Beginning at the beginning, the dawn of his people's life as a nation,
the young prophet declares that in her early days, in the old times of
simple piety and the uncorrupted life of the desert, Israel had been
true to her God; and her devotion to her Divine spouse had been rewarded
by guidance and protection. "Israel was a thing consecrated to Iahvah;
whoever eat of it was held guilty, and evil came upon them" (ii. 1-3).
This happy state of mutual love and trust between the Lord and His
people began to change with the great change in outward circumstances
involved in their conquest of Canaan and settlement among the aboriginal
inhabitants as the ruling race. With the lands and cities of the
conquered, the conquerors soon learned to adopt also their customs of
worship, and the licentious merriment of their sacrifices and festivals.
Gradually they lost all sense of any radical distinction between the
God of Israel and the local deities at whose ancient sanctuaries they
now worshipped Him. Soon they forgot their debt to Iahvah; His gracious
and long-continued guidance in the Arabian steppes, and the loving
care which had established them in the goodly land of orchards and
vineyards and cornfields. The priests ceased to care about ascertaining
and declaring His will; the princes openly broke His laws; and the
popular prophets spoke in the name of the popular Baals (vv. 4-8).
There was something peculiarly strange and startling in this general
desertion of the national God and Deliverer; it was unparalleled among
the surrounding heathen races. _They_ were faithful to gods that were
no gods; Israel actually exchanged her Glory, the living source of
all her strength and well-being, for a useless, helpless idol. Her
behaviour was as crazy as if she had preferred a cistern, all cracks
and fissures, that could not possibly hold water, to a never-failing
fountain of sweet spring water (vv. 9-13). The consequences were only
too plain to such as had eyes to see. Israel, the servant, the favoured
slave of Iahvah, was robbed and spoiled. The "lions," the fierce and
rapacious warriors of Assyria had ravaged his land, and ruined his
cities; while Egypt was proving but a treacherous friend, pilfering
and plundering on the borders of Judah. It was all Israel's own doing;
forsaking his God, he had forfeited the Divine protection. It was
his own apostasy, his own frequent and flagrant revolts which were
punishing him thus. Vain, therefore, utterly vain were his endeavours
to find deliverance from trouble in an alliance with the great heathen
powers of South or North (vv. 14-19). Rebellion was no new feature in
the national history. No; for of old the people had broken the yoke
of Iahvah, and burst the bonds of His ordinances, and said, I will
not serve! and on every high hill, and under every evergreen tree,
Israel had bowed down to the Baalim of Canaan, in spiritual adultery
from her Divine Lord and Husband. The change was a portent; the noble
vine-shoot had degenerated into a worthless wilding (vv. 20-21). The
sin of Israel was inveterate and ingrained; nothing could wash out the
stain of it. Denial of her guilt was futile; the dreadful rites in the
valley of Hinnom witnessed against her. Her passion for the foreign
worships was as insatiable and headstrong as the fierce lust of the
camel or the wild ass. To protests and warnings her sole reply was: "It
is in vain! I love the strangers, and them will I follow!" The outcome
of all this wilful apostasy was the shame of defeat and disaster, the
humiliation of disappointment, when the helplessness of the stocks
and stones, which had supplanted her Heavenly Father, was demonstrated
by the course of events. Then she bethought her of the God she had
so lightly forsaken, only to hear in His silence a bitterly ironical
reference to the multitude of her helpers, the gods of her own creation.
The national reverses failed of the effect intended in the counsels of
Providence. Her sons had fallen in battle; but instead of repenting of
her evil ways, she slew the faithful prophets who warned her of the
consequences of her misdeeds (vv. 20-30). It was the crowning sin; the
cup of her iniquity was full to overflowing. Indignant at the memory of
it, the prophet once more insists that the national crimes are what has
put misfortune on the track of the nation; and chiefly, this heinous
one of killing the messengers of God like housebreakers caught in the
act; and then aggravating their guilt by self-justification, and by
resorting to Egypt for that help, which they despaired of obtaining from
an outraged God. All such negotiations, past or present, were doomed
to failure beforehand; the Divine sentence had gone forth, and it was
idle to contend against it (vv. 31-37). Idle also it was to indulge in
hopes of the restoration of Divine favour. Just as it was not open to a
discarded wife to return to her husband after living with another; so
might not Israel be received back into her former position of the Bride
of Heaven, after she had "played the harlot with many lovers." Doubtless
of late she had given tokens of remembering her forgotten Lord, calling
upon the Father who had been the guide of her youth, and deprecating
the continuance of His wrath. But the time was long since past, when it
was possible to avert the evil consequences of her misdoings. She had,
as it were, steadily purposed and wrought out her own evils; both her
sins and her sufferings past and to come: the iron sequence could not
be broken; the ruin she had courted lay before her in the near future:
she had "prevailed." All efforts such as she was now making to stave it
off were like a deathbed repentance; in the nature of things, they could
not annihilate the past, nor undo what had been done, nor substitute the
fruit of holiness for the fruit of sin, the reward of faithfulness and
purity for the wages of worldliness, sensuality, and forgetfulness of
God.
Thus the discourse starts with impeachment, and ends with irreversible
doom. Its tone is comminatory throughout; nowhere do we hear, as in
other prophecies, the promise of pardon in return for penitence.
Such preaching was necessary, if the nation was to be brought to
a due sense of its evil; and the reformation of the eighteenth of
Josiah, which was undoubtedly accompanied by a considerable amount of
genuine repentance among the governing classes, was in all likelihood
furthered by this and similar prophetic orations.[20]
FOOTNOTES:
[19] צַלְמָוֶת, so far as the punctuation suggests that the term is
a compound, meaning "shadow of death," is one of the fictions of the
Masorets, like לִגְאֵיוֹנִים and חֵלְכָּאִים and חֵֽלְכָה in the Psalms.
[20] Perhaps, too, the immediate object of the prophet was attained,
which was, as Ewald thinks, to dissuade the people from alliance with
Psammitichus, the vigorous monarch who was then reviving the power and
ambition of Egypt. Jeremiah dreaded the effects of Egyptian influence
upon the religion and morals of Judah. Ewald notes the significant
absence of all reference to the enemy from the north, who appears in
all the later pieces.
III.
_ISRAEL AND JUDAH: A CONTRAST._
JEREMIAH iii. 6-iv. 2.
The first address of our prophet was throughout of a sombre cast, and
the darkness of its close was not relieved by a single ray of hope.
It was essentially a comminatory discourse, the purpose of it being
to rouse a sinful nation to the sense of its peril, by a faithful
picture of its actual condition, which was so different from what
it was popularly supposed to be. The veil is torn aside; the real
relations between Israel and his God are exposed to view; and it is
seen that the inevitable goal of persistence in the course which has
brought partial disasters in the past, is certain destruction in the
imminent future. It is implied, but not said, that the only thing
that can save the nation is a complete reversal of policies hitherto
pursued, in Church and State and private life; and it is apparently
taken for granted that the thing implied is no longer possible. The
last word of the discourse was: "Thou hast purposed and performed the
evils, and thou hast conquered" (iii. 5). The address before us forms
a striking contrast to this dark picture. It opens a door of hope for
the penitent. The heart of the prophet cannot rest in the thought of
the utter rejection of his people; the harsh and dreary announcement
that his people's woes are self-caused cannot be his last word. "His
anger was only love provoked to distraction; here it has come to
itself again," and holds out an offer of grace first to that part of
the whole nation which needs it most, the fallen kingdom of Ephraim,
and then to the entire people. The all Israel of the former discourse
is here divided into its two sections, which are contrasted with each
other, and then again considered as a united nation. This feature
distinguishes the piece from that which begins chap. iv. 3, and which
is addressed to "Judah and Jerusalem" rather than to Israel and Judah,
like the one before us. An outline of the discourse may be given thus.
It is shown that Judah has not taken warning by Iahvah's rejection
of the sister kingdom (6-10); and that Ephraim may be pronounced
less guilty than Judah, seeing that she had witnessed no such signal
example of the Divine vengeance on hardened apostasy. She is,
therefore, invited to repent and return to her alienated God, which
will involve a return from exile to her own land; and the promise
is given of the reunion of the two peoples in a restored Theocracy,
having its centre in Mount Zion (11-19). All Israel has rebelled
against God; but the prophet hears the cry of universal penitence and
supplication ascending to heaven; and Iahvah's gracious answer of
acceptance (iii. 20-iv. 2).
The opening section depicts the sin which had brought ruin on Israel,
and Judah's readiness in following her example, and refusal to take
warning by her fate. This twofold sin is aggravated by an insincere
repentance. _And Iahvah said unto me, in the days of Josiah the
king, Sawest thou what the Turncoat_ or _Recreant Israel did? she
would go up every high_ _hill, and under every evergreen tree, and
play the harlot there. And methought that after doing all this she
would return to Me; but she returned not; and the Traitress, her
sister Judah saw it. And I[21] saw that when for the very reason
that she, the Turncoat Israel, had committed adultery, I had put her
away, and given her her bill of divorce, the Traitress Judah, her
sister, was not afraid, but she too went off and played the harlot.
And so, through the cry_ (cf. Gen. iv. 10, xviii. 20 _sq._) _of her
harlotry_ (or read רב for קל, _script. defect._ through her manifold
or abounding harlotry) _she polluted the land_ (וַתַּחֲנֵף ver. 2),
_in that she committed adultery with the Stone and with the Stock.
And yet though she was involved in all this guilt_ (lit. _and even in
all this_. Perhaps the sin and the penalties of it are identified;
and the meaning is: _And yet for all this liability_: cf. Isa. v.
25), _the Traitress Judah returned not unto Me with all her heart_
(with a _whole_ or _undivided_ heart, with entire sincerity[22])
_but in falsehood saith Iahvah_. The example of the northern kingdom
is represented as a powerful influence for evil upon Judah. This
was only natural; for although from the point of view of religious
development Judah is incomparably the more important of the sister
kingdoms; the exact contrary is the case as regards political power
and predominance. Under strong kings like Omri and Ahab, or again,
Jeroboam II., Ephraim was able to assert itself as a first-rate power
among the surrounding principalities; and in the case of Athaliah, we
have a conspicuous instance of the manner in which Canaanite idolatry
might be propagated from Israel to Judah. The prophet declares that
the sin of Judah was aggravated by the fact that she had witnessed
the ruin of Israel, and yet persisted in the same evil courses of
which that ruin was the result. She sinned against light. The fall of
Ephraim had verified the predictions of her prophets; yet "she was
not afraid," but went on adding to the score of her own offences, and
polluting the land with her unfaithfulness to her Divine Spouse. The
idea that the very soil of her country was defiled by Judah's idolatry
may be illustrated by reference to the well-known words of Ps. cvi.
38: "They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and their
daughters whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan; and the land
was defiled with the bloodshed." We may also remember Elohim's word
to Cain: "The voice of thy brother's blood is crying unto Me from the
ground!" (Gen. iv. 10). As Iahvah's special dwelling-place, moreover,
the land of Israel was holy; and foreign rites desecrated and profaned
it, and made it offensive in His sight. The pollution of it cried to
heaven for vengeance on those who had caused it. To such a state had
Judah brought her own land, and the very city of the sanctuary; "and
yet in all this"--amid this accumulation of sins and liabilities--she
turned not to her Lord with her whole heart. The reforms set on foot
in the twelfth year of Josiah were but superficial and half-hearted;
the people merely acquiesced in them, at the dictation of the court,
and gave no sign of any inward change or deep-wrought repentance. The
semblance without the reality of sorrow for sin is but a mockery of
heaven, and a heinous aggravation of guilt. Hence the sin of Judah
was of a deeper dye than that which had destroyed Israel. _And Iahvah
said unto me, The Turncoat or Recreant Israel hath proven herself more
righteous than the Traitress Judah._ Who could doubt it, considering
that almost all the prophets had borne their witness in Judah; and
that, in imitating her sister's idolatry, she had resolutely closed
her eyes to the light of truth and reason? On this ground, that Israel
has sinned less, and suffered more, the prophet is bidden to hold out
to her the hope of Divine mercy. The greatness of her ruin, as well as
the lapse of years since the fatal catastrophe, might tend to diminish
in the prophet's mind the impression of her guilt; and his patriotic
yearning for the restoration of the banished Ten Tribes, who, after
all, were the near kindred of Judah, as well as the thought that they
had borne their punishment, and thus atoned for their sin (Isa. xl.
2), might cooperate with the desire of kindling in his own countrymen
a noble rivalry of repentance, in moving the prophet to obey the
impulse which urged him to address himself to Israel. _Go thou, and
cry these words northward_ (toward the desolate land of Ephraim),
_and say: Return, Turncoat or Recreant Israel, saith Iahvah; I will
not let My countenance fall at the sight of you_ (lit. _against you_,
cf. Gen. iv. 5); _for I am loving, saith Iahvah, I keep not anger
for ever. Only recognise thy guilt, that thou hast rebelled against
Iahvah thy God, and hast scattered_ (or _lavished_: Ps. cxii. 9) _thy
ways to the strangers_ (hast gone now in this direction, now in that,
worshipping first one idol and then another; cf. ii. 23; and so, as it
were, dividing up and dispersing thy devotion) _under every evergreen
tree; but My voice ye have not obeyed, saith Iahvah._ The invitation,
"Return Apostate Israel!"--יש משבה שובה[23]--contains a play on words,
which seems to suggest that the exile of the Ten Tribes was voluntary,
or self-imposed; as if, when they turned their backs upon their true
God, they had deliberately made choice of the inevitable consequence
of that rebellion, and made up their minds to abandon their native
land. So close is the connexion, in the prophet's view, between the
misfortunes of his people and their sins.
_Return, ye apostate children_ (again there is a play on words--שובבים
בנים שובו--_Turn back, ye back-turning sons_, or _ye sons that turn the
back_ to Me) _saith Iahvah; for it was I that wedded you_ (ver. 14), and
am, therefore, your proper lord. The expression is not stranger than
that which the great prophet of the Return addresses to Zion: "Thy sons
shall marry thee." But perhaps we should rather compare another passage
of the book of Isaiah, where it is said: "Iahvah, our God! other lords
beside Thee have had dominion over us" (בְּעָלוּנוּ Isa. xxvi. 13), and
render: _For it is I that will be your lord_; or perhaps, _For it is I
that have mastered you_, and put down your rebellion by chastisements;
_and I will take you, one of a city and two of a clan, and will bring
you to Zion_. As a "city" is elsewhere spoken of as a "thousand" (Mic.
v. 1), and a "thousand" (אלף) is synonymous with a "clan" (משפחה), as
providing a thousand warriors in the national militia; it is clear
that the promise is that one or two representatives of each township
in Israel shall be restored from exile to the land of their fathers.
In other words, we have here Isaiah's doctrine of the remnant, which
he calls a "tenth" (Isa. vi. 13), and of which he declared that "the
survivors of the house of Judah that remain, shall again take root
downwards, and bear fruit upwards" (Isa. xxxvii. 31). And as Zion is
the goal of the returning exiles, we may see, as doubtless the prophets
saw, a kind of anticipation and foreshadowing of the future in the
few scattered members of the northern tribes of Asher, Manasseh and
Zebulun, who "humbled themselves," and accepted Hezekiah's invitation
to the passover (2 Chron. xxx. 11, 18); and, again, in the authority
which Josiah is said to have exercised in the land of the Ten Tribes
(2 Chron. xxxiv. 6; cf. 9). We must bear in mind that the prophets
do not contemplate the restoration of every individual of the entire
nation; but rather the return of a chosen few, a kind of "firstfruits"
of Israel, who are to be a "holy seed" (Isa. vi. 13), from which the
power of the Supreme will again build up the entire people according to
its ancient divisions. So the holy Apostle in the Revelation hears that
twelve thousand of each tribe are sealed as servants of God (Rev. vii.).
The happy time of restoration will also be a time of reunion. The
estranged tribes will return to their old allegiance. This is implied
by the promise, "I will bring you to Zion," and by that of the next
verse: _And I will give you shepherds after My own heart; and they
shall shepherd you with knowledge and wisdom_. Obviously, kings of
the house of David are meant; the good shepherds of the future are
contrasted with the "rebellious" ones of the past (ii. 8). It is the
promise of Isaiah (i. 26): "And I will restore thy judges as at the
first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning." In this connexion, we
may recall the fact that the original schism in Israel was brought
about by the folly of evil shepherds. The coming King will resemble
not Rehoboam but David. Nor is this all; for _It shall come to pass,
when ye multiply and become fruitful in the land, in those days,
saith Iahvah, men shall not say any more, The ark of the covenant of
Iahvah_, (or, as LXX., _of the Holy One of Israel); nor shall it_
(the ark) _come to mind; nor shall men remember it, nor miss it; nor
shall it be made any more_ (pointing יֵעָשֶׂה although the verb may be
impersonal. I do not understand why Hitzig asserts "_Man wird keine
andere machen_ (Movers) oder; _sie wird nicht wieder gemacht_ (Ew.,
Graf) als wäre nicht von der geschichtlichen Lade die Rede, sondern
von ihr begrifflich, können die Worte nicht bedeuten." But cf. Exod.
xxv. 10; Gen. vi. 14; where the same verb עשה is used. Perhaps,
however, the rendering of C. B. Michaelis, which he prefers, is more
in accordance with what precedes: _nor shall all that be done any
more_, Gen. xxix. 26, xli. 34. But פקד does not mean _nachforschen_:
cf. 1 Sam. xx. 6, xxv. 15). _In that time men will call Jerusalem the
throne of Iahvah; and all the nations will gather into it_ (Gen. i.
9), _for the name of Iahvah_ [_at Jerusalem_: LXX. om.]; _and they_
(the heathen) _will no longer follow the stubbornness of their evil
heart_ (vii. 24; Deut. xxix. 19).
In the new Theocracy, the true kingdom of God, the ancient symbol
of the Divine presence will be forgotten in the realization of that
presence. The institution of the New Covenant will be characterized by
an immediate and personal knowledge of Iahvah in the hearts of all His
people (xxxi. 31 _sq._). The small object in which past generations
had loved to recognise the earthly throne of the God of Israel, will
be replaced by Jerusalem itself, the Holy City, not merely of Judah,
nor of Judah and Israel, but of the world. Thither will all the
nations resort "to the name of Iahvah;" ceasing henceforth "to follow
the hardness (or callousness) of their own evil heart." That the more
degraded kinds of heathenism have a hardening effect upon the heart;
and that the cruel and impure worships of Canaan especially tended to
blunt the finer sensibilities, to enfeeble the natural instincts of
humanity and justice, and to confuse the sense of right and wrong,
is beyond question. Only a heart rendered callous by custom, and
stubbornly deaf to the pleadings of natural pity, could find genuine
pleasure in the merciless rites of the Molech-worship; and they who
ceased to follow these inhuman superstitions, and sought light and
guidance from the God of Israel, might well be said to have ceased
"to walk after the hardness of their own evil heart."[24] The more
repulsive features of heathenism chime in too well with the worst
and most savage impulses of our nature; they exhibit too close a
conformity with the suggestions and demands of selfish appetite;
they humour and encourage the darkest passions far too directly and
decidedly, to allow us to regard as plausible any theory of their
origin and permanence which does not recognise in them at once a cause
and an effect of human depravity (cf. Rom. i.).
The repulsiveness of much that was associated with the heathenism with
which they were best acquainted, did not hinder the prophets of Israel
from taking a deep spiritual interest in those who practised and were
enslaved by it. Indeed, what has been called the universalism of the
Hebrew seers--their emancipation in this respect from all local and
national limits and prejudices--is one of the clearest proofs of their
divine mission. Jeremiah only reiterates what Micah and Isaiah had
preached before him; that "in the latter days the mountain of Iahvah's
House shall be established as the chief of mountains, and shall be
exalted above the hills; and all the nations will flow unto it" (Isa.
ii. 2). In ch. xvi. 19 _sq._ our prophet thus expresses himself upon
the same topic. "Iahvah, my strength and my stronghold, and my refuge
in the day of distress! unto Thee shall nations come from the ends
of the earth, and shall say: Our forefathers inherited nought but a
lie, vanity, and things among which is no helper. Shall a man make him
gods, when they are no gods?" How largely this particular aspiration
of the prophets of the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. has since
been fulfilled in the course of the ages is a matter of history. The
religion which was theirs has, in the new shape given it by our Lord
and His Apostles, become the religion of one heathen people after
another, until at this day it is the faith professed, not only in the
land of its origin, but by the leading nations of the world. So mighty
a fulfilment of hopes, which at the time of their first conception
and utterance could only be regarded as the dreams of enthusiastic
visionaries, justifies those who behold and realize it in the joyful
belief that the progress of true religion has not been maintained for
six and twenty centuries to be arrested now; and that these old-world
aspirations are destined to receive a fulness of illustration in the
triumphs of the future, in the light of which the brightest glories of
the past will pale and fade away.
The prophet does not say, with a prophet of the New Covenant, that
all _Israel shall be saved_ (Rom. xi. 26). We may, however, fairly
interpret the latter of the true Israel, _the remnant according to the
election of grace_, rather than of _Israel according to the flesh_,
and so both will be at one, and both at variance with the unspiritual
doctrine of the Talmud, that _All Israel_, irrespective of moral
qualifications, will have _a portion in the world to come_, on account
of the surpassing merits of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and even of
Abraham alone (cf. St. Matt. iii. 9; St. John viii. 33).
The reference to the ark of the covenant in the sixteenth verse is
remarkable upon several grounds. This sacred symbol is not mentioned
among the spoils which Nebuzaradan (Nabû-zir-iddin) took from the
temple (lii. 17 _sqq._); nor is it specified among the treasures
appropriated by Nebuchadrezzar at the surrender of Jehoiachin. The
words of Jeremiah prove that it cannot be included among "the vessels
of gold" which the Babylonian conqueror "cut in pieces" (2 Kings xxiv.
13). We learn two facts about the ark from the present passage: (1)
that it no longer existed in the days of the prophet; (2) that people
remembered it with regret, though they did not venture to replace the
lost original by a new substitute. It may well have been destroyed
by Manasseh, the king who did his utmost to abolish the religion of
Iahvah. However that may be, the point of the prophet's allusion
consists in the thought that in the glorious times of Messianic rule
the idea of holiness will cease to be attached to things, for it will
be realized in persons; the symbol will become obsolete, and its
name and memory will disappear from the minds and affections of men,
because the fact symbolized will be universally felt and perceived to
be a present and self-evident truth. In that great epoch of Israel's
reconciliation, all nations will recognise in Jerusalem the _throne
of Iahvah_, the centre of light and source of spiritual truth; the
Holy City of the world. Is it the earthly or the heavenly Jerusalem
that is meant? It would seem, the former only was present to the
consciousness of the prophet, for he concludes his beautiful interlude
of promise with the words: _In those days will the house of Judah walk
beside the house of Israel; and they will come together from the land
of the North_ [_and from all the lands_: LXX add. cf. xvi. 15] _unto
the land that I caused your fathers to possess_. Like Isaiah (xi. 12
_sqq._) and other prophets his predecessors, Jeremiah forecasts for
the whole repentant and united nation a reinstatement in their ancient
temporal rights, in the pleasant land from which they had been so
cruelly banished for so many weary years.
"The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." If, when we look
at the whole course of subsequent events, when we review the history
of the Return and of the narrow religious commonwealth which was at
last, after many bitter struggles, established on mount Sion; when
we consider the form which the religion of Iahvah assumed in the
hands of the priestly caste, and the half-religious, half-political
sects, whose intrigues and conflicts for power constitute almost all
we know of their period; when we reflect upon the character of the
entire post-exilic age down to the time of the birth of Christ, with
its worldly ideals, its fierce fanaticisms, its superstitious trust
in rites and ceremonies; if, when we look at all this, we hesitate
to claim that the prophetic visions of a great restoration found
fulfilment in the erection of this petty state, this paltry edifice,
upon the ruins of David's capital; shall we lay ourselves open to the
accusation that we recognise no element of truth in the glorious
aspirations of the prophets? I think not.