PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositor's Bible: The Book of Jeremiah, Chapters XXI.-LII.
Bennett, W. H. (William Henry) · 101,314 words · 154 reading sections
_Persistent Apostasy_
Apostasy from the Mosaic and prophetic religion was naturally accompanied by social corruption. It has recently been maintained that the universal instinct which inclines man to be religious is not necessarily moral, and that it is the distinguishing note of the true faith, or of religion proper, that it enlists this s…
689 wordsSECTION 122_Ruin_
[285] Hosea ix. 7-9: cf. Judges xix. 22. [286] Hosea vi. 9. [287] Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is excluded from this statement. [288] xxxii. 34, 35, repeating vii. 30, 31, with slight variations. A similar statement occurs in xix. 4, 5. Cf. 2 Kings xvi. 3, xxi. 6, xxiii. 10; also Giesebrecht and Orelli _in loco_. [289] Exod. x…
826 wordsSECTION 123_Ruin_
But, until the catastrophe is clearly inevitable, the Christian, both as patriot and as churchman,[313] will be quick to cherish all those symptoms of higher life which indicate that society is still a living organism. He will zealously believe and teach that even a small leaven may leaven the whole mass. He will remem…
739 wordsSECTION 124_Ruin_
Nebuchadnezzar is first[321] introduced in the fourth year of Jehoiakim; after the decisive defeat of Pharaoh Necho by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, Jeremiah prophesied the devastation of Judah by the victor; it is also prophesied that he is to carry Jehoiachin away captive,[322] and similar prophecies were repeated du…
662 wordsSECTION 125_Ruin_
Jeremiah and his prophecies were no mean part of the terror. To the devotees of Baal and Moloch Jeremiah must have appeared in much the same light as the fanatic whose ravings added to the horrors of the Plague of London, while the very sanity and sobriety of his utterances carried a conviction of their fatal truth. W…
708 wordsSECTION 126_Ruin_
Part of the burden of Jeremiah's prophecy, one of the sayings constantly on his lips, was that the city would be taken and destroyed by fire.[336] The Temple would be laid in ruins like the ancient sanctuary of Israel at Shiloh.[337] The palaces[338] of the king and princes would be special marks for the destructive fu…
716 wordsSECTION 127Footnotes:
We have now traced the details of the prophet's message of doom. Fulfilment followed fast upon the heels of prediction, till Jeremiah rather interpreted than foretold the thick-coming disasters. When his book was compiled, the prophecies were already, as they are now, part of the history of the last days of Judah. The …
340 wordsSECTION 128_Restoration--I. The Symbol_
xxxii "And I bought the field of Hanameel."--JER. xxxii. 9. When Jeremiah was first called to his prophetic mission, after the charge "to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to overthrow," there were added--almost as if they were an afterthought--the words "to build and to plant."[346] Throughout a large p…
745 wordsSECTION 129_Restoration--I. The Symbol_
In this uncertain frame of mind Hanameel found his cousin, when he came to demand that Jeremiah should buy his field. Perhaps the prisoner found his kinsman's presence a temporary mitigation of his gloomy surroundings, and was inspired with more cheerful and kindly feelings. The solemn and formal appeal to fulfil a kin…
1,189 wordsSECTION 130_Restoration--I. The Symbol_
The earthen vessel would preserve the record from being spoilt by the damp; similarly bottles are used nowadays to preserve the documents that are built up into the memorial stones of public buildings. In both cases the object is that "they may continue many days." So far the prophet had proceeded in simple obedience …
658 wordsSECTION 131_Restoration--I. The Symbol_
Thus the symbol is expounded: Israel's tenure of the Promised Land will survive the Captivity; the Jews will return to resume their inheritance, and will again deal with the old fields and vineyards and oliveyards, according to the solemn forms of ancient custom. The familiar classical parallel to this incident is fou…
395 wordsSECTION 132_Restoration--Ii. The New Israel_
[346] i. 10. [347] xiv. 8, xvii. 13. [348] Amos v. 18, 20. [349] xxxvii. 12 (R.V.). [350] 1 Kings xxi. 3. [351] Lev. xxv. 25, Law of Holiness; Ruth iv. [352] 2 Sam. xxiv. 24: cf. 1 Chron. xxi. 25, where the price is six hundred shekels of _gold_. It is scarcely necessary to point out that "threshing-floor" (Sam.)…
689 wordsSECTION 133_Restoration--Ii. The New Israel_
Elsewhere again Jeremiah connects his promise with the clause in his original commission "to build and to plant":[363] "I will set My eyes upon them (the captives) for good, and I will bring them again to this land; and I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up."[364] As in…
727 wordsSECTION 134_Restoration--Ii. The New Israel_
Jeremiah was fond of speaking of the leaders of Judah as shepherds. We have had occasion already[374] to consider his controversy with the "shepherds" of his own time. In his picture of the New Israel he uses the same figure. In denouncing the evil shepherds, he predicts that, when the remnant of Jehovah's flock is bro…
705 wordsSECTION 135_Restoration--Ii. The New Israel_
Jehovah's own peculiar flock, His Chosen People, shall be fruitful and multiply according to the primæval blessing; under their new shepherds they shall no more fear nor be dismayed, neither shall any be lacking.[383] Jeremiah recurs again and again to the quiet, the restfulness, the freedom from fear and dismay of the…
542 wordsSECTION 136Footnotes:
[361] Vatke and Stade reject chapters xxx., xxxi., xxxiii., but they are accepted by Driver, Cornill, Kautzsch (for the most part). Giesebrecht assigns them partly to Baruch and partly to a later editor. It is on this account that the full exposition of certain points in xxxii. and elsewhere has been reserved for the p…
556 wordsSECTION 137_Restoration--Iii. Reunion_
xxxi. "I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast."--JER. xxxi. 27. In his prophecies of restoration, Jeremiah continually couples together Judah and Israel.[392] Israel, it is true, often stands for the whole elect nation, and is so used by Jeremiah. After…
672 wordsSECTION 138_Restoration--Iii. Reunion_
Jehovah speaks from his ancient dwelling-place in Jerusalem, and, when the Virgin of Israel hears Him in her distant exile, she answers:-- "From afar hath Jehovah appeared unto me (saying), With My ancient love do I love thee; Therefore My lovingkindness is enduring toward thee."[400] His love is as old as the Exod…
676 wordsSECTION 139_Restoration--Iii. Reunion_
Jeremiah does not dwell, in any grasping sacerdotal spirit, on the contributions which these reconciled schismatics would pay to the Temple revenues, but rather delights to make mention of their share in the common blessings of God's obedient children. "They shall be like a well-watered garden; they shall no more be …
696 wordsSECTION 140_Restoration--Iii. Reunion_
The image of the calf is another reminiscence of Hosea, with whom Israel figures as a "backsliding heifer" and Ephraim as a "heifer that has been broken in and loveth to tread out the corn"; though apparently in Hosea Ephraim is broken in to wickedness. Possibly this figure was suggested by the calves at Bethel and Dan…
793 wordsSECTION 141_Restoration--Iii. Reunion_
"Hereupon," saith the prophet, "I awaked and looked about me, and felt that my sleep had been pleasant to me." The vision had come to him, in some sense, as a dream. Zechariah[415] had to be aroused, like a man wakened out of his sleep, in order to receive the Divine message; and possibly Zechariah's sleep was the ecst…
714 wordsSECTION 142_Restoration--Iii. Reunion_
Thus various causes contributed to produce a kindlier feeling between the survivors of the catastrophes of Samaria and Jerusalem; and from henceforth those of the ten tribes who found their way back to Palestine lived in brotherly union with the other Jews. And, on the whole, the Jews have since remained united both as…
653 wordsSECTION 143Footnotes:
It is a melancholy reflection that Jeremiah's effort at reconciliation came too late, when the tribes whom it sought to reunite were hopelessly set asunder. Reconciliation, which involves a kind of mutual repentance, can ill afford to be deferred to the eleventh hour. In the last agonies of the Greek Empire, there was …
547 wordsSECTION 144_Restoration--Iv. The New Covenant_
xxxi. 31-38: cf. Hebrews viii. "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah."--JER. xxxi. 31. The religious history of Israel in the Old Testament has for its epochs a series of covenants: Jehovah declared His gracious purposes towards His people, and made known the conditions upon whi…
667 wordsSECTION 145_Restoration--Iv. The New Covenant_
The rendering of the next clause is uncertain, and, in any case, the reason given for setting aside the old covenant is not quite what might have been expected. The Authorised and Revised Versions translate: "Which My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them";[429] thus introducing that Old Testament fi…
785 wordsSECTION 146_Restoration--Iv. The New Covenant_
The next verse explains the character of the New Covenant; once Jehovah wrote His law on tables of stone, but now:-- "This is the covenant which I will conclude with the House of Israel after those days--it is the utterance of Jehovah-- I will put My law within them, and will write it upon their heart; And I will…
655 wordsSECTION 147_Restoration--Iv. The New Covenant_
The novelty of Jeremiah's teaching is that these principles are made central in the New Covenant. Even Deuteronomy, which approaches so closely to the teaching of Jeremiah, was a new edition of the Covenant of the Exodus, an attempt to secure a righteous life by exhaustive rules and by external sanctions. Jeremiah had …
431 wordsSECTION 148Footnotes:
[423] Exod. xxiv. 7. [424] _I.e._ in the sections generally acknowledged. [425] Hosea ii. 18, vi. 7, viii. 1. [426] xxxiv. [427] Cf. xxxiv. 14 with Deut. xv. 12 and Exod. xxi. 2. [428] Cf. Prof. Adeney's _Ezra_, _Nehemiah_, etc., in this series. [429] So also Kautzsch, Reuss, Sugfried, and Stade. The same phrase …
368 wordsSECTION 149_Restoration--V. Review_
xxx.-xxxiii. In reviewing these chapters we must be careful not to suppose that Jeremiah knew all that would ultimately result from his teaching. When he declared that the conditions of the New Covenant would be written, not in a few parchments, but on every heart, he laid down a principle which involved the most char…
664 wordsSECTION 150_Restoration--V. Review_
The Reunion of long-divided Israel is for the most part a misnomer; there was no healing of the wound, and the offending member was cut off. Even now, when the leaven of the Kingdom has been working in the lump of humanity for nearly two thousand years, any suggestion that these chapters are realised in Modern Christi…
683 wordsSECTION 151_Restoration--V. Review_
If even Judaism did not altogether fail to conform itself to Jeremiah's picture of the New Israel, clearly Christianity must have shaped itself still more fully according to his pattern. In the Old Testament both the idea and the name of a "New Covenant,"[449] superseding that of Moses, are peculiar to Jeremiah, and th…
664 wordsSECTION 152_Jeremiah And Christ_
One group of Jeremiah's prophecies has indeed been entirely fulfilled.[452] In Christ, God has raised up a Branch of Righteousness unto David, and through Him judgment and righteousness are wrought in the earth. [442] xxxii. 40. [443] xxxi. 26. [444] Heb. ix. 10. [445] Gal. iv. 24, 25. [446] _Histoire du Peuple d'…
873 wordsSECTION 153_Jeremiah And Christ_
In the Christian Church, notwithstanding the lack of popular sympathy, earnest students of the prophet's life and words have ranked him with some of the noblest characters of history. A modern writer enumerates as amongst those with whom he has been compared Cassandra, Phocion, Demosthenes, Dante, Milton, and Savonarol…
805 wordsSECTION 154*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook Expositor'S Bible: The Book Of Jeremiah, Chapters Xxi.-Lii. ***
Thus when we confess that the Church is built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, we have to recognise that to this foundation Jeremiah's ministry supplied indispensable elements, alike by its positive and in its negative parts. This fact was manifest even to Renan, who fully shared the popular prejudices…
382 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.