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 crew turn drunken and mutinous, the ship is in unquestionable peril; but if they who have the guidance of the vessel in their hands, follow the vices of those whom they should command and control, wreck and ruin are assured.
The profligacy allowed by heathenism, against which the prophets cried in vain, is forcibly depicted in the words: _Why should I pardon thee? Thy sons have forsaken Me, and have sworn by them that are no gods: though I had bound them_ (to Me) _by oath,[27] they committed_ (spiritual) _adultery, and into the house of the Fornicatress_ (the idol's temple, where the harlot priestess sat for hire) _they would flock. Stallions roaming at large were they; neighing each to his neighbour's wife. Shall I not punish such offences, saith Iahvah; and shall not My soul avenge herself on such a nation as this?_ The cynical contempt of justice, the fraud and violence of those who were in haste to become rich, are set forth in the following: _Among My people are found godless men; one watcheth, as birdcatchers lurk; they have set the trap, they catch men. Like a cage filled with birds, so are their houses filled with fraud: therefore they are become great, and have amassed wealth. They are become fat, they are sleek; also they pass over_ (Isa. xl. 27) _cases_ (Ex. xxii. 9, xxiv. 14; cf. also 1 Sam. x. 2) _of wickedness--neglect to judge heinous crimes; the cause they judge not, the cause of the fatherless, to make it succeed; and the right of the needy they vindicate not_ (v. 26-28).
_She is the city doomed to be punished! she is all oppression within. As a spring poureth forth its waters, so she poureth forth her wickedness; violence and oppression resound in her; before Me continually is_ _sickness and wounds_ (vi. 6, 7). There would seem to be no hope for such a people and such a city. The prophet, indeed, cannot forget the claims of kindred, the thousand ties of blood and feeling that bind him to this perverse and sinful nation. Thrice, even in this dark forecast of destruction, he mitigates severity with the promise, _yet will I not make a full end_. The door is still left open, on the chance that some at least may be won to penitence. But the chance was small. The difficulty was, and the prophet's yearning tenderness towards his people could not blind him to the fact, that all the lessons of God's providence were lost upon this reprobate race: _They have belied the Lord, and said, it is not He; neither shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword and famine._ The prophets, they insisted, were wrong both in the significance which they attributed to occasional calamities, and in the disasters, which they announced as imminent: _The prophets will become wind, and the Word of God is not in them; so will it turn out with them_. It was, therefore, wholly futile to appeal to their better judgment against themselves: _Thus said Iahvah, Stop on the ways, and consider, and ask after the eternal paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and find rest for your soul: and they said, We will not walk therein. And I will set over you watchmen_ (the prophets); _hearken ye to the call of the trumpet!_ (the warning note of prophecy) _and they said We will not hearken._ From such wilful hardness and impenitence, disdaining correction and despising reproof, God appeals to the heathen themselves, and to the dumb earth, to attest the justice of His sentence of destruction against this people: _Therefore, hear, O ye nations, and know, and testify what is among_ _them! Hear, O earth! Lo, I am about to bring evil upon this people, the fruit of their own devisings; for unto My words they have not hearkened, and as for Mine instruction, they have rejected it._ Their doom was inevitable, for it was the natural and necessary consequence of their own doings: _Thine own way and thine Own deeds have brought about these evils for thee; this is thine own evil; verily, it is bitter, verily, it reacheth unto thine heart_. The discourse ends with a despairing glance at the moral reprobation of Israel. _An assayer did I make thee among My people, a refiner_ (reading _mec̰ārēf_, Mal. iii. 2, 3), _that thou mightest know and assay their kind_ (lit. _way_). Jeremiah's call had been to "sit as a refiner and purifier of silver" in the name of his God: in other words, to separate the good elements from the bad in Israel, and to gather around himself the nucleus of a people "prepared for Iahvah." But his work had been vain. In vain had the prophetic fire burnt within him; in vain had the vehemency of the spirit fanned the flame; the Divine word--that solvent of hearts--had been expended in vain; no good metal could come of an ore so utterly base. _They are all the worst_ (1 Ki. xx. 43) _of rebels_ (or, _deserters to the rebels_), _going about with slander; they are brass and iron; they all deal corruptly.[28] The bellows blow; the lead_ (used for fining the ore) _is consumed by the fire; in vain do they go on refining_ (or, _does the refiner refine_[29]); _and the wicked are not separated. Refuse silver are they called, for Iahvah hath refused them._