PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Prophecies of Jeremiah
Ball, C. J. (Charles James) · 129,298 words · 160 reading sections
_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
How, it may be asked, can we really think of his Maker being cut off from man, or man from his Maker? God were not God, if He left man to himself. But not only are His wisdom, justice and love manifested forth in the beneficent arrangements of the world in which we find ourselves; not only is He "kind to the unjust and…
693 wordsSECTION 122_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
The "deaths of agony" seem to indicate the pestilence, which always ensued upon the scarcity and vile quality of food, and the confinement of multitudes within the narrow bounds of a besieged city (see Josephus' well-known account of the last siege of Jerusalem). The attitude of solitary watchfulness and strict separa…
740 wordsSECTION 123_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
In like manner, the prophet is forbidden to enter as guest "the house of feasting." He is not to be seen at the marriage-feast,--that occasion of highest rejoicing, the very type and example of innocent and holy mirth; to testify by his abstention that the day of judgment was swiftly approaching, which would desolate a…
716 wordsSECTION 124_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
An interruption is now supposed, such as may often have occurred in the course of Jeremiah's public utterances. The audience demands to know why all this evil is ordained to fall upon them. _What is our guilt and what our trespass, that we have trespassed against Iahvah our God?_ The answer is a twofold accusation. The…
680 wordsSECTION 125_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
The prophet's dark horizon is here apparently lit up for a moment by a gleam of hope. The fourteenth and fifteenth verses, however, with their beautiful promise of restoration, really belong to another oracle, whose prevailing tones are quite different from the present gloomy forecast of retribution (xxiii. 7 _sqq._). …
654 wordsSECTION 126_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
The measure of the penalty is now assigned. "And I will repay first the double of their guilt and their trespass For that they profaned My land with the carcases of their loathly offerings, And their abominations filled Mine heritage."[69] "I will repay _first_." The term "first," which has occasioned much perple…
771 wordsSECTION 127_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
A rude awakening awaits them. Once more will Iahvah interpose to save them from their infatuation. "This time" they shall be taught to know the nothingness of idols, not by the voice of prophetic pleadings, not by the fervid teachings of the Book of the Law, but by the sword of the enemy, by the rapine and ruin, in whi…
717 wordsSECTION 128_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
It is difficult to fix the date of this short lyrical outpouring, if it be assumed, with Hitzig, that it is an independent whole. He refers it to the year B.C. 602, after Jehoiakim had revolted from Babylon--"a proceeding which made a future captivity well-nigh certain, and made it plain that the sin of Judah remained …
650 wordsSECTION 129_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
There seems no way out of the difficulty, but either to date the piece much earlier, assigning it, _e.g._, to the time of the prophet's earnest preaching in connexion with the reforming movement of Josiah, when the living generation would certainly remember the human sacrifices under Manasseh; or else to construe the p…
912 wordsSECTION 130_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
The internal evidence of the fragment before us, so far as any such is traceable, appears to point to the same period as what precedes, the time immediately subsequent to the death of Jehoiakim. The curse pronounced upon trusting in man may be an allusion to that king's confidence in the Egyptian alliance, which probab…
836 wordsSECTION 131_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
It is not for man, who cannot see the heart, to pronounce upon the degree of his fellow's guilt. All sins, all crimes, are in this respect relative to the intensity of passion, the force of circumstances, the nature of surroundings, the comparative stress of temptation. Murder and adultery are absolute crimes in the ey…
661 wordsSECTION 132_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
"riches have their proper stint In the contented mind, not mint;" and that "those who have the itch Of craving more, are never rich;" and who has missed all apprehension of the grand secret that "Wealth cannot make a _life_, but love." From the vanity of earthly thrones, whether of Egypt or of Judah, thrones who…
913 wordsSECTION 133_The Drought And Its Moral Implications._
When the prophet adds: "and the ill day I desired not," some think that he means the day when he surrendered to the Divine calling, and accepted his mission. But it seems to suit the context better, if we understand by the "ill day" the day of wrath whose coming was the burden of his preaching; the day referred to in t…
730 wordsSECTION 134Footnotes:
[57] HITZIG: (1) xiv. 1-9, 19-22: "Lament and Prayer on occasion of a Drought." (2) xiv. 10-18. "Oracle against the false Prophets and the misguided People" (Hitzig mistakes the import of the phrase לנוע אהבו כן, "_Thus_ have they loved to wander," ver. 10; supposing that the "thus" refers to xiii. 27, and that xiv. 1-…
682 wordsSECTION 135Footnotes:
[69] For the construction, cf. Gen. i. 22; Jer. li. 11. Or "With their abominations they filled, etc.," a double accusative. [70] _i.e._, Loose thine hold of ... let go ... release. Read ידך for ובך. The uses of שִמט "to throw down," "let fall," resemble those of the Greek ἵημι and its compounds. I corrected the passa…
353 wordsSECTION 136_The Sabbath--A Warning._
JEREMIAH xvii. 19-27. _"Thus said Iahvah unto me: Go and stand in the gate of Benjamin, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and whereby they go out; and in all the gates of Jerusalem. And say unto them, Hear ye the word of Iahvah, O kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all inhabitants of Jerusalem, who come in by these …
676 wordsSECTION 137_The Sabbath--A Warning._
The circumstances of the present oracle are these. Jeremiah is inwardly bidden to station himself first in "the gate of the sons of the people"--a gate of Jerusalem which we cannot further determine, as it is not mentioned elsewhere under this designation, but which appears to have been a special resort of the masses o…
752 wordsSECTION 138_The Sabbath--A Warning._
It is hardly likely that, when law or custom compelled covetous dealers to cease operations on the Sabbath, and buying and selling, the principal business of the time, was suspended, the artisans of town or country would be allowed by public opinion to ply their everyday tasks. Accordingly, when Jeremiah adds to his pr…
925 wordsSECTION 139_The Sabbath--A Warning._
The Sabbath observance prescribed by the old Law, and recommended by Jeremiah, was indeed a very different thing from the pedantic and burdensome obligation which it afterwards became in the hands of scribes and Pharisees. These, with their long catalogue of prohibited works, and their grotesque methods of evading the …
887 wordsSECTION 140_The Sabbath--A Warning._
To those who believe that the prophets enjoyed a higher and less fallible guidance than human fancy, reflexion, experience; who recognise in the general aim and effect of their teaching, as contrasted with that of other teachers, the best proof that their minds were subject to an influence and a spirit transcending the…
468 wordsSECTION 141_The Divine Potter._
[78] The context is against supposing, with Graf, that the prophet's call "hear ye!" extends also to princes yet unborn (cf. xiii. 13; xxv. 18 is different). If, however, it be thought that Jeremiah addressed not the sovereigns personally, but only the people passing in and out of the gates; then the expression becomes…
927 wordsSECTION 142_The Divine Potter._
Compared with the mysterious Power which evinces itself continuously in the apparent chaos of conflicting events, man's free will is like the eddy whirling round upon the bosom of a majestic river as it floats irresistibly onward to its goal, bearing the tiny vortex along with it. Man's power of self-determination no m…
664 wordsSECTION 143_The Divine Potter._
"Return ye, I pray you, each from his evil way, And make good your ways and your doings!" If the prophetic warning fulfil its purpose, and the nation repent, then as in the case of Nineveh, which repented at the preaching of Jonah, the sentence of destruction is revoked, and the doomed nation is granted a new lease o…
764 wordsSECTION 144_The Divine Potter._
From this point of view, we may fairly ask, what difference it makes whether the prophet affirm that Iahvah repents of retributive designs, when a nation repents of its sins, or that a nation's repentance will be followed by the restoration of temporal prosperity. It is a mere matter of statement; and the former way of…
919 wordsSECTION 145_The Divine Potter._
And they will say, Hopeless! for we will follow after our own devices, and will each practise the stubbornness of his own evil heart. Therefore thus hath Iahvah said: 1. "Ask ye now among the heathen, Who hath heard the like? The virgin (daughter) of Israel Hath done a very horrible thing. 2. "Doth the snow of L…
1,019 wordsSECTION 146_The Divine Potter._
So far as his immediate hearers were concerned, the effect of the prophet's words was exactly what had been anticipated (ver. 18; cf. ver. 12). Jeremiah's preaching was a ministry of hardening, in a far more complete sense than Isaiah's had been. On the present occasion, the popular obduracy and unbelief evinced itself…
666 wordsSECTION 147_The Divine Potter._
Once more he lays his cause before the one impartial Judge; the one Being who is exalted above all passion, and therefore sees the truth as it is. "Hearken Thou, O Iahvah, unto me, And hear Thou the voice of mine adversaries. Should evil be recompensed for good? For they have digged a pit for my life. Remember my …
737 wordsSECTION 148_The Divine Potter._
While we admit that no Christian may ordinarily pray for the annihilation of any but spiritual enemies, we must remember that no Christian can possibly occupy the same peculiar position as a prophet of the Old Covenant; and we may fairly ask whether any who may incline to judge harshly of Jeremiah on the ground of pass…
439 wordsSECTION 149_The Broken Vessel--A Symbol Of Judgment._
[80] Instead of שדי מצור "from the rock of the field," I have ventured to read שדי מצוף (Lam. iii. 54; Deut. xi. 4; 2 Kings vi. 6). For ינתשו "plucked up" "uprooted," which is inappropriate in connexion with water, Schnurrer's ינתשו "dried up" (Isa. xix. 5; Jer. li. 30), is probably right. In the second couplet, I read…
951 wordsSECTION 150_The Broken Vessel--A Symbol Of Judgment._
_And break thou the bottle, to the eyes of the men that_ _go with thee, and say unto them: Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth; So will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh the potter's vessel so that it cannot be mended again! Thus will I do to this place, saith Iahvah, and to the inhabitants thereof and make_ (inf…
784 wordsSECTION 151_The Broken Vessel--A Symbol Of Judgment._
It is worth while, by the way, to notice who those companions were. They were certain of "the elders of the people" and of the "the elders of the priests." Jeremiah, it seems, was no wild revolutionary dreamer and schemer, whose hand and voice were against all established authority in Church and State. This was not the…
746 wordsSECTION 152_The Broken Vessel--A Symbol Of Judgment._
Jeremiah knew his countrymen well. No phrase could have better described the resolute obstinacy of the national character. How were the headstrong self-will, the inveterate sensuality, the blind tenacity of fanatical and non-moral conceptions which characterized this people, to be purified and made serviceable in the i…
693 wordsSECTION 153_The Broken Vessel--A Symbol Of Judgment._
If we reverence those Scriptures of the Old Testament to which our Lord and His Apostles made their constant appeal, we shall keep steadily before our minds the fact that, in the estimation of a prophet like Jeremiah, the sin of sins, the sin that involved the ruin of Israel and Judah, was the sin of associating other …
504 wordsSECTION 154_Jeremiah Under Persecution._
[81] LXX. ἀπὸ τῶν ἀκαθαρσιῶν αὐτῶν makes it possible that they read מטמאים which would represent מְטֻמֶּאִים "defiled." JEREMIAH xx. The prophet has now to endure something more than a scornful rejection of his message. _And Pashchur ben Immer the priest_ (_he was chief officer in the house of Iahvah_) _heard Jeremia…
957 wordsSECTION 155_Jeremiah Under Persecution._
_And for thyself, Pashchur, and all that dwell in thine house, ye shall depart among the captives; and to Babylon thou shall come, and there thou shalt die, and there be buried, thyself and all thy lovers, to whom thou hast prophesied with untruth_, or rather _by the Lie_, i.e., _by the Baal_ (ii. 8, xxiii. 13, cf. xii…
750 wordsSECTION 156_Jeremiah Under Persecution._
1. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born! The day that my mother bare me, Let it not be blest! 2. Cursed be the man who told the glad tidings to my father, 'There is born to thee a male child;' Who made him rejoice greatly. 3. And let that man become like the cities that Iahweh overthrew, without relenting, And…
658 wordsSECTION 157_Jeremiah Under Persecution._
4. "For I have heard the defaming of many, the terror on every side;[85] All the men of my friendship are watching for my fall; 'Perchance he will be enticed, and we shall prevail over him, And take our revenge of him.' 5. "Yet Iahvah is with me as a dread warrior, Therefore my pursuers shall stumble and not prev…
710 wordsSECTION 158_Jeremiah Under Persecution._
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…
775 wordsSECTION 159Footnotes:
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 …
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.