

V. 23. I look on the earth, and, lo, it is waste and void; and towards the heavens, and there is no light in them.

V. 24. I look on the mountains, and, lo, they tremble, and all the hills totter.

V. 25. I look, and, lo, no man is there, and all the fowls of the heavens are fled.

V. 26. I look, and, lo, Carmel is the wilderness, and all the cities thereof are destroyed before Jahveh, before the heath of His anger.” To express the misery which the approaching siege of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah is about to bring, the prophet breaks forth into lamentation, vv. 19-21. It is a much debated question, whether the prophet is the speaker, as the Chald. has taken it, i.e., whether Jeremiah is uttering his own (subjective) feelings, or whether the people is brought before us speaking, as Grot., Schnur., Hitz., Ew. believe. The answer is this: the prophet certainly is expressing his personal feelings regarding the nearing catastrophe, but in doing so he lends words to the grief which all the godly will feel. The lament of v. 20, suddenly are my tents spoiled, is unquestionably the lament not of the prophet as an individual, but of the congregation, i.e., of the godly among the people, not of the mass of the blinded people. The violence of the grief finds vent in abrupt ejaculations of distress. “My bowels, my bowels!” is the cry of sore pain, for with the Hebrews the bowels are the seat of the deepest feelings.

The Chet. hlwhwa is a monstrosity, certainly a copyist’s error for hl;Wha; , as it is in many MSS and edd., from lWj : I am driven to writhe in agony.

The Keri lWj , I will wait (cf. Mic 7:7), yields no good sense, and is probably suggested merely by the cohortative form, a cohortative being regarded as out of place in the case of lWj . But that form may express also the effort to incite one’s own volition, and so would here be rendered in English by: I am bound to suffer pain, or must suffer; cf. Ew. §228, ble ryqi , prop. the walls of my heart, which quiver as the heart throbs in anguish. howmeh-liy is not to be joined with the last two words as if it were part of the same clause; in that case we should expect hm;h; . But these words too are an ejaculation. The subject of howmeh is the following ble ; cf. Jer 48:36. In defiance of usage, Hitz. connects ble with vræj; alo : my heart can I not put to silence. But this verb in Hiph. means always: be silent, never: put to silence. Not even in Job 11:3 can it have the latter meaning; where we have the same verb construed with acc. rei, as in Job 41:4, and where we must translate: at thy harangues shall the people be silent. The heart cannot be silent, because the soul hears the peal of the war-trumpet. [mæv; is 2nd pers. fem., as in Jer 2:20,33, and freq., the soul being addressed, as in Ps 16:2 (in rmæa; ), Ps. 42:6,12. This apostrophe is in keeping with the agitated tone of the whole verse.

Verse 20-26. One destruction after another is heralded (on rb,v, , see v. 6).

Ew. translates loosely: wound upon wound meet one another. For the word does not mean wound, but the fracture of a limb; and it seems inadmissible to follow the Chald. and Syr. in taking ar;q; here in the sense of hr;q; , since the sig. “meet” does not suit rb,v, . The thought is this: tidings are brought of one catastrophe after another, for the devastation extends itself over the whole land and comes suddenly upon the tents, i.e., dwellings of those who are lamenting. Covers, curtains of the tent, is used as synonymous with tents; cf. Jer 10:20; Isa 54:2. How long shall I see the standard, etc.! is the cry of despair, seeing no prospect of the end to the horrors of the war. The standard and the sound of the trumpet are, as in v. 5, the alarm-signals on the approach of the enemy.

There is no prospect of an end to the horrors, for (v. 22) the people is so foolish that it understands only how to do the evil, but not the good; cf. for this Jer 5:21; Isa 1:3; Mic 7:3. V. 21 gives God’s answer to the woful query, how long the ravaging of the land by war is to last. The answer is: as long as the people persists in the folly of its rebellion against God, so long will chastising judgments continue. To bring this answer of God home to the people’s heart, the prophet, in vv. 23-26, tells what he has seen in the spirit. He has seen ha;r; , perf. proph.) bursting over Judah a visitation which convulses the whole world. The earth seemed waste and void as at the beginning of creation, Gen 1:2, before the separation of the elements and before the creation of organic and living beings. In heaven no light was to be seen, earth and heaven seemed to have been thrown back into a condition of chaos.

The mountains and hills, these firm foundations of the earth, quivered and swayed ( lqel]qæt]hi , be put into a light motion, cf. Nah 1:5); men had fled and hidden themselves from the wrath of God (cf. Isa 2:19,21), and all the birds had flown out of sight in terror at the dreadful tokens of the beginning catastrophe (9:9). The fruitful field was the wilderness-not a wilderness, but “changed into the wilderness with all its attributes” (Hitz.). lm,r]Kæ is not appell. as in Jer 2:7, but nom. prop. of the lower slopes of Carmel, famed for their fruitfulness; these being taken as representatives of all the fruitful districts of the land. The cities of the Carmel, or of the fruitful-field, are manifestly not to be identified with the store cities of Kings 9:19, as Hitz. supposes, but the cities in the most fertile districts of the country, which, by reason of their situation, were in a prosperous condition, but now are destroyed. “Before the heat of His anger,” which is kindled against the foolish and godless race; cf. Nah 1:6; Isa 13:13.

Verse 27-31. The devastation of Judah, though not its utter annihilation, is irrevocably decreed, and cannot be turned away by any meretricious expedients. V. 27. “For thus saith Jahveh, A waste shall the whole land be, yet will I not make an utter end.

V. 28. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heaven above darken, because I have said it, purposed it, and repent it not, neither will I turn back from it.

V. 29. For the noise of the horseman and bowman every city flees; they come into thickets, and into clefts of the rock they go up; every city is forsaken, and no man dwells therein.

V. 30. And thou, spoiled one, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself in purple, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou tearest open thine eyes with paint, in vain thou makest thyself fair; the lovers despise thee, they seek thy life.

V. 31. For I hear a voice as of a woman in travail, anguish as of one who bringeth forth her first-born, the voice of the daughter of Zion; she sigheth, she spreadeth out her hands: Woe is me! for my soul sinketh powerless beneath murderers.” Verse 27-29. Vv. 27 and 28 confirm and explain what the prophet has seen in spirit in vv. 23-26. A waste shall the land become; but the wasting shall not be a thorough annihilation, not such a destruction as befell Sodom and Gomorrah. hl;K; `hc;[; , as in Nah 1:8f., Isa 10:23, and freq. This limitation is yet again in v. Jer 5:10,18 made to apply to Jerusalem, as it has done already to the people at large. It is founded on the promise in Lev 26:44, that the Lord will punish Israel with the greatest severity for its stubborn apostasy from Him, but will not utterly destroy it, so as to break His covenant with it. Accordingly, all prophets declare that after the judgments of punishment, a remnant shall be left, from which a new holy race shall spring; cf. Amos 9:8; Isa 6:13; 11:11,16; 10:20ff., Mic 2:12; 5:6; Zeph 3:13, etc. “For this” refers to the first half of v. 27, and is again resumed in the yKi `l[æ following: for this, because Jahveh hath purposed the desolation of the whole land.

The earth mourns, as in Hos 4:3, because her productive power is impaired by the ravaging of the land. The heaven blackens itself, i.e., shrouds itself in dark clouds (1 Kings 18:45), so as to mourn over the desolated earth.

The vividness of the style permits “have decreed it” to be appended as asyndeton to “I have said it,” for the sake of greater emphasis. God has not only pronounced the desolation of the land, but God’s utterance in this is based upon a decree which God does not repent, and from which He will not turn back. The LXX have placed the µmæz; after µjæn; , and have thus obtained a neater arrangement of the clauses; but by this the force of expression in “I have said it, decreed it,” is weakened. In v. 29 the desolation of the land is further portrayed, set forth in v. 30 as inevitable, and exhibited in its sad consequences in v. 31. On the approach of the hostile army, all the inhabitants flee into inaccessible places from the clatter or noise of the horsemen and archers.

He that casts the bow, the bowman; cf. Ps 78:9. ry[ih;AlK; means, in spite of the article, not the whole city, but every city, all cities, as may be gathered from the ˆhe , which points back to this. So frequently before the definite noun, especially when it is further defined by a relative clause, as e.g., Ex 1:22; Deut 4:3; 1 Sam 3:17; cf. Ew. §290, c. For the first kaalhaa` iyr the LXX have pa>sa hJ cw>ra , and accordingly J. D. Mich., Hitz., and Graf propose to amend to xr,a;h;AlK; , so as to avoid “the clumsy repetition.” But we cannot be ruled here by aesthetic principles of taste.

Clearly the first “every city” means the populace of the cities, and so awOB is: they (i.e., the men) come, pouring forth. `b[; is not here clouds, but, according to its etymology, to be dark, means the dark thickets or woods; cf. the Syr. WaB; , wood. µypiKe , rocks, here clefts in the rocks, as is demanded by the b] . For this state of things, cf. Isa 2:19,21, and the accounts of Judg 6:2; 1 Sam 13:6, where the Israelites hide themselves from the invading Midianites in caves, ravines, thorn-thickets, rocks, and natural fastnesses.

Verse 30. In vain will Jerusalem attempt to turn away calamity by the wiles of a courtesan. In v. 31 the daughter of Zion is addressed, i.e., the community dwelling around the citadel of Zion, or the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom, regarded as a female personality (as to ˆwOyxiAtBæ , see on Isa 1:8). “Spoiled one” is in apposition not to the yT]aæ , but to the person in the verb; it is regarded as adverbial, and so is without inflexion: if thou art spoiled, like `µwOr[; , Job 24:7,10; cf. Ew. §316, b. The following clauses introduced by yKi are not so connected with the question, what wilt thou do? as that yKi should mean that: what wilt thou do, devise to the end that thou mayest clothe thee? (Graf); the yKi means if or though, and introduces new clauses, the apodosis of which is: “in vain,” etc. If thou even clothest thyself in purple. yniv; , the crimson dye, and stuffs or fabrics dyed with it, see in Ex 25:4. ËWp is a pigment for the eye, prepared from silver-glance, sulphur-antimony-the Cohol, yet much esteemed by Arab women, a black powder with a metallic glitter.

It is applied to the eyelids, either dry or reduced to a paste by means of oil, by means of a blunt-pointed style or eye-pencil, and increases the lustre of dark eyes so that they seem larger and more brilliant. See the more minute account in Hillel, on the eye-paint of the East, in ref. to 2 Kings 9:30. [ræq; , tear asunder, not, prick, puncture, as Ew., following J. D. Mich., makes it. This does not answer the mode of using the eye-paint, which was this: the style rubbed over with the black powder is drawn horizontally through between the closed eyelids, and these are thus smeared with the ointment. This proceeding Jeremiah sarcastically terms rending open the eyes. As a wife seeks by means of paint and finery to heighten the charms of her beauty in order to please men and gain the favour of lovers, so the woman Jerusalem will attempt by like stratagems to secure the favour of the enemy; but in vain like Jezebel in 2 Kings 9:30. The lovers will despise her. The enemies are called lovers, paramours, just as Israel’s quest for help amongst the heathen nations is represented as intrigue with them; see on Jer 2:33,36.

Verse 31. as giving a reason, is introduced by yKi . Zion’s attempts to secure the goodwill of the enemy are in vain, for already the prophet hears in spirit the agonized cry of the daughter of Zion, who beseechingly stretches out her hands for help, and falls exhausted under the assassin’s strokes. hl;j; , partic. Kal faem. from lWj ; see Ew. §151, b, and Gesen. §72, Rem. 1. hr;x; , in parallelism with lwOq and dependent on “I hear,” means cry of anguish. jæpeyæt]hi , breathe heavily, pant, sign. cræp; is joined asynd. with the preceding word, but is in sense subordinate to it: she sighs with hands spread out; a pleading gesture expressing a prayer for protection. `ãye[; , be exhausted, here = sink down faint, succumb to the murderers.

JEREMIAH 5:1-9 The Causes which Called Down the Judgment Pronounced: The Total Corruption of the People. Chr. B. Mich. has excellently summed up thus the contents of this chapter:

Deus judicia sua, quae cap. IV praedixerat, justificat ostendens, se quamvis invitum, tamen non aliter posse quam punire Judaeos propter praefractam ipsorum malitiam. The train of thought in this chapter is the following: God would pardon if there were to be found in Jerusalem but one who practised righteousness and strove to keep good faith; but high and low have forsaken God and His law, and serve the false gods. This the Lord must punish (vv. 1-9). Judah, like Israel, disowns the Lord, and despises the words of His prophets; therefore the Lord must affirm His word by deeds of judgment (vv. 10-18). Because they serve the gods of strangers, He will throw them into bondage to strange peoples, that they may learn to fear Him as the Almighty God and Lord of the world, who withholds His benefits from them because their sins keep them far from Him (vv. 19-25); for wickedness and crime have acquired a frightful predominance (vv. 26- 31).

Verse 1-2. By reason of the universal godlessness and moral corruption the Lord cannot pardon.

V. 1. “Range through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek upon her thoroughfares, if ye find any, if any doth judgment, seeketh after faithfulness, and I will pardon her.

V. 2. And if they say, ‘As Jahveh liveth,’ then in this they swear falsely.

V. 3. Jahveh, are not Thine yes upon faithfulness? Thou smitest them, an they are not pained; thou consumest them, they will take no correction; they make their face harder than rock, they will not turn.

V. 4. And I thought, It is but the baser sort, they are foolish; for they know not the way of Jahveh, the judgment of their God.

V. 5. I will get me then to the great, and will speak with them, for they know the way of Jahveh, the judgment of their God; yet together have they broken the yoke, burst the bonds.

V. 6. Therefore a lion out of the wood smiteth them, a wolf of the deserts spoileth them, a leopard lieth in wait against their cities: every one that goeth out thence is torn in pieces; because many are their transgressions, many their backslidings. V. 7. Wherefore should I pardon thee? thy sons have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods. I caused them to sear, but they committed adultery, and crowd into the house of the harlot.

V. 8. Like well-fed horses, they are roaming about; each neigheth after the other’s wife.

V. 9. Shall I not punish this? saith Jahveh; or shall not my soul be avenged on such a people as this?” The thought of v. 1, that in Jerusalem there is not to be found one solitary soul who concerns himself about uprightness and sincerity, does not, though rhetorically expressed, contain any rhetorical hyperbole or exaggeration such as may have arisen from the prophet’s righteous indignation, or have been inferred from the severity of the expected judgment (Hitz.); it gives but the simple truth, as is seen when we consider that it is not Jeremiah who speaks according to the best of his judgment, but God, the searcher of hearts. Before the all-seeing eye of God no man is pure and good. They are all gone astray, and there is none that doeth good, Ps 14:2-3. And if anywhere the fear of God is the ruling principle, ye