once lifted from the soul of the seer. He knew that justice must
in the end overtake the guilty; but, in the meantime, "his enemies
lived and were mighty," and their criminal designs against himself
remained unnoticed and unpunished. The more he brooded over it, the
more difficult it seemed to reconcile their prosperous immunity with
the justice of God. He has given us the course of his reflections
upon this painful question, ever suggested anew by the facts of life,
never sufficiently answered by toiling reason. _Too righteous art
Thou, Iahvah, for me to contend with Thee: I will but lay arguments
before Thee_ (i.e., argue the case forensically). _Wherefore doth the
way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are they undisturbed, all that
deal very treacherously? Thou plantest them, yea, they take root;
they grow ever, yea, they bear fruit: Thou art nigh in their mouth,
and far from their reins. And Thou, Iahvah, knowest me; Thou seest
me, and triest mine heart in Thy mind. Separate them like sheep for
the slaughter, and consecrate them for the day of killing! How long
shall the land mourn, and the herbage of all the country wither? From
the evil of the dwellers therein, beasts and birds perish: for they
have said_ (or, _thought_), _He cannot see our end_ (xii. 1-4). It is
not merely that his would-be murderers thrive; it is that they take
the holy Name upon their unclean lips; it is that they are hypocrites
combining a pretended respect for God, with an inward and thorough
indifference to God. He is nigh in their mouth and far from their
reins. They "honour Him with their lips, but have removed their heart
far from Him; and their worship of Him is a mere human commandment,
learned by rote" (Isa. xxix. 13). They swear by His Name, when they
are bent on deception (ch. v. 2). It is all this which especially
rouses the prophet's indignation; and contrasting therewith his own
conscious integrity and faithfulness to the Divine law, he calls upon
Divine Justice to judge between himself and them: _Pull them out like
sheep for slaughter, and consecrate them_ (_set them apart_--from the
rest of the flock) _for the day of killing_! It has been said that
Jeremiah throughout this whole paragraph speaks not as a prophet but
as a private individual; and that in this verse especially he "gives
way to the natural man, and asks the life of his enemies" (1 Kings
iii. 11; Job xxxi. 30). This is perhaps a tenable opinion. We have
to bear in mind the difference of standpoint between the writers of
the Old Covenant and those of the New. Not much is said by the former
about the forgiveness of injuries, about withholding the hand from
vengeance. The most ancient law, indeed, contained a noble precept,
which pointed in this direction: "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or
his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.
If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden,
and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him"
(Ex. xxiii. 4, 5). And in the book of Proverbs we read: "Rejoice not
when thine enemy falleth, And let not thine heart be glad when he
is overthrown." But the impression of magnanimity thus produced is
somewhat diminished by the reason which is added immediately: "Lest
the Lord see it and it displease Him, _And He turn away His wrath
from him_:" a motive of which the best that can be said is that it is
characteristic of the imperfect morality of the time (Prov. xxiv. 17
_sq._). The same objection may be taken to that other famous passage
of the same book: "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat;
And if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: _For thou shalt heap
coals of fire upon his head_, And the Lord shall reward thee" (Prov.
xxv. 21 _sq._). The reflexion that the relief of his necessities will
mortify and humiliate an enemy to the utmost, which is what seems
to have been originally meant by "heaping coals of fire upon his
head," however practically useful in checking the wild impulses of a
hot-blooded and vindictive race, such as the Hebrews were, and such
as their kindred the Bedawi Arabs have remained to this day under
a system of faith which has _not_ said, "Love your enemies"; and
however capable of a new application in the more enlightened spirit
of Christianity (Rom. xii. 19 _sqq._); is undoubtedly a motive marked
by the limitations of Old Testament ethical thought. And edifying as
they may prove to be, when understood in that purely spiritual and
universal sense, to which the Church has lent her authority, how many
of the psalms were, in their primary intention, agonizing cries for
vengeance; prayers that the human victim of oppression and wrong might
"see his desire upon his enemies"? All this must be borne in mind; but
there are other considerations also which must not be omitted, if we
would get at the exact sense of our prophet in the passage before us.
We must remember that he is laying a case before God. He has admitted
at the outset that God is absolutely just, in spite of and in view of
the fact that his murderous enemies are prosperous and unpunished.
When he pleads his own sincerity and purity of heart, in contrast
with the lip-service of his adversaries, it is perhaps that God
may grant, not so much _their_ perdition, as the salvation of the
country from the evils they have brought and are bringing upon it.
Ascribing the troubles already present and those which are yet to
come, the desolations which he sees and those which he foresees, to
their steady persistence in wickedness, he asks, How long must this
continue? Would it not be better, would it not be more consonant with
Divine wisdom and righteousness to purify the land of its fatal taint
by the sudden destruction of those heinous and hardened offenders,
who scoff at the very idea of a true forecast of their "end" (ver.
4)? But this is not all. There would be more apparent force in the
allegation we are discussing if it were. The cry to heaven for an
immediate act of retributive justice is not the last thing recorded of
the prophet's experience on this occasion. He goes on to relate, for
our satisfaction, the Divine answer to his questionings, which seems
to have satisfied his own troubled mind. _If thou hast run but with
footracers, and they have wearied thee, how then wilt thou compete
with the coursers? And if thy confidence be in a land of peace_ (or,
_a quiet land_), _how then wilt thou do in the thickets_ (_jungles_)
_of Jordan?[46] For even thine own brethren and thy_ _father's
house, even they will deal treacherously with thee; even they will
cry aloud after thee: trust thou not in them, though they speak thee
fair!_ (xii. 5, 6). The metaphors convey a rebuke of impatience and
premature discouragement. Hitzig aptly quotes Demosthenes: "If they
cannot face the candle, what will they do when they see the sun?"
(_Plut. de vitioso pudore_, c. 5.) It is "the voice of the prophet's
better feeling, and of victorious self-possession," adds the critic;
and we, who earnestly believe that, of the two voices which plead
against each other in the heart of man, the voice that whispers good
is the voice of God, find it not hard to accept his statement in that
sense. The prophet is giving us the upshot of his reflexion upon the
terrible danger from which he had been mercifully preserved; and we
see that his thoughts were guided to the conclusion that, having once
accepted the Divine Call, it would be unworthy to abdicate his mission
on the first signal of danger. Great as that danger had been, he
now, in his calmer hour, perceives that, if he is to fulfil his high
vocation, he must be prepared to face even worse things. With serious
irony he asks himself, if a runner who is overcome in a footrace
can hope to outstrip horses? or how a man, who is only bold where
no danger is, will face the perils that lurk in the jungles of the
Jordan? He remembers that he has to fight a more arduous battle and
on a greater scene. Jerusalem is more than Anathoth; and "the kings
of Judah and the princes thereof" are mightier adversaries than the
conspirators of a country town. And his present escape is an earnest
of deliverance on the wider field: _They shall fight against thee,
but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee, said
Iahvah, to deliver thee_ (see i. 17-19). But to a deeply affectionate
and sensitive nature like Jeremiah's, the thought of being forsaken
by his own kindred might well appear as a trial worse than death.
This is the "contending with horses," the struggle that is almost
beyond the powers of man to endure; this is the deadly peril, like
that of venturing into the lion-haunted thickets of Jordan, which he
clearly foresees as awaiting him: _For even thine own brethren and thy
father's house, even they will deal treacherously with thee_.[47] It
would seem that the prophet, with whose "timidity" some critics have
not hesitated to find fault, had to renounce all that man holds dear,
as a condition of faithfulness to his call. Again we are reminded of
One, of whom it is recorded that "Neither did His brethren believe in
Him" (St. John vii. 5), and that "His friends went out to lay hold
on Him, for they said, He is beside Himself" (St. Mark iii. 21). The
closeness of the parallel between type and antitype, between the
sorrowful prophet and the Man of Sorrows, is seen yet further in the
words, "Even they will cry aloud after thee" (lit. _with full cry_).
The meaning may be: They will join in the hue and cry of thy pursuers,
the mad shouts of "Stop him!" or "Strike him down!" such as may
perhaps have rung in the prophet's ears as he fled from Anathoth.
But we may also understand a metaphorical description of the efforts
of his family to recall him from the unpopular path on which he had
entered; and this perhaps agrees better with the warning: "Trust them
not, though they speak thee fair." And understood in this sense, the
words coincide with what is told us in the Gospel of the attempt of
our Lord's nearest kin to arrest the progress of His Divine mission,
when His mother and His brethren "standing without, sent unto Him,
calling Him" (St. Mark iii. 31).
The lesson for ourselves is plain. The man who listens to the Divine
call, and makes God his portion, must be prepared to surrender
everything else. He must be prepared, not only to renounce much
which the world accounts good; he must be prepared for all kinds of
opposition, passive and active, tacit and avowed; he may even find,
like Jeremiah, that his foes are the members of his own household (St.
Matt. x. 36). And, like the prophet, his acceptance of the Divine
call binds him to close his ears against entreaties and flatteries,
against mockery and menace; and to act upon his Master's word: "If any
man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,
and follow Me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and
whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save
it" (St. Mark viii. 34 _sq._). "If any man come unto Me, and hate not
his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters,
yea and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple" (St. Luke xiv.
26). A great prize is worth a great risk; and eternal life is a prize
infinitely great. It is therefore worth the hazard and the sacrifice
of all (St. Luke xviii. 29 _sq._).
The section which follows (vv. 7-17) has been supposed to belong to the
time of Jehoiakim, and consequently to be out of place here, having
been transposed from its original context, because the peculiar Hebrew
term which is rendered "dearly beloved" (ver. 7), is akin to the term
rendered "My beloved," chap. xi. 15. But this supposition depends on the
assumption that the "historical basis of the section" is to be found in
the passage 2 Kings xxiv. 2, which relates briefly that in Jehoiakim's
time plundering bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites and Ammonites
overran the country. The prophecy concerning Iahvah's "evil neighbours"
is understood to refer to these marauding inroads, and is accordingly
supposed to have been uttered between the eighth and the eleventh years
of Jehoiakim (Hitzig). It has, however, been pointed out (Naegelsbach)
that the prophet does not once name the Chaldeans in the present
discourse; which "he invariably does in all discourses subsequent to the
decisive battle of Carchemish in the fourth year of Jehoiakim," which
gave the Chaldeans the sovereignty of Western Asia. This discourse must,
therefore, be of earlier date, and belong either to the first years
of Jehoiakim, or to the time immediately subsequent to the eighteenth
of Josiah. The history as preserved in Kings and Chronicles is so
incomplete, that we are not bound to connect the reference to "evil
neighbours" with what is so summarily told in 2 Kings xxiv. 2. There
may have been other occasions when Judah's jealous and watchful enemies
profited by her internal weakness and dissensions to invade and ravage
the land; and throughout the whole period the country was exposed to
the danger of plundering raids by the wild nomads of the eastern and
southern borders. It is possible, however, that vv. 14-17 are a later
postscript, added by the prophet when he wrote his book in the fifth or
sixth year of Jehoiakim (xxxvi. 9, 32).
There is, in reality, a close connexion of thought between ver. 7 _sqq._
and what precedes. The relations of the prophet to his own family are
made to symbolise the relations of Iahvah to His rebellious people; just
as a former prophet finds in his own merciful treatment of a faithless
wife a parable of Iahvah's dealings with faithless Israel. _I have
forsaken My house, I have cast away My domain; I have given My soul's
love into the grasp of her foes. My domain hath become to Me like the
lion in the wood; she hath given utterance with her voice against Me;
therefore I hate her._ It is Iahvah who still speaks, as in ver. 6; the
"house" is His holy house,[48] the temple; the domain is His domain,
the land of Judah; His "soul's love," is the Jewish people. Yet the
expressions, "my house," "my domain," "my soul's love," equally suit
the prophet's own family and their estate; the mention of the "lion in
the wood" and its threatening roar, and the enmity provoked thereby,
recalls what was said about the "wilds of the Jordan" in ver. 5, and the
full outcry of his kindred after the prophet in ver. 6; and the solemn
words "I have forsaken Mine house, I have cast away My domain" ... "I
hate her," clearly correspond with the sentence of destruction upon
Anathoth, ch. xi. 21 _sqq._ The double reference of the language becomes
intelligible when we remember that in rejecting His messengers, Israel,
nay mankind, rejects God; and that words and deeds done and uttered by
Divine authority may be ascribed directly to God Himself. And regarded
in the light of the prophet's commission "to pluck up and to break down,
and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" nations and
kingdoms (i. 10), all that is here said may be taken to be the prophet's
own deliverance concerning his country. This, at all events, is the case
with verses 12, 13.
_What! do I see my domain_ (_all_) _vultures_ (_and_) _hyenas?[49] Are
vultures all around her? Go ye, assemble all the beasts of the field!
Bring them to devour_ (ver. 9). The questions express astonishment at
an unlooked-for and unwelcome spectacle. The loss of Divine favour
has exposed Judah to the active hostility of man; and her neighbours
eagerly fall upon her, like birds and beasts of prey, swarming over
a helpless quarry. It is--so the prophet puts it--it is as if a
proclamation had gone forth to the wolves and jackals of the desert,
bidding them come and devour the fallen carcase.[50] In another oracle
he speaks of the heathen as "devouring Jacob" (x. 25). The people of
Iahvah are their natural prey (Ps. xiv. 4: "who eat up My people as
they eat bread"); but they are not suffered to devour them, until they
have forfeited His protection.
The image is now exchanged for another, which approximates more nearly
to the fact pourtrayed. _Many shepherds have marred My vineyard; they
have trodden down My portion; they have turned My pleasant portion into
a desolate wilderness. He_ (the foe, the instrument of this ruin) _hath
made it a desolation; it mourneth against Me, being desolate; desolated
is all the land, for there is no man that giveth heed_ (vv. 10, 11).
As in an earlier discourse, ch. vi. 3, the invaders are now compared
to hordes of nomad shepherds, who enter the land with their flocks and
herds, and make havoc of the crops and pastures. From time immemorial
the wandering Bedawis have been a terror to the settled peasantry of the
East, whose way of life they despise as ignoble and unworthy of free
men. Of this traditional enmity we perhaps hear a far-off echo in the
story of Cain the tiller of the ground and Abel the keeper of sheep; and
certainly in the statement that "every shepherd was an abomination unto
the Egyptians" (Gen. xlvi. 34). The picture of utter desolateness, which
the prophet suggests by a fourfold repetition, is probably sketched
from a scene which he had himself witnessed; if it be not rather a
representation of the actual condition of the country at the time of his
writing. That the latter is the case might naturally be inferred from a
consideration of the whole passage; and the twelfth verse seems to lend
much support to this view: _Over all bare hills in the wilderness have
come ravagers; for Iahvah hath a devouring sword: from land's end to
land's end no flesh hath peace_.[51] The language indeed recalls that
of ch. iv. 10, 11; and the entire description might be taken as an ideal
picture of the ruin that must ensue upon Iahvah's rejection of the land
and people, especially if the closing verses (14-17) be considered as a
later addition to the prophecy, made in the light of accomplished facts.
But, upon the whole, it would seem to be more probable that the prophet
is here reading the moral of present or recent experience. He affirms
(ver. 11) that the affliction of the country is really a punishment for
the religious blindness of the nation: _there is no man that layeth to
heart_ the Divine teaching of events as interpreted by himself (cf.
ver. 4). The fact that we are unable, in the scantiness of the records
of the time, to specify the particular troubles to which allusion is
made, is no great objection to this view, which is at least effectively
illustrated by the brief statement of 2 Kings xxiv. 2. The reflexion
appended in ver. 13 points in the same direction: _They have sown
wheat, and have reaped thorns; they have put themselves to pain_ (or,
_exhausted themselves_) _without profit_, (or, _made themselves sick
with unprofitable toil_); _and they are ashamed of their[52] produce_
(_ingatherings_), _through the heat of the wrath of Iahvah._ When the
enemy had ravaged the crops, thorns would naturally spring up on the
wasted lands; and "the heat of the wrath of Iahvah" appears to have been
further manifested in a parching drought, which ruined what the enemy
had left untouched (ver. 4, ch. xiv.).
Thus, then, Jeremiah receives the answer to his doubts in a painfully
visible demonstration of what the wrath of Iahvah means. It means
drought and famine; it means the exposure of the country, naked and
defenceless, to the will of rapacious and vindictive enemies. For
Iahvah's wrongs are far deeper and more bitter than the prophet's. The
misdeeds of individuals are lighter in the balance than the sins of
a nation; the treachery of a few persons on a particular occasion is
as nothing beside the faithlessness of many generations. The partial
evils, therefore, under which the country groans, can only be taken as
indications of a far more complete and terrible destruction reserved
for final impenitence. The perception of this truth, we may suppose,
sufficed for the time to silence the prophet's complaints; and in the
revulsion of feeling inspired by the awful vision of the unimpeded
outbreak of Divine wrath, he utters an oracle concerning his country's
destroyers, in which retributive justice is tempered by compassion and
mercy. _Thus hath Jehovah said, Upon all Mine evil neighbours, who
touch the heritage which I caused My people Israel to inherit: Lo I am
about to uproot_ (i. 10) _them from off their own land, and the house
of Judah will I uproot from their midst. And after I have uprooted
them, I will have compassion on them again, and will restore them each
to their own heritage and their own land. And if they truly learn the
ways of My people, to swear by My name, 'as Iahvah liveth!' even as
they taught My people to swear by the Baal; they shall be rebuilt in
the midst of My people. And if they will not hear, I will uproot that
nation, utterly and fatally; it is an oracle of Iahvah_ (14-17). The
preceding section (vv. 7-14), as we have seen, rapidly yet vividly
sketches the calamities which have ensued and must further ensue upon
the Divine desertion of the country. Iahvah has forsaken the land, left
her naked to her enemies, for her causeless, capricious, thankless
revolt against her Divine Lord. In this forlorn, defenceless condition,
all manner of evils befall her; the vineyards and cornfields are
ravaged, the goodly land is desolated, by hordes of savage freebooters
pouring in from the eastern deserts. These invaders are called Iahvah's
"evil neighbours;" an expression which implies, not individuals banded
together for purposes of brigandage, but hostile nations.[53] Upon these
nations also will the justice of God be vindicated; for that justice
is universal in its operation, and cannot therefore be restricted to
Israel. Judgment must "begin at the house of God;" but it will not
end there. The "evil neighbours," the surrounding heathen kingdoms,
have been Iahvah's instruments for the chastisement of His rebellious
people; but they are not on that account exempted from recompense.
They too must reap what they have sown. They have insulted Iahvah, by
violating His territory; they have indulged their malice and treachery
and rapacity, in utter disregard of the rights of neighbours, and the
moral claims of kindred peoples. As they have done, so shall it be done
unto them: Δράσαντι παθεῖν. They have laid hands on the possessions of
their neighbour, and their own shall be taken from them; _I am about
to uproot them from off their own land_ (cf. Amos i. 3-ii. 3). And not
only so, but _the house of Judah will I pluck up from their midst_. The
Lord's people shall be no more exposed to their unneighbourly ill-will;
the butt of their ridicule, the victim of their malice, will be removed
to a foreign soil as well as they; but oppressed and oppressors will no
longer be together; their new settlements will lie far apart; under the
altered state of things, under the shadow of the great conqueror of the
future, there will be no opportunity for the old injurious dealings.
All alike, Judah and the enemies of Judah, will be subject to the will
of the foreign lord. But that is not the end. The Judge of all the
earth is merciful as well as just. He is loth to blot whole peoples out
of existence, even though they have merited destruction by grievous
and prolonged transgression of His laws. Therefore banishment will be
followed by restoration, not in the case of Judah only, but of all the
expatriated peoples. After enduring the Divine probation of adversity,
they will be brought again, by the Divine compassion, "each to their
own heritage and their own land." And then, if they will profit by
the teaching of Iahvah's prophets, and "learn the ways," that is, the
religion of His people, making their supreme appeal to Iahvah, as the
fountain of all truth and the sovran vindicator of right and justice, as
hitherto they have appealed to the Baal, and misled Israel into the same
profane and futile course; then "they shall be built up," or rebuilt,
or brought to great and ever-growing prosperity, "in the midst of My
people." Such is to be the blessing of the Gentiles; they shall share in
the glorious future that awaits repentant Israel. The present condition
of things is to be completely reversed: now Judah sojourns in _their_
midst; then _they_ will be surrounded on every side by the emancipated
and triumphant people of God: now _they_ beset Judah with jealousies,
suspicions, enmities; then Judah will embrace them all with the arms
of an unselfish and protecting love. A last word of warning is added.
The doom of the nation that will not accept the Divine teaching will be
utter and absolute extermination.