The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 385

Ver. 9.-The d<llT'kened home. "She that ha.th borne ••• was yet day." Perhaps in all the range of human sorrows there is none greater than that which befalls a home when the dearly beloved mother of many children, yet needing sorely her care, is early cut off. Such a piteous case is described here. The prophet, bewailin" the coming calamities of his country, adopts the heartbroken language of a hu;band bitterly mourning the death of his wife and the mother of his many children. He seems to think of her who is gone, and all her sweetness and grace and goodness rise up before him. He thinks of their children and how they will need their mother's care, terribly need it, though never more can they have it, and his heart dies down within him. He thinks of himself and how utterly lonely his lot must be. At such times heart aud mind almost give way, and faith and love Godward receive a blow beneath which they reel and somdimes never recover themselves. But this verse is as a holy angel of God, and enters that darkened home; and- L IT CALLS (1"0 MEMORY WIIAT THE LOST ONE WAS. Her life was as the shining of the sun-bright, cheerful, generous, inspiriting, attracting, healthful, and joy-giving to all. JI. IT DENIES NOT THE FACT WHICH IS so BITTERLY MOURNED. Her premature death, her sun went down, etc. Nothing can alter that fact. And perhaps, as the very words indicate, circumstances of peculiar sorrow may have surrounded her death. Like her told of in this verse, "she may have breathed out her life as if in l&boured sighs, expiring in heavy hearl;..brcaths of grief." Not a calm, gradual, bright sunset, but the very reverse, the.sun going down in dark clouds. The power to utter those blessed parting words of counsel and comfort taken from her, and in darkness and silence sho had to wend her way to the unseen. But a.mid llll this depth of gloom this verse- III. SuGGESTB MOST BLESSED TRUTH, The sun of her life has not perished but shines elsewhere, Vve know that when the sun sinks below our horizon it has gone to gladden and bless other shores. And so with the life of the blessed dead. They all live unto God. All that in them which was so pure, so sweet, so full oft.he graco of God, has not perished; it is shining elsewhere, it has risen on another shore, the eternal and the blessed .. And on us it shall rise again, as the sunrise follows in duo time the sunRet. That lifo is not lost but is hidden with Christ in God, and so "when he who is our life shall appear" then shall that now hidden life "&ppenr with him in glory."-O. Ver. 12.-A vain con test. "Shall iron break the northern iron nnd the steel?" So nsks the Lord God of his, at this time not simply lamenting prophet, ho was rarely anything but that, but also his complaining prophet. And as we read these verses with w.hich the striking inquiry contained in this verse is ,conneoted, we cannot help feeling that- his lamentations become him :far more than his complaints. Still, who are we, to criticize a. great hero. of the faith such as Jeremiah undoubtedly was? These verses, from.the tenth onwards,.are no doubt on a lower, a Jess spiritual and less self~forgetful level than that which the common strain of his prophecies and prayers maintain. It will be seen that these verses come at the close of a long and most earnest appeal addressed by. him to God on behalf of his co,untrymen .. They were suffering fearfully from the dearth of which the opening of the.fourteenth chapter tells. Now, all this was then present .before the prophet's mind, and these chapters record tho expostulations, the pathetic appeals, and the almost agonized prayers which he pours forth on behalf of his suffering land and people, Ho makes fall confession of their sins, but pleads tho all-merciful Name of the Lord, and when that did not suffice, he urges the evil teaching that they had received from their prophets and that thereforo they ruay bo held guillless or far less guilty, and when that plea also was rejcclccl ],o returns to his confessions and carne~t cutrcatie~; but it is all of no avail. At tho 388 THE DOOK OF 'l'HE rROPHET JEREMIAH. [011. xv. l-21.