only was the prophet's overwhelming trouble due to his having yielded
to the persuasions and promises of Iahvah; not only has he been
rewarded with scorn and the scourge and the stocks for his compliance
with a Divine call. He has been in a manner forced and driven into his
intolerable position by the coercive power of Iahvah, which left him
no choice but to utter the word that burnt like a fire within him.
Sometimes his fears of perfidy and betrayal suggested the thought
of succumbing to the insuperable obstacles which seemed to block
his path; of giving up once for all a thankless and fruitless and
dangerous enterprise: but then the inward flame burnt so fiercely,
that he could find no relief for his anguish but by giving it vent in
words (cf. Ps. xxxix. 1-3).
The verse finely illustrates that vivid sense of a Divine constraint
which distinguishes the true prophet from pretenders to the office.
Jeremiah does not protest the purity of his motives; indirectly and
unconsciously he expresses it with a simplicity and a strength which
leave no room for suspicion. He has himself no doubt at all that what
he speaks is "Iahvah's word." The inward impulse is overpowering; he
has striven in vain against its urgency; like Jacob at Peniel, he
has wrestled with One stronger than himself. He is no vulgar fanatic
or enthusiast, in whom rooted prejudices and irrational frenzies
overbalance the judgment, making him incapable of estimating the
hazards and the chances of his enterprise; he is as well aware of
the perils that beset his path as the coolest and craftiest of his
worldly adversaries. Thanks to his natural quickness of perception,
his developed faculty of reflexion, he is fully alive to the probable
consequences of perpetually thwarting the popular will, of taking up
a position of permanent resistance to the policy and the aims and the
interests of the ruling classes. But while he has his mortal hopes
and fears, his human capacity for anxiety and pain; while his heart
bleeds at the sight of suffering, and aches for the woes that thickly
crowd the field of his prophetic vision; his speech and his behaviour
are dominated, upon the whole, by an altogether higher consciousness.
His emotions may have their moments of mastery; at times they may
overpower his fortitude, and lay him prostrate in an agony of
lamentation and mourning and woe; at times they may even interpose
clouds and darkness between the prophet and his vision of the Eternal;
but these effects of mortality do not last: they shake but cannot
loosen his grasp of spiritual realities; they cannot free him from the
constraining influence of the Word of Iahvah. That word possesses,
leads him captive, "triumphs over him," over all the natural
resistance of flesh and blood; for he is "not as the many"--the false
prophets--"who corrupt the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of
God, in the sight of God, he speaks" (2 Cor. ii. 14, 17).
And still, unless a man be thus impelled by the Spirit; unless he have
counted the cost and is prepared to risk all for God; unless he be
ready to face unpopularity and social contempt and persecution; unless
he knows what it is to suffer for and with Jesus Christ; I doubt if
he has any moral right to speak in that most holy Name. For if the
all-mastering motive be absent, if the love of Christ constrain him
not, how can his desires and his doings be such as the Unseen Judge
will either approve or bless?
* * * * *
The fourth stanza explains why the prophet laboured, though vainly, to
keep silence. It was because of the malicious reports of his utterances,
which were carefully circulated by his watchful antagonists. They beset
him on every side; like Pashchur, they were to him a "magor-missabib,"
an environing terror (cf. vi. 25), as they listened to his harangues,
and eagerly invited each other to inform against him as a traitor (The
words "Inform ye, and let us inform against him!" or "Denounce ye, and
let us denounce him!" may be an ancient gloss upon the term _dibbah_,
"ill report," "calumny;" Gen. xxxvii. 2; Num. xiii. 32; Job xvii. 5. For
the construction, cf. Job xxxi. 37. They spoil the symmetry of the line.
That _dibbah_ really means "defaming," or "slander," appears not only
from the passages in which it occurs, but also from the Arabic _dabûb_;
"one who creeps about with slander," from _dabba_, "to move gently or
slowly about." The Heb. _ragal_, _riggel_, "to go about slandering," and
_rakîl_, "slander," are analogous).
And not only open enemies thus conspired for the prophet's
destruction. Even professed friends (for the phrase, cf. xxxviii. 22;
Ps. xli. 10) were treacherously watchful to catch him tripping (cf.
ix. 2, xii. 6). Those on whom he had a natural claim for sympathy
and protection, bore a secret and determined grudge against him. His
unpopularity was complete, and his position full of peril. We have
in the thirty-first and several of the following psalms outpourings
of feeling under circumstances very similar to those of Jeremiah on
the present occasion, even if they were not actually written by him
at the same crisis in his career, as certain striking coincidences
of expression seem to suggest (ver. 10; cf. Ps. xxxi. 13, xxxv. 15,
xxxviii. 17, xli. 9; ver. 13 with Ps. xxxv. 9, 10).
The prophet closes his psalm-like monologue with an act of faith.
He remembers that he has a Champion who is mightier than a thousand
enemies. Iahvah is with him, not with them (cf. 2 Kings vi. 16); their
plots, therefore, are foredoomed to failure, and themselves to the
vengeance of a righteous God (xi. 20). The last words are an exultant
anticipation of deliverance.
We thus see that the whole piece, like a previous one (xv. 10-21),
begins with cursing and ends with an assurance of blessing.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] The name is probably a quadriliteral from פשח, [Arabic: **]
Ethiopic ተፋሥሐ "to be glad," Assyrian [Assyrian: **] _pashâchu_ "to
be at ease," "to rest," (which comes nearest to the Hebrew root).
The Arabic verb means "The place was roomy, wide, ample"; whence
[Arabic: **] "free from distress or narrowness of mind." Thus Pashchur
= "case," "tranquillity," and is formed like Achbor, _kaphtor_, "a
capital," (LXX. Pashchor). But the name might remind a Hebrew of the
root פוש "to leap," "prance," Jer. l. 11, and חר "free" (plur. only),
as if it were a compound of _pāsh_ and _chōr_. "Glad and free:" cf.
the LXX. vocalisation Πασχώρ. I think this popular etymology pash +
chor is probably what Jeremiah thought of.
[83] Ex. xii. 33; Isa. viii. 11; Ezek. iii. 14; Jer. xv. 17.
[84] vi. 11 (or, of enduring, Mal. iii. 2).
[85] 'Denounce ye, and we will denounce him!'
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.
Inconsistent hyphenation left as in the original text.
Footnote 31: This footnote was originally an author's note. Converted
to a footnote for ease of reference.
Footnote 78: There is no anchor for this in the original text, left as
in the original.