PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Prophecies of Jeremiah
Ball, C. J. (Charles James) · 129,298 words · 160 reading sections
_Popular And True Religion._
In the second part of this great discourse (viii. 4-23) we have a fine development of thoughts which have already been advanced in the opening piece, after the usual manner of Jeremiah. The first half (or strophe) is mainly concerned with the sins of the nation (vv. 4-13), the second with a despairing lament over the p…
1,191 wordsSECTION 62_Popular And True Religion._
The prophet next meets an objection. He has just alleged a profound moral ignorance--a culpable ignorance--against the people. He supposes them to deny the accusation, as doubtless they often did in answer to his remonstrances (cf. xvii. 15, xx. 7 _sq._) _How can ye say, "We are wise"_--morally wise--"_and the teaching…
680 wordsSECTION 63_Popular And True Religion._
They who reject Iahvah's word, in whatever form it comes to them, have no other light to walk by; they must needs walk in darkness, and stumble at noonday. For Iahvah's word is the only true wisdom, the only true guide of man's footsteps. And this is the kind of wisdom which the Holy Scriptures offer us; not a merely s…
883 wordsSECTION 64_Popular And True Religion._
The opening threat is apparently quoted from the contemporary prophet 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…
1,074 wordsSECTION 65_Popular And True Religion._
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., a…
749 wordsSECTION 66_Popular And True Religion._
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 t…
691 wordsSECTION 67_Popular And True Religion._
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 almos…
711 wordsSECTION 68_Popular And True Religion._
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 th…
919 wordsSECTION 69_Popular And True Religion._
_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 the…
696 wordsSECTION 70_Popular And True Religion._
A Christian country: where human beings die, year after year, in the unspeakable, unimaginable agonies of canine madness, and dogs are kept by the thousand in crowded cities, that the sacrifice to the fiend of selfishness and the mocking devil of vanity may never lack its victims! There is a more than Egyptian worship …
685 wordsSECTION 71_Popular And True Religion._
The prophet thus, perhaps, discerns a faint glimmer of hope, but his sky darkens again immediately. The land is already to a great extent desolate, through the ravages of the invaders, or through severe droughts (cf. iv. 25, viii. 20(?), xii. 4). _Upon the mountains will I lift up weeping and wailing, and upon the past…
790 wordsSECTION 72_Popular And True Religion._
This, then, is the reason why the land is waste and deserted. And _therefore_--because past and present experience is an index of the future, for Iahvah's character and purpose are constant--therefore the desolation of the cities of Judah and of Jerusalem itself, will ere long be accomplished. _Therefore thus said Iahv…
654 wordsSECTION 73_Popular And True Religion._
"_Death scales our lattices, Enters our palaces, To cut off boy without, The young men from the streets._" _And the corpses of men will fall_--the tense certifies the future reference of the others--_like dung_ (viii. 2) _on the face of the field_ (2 Kings ix. 37, of Jezebel's corpse)--left without burial rites to …
927 wordsSECTION 74_Popular And True Religion._
Now why does Jeremiah mention circumcision at all? The case is, I think, parallel to his mention of another external distinction of the popular religion, the Ark of the Covenant (iii. 15). Just as in that place God promises _shepherds according to Mine heart which shall shepherd_ the restored Israel _with knowledge and…
716 wordsSECTION 75_Popular And True Religion._
x. 17-25. The latter part of chap. x. resumes the subject suspended at ix. 22. It evidently contemplates the speedy departure of the people into banishment. _Away out of the land with thy pack_ (or _thy goods_; LXX. ὑπόστασις, "property," Targ. "merchandise," the Heb. term, which is related to "Canaan," occurs here onl…
687 wordsSECTION 76_Popular And True Religion._
The lament of the mourning mother continues: _My tent is laid waste and all my cords are broken; My sons went forth of me_ (to battle) _and are not; There is none to spread my tent any more, And to set up my curtains_ (cf. Amos ix. 11). Overhearing, as it were, this sorrowful lamentation (_qinah_), the prophet interpos…
721 wordsSECTION 77_Popular And True Religion._
Israel now confesses, by the mouth of his best and truest representative, that he has hitherto loved to choose his own path, and to walk in his own strength, without reference to the will and way of God. Now, the overwhelming shock of irresistible calamity has brought him to his senses, has revealed to him his powerles…
535 wordsSECTION 78Footnotes:
[30] The omissions of the Septuagint are not always intelligent. The repetition of the "all" here intensifies the idea of the _totality_ of the ruin of the northern kingdom. The two clauses balance each other: _all your brethren--all the seed of Ephraim_. The objection that Edom was also a "brother" of Israel (Deut. xx…
523 wordsSECTION 79Vi.
_THE IDOLS OF THE HEATHEN AND THE GOD OF ISRAEL._ JEREMIAH x. 1-16. This fine piece is altogether isolated from the surrounding context, which it interrupts in a very surprising manner. Neither the style nor the subject, neither the idioms nor the thoughts expressed in them, agree with what we easily recognise as Je…
766 wordsSECTION 80Vi.
The details of the idolatry satirized in the piece before us point to Chaldea rather than to Canaan. We have here a zealous worship of wooden images overlaid and otherwise adorned with silver and gold, and robed in rich garments of violet and purple (cf. Josh. vii. 21). This does not agree with what we know of Judean p…
794 wordsSECTION 81Vi.
The Greek Epistle of Jeremiah, which in MSS. is sometimes appended to Baruch, and which Fritzsche refers to the Maccabean times, appear to be partially based upon the passage we are considering. Its heading is: "Copy of a letter which Jeremiah sent unto those who were about to be carried away captives to Babylon, by th…
664 wordsSECTION 82Vi.
When we turn to the Septuagint, we are immediately struck by its remarkable omissions. The four verses 6-8 and 10 do not appear at all in this oldest of the versions; while the ninth is inserted between the first clause and the remainder of the fifth verse. Now, on the one hand, it is just the verses which the LXX. tra…
758 wordsSECTION 83Vi.
On the present occasion, the crisis in view of which a prophet declares the mind of Iahvah is not a political emergency but a religious temptation. The day for the former has long since passed away, and the depressed and scattered communities of exiled Israelites are exposed among other trials to the constant temptatio…
1,330 wordsSECTION 84Vi.
"Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum, Maluit esse deum. Deus inde ego, furum ariumque Maxima formido." (Hor., _Sat._ i. 8, 1, _sqq._) Though the idol has the outward semblance of a man, it lacks his distinguishing faculty of speech; it is as dumb as the scarecro…
941 wordsSECTION 85Vi.
The body of the idol is wood, and outwardly it is decorated with silver and gold and costly apparel; but the whole and every part of it is the work of man. _Silver plate_ (lit. _beaten out_) _from Tarshish_--from far away Tartessus in Spain--_is brought, and gold from Uphaz_ (Dan. x. 5), _the work of the smith, and of …
855 wordsSECTION 86Vi.
Thus the wisdom enshrined in the laws of the visible world, all its strength and all its stability, is a manifestation of the Unseen God. Invisible in themselves, the eternal power and godhead of Iahvah become visible in His creation. And, as the Hebrew mode of expression indicates, His activity is never suspended, nor…
722 wordsSECTION 87Vi.
Looking round upon this spectacle of superstitious folly, the prophet declares that _all men are become too brute-like for knowledge_; too degraded to appreciate the truth, the simplicity of a higher faith; too besotted with the worship of a hundred vain idols, which were the outward reflexion of their own diseased ima…
869 wordsSECTION 88Vi.
_Not like these_: for He is the Divine Potter who moulded all things, including the signs of heaven, and the idols of wood and metal, and their foolish worshippers. And he is _Jacob's portion_; for the knowledge and worship of Him was, in the Divine counsels, originally assigned to Israel (cf. Deut. iv. 19; and xxxii. …
745 wordsSECTION 89Vi.
The special illumination of Israel, however, does not imply that no light was vouchsafed elsewhere. The religious systems of other nations furnish abundant evidence to the contrary. God "left not Himself without witness," the silent witness of that beneficent order of the natural world, which makes it possible for man …
718 wordsSECTION 90Vi.
The pious Israelite could not indulge a morbidly acute and restlessly speculative intellect with philosophical or scientific theories about the Deity, His nature in Himself, His essential and accidental attributes, His relation to the visible world. Neither did such theories then exist ready made to his hand, nor did h…
645 wordsSECTION 91_The Broken Covenant._
[39] LXX. "for _they_ are afraid before them," לפניהם המה יחתו כי. [40] This is the most natural interpretation of the passage according to the Hebrew punctuation. Another is given below. [41] It is against usage to divide the clause as Naegelsbach does, "Vain instruction! It is wood!" or to render with Ewald "Simply…
882 wordsSECTION 92_The Broken Covenant._
_Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak ye unto the men of Judah, and upon the dwellers in Jerusalem! And say thou unto them, Thus saith Iahvah, the God_ _of Israel, Accursed are the men that hear not the words of this covenant, which I lay on your fathers, in the day that I brought them forth from the land of E…
1,022 wordsSECTION 93_The Broken Covenant._
The relation of the One God to this one people was neither accidental nor arbitrary. It is sometimes spoken of as a thing glaringly unjust to the other nations of the ancient world, that the Father of all should have chosen Israel only to be the recipient of His special favours. Sometimes it is demanded, as an unanswer…
1,082 wordsSECTION 94_The Broken Covenant._
But the word further signifies that a BOND has been entered into, a bond which is the exact antithesis of the covenant with Iahvah; and it implies that this bond has about it a fatal strength and permanence, involving as its necessary consequence the ruin of the nation. Breaking covenant with Iahvah meant making a cove…
657 wordsSECTION 95_The Broken Covenant._
_"A flourishing olive, fair with shapely fruit, did Iahvah call thy name. To the sound of a great uproar will He set her on fire; and his hanging boughs will crackle_ (_in the flames_). _And Iahvah Sabaoth, that planted thee, Himself hath pronounced evil upon thee; because of the evil of the house of Israel and the hou…
1,038 wordsSECTION 96_The Broken Covenant._
He had appealed to the Judge of all the earth, that doeth right; and he knew the innocency of his own heart in the quarrel. He was certain, therefore, that his cause would one day be vindicated, when that ruin overtook his enemies, of which he had warned them in vain. Looked at in this light, his words are a confident …
1,128 wordsSECTION 97_The Broken Covenant._
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 …
948 wordsSECTION 98_The Broken Covenant._
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…
883 wordsSECTION 99_The Broken Covenant._
_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 …
701 wordsSECTION 100_The Broken Covenant._
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 tha…
941 wordsSECTION 101Footnotes:
The forecast is plainly of a Messianic nature; it recognises in Iahvah the Saviour, not of a nation, but of the world. It perceives that the disunion and mutual hatred of peoples, as of individuals, is a breach of Divine law; and it proclaims a general return to God, and submission to His guidance in all political as w…
689 wordsSECTION 102_The Fall Of Pride._
[50] The references to "birds of prey," "beasts of the field," and "spoilers" (ver. 12), are interpreted by the phrase "mine evil neighbours" (ver. 14); and this constitutes a link between vv. 7-14 and 14-17. [51] Such seems to be the best punctuation of the sentence. It involves the transfer of Athnach to אכלה. [52]…
1,427 wordsSECTION 103_The Fall Of Pride._
The mention of the queen-mother (ver. 18) along with the king appears to point unmistakably to the reign of Jehoiachin or Jechoniah. The allusion is compared with the threat of ch. xxii. 26: "I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee into another country." Like Josiah, this king was but eight years old when h…
1,061 wordsSECTION 104_The Fall Of Pride._
The verbal allusiveness of the opening section does not, according to Oriental taste, diminish the solemnity of the speaker; on the contrary, it tends to deepen the impression produced by his words. And perhaps there is a psychological reason for the fact, beyond the peculiar partiality of Oriental peoples for such dis…
821 wordsSECTION 105_The Fall Of Pride._
The exposition begins with the words, _Thus will I mar the great pride of Judah and of Jerusalem_! The spiritual uncleanness of the nation consisted in the proud self-will which turned a deaf ear to the warnings of Iahvah's prophets, and obstinately persisted in idolatry (ver. 10). It continues: _For as the girdle clea…
713 wordsSECTION 106_The Fall Of Pride._
But even yet one way of escape lies open. It is to sacrifice their pride, and yield to the will of Iahvah. _Hear ye, and give ear, be not haughty! for Iahvah hath spoken: give ye to Iahvah your God the glory, before it grow dark_ (or _He cause darkness_), _and before your feet stumble upon mountains of twilight; and_ _…
663 wordsSECTION 107_The Fall Of Pride._
4. From the sovereigns, the prophet turns to Jerusalem. _Lift up thine eyes_ (_O Jerusalem_[56]), _and behold them that came from the north! Where is the flock that was given to thee, thy beautiful sheep? What wilt thou say when He shall appoint over thee--nay, thou thyself hast spurred them against thyself!--lovers_ (…
745 wordsSECTION 108_The Fall Of Pride._
Not only must we abstain from treating a rhetorical figure as a colourless and rigorous proposition of mathematical science; not only must we allow for the irony and the exaggeration of the preacher: we must also remember his object, which is, if possible, to shock his hearers into a sense of their condition, and to aw…
538 wordsSECTION 109_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
[54] Also xlviii. 12; Lam. iv. 2; Isa. xxx. 14. [55] LXX. ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς ὑμῶν.. Read מֵרָאשֹׁתֵיכֶם = מֵרָאשׁיכֶם; and cf. Assyrian _rešu_, plur. _rešêtu_ (= ראשות). [56] For עיניכם we might read, with LXX., Vat., ם(ירושל) עיניך. The Arabic has Israel. But Vulg. and Targ. agree with the Q'rê, and take the verbs as plur.…
716 wordsSECTION 110_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
There lies at the heart of many of us a feeling, which has lurked there, more or less without our cognisance, ever since the childish days when the Old Testament was read at the mother's knee, and explained and understood in a manner proportioned to the faculties of childhood. When we hear the phrase "The Lord spake," …
849 wordsSECTION 111_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
The prayer is a humble confession of sin, an unreserved admission that the woes of man evince the righteousness of God. Unlike certain modern poets, who bewail the sorrows of the world as the mere infliction of a harsh and arbitrary and inevitable Destiny, Jeremiah makes no doubt that human sufferings are due to the wo…
652 wordsSECTION 112_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
"He now remembereth their guilt, And visiteth their trespasses. And Iahvah said unto me, Intercede thou not for this people for good! If they fast, I will not hearken unto their cry; And if they offer whole-offering and oblation, I will not accept their persons; But by the sword, the famine, and the plague, will…
660 wordsSECTION 113_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
Of the "false," that is, the common run of prophets, who were in league with the venal priesthood of the time, and no less worldly and self-seeking than their allies, we note that, as usual, they foretell what the people wishes to hear; "Peace (Prosperity), and Permanence," is the burden of their oracles. They knew tha…
670 wordsSECTION 114_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
"We know, Iahvah, our wickedness, our fathers' guilt; For we have trespassed toward Thee. Scorn Thou not, for Thy Name sake, Disgrace not Thy glorious throne! Remember, break not, Thy covenant with us! "Are there, in sooth, among the Nothings of the nations senders of rain? And is it the heavens that bestow the …
685 wordsSECTION 115_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
"To spoil the dead of weed Is sacrilege, and doth all sins exceed." And the destruction of Moab is decreed by the earlier prophet Amos, "because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime," thus violating a law universally recognised as binding upon the conscience of nations (Amos ii. 1). Cf. also Gen. xxiii. …
777 wordsSECTION 116_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
"'Twas thou that rejectedst Me; Backward wouldst thou wend: So I stretched forth My hand against thee, and wrought thee hurt; I wearied of relenting." The cup of national iniquity was full, and its baleful contents overflowed in a devastating flood. "In the gates of the land"--the point on the north-west frontier w…
698 wordsSECTION 117_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
There is a pause, and then the prophet vehemently pleads his own cause with Iahvah. Smarting with the sense of personal wrong, he urges that his suffering is for the Lord's own sake; that consciousness of the Divine calling has dominated his entire life, ever since his dedication to the prophetic office; and that the h…
740 wordsSECTION 118_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
The seeming injustice or indifference of Providence is a problem which recurs to thoughtful minds in all generations of men. "O, goddes cruel, that govérne This world with byndyng of youre word eterne ... What governance is in youre prescience That gilteles tormenteth innocence?... Alas! I see a serpent or a theif…
778 wordsSECTION 119_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
May we not recognise in this great fact of human nature a sure index of a great corresponding truth? Can we avoid taking it as a clear token of the reality of revelation; as a kind of immediate and spontaneous evidence on the part of nature that there is and always has been in this lower world some positive knowledge o…
681 wordsSECTION 120_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
Under these discouraging circumstances, men are fatally prone to seek escape from their self-involved dilemma, by a hardy denial of what their methods have failed to discover and their favourite theories to explain. The soul and God are treated as mere metaphysical expressions, or as popular designations of the unknown…
678 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.