Zephaniah (i. 2, 3). The point of the rest of the verse is not quite
clear, owing to the fact that the last clause of the Hebrew text is
undoubtedly corrupt. We might suppose that the term "laws" (חֻקִּים) had
fallen out, and render, _and I gave them laws which they transgress_
(cf. v. 22, xxxi. 35). The Vulgate has an almost literal translation,
which gives the same sense: "et dedi eis quæ praetergressa sunt."[32]
The Septuagint omits the clause, probably on the ground of its
difficulty. It may be that bad crops and scarcity are threatened (cf.
chap. xiv., v. 24, 25). In that case, we may correct the text in the
manner suggested above שׁבָרִים or בָּרֹושִׁן xvii. 18, for יַעַבְרוּם;
or שִׁדָּפוֹן Amos iv. 9, for the יַעַבְדוּם of other MSS.. Others
understand the verse in a metaphorical sense. The language seems to be
coloured by a reminiscence of Micah vii. 1, 2; and the "grapes" and
"figs" and "foliage" may be the fruits of righteousness, and the nation
is like Isaiah's unfruitful vineyard (Isa. v.) or our Lord's barren fig
tree (Matt. xxi. 19), fit only for destruction (cf. also vi. 9 and ver.
20). Another passage which resembles the present is Hab. iii. 17: "For
the fig tree will not blossom, and there will be no yield on the vines;
the produce of the olive will disappoint, and the fields will produce no
food." It was natural that tillage should be neglected upon the rumour
of invasion. The country-folk would crowd into the strong places, and
leave their vineyards, orchards and cornfields to their fate (ver. 14).
This would, of course, lead to scarcity and want, and aggravate the
horrors of war with those of dearth and famine. I think the passage of
Habakkuk is a precise parallel to the one before us. Both contemplate
a Chaldean invasion, and both anticipate its disastrous effects upon
husbandry.
It is possible that the original text ran: _And I have given_ (_will
give_) _unto them their own work_ (_i.e._, the fruit of it, עֲבֹדָתָם:
used of field-work, Ex. i. 14; of the earnings of labour, Isa. xxxii.
17). This, which is a frequent thought in Jeremiah, forms a very
suitable close to the verse. The objection is that the prophet does
not use this particular term for "work" elsewhere. But the fact of its
only once occurring might have caused its corruption. (Another term,
which would closely resemble the actual reading, and give much the
same sense as this last, is עֲבוּרָם "their produce." This, too, as a
very rare expression, only known from Josh. v. 11, 12, might have been
misunderstood and altered by an editor or copyist. It is akin to the
Aramaic עִבּוּר, and there are other Aramaisms in our prophet.) One
thing is certain; Jeremiah cannot have written what now appears in the
Masoretic text.
It is now made clear what the threatened evil is, in a fine closing
strophe, several expressions of which recall the prophet's magnificent
alarm upon the coming of the Scythians (cf. iv. 5 with viii. 14; iv.
15 with viii. 16; iv. 19 with viii. 18). Here, however, the colouring
is darker, and the prevailing gloom of the picture unrelieved by any
ray of hope. The former piece belongs to the reign of Josiah, this
to that of the worthless Jehoiakim. In the interval between the two,
moral decline and social and political disintegration had advanced
with fearfully accelerated speed, and Jeremiah knew that the end could
not be far off.
The fatal news of invasion has come, and he sounds the alarm to his
countrymen. _Why are we sitting still_ (in silent stupefaction)?
_assemble yourselves, that we may go into the defenced cities, and be
silent_ (or _amazed_, _stupefied_, with terror) _there! for Iahvah our
God hath silenced us_ (with speechless terror) _and given us water of
gall to drink; for we trespassed toward Iahvah. We looked for peace_
(or, _weal_, _prosperity_), _and there is no good; for a time of
healing, and behold panic fear!_ So the prophet represents the effect
of the evil tidings upon the rural population. At first they are taken
by surprise; then they rouse themselves from their stupor to take
refuge in the walled cities. They recognise in the trouble a sign of
Iahvah's anger. Their fond hopes of returning prosperity are nipped
in the bud; the wounds of the past are not to be healed; the country
has hardly recovered from one shock, before another and more deadly
blow falls upon it. The next verse describes more particularly the
nature of the bad news; the enemy, it would seem, had actually entered
the land, and given no uncertain indication of what the Judeans might
expect, by his ravages on the northern frontier. _From Dan was heard
the snorting of his horses; at the sound of the neighings of his
chargers all the land did quake: and they came in_ (into the country)
_and eat up the land and the fulness thereof, a city and them that
dwelt_ _therein._ This was what the invaders did to city after city,
once they had crossed the border; ravaging its domain, and sacking
the place itself. Perhaps, however, it is better to take the perfects
as prophetic, and to render: "From Dan shall be heard ... shall
quake: and they shall come and eat up the land," etc. This makes the
connexion easier with the next verse, which certainly has a future
reference: _For behold I am about to send_ (or simply, _I send_)
_against you serpents, basilisks_ (Isa. xi. 8, the _çif·oni_ was a
small but very poisonous snake; Aquila βασιλίσκος, Vulg. regulus),
_for whom there is no charm, and they will bite you! saith Iahvah_.
If the tenses be supposed to describe what has already happened, then
the connexion of thought may be expressed thus: all this evil that you
have heard of has happened, not by mere ill fortune, but by the Divine
will: Iahvah Himself has done it, and the evil will not stop there,
_for_ He purposes to send these destroying serpents into your very
midst (cf. Num. xxi. 6).
The eighteenth verse begins in the Hebrew with a highly anomalous
word, which is generally supposed to mean "my source of comfort"
(מבליגיתי). But both the strangeness of the form itself, which can
hardly be paralleled in the language, and the indifferent sense which
it yields, and the uncertainty of the Hebrew MSS., and the variations
of the old versions, indicate that we have here another corruption of
the text. Some Hebrew copies divide the word, and this is supported by
the Septuagint and the Syro-Hexaplar version, which treat the verse
as the conclusion of ver. 17, and render "and they shall bite you
_incurably, with pain of your perplexed heart_" (Syro-Hex. "without
cure"). But if the first part of the word is "without" (מִבְּלִי "for
lack of" ...), what is the second? No such root as the existing
letters imply is found in Hebrew or the cognate languages. The Targum
does not help us: _Because they were scoffing_ (מלעיגין) _against the
prophets who prophesied unto them, sorrow and sighing will I bring_
(איתי) _upon them on account of their sins: upon them, saith the
prophet, my heart is faint._ It is evident that this is no better than
a kind of punning upon the words of the Masoretic text.[33] I incline
to read "How shall I cheer myself? Upon me is sorrow; upon me my
heart is sick." (The prophet would write עַל not עֲלֵי for "against,"
without a suffix. Read יָגוֹן עָלַי אַבְלִיגָה מָה Job ix. 27, x. 20;
Ps. xxxix. 14.) The passage is much like iv. 19.
Another possible emendation is: "Iahvah causeth sorrow to flash forth
upon me" (יהוה מבליג; after the archetype of Amos v. 9); but I prefer
the former.
Jeremiah closes the section with an outpouring of his own overwhelming
sorrow at the heart-rending spectacle of the national calamities.
No reader endued with any degree of feeling can doubt the sincerity
of the prophet's patriotism, or the willingness with which he would
have given his own life for the salvation of his country. This one
passage alone says enough to exonerate its author from the charge of
indifference, much more of treachery to his fatherland. He imagines
himself to hear the cry of the captive people, who have been carried
away by the victorious invader into a distant land: _Hark! the sound
of the imploring cry of the daughter of my people from a land far
away! "Is Iahvah not in Sion? or is not her King in her?"_ (cf. Mic.
iv. 9). Such will be the despairing utterance of the exiles of Judah
and Jerusalem; and the prophet hastens to answer it with another
question, which accounts for their ruin by their disloyalty to that
heavenly King; _O why did they vex Me with their graven images, with
alien vanities?_ Compare a similar question and answer in an earlier
discourse (v. 19). It may be doubted whether the pathetic words which
follow--_The harvest is past, the fruit-gathering is finished, but as
for us, we are not delivered!_--are to be taken as a further complaint
of the captives, or as a reference by the prophet himself to hopes
of deliverance which had been cherished in vain, month after month,
until the season of campaigns was over. In Palestine, the grain crops
are harvested in April and May, the ingathering of the fruit falls in
August. During all the summer months, Jehoiakim, as a vassal of Egypt,
may have been eagerly hoping for some decisive interference from that
quarter. That he was on friendly terms with that power at the time
appears from the fact that he was allowed to fetch back refugees
from its territory (xxvi. 22 _sq._). A provision for the extradition
of offenders is found in the far more ancient treaty between Ramses
II. and the king of the Syrian Chetta (fourteenth cent. B.C.). But
perhaps the prophet is alluding to one of those frequent failures of
the crops, which inflicted so much misery upon his people (cf. vers.
13, iii. 3, v. 24, 25), and which were a natural incident of times of
political unsettlement and danger. In that case, he says, the harvest
has come and gone, and left us unhelped and disappointed. I prefer the
political reference, though our knowledge of the history of the period
is so scanty, that the particulars cannot be determined.
It is clear enough from the lyrical utterance which follows (vv.
21-23), that heavy disasters had already befallen Judah: _For
the shattering of the daughter of my people am I shattered; I am
a mourner; astonishment hath seized me!_ This can hardly be pure
anticipation. The next two verses may be a fragment of one of the
prophet's elegies (_qinoth_). At all events, they recall the metre of
Lam. iv. and v.:
_Doth balm in Gilead fail?
Fails the healer there?
Why is not bound up
My people's deadly wound?_
_O that my head were springs,
Mine eye a fount of tears!
To weep both day and night
Over my people's slain._
It is not impossible that these two quatrains are cited from the
prophet's elegy upon the last battle of Megiddo and the death of
Josiah. Similar fragments seem to occur below (ix. 17, 18, 20) in the
instructions to the mourning-women, the professional singers of dirges
over the dead.
The beauty of the entire strophe, as an outpouring of inexpressible
grief, is too obvious to require much comment. The striking question
"Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there?" has passed
into the common dialect of religious aphorism; and the same may be
said of the despairing cry, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved!"
The wounds of the state are past healing; but how, it is asked, can
this be? Does nature yield a balm which is sovereign for bodily hurts,
and is there nowhere a remedy for those of the social organism?
Surely that were something anomalous, strange and unnatural (cf.
viii. 7). _Is there no balm in Gilead?_ Yes, it is found nowhere else
(cf. Plin., _Hist. Nat._, xii. 25 _ad init._ "Sed omnibus odoribus
præfertur balsamum, _uni terrarum Judææ concessum_"). Then has Iahvah
mocked us, by providing a remedy for the lesser evil, and leaving
us a hopeless prey to the greater? The question goes deep down to
the roots of faith. Not only is there an analogy between the two
realms of nature and spirit; in a sense, the whole physical world is
an adumbration of things unseen, a manifestation of the spiritual.
Is it conceivable that order should reign everywhere in the lower
sphere, and chaos be the normal state of the higher? If our baser
wants are met by provisions adapted in the most wonderful way to their
satisfaction, can we suppose that the nobler--those cravings by which
we are distinguished from irrational creatures--have not also their
satisfactions included in the scheme of the world? To suppose it is
evidence either of capricious unreason, or of a criminal want of
confidence in the Author of our being.
_Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no healer there?_ There is a
panacea for Israel's woes--the "law" or teaching of Iahvah; there
is a Healer in Israel, Iahvah Himself (iii. 22, xvii. 14), who has
declared of Himself, _I wound and I heal_ (Deut. xxxii. 39; chap. xxx.
17, xxxiii. 6). _Why then is no bandage applied to the daughter of my
people?_ This is like the cry of the captives, _Is Iahvah not in Sion,
is not her King in her?_ (ver. 19). The answer there is, Yes! it is
not that Iahvah is wanting; it is that the national guilt is working
out its own retribution. He leaves this to be understood here; having
framed his question so as to compel people, if it might be, to the
right inference and answer.
The precious balsam is the distinctive glory of the mountain land of
Gilead, and the knowledge of Iahvah is the distinctive glory of His
people Israel. Will no one, then, apply the true remedy to the hurt
of the state? No, for priests and prophets and people _know not--they
have refused to know_ Iahvah (ver. 5). The nation will not look to the
Healer and live. It is their misfortunes that they hate, not their
sins. There is nothing left for Jeremiah but to sing the funeral song
of his fatherland.
While weeping over their inevitable doom, the prophet abhors with his
whole soul his people's wickedness, and longs to fly from the dreary
scene of treachery and deceit. _O that I had in the wilderness a
lodging-place of wayfaring men_--some lonely khan on a caravan track,
whose bare, unfurnished walls, and blank almost oppressive stillness,
would be a grateful exchange for the luxury and the noisy riot of
Judah's capital--_that I might leave my people and go away from among
them!_ The same feeling finds expression in the sigh of the psalmist,
who is perhaps Jeremiah himself: _O for the wings of a dove!_ (Ps.
lv. 6 _sqq._) The same feeling has often issued in actual withdrawal
from the world. And under certain circumstances, in certain states of
religion and society, the solitary life has its peculiar advantages.
The life of towns is doubtless busy, practical, intensely real; but
its business is not always of the ennobling sort, its practice in the
strain and struggle of selfish competition is often distinctly hostile
to the growth and play of the best instincts of human nature; its
intensity is often the mere result of confining the manifold energies
of the mind to one narrow channel, of concentrating the whole complex
of human powers and forces upon the single aim of self-advancement
and self-glorification; and its reality is consequently an illusion,
phenomenal and transitory as the unsubstantial prizes which absorb
all its interest, engross its entire devotion, and exhaust its whole
activity. It is not upon the broad sea, nor in the lone wilderness,
that men learn to question the goodness, the justice, the very being
of their Maker. Atheism is born in the populous wastes of cities,
where human beings crowd together, not to bless but to prey upon each
other; where rich and poor dwell side by side, but are separated by
the gulf of cynical indifference and social disdain; where selfishness
in its ugliest forms is rampant, and is the rule of life with
multitudes:--the selfishness which grasps at personal advantage and
is deaf to the cries of human pain; the selfishness which calls all
manner of fraud and trickery lawful means for the achievement of its
sordid ends; and the selfishness of flagrant vice, whose activity is
not only earthly and sensual but also devilish, as directly involving
the degradation and ruin of human souls. No wonder that they whose
eyes have been blinded by the god of this world, fail to see evidence
of any other God; no wonder that they in whose hearts a coarse or a
subtle self-worship has dried the springs of pity and love can scoff
at the very idea of a compassionate God; no wonder that a soul, shaken
to its depths by the contemplation of this bewildering medley of
heartlessness and misery, should be tempted to doubt whether there is
indeed a Judge of all the earth, who doeth right.
* * * * *
There is no truth, no honour in their dealings with one another;
falsehood is the dominant note of their social existence: _They are
all adulterers, a throng of traitors!_ The charge of adultery is no
metaphor (chap. v. 7, 8). Where the sense of religious sanctions is
weakened or wanting, the marriage tie is no longer respected; and that
which perhaps lust began, is ended by lust, and man and woman are
faithless to each other, because they are faithless to God.
_And they bend their tongue, their bow, falsely._[34] The tongue is as
a bow of which words are the arrows. Evildoers "stretch their arrow,
the bitter word, to shoot in ambush at the blameless man" (Ps. lxiv.
4; cf. Ps. xi. 2). The metaphor is common in the language of poetry;
we have an instance in Longfellow's "I shot an arrow into the air,"
and Homer's familiar ἔπεα πτερόεντα, "winged words," is a kindred
expression. (Others render, _and they bend their tongue as their bow
of falsehood_, as though the term _sheqer, mendacium_, were an epithet
qualifying the term for "bow." I have taken it adverbially, a use
justified by Pss. xxxviii. 20, lxix. 5, cxix. 78, 86.) In colloquial
English a man who exaggerates a story is said to "draw the long bow."
Their tongue is a bow with which they shoot lies at their neighbours,
_and it is not by truth_--faithfulness, honour, integrity--_that they
wax mighty in the land_; their riches and power are the fruit of craft
and fraud and overreaching. As was said in a former discourse, "their
houses are full of deceit, therefore they become great, and amass
wealth" (v. 27). _By truth_, or more literally _unto truth, according
to the rule or standard of truth_ (cf. Isa. xxxii. 1, "according to
right;" Gen. i. 11, "according to its kind"). With the idea of the
verb, we may compare Ps. cxii. 2: "Mighty in the land shall his
seed become" (cf. also Gen. vii. 18, 19). The passage chap. v. 2, 3,
is essentially similar to the present, and is the only one besides
where we find the term "by truth" (לאמונה _le'emunah_). The idiom
seems certain, and the parallel passages, especially v. 27, appear to
establish the translation above given; otherwise one might be tempted
to render: _they stretch their tongue, their bow, for lying_ (לשקר,
v. 2), _and it is not for truth that they are strong in the land_.
"Noblesse oblige" is no maxim of theirs; they use their rank and
riches for unworthy ends.
_For out of evil unto evil they go forth_--they go from one wickedness
to another, adding sin to sin. Apparently, a military metaphor. What
they have and are is evil, and they go forth to secure fresh conquests
of the same kind. Neither good nor evil is stationary; progress is the
law of each--_and Me they know not, saith Iahvah_--they know not that
I am truth itself, and therefore irreconcilably opposed to all this
fraud and falsehood.
_Beware ye, every one of his companion, and in no brother confide ye;
for every brother will surely play the Jacob,--and every companion
will go about slandering. And they deceive each his neighbour,
and truth they speak not: they have trained their tongue to speak
falsehood, to pervert_ (their way, iii. 21) _they toil_ (chap. xx.
9; cf. Gen. xix. 11). _Thine inhabiting is in the midst of deceit;
through deceit they refuse to know Me, saith Iahvah_ (3-5).[35]
As Micah had complained before him (Mic. vii. 5), and as bitter
experience had taught our prophet (xi. 18 _sqq._, xii. 6), neither
friend nor brother was to be trusted; and that this was not merely
the melancholy characteristic of a degenerate age, is suggested by
the reference to the unbrotherly intrigues of the far-off ancestor
of the Jewish people, in the traditional portrait of whom the best
and the worst features of the national character are reflected with
wonderful truth and liveliness.[36] _Every brother will not fail
to play the Jacob_ (Gen. xxv. 29 _sqq._, xxvii. 36; Hos. xii. 4),
to outwit, defraud, supplant; cunning and trickery will subserve
acquisitiveness. But though an inordinate love of acquisition may
still seem to be specially characteristic of the Jewish race, as in
ancient times it distinguished the Canaanite and Semitic nations in
general, the tendency to cozen and overreach one's neighbour is so
far from being confined to it, that some modern ethical speculators
have not hesitated to assume this tendency to be an original and
natural instinct of humanity. The fact, however, for which those who
would account for human nature upon purely "natural" grounds are
bound to supply some rational explanation, is not so much that aspect
of it which has been well-known to resemble the instincts of the
lower animals ever since observation began, but the aspect of revolt
and protest against those lower impulses which we find reflected so
powerfully in the documents of the higher religion, and which makes
thousands of lives a perpetual warfare.
Jeremiah presents his picture of the universal deceit and
dissimulation of his own time as something peculiarly shocking and
startling to the common sense of right, and unspeakably revolting in
the sight of God, the Judge of all. And yet the difficulty to the
modern reader is to detect any essential difference between human
nature then and human nature now--between those times and these. It
is still true that avarice and lust destroy natural affection; that
the ties of blood and friendship are no protection against a godless
love of self. The work of slander and misrepresentation is not left to
avowed enemies; your own acquaintance will gratify their envy, spite,
or mere ill-will in this unworthy way. A simple child may tell the
truth; but tongues have to be trained to expertness in lying, whether
in commerce or in diplomacy, in politics or in the newspaper press, in
the art of the salesman or in that of the agitator and the demagogue.
Men still make a toil of perverting their way, and spend as much
pains in becoming accomplished villains as honest folk take to excel
in virtue. Deceit is still the social atmosphere and environment,
and _through deceit_ men _refuse to know Iahvah_. The knowledge, the
recognition, the steady recollection of what Iahvah is, and what His
law requires, does not suit the man of lies; his objects oblige him
to shut his eyes to the truth. Men _do not will_ and _will not_, to
know the moral impediments that lie in the way of self-seeking and
self-pleasing. Sinning is always a matter of choice, not of nature,
nor of circumstances alone. To desire to be delivered from moral evil
is, so far, a desire to know God.
_Thine inhabiting is in the midst of deceit_: who that ever lifts
an eye above the things of time, has not at times felt thus? "This
is a Christian country." Why? Because the majority are as bent on
self-pleasing, as careless of God, as heartlessly and systematically
forgetful of the rights and claims of others, as they would have
been had Christ never been heard of? A Christian country? Why? Is
it because we can boast of some two hundred forms or fashions of
supposed Christian belief, differentiated from each other by heaven
knows what obscure shibboleths, which in the lapse of time have become
meaningless and obsolete; while the old ill-will survives, and the
old dividing lines remain, and Christians stand apart from Christians
in a state of dissension and disunion that does despite and dishonour
to Christ, and must be very dear to the devil? Some people are bold
enough to defend this horrible condition of things by raising a cry of
Free Trade in Religion. But religion is not a trade, not a thing to
make a profit of, except with Simon Magus and his numerous followers
both inside and outside of the Church.
A Christian country! But the rage of avarice, the worship of Mammon,
is not less rampant in London than in old Jerusalem. If the more
violent forms of oppression and extortion are restrained among us by
the more complete organization of public justice, the fact has only
developed new and more insidious modes of attack upon the weak and
the unwary. Deceit and fraud have been put upon their mettle by the
challenge of the law, and thousands of people are robbed and plundered
by devices which the law can hardly reach or restrain. Look where
the human spider sits, weaving his web of guile, that he may catch
and devour men! Look at the wonderful baits which the company-monger
throws out day by day to human weakness and cupidity! Do you call
him shrewd and clever and enterprising? It is a sorry part to play
in life, that of Satan's decoy, tempting one's fellow-creatures to
their ruin. Look at the lying advertisements, which meet your eyes
wherever you turn, and make the streets of this great city almost as
hideous from the point of view of taste as from that of morality! What
a degrading resource! To get on by the industrious dissemination of
lies, by false pretences, which one knows to be false! And to trade
upon human misery--to raise hopes that can never be fulfilled--to add
to the pangs of disease the smart of disappointment and the woe of a
deeper despair, as countless quacks in this Christian country do!