The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 127

people, this carelessness about truth, ho chastises them to make them feel their wrong attend to his will, And alter their deceiving ways so as to correspond with it. They ar~ told beforehand what is coming, and the very instrument of chastisement is displayed before them. They had no ground for saying, "Suffering came upon us, and we knew not why it ea.me." We know that Jeremiah's words must have been very pungent and irritating, and the irritating element was j11st this, that he persistently spoke of conquest, desolation, and exile as lying in the imme<liate future for his fellow-country- men. And here Jeremiah, with the prophet's melancholy privilege, sets forth the future as present. The stroke has fallen; the suffering, the loss, the humiliation, are keen ; but there is no understanding in the mind, and no sign of repentance and return. Their faces are harder than the rock. If some sculptor could put into a marble face all that outwardly marks the stubborn mind, that would be the expression of Israel now towards Jehovah. No subdued look in the eye; no irrepressible quivering of the lips preliminary to saying, "Father, I have sinned .•. and am no more worthy to be called thy son" (eh. iii. 4). II. THE REASON WHICH THE PROPHET ADVANCES FOR THIS STUBBORNNESS. Remember what we have said already-and let it be said a.gain. for it is essential to a. right under- standing of the passage-that the purpose of the chastisement was distinctly set forth beforehand. The people had not to grope in the dark as to the reason of their suffering. There was no room for disputing, if only Jeremiah were accepted as indeed a prophet of Jehovah. And to Jeremiah himself the intention of the chastisement was, of course, plain by the very clearest light. And, since it is natural for us to suspect that what is plain to us should be plain to others, Jeremiah could see only one reason for this distressing want of recipiency. '!'hose who are so stubborn he thinks can be but a part of Israel, the poor and foolish, the degraded, brutalized residuum of the nation. 'l'hus Jeremiah illustrates, by this interposed conjecture of his, a very common and perilous tendency among thinking men. We may not be unwilling-indeed, we may only be too eager-to admit the degradation of a large part of mankind, and their stolid indilTercnce to all that is noble, refined, and truly humane. But then, on the other hand, there is an excessive exaltation of. the natural man. Genius, intellect, success in research and discovery, such as that of a Newton and a Faraday-these are glorified beyond their due. It is forgotten that while men have natural powers whereby they can climb very high, they must come to God in humility and ask for wings of faith if they are to discover the highest kind of truth, the truth to which man must soar rather than climb. Jeremiah reckons that what he certainly cannot find in some he will assuredly find in others. He will turn away from the ignorant rabble, and go to the men of substance, the men with responsibility, such, doubtless, as the king and the princes, the priests and the prophets. But he goes only to fail, only to discover that the wise men of this world are as little disposed to attend to the preaching of the prophet as Paul afterwards discovered them to be to the preaching of the apostle. lll. And so we come to THE REAL REASON OF THI!: BTUBnORNNESS. It is something which lies in universal sinful human nature, apart from o.ny special defects or special excellences. The stubbornness may sometimes suddenly vanish where we should expect it to continue, and where we should expect it to vanish it may not only continue but become to all appearance invincible. 'l'he heart of unbelief is found in every rank. The experience of Jesus would seem t.o have been that the poor and the foolish, as Jeremiah would have classified them, were more ready to turn to him than the great. An excellent commentary on the passage we have been consiclering is to be found in the first and second chapters of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians.-Y. Ver. 10.-The vineyard spoiled because of the degenerate branches. I. LooK AT TllE FIGURE WHICH UNDERLIES THUi EXHORTATION. We find in othet· parts ol Scripture passages curiously rich in illustration of the emphatic exhortation here. Turn to Isa. v. 1-7: hero is presented to us the picture of a vineyard pro- tected by a fence against marauderR and wild beasts, planted with the choicest vine, and tilled in the most complete nnd careful manner. llut when the vineyard, in spit{ of all care, only yields wild grapes, then the hcrlgo and the wall are taken nwa.y and the cultivated land lapses into wil,lcrness. Ps. lxxx. contnins a very slruil 1r p,ls- sage, save that it is the language of nppral from a suffering people instead ol a waruing 124 THE DOOR. OF 'l'HE rROPHE'!' JEREMtAH. (,·11. v. 1-31.