Ver. 33. — Eairvests tf horror and threshings of wrath. The Bible continually makes use of the similitude of the harvest and its labours, but it is only by its qualifying words that we can know what kind of harvest is meant. Here we have the frequent metaphor, but it tells of no joy, of sorrow only. Similar language has been iised of Israel as is here used of Babylon (cf. Isa. xxL 10 ; xli. 15). Israel's sins had been the seed of that harvest, and it was a terrible one. All the sorrows of the invasion and destruction of their beloved land and city, their holy city, Jerusalem, and all those which were associated with and sprang out of their bitter exile in Babylon, were but parts of that harvest and strokes of " the bruising flails of Qod's corrections." But here it is Babylon that is spoken of (cf. Isa. xxi. for a yet earlier prediction of Babylon's fall). She had sown the seed; the cup of her iniquity was full ere the harvests and threshings told of here came upon her. " Dissolute and luxurious in their habits, the Babylonians hid under their soft luxurious exterior a fierceness, an insatiable lust for blood, such as marked many Eastern tribes — such, for instance, as we ourselves have found in ' the mild Hindoo.' The Hebrew prophets describe them as 'a bitter and hasty,' a 'terrible and dreadful ' people, ' fiercer than the evening wolves,' a people who ' made the earth tremble and did shake kingdoms.' " They conquered well-nigh all the kingdoms of the then known world; they pillaged every country they conquered, and often went far to depopulate the countries they pillaged. In Jud^a, for instance, the land became a mere haunt of wild beasts after the Babylonians had subdued it, and from Jerusalem they pillaged even the sacred vessels of the temple. Hence to Isaiah they appeared as " the spoiler spoiling, and the destroyer destroying." And besides all this, there seems to have been an inherent and ineradicable wickedness in the nation itself, or it could hardly have been selected, as it is, as the type of all that is abominable and hateful in the sight of God. For many a generation and century she had been spared. From the beginning to the end of the Bible we read of her. In her decayed greatness there was a little Christian Church there, of which St. Peter tells (1 Pet. v. 19). But up to the time of the Exile, and during far the greater portion of it, Babylon seemed only to advance in splendour, in wealth, and power. But at length the time of her harvest — an awful time, indeed — came, and in the sorrows connected with her capture and overthrow, and in the hard and hated rule of her Persian lords, there was the " threshing " of which both Isaiah and Jeremiah telL The contemplation of it filled the Prophet Isaiah with an unspeak- able horror : " My loins are filled with pain : pangs have taken hold on me " (Isa. xxi. 8, 4). Jew as he was, he could not behold the dread vision of what wa? to come on Babylon without deep anguish. She " must have filled in his thoughts much the place which Rome held in the mind of a cultivated Spaniard or Carthaginian of the early Christian centuries. To him the Medes and Persians, plunging down from their unknown, mysterious mountain fastnesses upon the wealthy Babylonian plain, must have seemed much as the Goths and Vandals seemed to the more civilized races of Europe, when they came pouring down the Alps, to carry sword and fire through the storied plains of Italy. The whole Christian world shuddered when Rome fell ; and as her Tail to the modern so was the fall of Babylon to the ancient world." Harvest and threshing : these images of the bam commonly suggest that which is peaceful and joyous; but here they tell of the reverse of that — of horror and woe unspeakable. Learn, therefore —
I. Sins are seeds which may have a late, but shall subelt have a laboe and
TEBBIBLE, HARVEST.
II. Reluctant as God may be to afflict the childben of men, he will noi
SPABE a BINOLE BTBOKE 80 LONQ AS THBT OLINO TO THE EVILS WHICH DEQBADE A5D DESTEOT THEM.
III. The judgments and punishments of God abb not vindictive and final, but THE " THBEBHiNQS OF THE coBN OF HIS FLooB " (Isa. xxL 10). The separation, thiat is,
304 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. [oh. ll 1—64.
of the evil from the good, the worthless from that which is precious and shall be pre- served for evermore. — 0.
Ver. 48. — Joy over judgment. I. The sinneb will wbbp and wail. This is the sonstant declaration of the Word of God. " There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Would that the sinner would look steadily on to the end, and so consider his ways!
II. Human natdbb, in sympathy with the sinner's woes, will sobbow. (Cf. Isa. xxi. 10.) We have need to be on our guard against this. In the present day our sympathy with the suffering leads us to forget the causes and the blessed results that come from the judgment of God. No criminal is ever condemned to die but at once there are those who strive to get his punishment remitted. It is a false sympathy and needs to be resisted.
III. But heaven and eabth bejoioe. Cf. the many psalms in which we are called on to rejoice because the Lord " cometh to judge the earth." The grounds of this joy are : 1. Righteousness is vindicated. 2. The oppressed are delivered. 3. Men will learn righteousness. 4. They that are judged will be brought to a better mind. 6. The kingdom of God will more speedily come. — C.
Yer. 60. — The charge to them that are spared. This charge, addressed to Israelites spared from Babylon, may be applied to all in Christ. For —
L All in Christ are spared ones. Spared from: 1. The condemnation dne to sin. 2. The abiding tyranny of sin. 3. The crushing power of sorrow. 4. The misery of alienation from God. 6. The might of death.