JEREMIAH xii. 5 49
then how canst thou contend with horses ? and though in a land of peace thou art secure, yet how wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan ? "
The phrase "the pride," or "the swelling of Jordan" may mean either of two things, perhaps both. It may refer to the floods which follow the rainy season, when the river overflows its banks, or it may simply be an allusion to the wide tract of wild, marshy land along those banks with reeds and undergrowth, in which lurked dangerous beasts of prey. Thus we read in chapters xlix. and 1. : " Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan." Apparently the swelling of Jordan was a spot dangerous to travellers, and much dreaded in consequence. The thought of the text, therefore, is this : If you cannot race against men on foot without becoming exhausted, how can you expect to prevail when you have to race against horsemen ? At home, and in time of peace, you may feel safe, but how will you behave when you have to breast Jordan in full flood, or fight for your life against the fierce and terrible creatures that prowl along its banks waiting for what they may devour ? In other words, there come crises in life when all our moral reserves have to be summoned to enable us to hold our own against the forces of overwhelming evil. Well is it for us in that day if we are not found unprepared, but are equal to the demands of the dreadful occasion. History records that the man who first asked himself this question in the words of the text was able to answer it sublimely in the hour of trial.
^| The Jordan is from 90 to 100 feet broad, a rapid, muddy water with a zigzag current. The depth varies from 3 feet at some fords to as much as 10 or 12. In the sixty-five miles the descent is 610 feet, or an average of 9 feet a mile — not a great fall, for the Spey, and the Dee from Balmoral to Aberdeen, both average about 14 feet a mile. But near the Lake of Galilee the fall is over 40 feet a mile, and this impetus given to a large volume of water, down a channel in which it cannot sprawl, and few rocks retard, induces a great rapidity of current. This has given the river its name : Jordan means the Down-comer. The swiftness is rendered more dangerous by the muddy bed and curious zigzag current which will easily sweep a man from the side into the centre of the stream. In April the waters rise to the wider bed, but for the most part of the year they keep to the jer.-mal. — 4
5o THE PRIDE OF JORDAN
channel of 90 feet. Here, with infrequent interruptions of shingle, mostly silent and black in spite of its speed, but now and then breaking into praise and whitening into foam, Jordan scours along, muddy between banks of mud, careless of beauty, careless of life, intent only upon its own work, which for ages by the decree of the Almighty has been that of separation.
Down the broad valley [called a wilderness in the New Testament] there curves and twists a deeper, narrower bed — perhaps 150 feet deeper, and from 200 yards to a mile broad. Its banks are mostly of white marl, and within these it is packed with tamarisks and other semi-tropical trees and tangled bush. To those who look down from the hills along any great stretch of the valley, this Zor, as it is called, trails and winds like an enormous green serpent, more forbidding in its rankness than any open water could be, however foul or broken. This jungle marks the Jordan's wider bed, the breadth to which the river rises when in flood. In the Old Testament it appears as the "Pride of Jordan," and always as a symbol of trouble and danger. " Though in a land of peace thou be secure, what wilt thou do in the Pride of Jordan? He shall come up like a lion from the Pride of Jordan." It was long supposed that this referred to the spring floods of the river, and it is given in the English version as " swelling," but the word means " pride," and as one text speaks of the " pride of Jordan being spoiled," the phrase most certainly refers to the jungle, whose green serpentine ribbon looks so rich from the hills above. In that case we ought to translate it the "luxuriance" or "rankness" of Jordan. Though lions have ceased from the land, this jungle is still a covert for wild beasts, and Jeremiah's contrast of it with a " land of peace " is even more suitable to a haunted jungle than to an inundation. But it is floods which have made the rankness, they fill this wider bed of Jordan every year; and the floor of the jungle is covered with deposits of mud and gravel, with dead weed, driftwood and the exposed roots of trees.1
2. Jeremiah needed to be braced. He is taught the need of endurance. It is a strange cure for cowardice, a strange remedy for weakness ; yet it is effective. It gives stiffening to the soul. The tear-stained face is lifted up calm once more. A new resolu- tion creeps into the eye to prove worthy of the new responsibility. God appeals to Jeremiah's strength, not to his weakness. "By God's grace I will fight, and fighting fall if need be. By 1 G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 486, 484.