There is something unusually pathetic in the career of Jeremiah, the prophet of the captivity of Israel. He was called upon to take the prophetic office at a time when the Jewish nation, honey-combed with idolatry, avarice, and corruption, was swiftly rushing to destruction. Called upon to denounce the, national sins and the terrible wrath to come as a result of departure from God, he became an object of hatred to all the wicked elements in the nation and his whole career bore the burden of a double sorrow, public sorrow for "the slain of the daughter of his people," and personal sorrow caused by the bitter hatred of his enemies. He was the son of Hilkiah, a priest if not the high priest, and a nephew of Shallum and the prophetess Huldah, the vigorous supporters of the reforms of Josiah. [16] When he was quite young (Jer. 1:6), in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, the spirit of prophecy came upon him, and although he was a vigorous supporter of the reforms of that king, he foresaw that they would not be lasting. The corruption was too deep and Jeremiah knew that as soon as the influence of Josiah was removed the relapse would at once begin.

      In order to comprehend the struggle, of Jeremiah with his enemies, and the causes that were hurrying the country to destruction, it is needful to consider the times and parties that convulsed the state. The kingdom of Israel had fallen before the Assyrian power; the great empires of Assyria and Egypt threatened Judah on either side; the idolatry that existed among all other races had seduced a great portion of Israel and only the stern hand of Josiah stayed its progress until after his death. "The Princes" of Judah, the great noble families, were mostly idolatrous, avaricious, licentious, oppressors of the poor, and the bitter foes of a preacher like Jeremiah who did not spare their vices. The priests also had, as a rule, become corrupt and cared little whether they served God or Baal. Jeremiah was not only the target of the hatred of the "princes," but his writings show that he was bitterly opposed by the priests and by men of the prophetic order who uttered false oracles. On the other hand there was a party of friends of the old religion who supported and sought to protect its prophet. Among his protectors, Ahikam, the son of Shaphan the scribe, was prominent.

      As might be expected the country was filled with division and violence. Feuds divided the great families and prepared the way for an easy conquest. Men had to protect themselves from their own neighbors and kindred. Indeed, the factions devoured each other, much as they did at the time when, nearly seven hundred years later, Titus assailed Jerusalem.

      The date of this prophecy is supposed to be after the first invasion of Nebuchadnezzar and before the final destruction of the city.

      8:20. The summer is past. These words and the whole lesson are a portion of a prophecy which Jeremiah was commanded to deliver at the gate of the temple. The address, the message of the Lord to Judah, beginning with chapter 7, warned the nation to distrust the lying prophets who amused it with flatteries, and listen to the voice of the Lord. There was still a possibility of escape by obedience, for, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the, God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings and I will cause you to dwell in this place." If this offer was rejected then the mighty invaders before whom. Damascus, Samaria and Tyre had gone down, would come and assail Jerusalem with a power from which there would be no human deliverance. When it was too late and the impending ruin hung over them, they would cry: "The summer is past; the harvest is ended, and we are not saved." A very poetical and striking way of declaring that the offered opportunities are gone forever.

      21. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt. A favorite symbol of a [17] city in the prophets is a woman. The spiritual Babylon appears as a harlot; the New Jerusalem as the Bride of the Lamb; and Jerusalem is often described as "the daughter of my people." Here under this figure Jeremiah describes the carnage that shall desolate Jerusalem and his own suffering on account of her sufferings. He could see in his vision the near approach of the calamities that would ruin his country and he felt the hurt as his own. The reader must remember that Jeremiah was not predicting the distant future but events only separated by a few years.

      22. Is there no balm in Gilead? In Gilead, a district east of the Jordan, a tree produced the celebrated balm which was so useful in healing hurts and wounds. When the prophet weeps over the "hurt of the daughter of his people," the question arises, Is there no cure, no more healing balm in Gilead, no relief, no hope? There was a balm, and a physician to apply it. Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Israel is represented under the metaphor of one dying of a hurt, or a disease for which the balm applied by a physician is a specific. The nation was morally diseased; it had sinned grievously and persistently against God and this would bring destruction upon them. There was a balm and a physician which could save them, but they had refused the physician and the balm. Unless they repented of their sins the Healer could not reach them. God, the great Physician, had always stood ready to heal them, but they had clung to their sins.

      9:1. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears. The, calamities that were to come upon Israel filled the prophet with such sorrow that he felt as though his tears should flow like an exhaustless fountain. He hungered for the salvation of his country and people and when he saw that they were determined on a course of destruction it almost broke his heart. Thus has felt many a prophet and many a preacher whose warnings have been unheeded. Thus felt Savonarola when he called the Florentines to repentance and warned them of coming destruction. Thus has felt many a pastor who has sown seed on stony grounds. And thus Christ seemed to feel in that wonderful picture when he stands on Mt. Olivet and weeps over the Jerusalem "that he would have gathered as a hen gathers her brood wider her wings," but which had refused his mercy in the day of grace.

      2. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place. The wilderness was an uninhabited region, a desert, where men were seldom seen. There were no hotels in those days, but lodging places were erected here and there where the wayfarer [18] could find shelter. Sad of heart, weary, disappointed, the prophet sighs for such a lonely lodge in order that he might be a witness no longer to the abominations and the sorrows which were so shortly to be visited on his people. He was tired of his struggle with the wicked, of his constant danger from "treacherous men." The passage from verse 2 to 6 can only be understood in the light of what we have said in the introduction concerning the parties and feuds which filled the land with discord.

      3. They bend their tongues like their bow for lies. As the bent bow hurls the arrow and wounds or slays, so the lies of the deceivers and slanderers are shot forth to hurt the innocent. Jeremiah as the head of the party of Jehovah, was the target of the slanders of the false prophets. There was an effort on the part of his opposers to destroy his credit and influence. His history abounds with accounts of his conflicts with the "princes," and of their persecutions.

      4. Take ye heed every one of his neighbour. It would be difficult to choose language which would more strongly describe the ill will, the discord and violence that filled Judah at the period to which Jeremiah referred. The factions were in almost open war with each other. A man hardly knew whom to trust. Neighbors turned upon each other; one could not trust his brother. As a commentary on these verses it would be well to turn to chapter 20, and read some of Jeremiah's own experiences about five years later. "Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor of the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord," etc.

      5. They have taught their tongue to speak lies. Amid the general deceit and falsehood of this sad period of moral and religious decay, there was nothing else that worked so much evil as the words of the false prophets who made the people distrust Jeremiah's predictions and encouraged them with false hopes. As an illustration of this feature of the period, turn to Jer. 28:1-17, which describes a contest between the real prophet and Hananiah a false prophet. The latter declared: "Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the, yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years I will bring again into this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried to Babylon. And I will bring [19] again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, saith the Lord." "Then the prophet Jeremiah said, Amen. The Lord do so: the Lord perform thy words which thou hast prophesied, to bring again the vessels of the Lord's house, and all that is, carried away captive, from Babylon into this place.   *   *   *   *   Hear now, Hananiah, the Lord hath nor sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie."

      6. Through deceit they refuse to know me. Most skepticism results from a desire not to believe. It is when the truth is received "into honest hearts" that it brings forth.

      7. I will melt them, and try them. As the ores are melted and tried in a furnace to drive away the impurities, so God would try his people in the fierce furnace fires to purify them.

      8. Their tongue is as an arrow. It darts forth, wounds and hurts. It injures by slanders, lies and deceit. "It is a world of iniquity."

      9. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation? God's wrath may be delayed but the nation that sins will not escape. The fall of every nation is due to national sins.

      10. Neither can men hear the voice of the cattle. This verse describes the desolation of the country when God's judgments fall upon it. It will be left a wilderness. Cattle, fowl, beast and oxen will have fled.

      11. I will make Jerusalem heaps. About twenty years later this was fulfilled. The city was left in ruins, and for a period of seventy years was not inhabited. A den of dragons. Supposed to be jackals, a beast common in the East, similar to the wolf. [20]

      12. Who is the wise man? The one to whom the Lord hath revealed this impending calamity and who prepares for it.

      13, 14, 15. Because they have forsaken my law. These three verses declared the reasons why these awful judgments shall come upon Israel. They had forsaken God's law; they had turned to the worship of Baalim, or the Baal gods; therefore they should reap the fruit of their sins and eat wormwood and drink gall. The bitterness of wormwood and gall are metaphors to declare the bitterness of the anguish.

      16. I will scatter them among the heathen. The events that happened before that generation ended serve to explain the meaning. The city was destroyed, the temple leveled, and the people carried away captive to a far-off and unknown land, among the heathen, beyond the Euphrates, to remain for a period of seventy years before they were permitted to return.

      1. Opportunities are given to every one if he will accept them when offered, but if they are slighted they may be withdrawn forever. God, by Jeremiah, still offered Israel a place for repentance. It was rejected and when too late the ruined nation exclaimed, "The summer is past; the harvest ended, and we are not saved." Many centuries later Christ exclaimed: "If thou hadst only known in this thy day of visitation the things that make for thy peace!" So, too, many a shipwrecked life or dying soul mourns over lost opportunities and sighs, "Too late!" Now is the accepted time.

      2. The world is full of sickness. Souls are weary with the burden of sin. They are smitten unto death and die. Is there no balm in Gilead, no physician there? There is. The great Physician, the Healer of every sorrow, has come [21] with a balm for every hurt. He says: "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden." Do you refuse to come to the Physician? There is the Physician and the Gospel balm but many turn away and die because they refuse to be healed.

      3. Jeremiah wept over the stubborn sinfulness of his countrymen; Christ wept over Jerusalem; Paul exclaimed: "My heart's desire and prayer for Israel is that it should be saved;" John Knox prayed: "Oh God, give me Scotland, or I die." So, often, the faithful preacher hungers for the salvation of the people. So should the faithful superintendent and teacher long for the salvation of the children under their charge.

      4. Judah fell, not because of the power of Nebuchadnezzar, but on account of its sins. No nation perishes until it is weighed in the balances and found wanting. Repentance would have saved Judah, but when a nation is given over to hardness of heart and reprobacy of mind its doom is sealed. Israel, Judah, Babylon, Rome, Poland and every other nation that has gone down, has died because it was unfit to live. "Shall a righteous nation perish?" It never does. Our nation will be preserved as long as it does the work of God.

      5. If the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which, at the first, began to be spoken unto us by the Lord, and afterwards was confirmed unto us by them who heard him?

      6. Christ the antidote of sin. At a Sunday-school anniversary in Brooklyn some, years since, Dr. Hodge related the following interesting fact: During a visit he made to the Bahama Islands, a shower of rain unexpectedly fell. On this occasion a little colored boy was caught in the shower at a distance from home, and, having no place to go for protection, crept under a bush that was near. Its foliage, however, was not dense enough to keep him from the rain, and he was wet by the water trickling through the leaves. Unfortunately for him the bush was a poison-bush; and the water falling on the leaves caused the poison to strike into his little limbs, so that in a short time he was dead. After the shower he was found, and carried to his home. Dr. Hodge was requested to attend his funeral. The circumstances of his singular death excited his curiosity and he wished to learn something more about the fatal poison-bush. An aged negro told him that it grew abundantly upon the island, but that by its side there always grew another bush, which was its antidote; and that if the little boy had known it, and had rubbed himself with the leaves of the healing bush, the poison would have done him no harm. What an illustration is this of the sad fate of those, who have been poisoned by sin, and know not how to escape from its dreadful consequences! But for this fatal poison there is a sure remedy, provided by the same God who placed the antidote beside the poison-bush. The cross of Christ is the tree of life. Let the suffering and the dying come to that, and they shall be saved; for "its leaves are for the healing of the nations."--The Christian Weekly.

      7. If the world is not healed, it is not because God has not made adequate provision. "Much more" is the Gospel's gracious word. The Gospel has not lost its grip and power. Earthly remedies have changed--physicians change and diseases change. But the Gospel remedy and Physician are forever one. Why then is the world not saved? Because 1. It will not take the remedy through unwillingness, because it does not understand it and because it sees so many who profess to have taken it who do not appear any better; or, 2. Because the Gospel is not sent to men, or is not carried in faith.--Henson. [22]

[CLC01 16-22]