the connection of thought being this: Now that I have set before you the folly of idol-worship, and thus guarded you against its seductive influences, it remains to assure you that you are destined to be driven speedily from your land into captivity, and subjected there to these very temptations.- "Gather thy wares," means not specially bales of merchandise, but baggage generally, every thing packed and bound up for transportation.- -Even those who lived in fortified cities, the strongholds of the land, must prepare to flee, for they must go full soon, even thrust out altogether, and violently, as a stone hurled from a sling. The form of this expression, "this once," is thought to favor the opinion that this was the first deportation of captives in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. I can not regard it as decisive to this point.- -God will distress them till they shall feel it. To the end that they may feel it, is the sense of the original. God meant this chastisement should reach the sensibilities of that guilty and hardened people. 19. Woe is me for my hurt! my wound is grievous: but I said, Truly this is a grief, and I must bear it. Were it not that the next verse must be applied to the Jewish people, thought and spoken of as one, we should naturally refer this verse to the prophet himself. But the scope of v. 20 must determine the construction of this verse. Hence this represents the people as bewailing the crushing blow that falls on them. The Hebrew word for "hurt," means properly a blow that crushes. The next clause repeats, "My smiting is most severe," the word having often the sense of deadly, a death wound. But the people only say, This is our inevitable destiny; we will bear it.language does not necessarily involve submission to God in the sense of Christian resignation. It may be only the philosophic forced yielding that comes from a consciously unavoidable necessity. It seems here to represent a spirit, not softened and yielding, but hard, sour, and stubborn. -This 20. My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my children are gone forth of me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains. In this beautiful figure, the people say, "My tent is ruined; my tent-cords are broken; my children are no more; I have none left to help me set up my tent again." Alas! her sons and daughters are either slain or gone into captivity, and her homes are all desolate! 21. For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered. The reason why this great calamity comes on the people, its antecedent causes, must be continually kept in mind; hence they appear again here. The religious teachers of the people had become utterly brutish, in the same sense in which idolaters had been shown to be brutish (v. 8, 14). They had gone into idolatry, and led the people after them. They should have sought the Lord, but they did not. On their souls must rest the fearful guilt of ruining the nation! 22. Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons. The almost obsolete noun, "bruit," means the rumor, the tidings. Its sound-lo, it comes! a great crash from the land of the north, the Chaldean irruption, breaking into their country to lay it desolate. 23. O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. The usage of the first person in v. 19, 20, and also in v. 24, concur in sustaining the construction which applies this verse to the Jewish people. The prophet speaks for them, and in their behalf. "O Lord, I know that man's way is not to himself," in the sense of being under his absolute control. Thy hand is everywhere and evermore supreme, shaping all destinies and even all the lesser subordinate acts and ways of mortals. This recognition of God's universal agency introduces a prayer that God would shape the issues of their destined captivity in his merciful providence. The people express their sense of conscious weakness, and cast themselves on the supreme agency and control of God. -Probably this language is put into the mouth of the people by the prophet as adapted to meet their case, rather than as truly expressing their actual thought and prayer at this time. 24. O LORD, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. 25. Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name: for they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have made his habitation desolate. The prayer here is, first, that God would deal gently, tenderly with the people, that their ruin might not be utter and perpetual; and, secondly, that, upon the heathen who had rendered him no worship, he would send his judgments more heavily and fearfully, because they had consumed Jacob, and led the peopie of the Lord away into a long and grievous captivity.- -In due time the Lord answered this prayer by his judgments on Babylon.This passage is sometimes quoted as if it referred to family prayer. Such reference should be understood as merely by way of accommodation. The sense here takes a much broader range, even to those heathen tribes and clans that do not worship or even know the true God. CHAPTER XI. This chapter and the next are closely connected, the persecution of the prophet by his fellow-townsmen and relatives of Anathoth constituting a connecting bond. (Compare 11: 19-23 with 12: 6.) This message appears without any date; but the points made in it, especially the conspiracy found in Judah and Jerusalem to apostatize from God, and the violent efforts upon the prophet's life, show that it must have been later than Josiah's reign, and, in all probability, soon after Jehoiakim's accession to the throne. Persecution against the prophet became virulent during this king's reign. (See chap. 26, and also 36.) 1. The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 2. Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; 3. And say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, 4. Which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God: 5. That I may perform the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. Then answered I, and said, So be it, O LORD. Assuming the time of this message to be soon after the death of Josiah, in the first years of Jehoiakim, the manifest symptoms of apostasy arrested attention, and the Lord, through his prophet, sent this solemn warning to stay its development and further progress if possible. Most appropriately he calls their attention to that great covenant made between himself and the Hebrew nation soon after they came forth from Egypt, brought to view first in Ex. 19 and 20, and drawn out yet more fully in all its conditions, its curses and its blessings, in Deut. 27-30. There especially they might see the fearful catalogue of curses denounced upon the people if they should rebel against their God and prove faithless to their solemn vows in this covenant.- The prophet's answer at the close of v. 5, "Amen, Lord," i. e., so let it be, may be supposed to be in general his cordial assent to that covenant, including specially his prayer that the grant of Canaan might be made perpetual by the fidelity of the people; also his admission, in harmony with the spirit of Deut. 27: 14-26, that the curses imprecated would fall justly on the people if they proved faithless; and not improbably his consent to deliver the message as required:" "All right, Lord; I go." This emphatic amen seems to include his hearty assent and consent upon all these points. 6. Then the LORD said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them. 7. For I earnestly protested unto your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, even unto this day, rising early and protesting, saying, Obey my voice. "Protesting" is a solemn form of attestation. The Hebrew word is used for witnessing, giving or taking testimony under solemn sanctions. So the Lord had announced to the people the terms of this covenant often and in methods of the greatest solemnity, all along from the day they came out of Egypt unto the time then present. The expression "rising early," is specially significant, and in our prophet quite frequent. (See 7: 13, and 25: 3, 4, and 35: 15.) The command, "Proclaim these words, not only in the streets of Jerusalem, but in the cities of Judah," indicates the wide range of his mission and the solemn earnestness of this attempted reform. 8. Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do; but they did them not. "Walking in the imagination of their evil heart" stands opposed to walking obediently with God. See the explanation of this phrase in notes on 3: 17.—The last clause means, I will execute all the curses threatened in this covenant on those who violate it. (See these penalties in Deut. 27.) 9. And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. แ 10. They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words; and they went after other gods to serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers. A "conspiracy" is a concerted plan for mischief; in this case the mischief of turning away from the worship of God to the worship of idols; from obeying God to following altogether the impulses of their own wicked hearts. The term is often used in the political sense of treason against the throne-a sense pertinent here because Jehovah was their king.—It would seem that these developments appeared immediately after the death of Josiah. Jehoiakim began his reign wickedly. 11. Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them. This evil, the Chaldean army, would be one from which they could not escape; in the precise sense of the original, could not go forth from under it." It would be all in vain for them in the hour of their distress to cry to God for help. He forestalled such cries by assuring them he should not hear!-a fact which has a terrible significance to every sinner who has incurred the wrath of God, and for whom no help is possible, save in God's mercy, and yet with whom no cries for mercy can be availing! But the sinner is moving on fast to the hour of retribution! What shall he do? 12. Then shall the cities of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem go, and cry unto the gods unto whom they offer incense but they shall not save them at all in the time of their trouble. It will be only a righteous retribution upon them for God to turn them over to their idol-gods for help in their day of calamity. Can they hope to find the help they need there? Ah! the madness of such a hope! 13. For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal. This gives us a vivid view of the extent of idolatry at this timeidol-gods in every city throughout all the land and in every street of Jerusalem.- -Very concise and expressive is the original"altars to that shame "-that shameful thing, Baal. It was a shame |