The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 242

CHAPTER IX. repetition of himself in eh. xxiii. 10, "Their valour is-untruth." A less pointed form Ver. 1.-The Hebrew more correctly of the same figurative statement is that of attaches thiJ! verse to eh. viii. Oh that my the psalmist in Ps. lxiv. 3. Upon the earth; head were waters, etc. I A quaint conceit, it rather, in the land. The Authorized Version may be said. But "if we have been going pa.ye very little regard to the context in its on pace for pace with the passion before, this rendering of the o.mbiguous word erei:, sudden conversion of a strong-felt metaphor Ver. 4.-Take ye heed every one of his into something to be actually realized in neighbour. Such was the result of clinging nature, is striclly o.nd strikingly natural." So to an unprogressive religion-one which Bishop Doane, quoting, byway of illustration, refused to be spirituo.lized by the prophets. Shakespeare's 'Richard II.,' "meditating Certainly, if the established religion wo.s so on hiJ! own utter annihilation ae to royalty:" inefficacious, it was self.conderuued. Here we find the prophet depicting a state of "Oh that I were a mockery king of snow, society in which the elementary bonds o.re To melt before the sun of Bolingbroke I" already dissolved, and suspicion becomes the The tone of complaint continues in the no.tural attitude even of o. good mo.n. We following verse, though the subject is find a very similar picture in the last chapter different. of Micah-a c!Japter, it is true, which stands Vere. 2-22.-Complaint of the treachery apart from the rest of the book, !lS it implies and folly of the people: lamentation over a greater development of wickedness than their consequences. the rest of Micah and the contemporary Ver. 2.-A lodging ple.oe of wayfaring prophecies of Isaiah would leo.d us to expect. men; a "khan" or "caravanserai," to use Are these prophetic descriptions just and the terms now so familiar from Eastern accurate? We mo.y allow something, no travel, where "wayfaring men" could_ at doubt, for the warmth of feeling natural to least find shelter, o.nd the means ofpreparmg every human preacher, even under the influ- 1beir provisions. Comp., besides the parallel ence of inspiro.tion ; but we must not allow passage in Pe. Iv. 6, 7, our own Cowper's ourselves to explain away the obvious moan- fine reminii,cence of Jeremiah: "Oh fur a ing of the prophets. The lo.tter and their lodge in some vast wilderness I" etc.. :A,dul- disciples were "the salt" of their oountry; terers, ... treacheroua men (see oh. 11. 20; and in proportion as their influence declined, iii. 8, 9; iii. 20; V, 11). the natural effects of a non-moral, purely Ver. 3.-And they bend their tongues, etc. : ritualistic religion showed themselves on a rather, and they bend their tongue as their larger scale. Every brother; i.e. every bow offal,,ehood, and they we not their valour fellow-tribesman or follow-citizen. Will in (literally, according to) good/aith. There utterly supplant. There is nothing in the is " liBA-\, at.t-m irony in these words, which context to suggest an allusion to Gen. i:xvii. remind ue of Isaiah's (v. 22) " valiant men- 36 (Jacob). The verb has its oommon sense for drinking wine," and of our own propllet'1 of deceiving. The teIJBe should be the ou, IL 1-26.J THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 241