Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 3. Their nobles have sent their little ones] So general was this calamity, that the servants no longer attended to their lords, but every one was interested alone for himself; and the nobles of the land were obliged to employ their own children to scour the land, to see if any water could be found in the tanks or the pits. In the dearth in the time of Elijah, Ahab the king, and Obadiah his counselor, were obliged to traverse the land themselves, in order to find out water to keep their cattle alive. This and the three following verses give a lively but distressing picture of this dearth and its effects.
Matthew Henry Commentary
- The glory of the Jews should be marred. (Jer. 13:1-11) All ranks shoul suffer misery, An earnest exhortation to repentance. (Jer. 13:12-17) A awful message to Jerusalem and its king. (Jer. 13:18-27)
Jer. 13:1-11 It was usual with the prophets to teach by signs. And we have the explanation, Jer. 13:9-11. The people of Israel had been to God as this girdle. He caused them to cleave to him by the law he gav them, the prophets he sent among them, and the favours he showed them They had by their idolatries and sins buried themselves in foreig earth, mingled among the nations, and were so corrupted that they wer good for nothing. If we are proud of learning, power, and outwar privileges, it is just with God to wither them. The minds of men shoul be awakened to a sense of their guilt and danger; yet nothing will be effectual without the influences of the Spirit.
Jer. 13:12-17 As the bottle was fitted to hold the wine, so the sins of the people made them vessels of wrath, fitted for the judgments of God with which they should be filled till they caused each other' destruction. The prophet exhorts them to give glory to God, by confessing their sins, humbling themselves in repentance, and returnin to his service. Otherwise they would be carried into other countries in all the darkness of idolatry and wickedness. All misery, witnessed of foreseen, will affect a feeling mind, but the pious heart must mour most over the afflictions of the Lord's flock.
Jer. 13:18-27 Here is a message sent to king Jehoiakim, and his queen Their sorrows would be great indeed. Do they ask, Wherefore come thes things upon us? Let them know, it is for their obstinacy in sin. We cannot alter the natural colour of the skin; and so is it morall impossible to reclaim and reform these people. Sin is the blackness of the soul; it is the discolouring of it; we were shapen in it, so tha we cannot get clear of it by any power of our own. But Almighty grac is able to change the Ethiopian's skin. Neither natural depravity, no strong habits of sin, form an obstacle to the working of God, the new-creating Spirit. The Lord asks of Jerusalem, whether she is determined not be made clean. If any poor slave
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