PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Prophecies of Jeremiah
Ball, C. J. (Charles James) · 129,298 words · 160 reading sections
Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
=With a Sketch of His Life and Times.= BY THE REV. C. J. BALL, M.A., _Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn_; CONTRIBUTOR TO BISHOP ELLICOTT'S "COMMENTARY," "THE SPEAKER'S COMMENTARY," ETC. =New York:= A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 BROADWAY. 1890. CONTENTS. PAGE PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JEREMIAH. A pr…
1,006 wordsSECTION 2Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
"It is sad," says a well known writer, with reference to the noble passage, xxxi. 31-34, which he justly characterizes as "one of those which best deserve to be called the Gospel before Christ," "It is sad that Jeremiah could not always keep his spirit under the calming influence of these high thoughts. No book of the …
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The prophetic discourses, with which the book of Jeremiah opens (ii. 1-iv. 2), have a general application to all Israel, as is evident not only from the ideas expressed in them, but also from the explicit address, ii. 4: "Hear ye the word of Iahvah, O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel!" It is cle…
1,389 wordsSECTION 4Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
Jeremiah came prominently forward at a serious crisis in the history of his people. The Scythian invasion of Asia, described by Herodotus (i. 103-106), but not mentioned in the biblical histories of the time, was threatening Palestine and Judea. According to the old Greek writer, Cyaxares the Mede, while engaged in bes…
818 wordsSECTION 5Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
The public danger, which stimulated the reflexion and lent force to the invective of the lesser prophet, intensified the impression produced by the earlier preaching of Jeremiah. The tide of invasion, indeed, rolled past Judea, without working much permanent harm to the little kingdom, with whose destinies were involve…
736 wordsSECTION 6Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
"And I answered and said, So be it, Iahvah! "And Iahvah 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. For I solemnly adjured your fathers, at the time when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, (and) unto th…
1,044 wordsSECTION 7Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
The hopes of Judah rested upon a worldly foundation; and it was necessary that a people whose blindness was only intensified by prosperity, should be undeceived by the discipline of overthrow. No hint is given in the meagre narrative of the reign as to whether the prophets had lent their countenance or not to the fatal…
751 wordsSECTION 8Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
The effect of the downfall of the good king was electrical. The nation discovered that the displeasure of Iahvah had not passed away like a morning cloud. Out of the shock and the dismay of that terrible disillusion sprang the conviction that the past was not atoned for, that the evil of it was irreparable. The idea is…
1,253 wordsSECTION 9Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
* * * * * When the mourning for Josiah was ended (2 Chron. xxxv. 24 _sqq._), the people put Jehoahaz on his father's throne. But this arrangement was not suffered to continue, for Necho, having defeated and slain Josiah, naturally asserted his right to dispose of the crown of Judah as he thought fit. Accordingly, he p…
656 wordsSECTION 10Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
In the beginning of the reign of this worthless tyrant, the prophet was impelled to address a very definite warning to the throng of worshippers in the court of the temple (xxvi. 4 _sqq._). It was to the effect that if they did not amend their ways, their temple should become like Shiloh, and their city a curse to all …
699 wordsSECTION 11Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
Nebuchadrezzar was invincible, and the Jewish prophet clearly perceived the fact. But it must not be imagined that the Jewish people generally, or the neighbouring peoples, enjoyed a similar degree of insight. Had that been so, the battle of Jeremiah's life would never have been fought out under such cruel, such hopele…
726 wordsSECTION 12Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
Considering the unsatisfactory state of the text of Jeremiah, it is perhaps admissible to suppose, for the sake of this hypothesis, that the second verse of chap. xxv., which expressly declares that this prophecy was spoken by its author "to all the people of Judah, and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem," is "a loose…
687 wordsSECTION 13Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
Those twenty-three years of patient thought and earnest labour, of high converse with God, and of agonised pleading with a reprobate people, were not to be without their fruit, though the prophet himself was not to see it. It is matter of history that the words of Jeremiah wrought with such power upon the hearts of the…
933 wordsSECTION 14Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
That, I grant, is true; but then there is absolutely nothing to prove that this roll did not contain them all. Chap. xxxvi. 29, cited by the objector, is certainly not such proof. That verse simply gives the angry exclamation with which the king interrupted the reading of the roll, "Why hast thou written upon it, The k…
668 wordsSECTION 15Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
And again, at the end of the chapter, "Hast Thou wholly rejected Judah? Hath Thy soul loathed Zion? Why hast Thou smitten us, That there is no healing for us? We looked for welfare, but bootlessly, For a time of healing, and behold terror! We know, Iahvah, our wickedness, the guilt of our fathers: Verily, we ar…
860 wordsSECTION 16Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
The premature death of the tyrant removed a serious obstacle from the path of Jeremiah. No longer forced to exercise a wary vigilance in avoiding the vengeance of a king whose passions determined his conduct, the prophet could now devote himself heart and soul to the work of his office. The public danger, imminent from…
753 wordsSECTION 17Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
No better success attended the prophet's ministry under the new king Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadrezzar had placed on the throne as his vassal and tributary. So far as we can judge from the accounts left us, Zedekiah was a wellmeaning but unstable character, whose weakness and irresolution were too often played upon by unsc…
1,595 wordsSECTION 18Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
"They chased me sore like a bird, They that were my foes without a cause. They silenced my life in the pit, And they cast a stone upon me. Waters overflowed mine head; Methought, I am cut off. I called Thy name, Iahvah, Out of the deepest pit. My voice Thou heardest (saying), 'Hide not Thine ear at my breathin…
727 wordsSECTION 19Jeremiah Under Persecution 411
An old man, worn out with strife and struggle, and weighed down by disappointment and the sense of failure, he might well have decided to avail himself of the favour extended to him by the conqueror, and to secure a peaceful end for a life of storm and conflict. But the calamities of his country had not quenched his pr…
699 wordsSECTION 20Footnotes:
The tale is told. In meagre and broken outline I have laid before you the known facts of a life which must always possess permanent interest, not only for the student of religious development, but for all men who are stirred by human passion, and stimulated by human thought. And fully conscious as I am of failure in th…
393 wordsSECTION 21_The Call And Consecration._
In the foregoing pages we have considered the principal events in the life of the prophet Jeremiah, by way of introduction to the more detailed study of his writings. Preparation of this kind seemed to be necessary, if we were to enter upon that study with something more than the vaguest perception of the real personal…
1,421 wordsSECTION 22_The Call And Consecration._
Another and more radical ground is discovered in the substance of the Divine communication. It is said that the anticipatory statement of the contents and purpose of the subsequent prophesyings of the seer (ver. 10), the announcement beforehand of his fortunes (vv. 8, 18, 19), and the warning addressed to the prophet p…
757 wordsSECTION 23_The Call And Consecration._
Apart from the unsatisfactory nature of the reasons alleged, it is very probable that this opening chapter was penned by Jeremiah as an introduction to the first collection of his prophecies, which dates from the fourth year of Jehoiakim, that is, circ. B.C. 606. In that case, it must not be forgotten that the prophet …
712 wordsSECTION 24_The Call And Consecration._
Vv. 5-10, which relate how the prophet became aware that he was in future to receive revelations from above, constitute in themselves an important revelation. Under Divine influence he becomes aware of a special mission. _Ere I began to form_ (mould, fashion, יצר, as the potter moulds the clay) _thee in the belly, I kn…
1,019 wordsSECTION 25_The Call And Consecration._
_And Iahvah put forth His hand and touched my mouth: and Iahvah said unto me, Behold I have put My words in thy mouth!_ This word of the Lord, says Hitzig, is represented as a corporeal substance; in accordance with the Oriental mode of thought and speech, which invests everything with bodily form. He refers to a passa…
876 wordsSECTION 26_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
[16] Even in the history of the transmission of ancient writings. [17] Isa. xliv. 24, מבָּטן יוצֶרך, xlix. 5, לו לֶעבד מבּטְןֶ יצְרִי. [18] For the words of this promise, cf. ver. 19 _infr._, xv. 20, xlii. 11. JEREMIAH ii. 1-iii. 5. The first of the prophet's public addresses is, in fact, a sermon which proceeds fr…
689 wordsSECTION 27_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
In the Hebrew text the chapter begins with the same formula as chap. i. (ver. 4): "And there fell a word of Iahvah unto me, saying." But the LXX. reads: "And he said, Thus saith the Lord," (καὶ εἶπε, τάδε λέγει κύριος); a difference which is not immaterial, as it may be a trace of an older Hebrew recension of the proph…
1,083 wordsSECTION 28_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_Thus hath Iahvah said, What found your fathers in Me, that was unjust_, (עָוֶל a single act of injustice, Ps. vii. 4; not to be found in Iahvah, Deut. xxxii. 4) _that they went far from Me and followed the Folly and were befooled_ (or _the Delusion and were deluded_) (ver. 5). The phrase is used 2 Kings xvii. 15 in th…
792 wordsSECTION 29_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_And I brought you into the garden land, to eat its fruits and its choicest things_ (טוּבָהּ Isa. i. 19; Gen. xlv. 18, 20, 23); _and ye entered and defiled My land, and My domain ye made a loathsome thing!_ (ver. 7). With the wilderness of the wanderings is contrasted the "land of the _carmel_," the land of fruitful or…
1,347 wordsSECTION 30_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_Is Israel a bondman, or a homeborn serf? Why hath he become a prey? Over him did young lions roar; they uttered their voice; and they made his land a waste; his cities, they are burnt up_ (or _thrown down_), _so that they are uninhabited. Yea, the sons of Noph and Tahpan_(_h_)_es, they did bruise thee on the crown. Is…
1,114 wordsSECTION 31_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_Aye, and the children of Noph and Tahpanhes they bruise_ (_? used to bruise; are bruising_: the Heb. ירעו may mean either) _thee on the crown_ (ver. 16). This obviously refers to injuries inflicted by Egypt, the two royal cities of Noph or Memphis, and Tahpanhes or Daphnæ, being mentioned in place of the country itsel…
750 wordsSECTION 32_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_And now_--a common formula in drawing an inference and concluding an argument--_what hast thou to do with the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Shihor_ (the Black River, the Nile); _and what hast thou to do with the way to Assyria, to drink the waters of the River?_ (_par excellence_, _i.e._, the Euphrates). _Thy w…
820 wordsSECTION 33_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_For long ago didst thou break thy yoke, didst thou burst thy bonds, and saidst, I will not serve: for upon every high hill, and under each evergreen tree thou wert crouching in fornication_ (vv. 20-24). Such seems to be the best way of taking a verse which is far from clear as it stands in the Masoretic text. The prop…
670 wordsSECTION 34_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_How canst thou say, I have not defiled myself; after the Baals I have not gone: See thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done, O swift she-camel, running hither and thither_ (literally _intertwining_ or _crossing her ways_) (ver. 23). The prophet anticipates a possible attempt at self-justification; just as in v…
735 wordsSECTION 35_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_Like the shame of a thief, when he is detected, so are the house of Israel ashamed--they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets; in that they say_ (are ever saying) _to the wood_ (iii. 9 in Heb. masc.), _Thou art my father!_ (iii. 4) _and to the stone_ (in Heb. fem.), _Thou didst bring me f…
733 wordsSECTION 36_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
The sarcastic reference to the number of Judah's idols may remind us of what is recorded of classic Athens, in whose streets it was said to be easier to find a god than a man. The irony of the prophet's remark depends on the consideration that there is, or ought to be, safety in numbers. The impotence of the false gods…
762 wordsSECTION 37_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
_Why hurriest thou to seek thy love?_ (Lit. _why dost thou make good thy way?_ somewhat as we say, "to make good way with a thing") (ver. 33). The key to the meaning here is supplied by ver. 36: _Why art thou in such haste to change thy way? In_ (Of) _Egypt also thou shalt be disappointed, as thou wert in Assyria._ The…
807 wordsSECTION 38_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
In the Hebrew, ch. iii. opens with the word "saying" (לֵאמֹר). No real parallel to this can be found elsewhere, and the Sept. and Syriac omit the term. Whether we follow these ancient authorities, and do the same, or whether we prefer to suppose that the prophet originally wrote, as usually, "And the Word of Iahvah cam…
1,107 wordsSECTION 39_The Trust In The Shadow Of Egypt._
And now let us take a farewell look at the discourse in its entirety. 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 he…
1,043 wordsSECTION 40_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
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…
676 wordsSECTION 41_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
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 …
1,063 wordsSECTION 42_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
_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…
791 wordsSECTION 43_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
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…
672 wordsSECTION 44_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
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 varianc…
660 wordsSECTION 45_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
After all, it is clear from the entire context that these hopes of a golden time to come are not independent of the attitude of the people towards Iahvah. They will only be realized, if the nation shall truly repent of the past, and turn to Him with the whole heart. The expressions "at that time," "in those days" (vv. …
845 wordsSECTION 46_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
In this closing section of the piece (iii. 19-iv. 2) 'Israel' means not the entire people, but the northern kingdom only, which is spoken of separately also in iii. 6-18, with the object of throwing into higher relief the heinousness of Judah's guilt. Israel--the northern kingdom--was less guilty than Judah, for she ha…
749 wordsSECTION 47_Israel And Judah: A Contrast._
The confession continues: _And as for the Shame_--the shameful idol, the Baal whose worship involved shameful rites (chap. xi. 13; Hos. ix. 10), and who put his worshippers to shame, by disappointing them of help in the hour of their need (ii. 8, 26, 27)--_as for the Shame_--in contrast with Iahvah, the Safety of Israe…
651 wordsSECTION 48_The Scythians As The Scourge Of God._
Jeremiah could hardly have chosen a more extreme instance for pointing the lesson he had to teach than the long-since ruined and depopulated kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Hopeless as their actual condition must have seemed at the time, he assures his own countrymen in Judah and Jerusalem that even yet, if only the moral r…
1,322 wordsSECTION 49_The Scythians As The Scourge Of God._
Even the strong walls of Jerusalem are no sure defence; there is no safety but in flight. _Remove your goods, ye sons of Benjamin, from within Jerusalem! And in Tekoah_ (as if Blaston or Blowick or Trumpington) _blow a trumpet-blast, and upon Beth-hakkérem raise a signal_ (or _beacon_)! _for evil hath looked forth_ _fr…
674 wordsSECTION 50_The Scythians As The Scourge Of God._
He begins with encouragement and persuasion, but his tone soon changes to denunciation and despair (iv. 3 _sq._). _Thus hath Iahvah said to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, Break you up the fallows, and sow not into thorns! Circumcise yourselves to Iahvah, and remove the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah, and …
744 wordsSECTION 51_The Scythians As The Scourge Of God._
In the early days of reform, indeed, Jeremiah himself appears to have shared in the sanguine views associated with a revival of suspended orthodoxy. The tidings of imminent danger were a surprise to him, as to the zealous worshippers who thronged the courts of the temple. So then, after all, "the burning anger of Iahva…
1,030 wordsSECTION 52_The Scythians As The Scourge Of God._
Then, as now, the debasement of the standard of life among the ruling classes was a far more threatening symptom of danger to the commonwealth than laxity of principle among the masses, who had never enjoyed the higher knowledge and more thorough training which wealth and rank, as a matter of course, confer. If the cre…
970 wordsSECTION 53_Popular And True Religion._
[25] The modern singer has well caught the echo of this ancient strain. "Wilt thou cover thine hair with gold, and with silver thy feet? Hast thou taken the purple to fold thee, and made thy mouth sweet? Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate: Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of…
946 wordsSECTION 54_Popular And True Religion._
Jeremiah, therefore, affirms that the popular confidence is ill-founded; that his countrymen are lulled in a false security; and he enforces his point, by a plain exposure of the flagrant offences, which render their worship a mockery of God. Again, it may be supposed that the startling word, _Add your burnt-offerings…
788 wordsSECTION 55_Popular And True Religion._
Let us see what it was that called so loudly for amendment, and then we may become more fully aware of the gulf that divided the God of Israel from the idols of Canaan, and His service from all other service. It is important to keep this radical difference steadily before our minds, and to deepen the impression of it, …
1,041 wordsSECTION 56_Popular And True Religion._
The people of Judah were misled, but they were willingly misled. When Jeremiah declares to them, _Lo, ye are trusting, for your part, upon the words of delusion, so that ye gain no good!_ (vii. 8) it is perhaps not so much the smooth prophecies of the false prophets as the fatal attitude of the popular mind, out of whi…
739 wordsSECTION 57_Popular And True Religion._
The reference is not to the tabernacle, the sacred Tent of the Wanderings, which was first set up at Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 22) and then removed to Gibeon (2 Chron. i. 3), but obviously to a building more or less like the temple, though less magnificent. The place and its sanctuary had doubtless been ruined in the great cata…
808 wordsSECTION 58_Popular And True Religion._
In another sense, of course, it is profoundly true to say that human sin provokes and grieves the Lord. God is Love; and love may be pained to its depths by the fault of the beloved, and stirred to holy indignation at the disclosure of utter unworthiness and ingratitude. Something corresponding to these emotions of man…
679 wordsSECTION 59_Popular And True Religion._
_Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth, the God of Israel: Your holocausts add ye to your common sacrifices, and eat ye flesh!_ that is, Eat flesh in abundance, eat your fill of it! Stint not yourselves by devoting any portion of your offerings wholly to Me. I am as indifferent to your "burnt-offerings," your more costly and splend…
794 wordsSECTION 60_Popular And True Religion._
_Hearken unto My voice_: not as giving regulations about the ritual, but as inculcating moral duty by the prophets, as is explained immediately (ver. 25), and as is clear also from the statement that _they walked in the schemes of their own evil heart_ [omit: _in the stubbornness_, with LXX., and read _mô` açôth_ stat.…
1,174 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.