{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JER","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jeremiah","commonName":"Jeremiah","introduction":"JEREMIAH, son of Hilkiah, one of the ordinary priests, dwelling in Anathoth of Benjamin (Jer 1:1), not the Hilkiah the high priest who discovered the book of the law (Kg2 22:8); had he been the same, the designation would have been \"the priest\", or \"the high priest\". Besides, his residence at Anathoth shows that he belonged to the line of Abiathar, who was deposed from the high priesthood by Solomon (Kg1 2:26-35), after which the office remained in Zadok's line. Mention occurs of Jeremiah in Ch2 35:25; Ch2 36:12, Ch2 36:21. In 629 B.C. the thirteenth year of King Josiah, while still very young (Jer 1:5), he received his prophetical call in Anathoth (Jer 1:2); and along with Hilkiah the high priest, the prophetess Huldah, and the prophet Zephaniah, he helped forward Josiah's reformation of religion (2Ki. 23:1-25). Among the first charges to him was one that he should go and proclaim God's message in Jerusalem (Jer 2:2). He also took an official tour to announce to the cities of Judah the contents of the book of the law, found in the temple (Jer 11:6) five years after his call to prophesy. On his return to Anathoth, his countrymen, offended at his reproofs, conspired against his life. To escape their persecutions (Jer 11:21), as well as those of his own family (Jer 12:6), he left Anathoth and resided at Jerusalem. During the eighteen years of his ministry in Josiah's reign he was unmolested; also during the three months of Jehoahaz or Shallum's reign (Jer 22:10-12). On Jehoiakim's accession it became evident that Josiah's reformation effected nothing more than a forcible repression of idolatry and the establishment of the worship of God outwardly. The priests, prophets, and people then brought Jeremiah before the authorities, urging that he should be put to death for his denunciations of evil against the city (Jer 26:8-11). The princes, however, especially Ahikam, interposed in his behalf (Jer 26:16, Jer 26:24), but he was put under restraint, or at least deemed it prudent not to appear in public. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (606 B.C.), he was commanded to write the predictions given orally through him, and to read them to the people. Being \"shut up\", he could not himself go into the house of the Lord (Jer 36:5); he therefore deputed Baruch, his amanuensis, to read them in public on the fast day. The princes thereupon advised Baruch and Jeremiah to hide themselves from the king's displeasure. Meanwhile they read the roll to the king, who was so enraged that he cut it with a knife and threw it into the fire; at the same time giving orders for the apprehension of the prophet and Baruch. They escaped Jehoiakim's violence, which had already killed the prophet Urijah (Jer 26:20-23). Baruch rewrote the words, with additional prophecies, on another roll (Jer 36:27-32). In the three months' reign of Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, he prophesied the carrying away of the king and the queen mother (Jer 13:18; Jer 22:24-30; compare Kg2 24:12). In this reign he was imprisoned for a short time by Pashur (Jer. 20:1-18), the chief governor of the Lord's house; but at Zedekiah's accession he was free (Jer 37:4), for the king sent to him to \"inquire of the Lord\" when Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem (Jer 21:1-3, &c.; Jer 37:3). The Chaldeans drew off on hearing of the approach of Pharaoh's army (Jer 37:5); but Jeremiah warned the king that the Egyptians would forsake him, and the Chaldeans return and burn up the city (Jer 37:7-8). The princes, irritated at this, made the departure of Jeremiah from the city during the respite a pretext for imprisoning him, on the allegation of his deserting to the Chaldeans (Jer 38:1-5). He would have been left to perish in the dungeon of Malchiah, but for the intercession of Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian (Jer 38:6-13). Zedekiah, though he consulted Jeremiah in secret yet was induced by his princes to leave Jeremiah in prison (Jer 38:14-28) until Jerusalem was taken. Nebuchadnezzar directed his captain, Nebuzar-adan, to give him his freedom, so that he might either go to Babylon or stay with the remnant of his people as he chose. As a true patriot, notwithstanding the forty and a half years during which his country had repaid his services with neglect and persecution, he stayed with Gedaliah, the ruler appointed by Nebuchadnezzar over Judea (Jer 40:6). After the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael, Johanan, the recognized ruler of the people, in fear of the Chaldeans avenging the murder of Gedaliah, fled with the people to Egypt, and forced Jeremiah and Baruch to accompany him, in spite of the prophet's warning that the people should perish if they went to Egypt, but be preserved by remaining in their land (Jer. 41:1-43:13). At Tahpanhes, a boundary city on the Tanitic or Pelustan branch of the Nile, he prophesied the overthrow of Egypt (Jer 43:8-13). Tradition says he died in Egypt. According to the PSEUDO-EPIPHANIUS, he was stoned at TaphnÃ&brvbr or Tahpanhes. The Jews so venerated him that they believed he would rise from the dead and be the forerunner of Messiah (Mat 16:14).\n\nHAVERNICK observes that the combination of features in Jeremiah's character proves his divine mission; mild, timid, and susceptible of melancholy, yet intrepid in the discharge of his prophetic functions, not sparing the prince any more than the meanest of his subjects--the Spirit of prophecy controlling his natural temper and qualifying him for his hazardous undertaking, without doing violence to his individuality. Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Daniel, and Ezekiel were his contemporaries. The last forms a good contrast to Jeremiah, the Spirit in his case acting on a temperament as strongly marked by firmness as Jeremiah's was by shrinking and delicate sensitiveness. Ezekiel views the nation's sins as opposed to righteousness--Jeremiah, as productive of misery; the former takes the objective, the latter the subjective, view of the evils of the times. Jeremiah's style corresponds to his character: he is peculiarly marked by pathos, and sympathy with the wretched; his Lamentations illustrate this; the whole series of elegies has but one object--to express sorrow for his fallen country; yet the lights and images in which he presents this are so many, that the reader, so far from feeling it monotonous, is charmed with the variety of the plaintive strains throughout. The language is marked by AramÃ&brvbrisms, which probably was the ground of JEROME'S charge that the style is \"rustic\". LOWTH denies the charge and considers him in portions not inferior to Isaiah. His heaping of phrase on phrase, the repetition of stereotyped forms--and these often three times--are due to his affected feelings and to his desire to intensify the expression of them; he is at times more concise, energetic, and sublime, especially against foreign nations, and in the rhythmical parts.\n\nThe principle of the arrangement of his prophecies is hard to ascertain. The order of kings was--Josiah (under whom he prophesied eighteen years), Jehoahaz (three months), Jehoiakim (eleven years), Jeconiah (three months), Zedekiah (eleven years). But his prophecies under Josiah (the first through twentieth chapters) are immediately followed by a portion under Zedekiah (the twenty-first chapter). Again, Jer 24:8-10, as to Zedekiah, comes in the midst of the section as to Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jeconiah (the twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fifth chapters, &c.) So the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth chapters as to Jehoiakim, follow the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, thirty-third, thirty-fourth chapters, as to Zedekiah; and the forty-fifth chapter, dated the fourth year of Jehoiakim, comes after predictions as to the Jews who fled to Egypt after the overthrow of Jerusalem. EWALD thinks the present arrangement substantially Jeremiah's own; the various portions are prefaced by the same formula, \"The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord\" (Jer 7:1; Jer 11:1; Jer 18:1; Jer 21:1; Jer 25:1; Jer 30:1; Jer 32:1; Jer 34:1, Jer 34:8; Jer 35:1; Jer 40:1; Jer 44:1; compare Jer 14:1; Jer 46:1; Jer 47:1; Jer 49:34). Notes of time mark other divisions more or less historical (Jer 26:1; Jer 27:1; Jer 36:1; Jer 37:1). Two other portions are distinct of themselves (Jer 29:1; Jer 45:1). The second chapter has the shorter introduction which marks the beginning of a strophe; the third chapter seems imperfect, having as the introduction merely \"saying\" (Jer 3:1, Hebrew). Thus in the poetical parts, there are twenty-three sections divided into strophes of from seven to nine verses, marked some way thus, \"The Lord said also unto me\". They form five books: I. The Introduction, first chapter II. Reproofs of the Jews, the second through twenty-fourth chapters, made up of seven sections: (1) the second chapter (2) the third through sixth chapters; (3) the seventh through tenth chapters; (4) the eleventh through thirteenth chapters; (5) the fourteenth through seventeenth chapters; (6) the seventeenth through nineteenth and twentieth chapters; (7) the twenty-first through twenty-fourth chapters. III. Review of all nations in two sections: the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth through forty-ninth chapters, with a historical appendix of three sections, (1) the twenty-sixth chapter; (2) the twenty-seventh chapter; (3) the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters. IV. Two sections picturing the hopes of brighter times, (1) the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters; (2) the thirty-second and thirty-third chapters; and an historical appendix in three sections: (1) Jer 34:1-7; (2) Jer 34:8-22; (3) Jer. 35:1-19. V. The conclusion, in two sections: (1) Jer 36:2; (2) Jer 45:1-5. Subsequently, in Egypt, he added Jer 46:13-26 to the previous prophecy as to Egypt; also the three sections, the thirty-seventh through thirty-ninth chapters; fortieth through forty-third chapters; and forty-fourth chapter. The fifty-second chapter was probably (see Jer 51:64) an appendix from a later hand, taken from Kg2 24:18, &c.; Kg2 25:30. The prophecies against the several foreign nations stand in a different order in the Hebrew from that of the Septuagint; also the prophecies against them in the Hebrew (the forty-sixth through fifty-first chapters) are in the Septuagint placed after Jer 25:14, forming the twenty-sixth and thirty-first chapters; the remainder of the twenty-fifth chapter of the Hebrew is the thirty-second chapter of the Septuagint. Some passages in the Hebrew (Jer 27:19-22; Jer 33:14-26; Jer 39:4-14 Jer 48:45-47) are not found in the Septuagint; the Greek translators must have had a different recension before them; probably an earlier one. The Hebrew is probably the latest and fullest edition from Jeremiah's own hand. See on Jer 25:13. The canonicity of his prophecies is established by quotations of them in the New Testament (see Mat 2:17; Mat 16:14; Heb 8:8-12; on Mat 27:9, see on Introduction to Zechariah); also by the testimony of Ecclesiasticus 49:7, which quotes Jer 1:10; of PHILO, who quotes his word as an \"oracle\"; and of the list of canonical books in MELITO, ORIGEN, JEROME, and the Talmud. \n\n\n\nNext: Jeremiah Chapter 1\n\n","order":24,"numberOfChapters":52,"sha256":"c78e13c74a2800611f22cb60aa103f8a8343344fc49d4e0043f00d5c7e483f21","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":52,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/52.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":52},"totalNumberOfVerses":1164},"chapter":{"number":18,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["wheels--literally, \"on both stones.\" The potter's horizontal lathe consisted of two round plates, the lower one larger, the upper smaller; of stone originally, but afterwards of wood. On the upper the potter moulded the clay into what shapes he pleased. They are found represented in Egyptian remains. In Exo 1:16 alone is the Hebrew word found elsewhere, but in a different sense.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["marred--spoiled. \"Of clay\" is the true reading, which was corrupted into \"as clay\" (Margin), through the similarity of the two Hebrew letters, and from Jer 18:6, \"as the clay.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["Refuting the Jews' reliance on their external privileges as God's elect people, as if God could never cast them off. But if the potter, a mere creature, has power to throw away a marred vessel and raise up other clay from the ground, a fortiori God, the Creator, can east away the people who prove unfaithful to His election and can raise others in their stead (compare Isa 45:9; Isa 64:8; Rom 9:20-21). It is curious that the potter's field should have been the purchase made with the price of Judas' treachery (Mat 27:9-10 : a potter's vessel dashed to pieces, compare Psa 2:8-9; Rev 2:27), because of its failing to answer the maker's design, being the very image to depict God's sovereign power to give reprobates to destruction, not by caprice, but in the exercise of His righteous judgment. Matthew quotes Zechariah's words (Zac 11:12-13) as Jeremiah's because the latter (Jer. 18:1-19:15) was the source from which the former derived his summary in Zac 11:12-13 [HENGSTENBERG].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["At what instant--in a moment, when the nation least expects it. Hereby he reminds the Jews how marvellously God had delivered them from their original degradation, that is, In one and the same day ye were the most wretched, and then the most favored of all people [CALVIN].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["their evil--in antithesis to, \"the evil that I thought to do.\" \n\nrepent--God herein adapts Himself to human conceptions. The change is not in God, but in the circumstances which regulate God's dealings: just as we say the land recedes from us when we sail forth, whereas it is we who recede from the land (Eze 18:21; Eze 33:11). God's unchangeable principle is to do the best that can be done under all circumstances; if then He did not take into account the moral change in His people (their prayers, &c.), He would not be acting according to His own unchanging principle (Jer 18:9-10). This is applied practically to the Jews' case (Jer 18:11; see Jer 26:3; Jon 3:10).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["frame evil--alluding to the preceding image of \"the potter,\" that is, I, Jehovah, am now as it were the potter framing evil against you; but in the event of your repenting, it is in My power to frame anew My course of dealing towards you. \n\nreturn, &c.-- (Kg2 17:13).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["no hope--Thy threats and exhortations are all thrown away (Jer 2:25). Our case is desperate; we are hopelessly abandoned to our sins and their penalty. In this and the following clauses, \"We will walk after our own devices,\" Jeremiah makes them express the real state of the case, rather than the hypocritical subterfuges which they would have been inclined to put forth. So Isa 30:10-11.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["(Jer 2:10-11). Even among the heathen it was a thing unheard of, that a nation should lay aside its gods for foreign gods, though their gods are false gods. But Israel forsook the true God for foreign false gods. \n\nvirgin of Israel-- (Kg2 19:21). It enhances their guilt, that Israel was the virgin whom God had specially betrothed to Him. \n\nhorrible thing-- (Jer 5:30).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["Is there any man (living near it) who would leave the snow of Lebanon (that is, the cool melted snow water of Lebanon, as he presently explains), which cometh from the rock of the field (a poetical name for Lebanon, which towers aloft above the surrounding field, or comparatively plain country)? None. Yet Israel forsakes Jehovah, the living fountain close at hand, for foreign broken cisterns. Jer 17:13; Jer 2:13, accord with English Version here. MAURER translates, \"Shall the snow of Lebanon cease from the rock to water (literally, 'forsake') My fields\" (the whole land around being peculiarly Jehovah's)? Lebanon means the \"white mountain\"; so called from the perpetual snow which covers that part called Hermon, stretching northeast of Palestine. \n\nthat come from another place--that come from far, namely, from the distant lofty rocks of Lebanon. HENDERSON translates, \"the compressed waters,\" namely, contracted within a narrow channel while descending through the gorges of the rocks; \"flowing\" may in this view be rather \"flowing down\" (Sol 4:15). But the parallelism in English Version is better, \"which cometh from the rock,\" \"that cometh from another place.\" \n\nbe forsaken--answering to the parallel, \"Will a man leave,\" &c. MAURER translates, \"dry up,\" or \"fail\" (Isa 19:5); the sense thus being, Will nature ever turn aside from its fixed course? The \"cold waters\" (compare Pro 25:25) refer to the perennial streams, fed from the partial melting of the snow in the hot weather.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["Because--rather, \"And yet\"; in defiance of the natural order of things. \n\nforgotten me-- (Jer 2:32). This implies a previous knowledge of God, whereas He was unknown to the Gentiles; the Jews' forgetting of God, therefore, arose from determined perversity. \n\nthey have caused . . . to stumble--namely the false prophets and idolatrous priests have. \n\nancient paths-- (Jer 6:16): the paths which their pious ancestors trod. Not antiquity indiscriminately, but the example of the fathers who trod the right way, is here commended. \n\nthem--the Jews. \n\nnot cast up--not duly prepared: referring to the raised center of the road. CALVIN translates, \"not trodden.\" They had no precedent of former saints to induce them to devise for themselves a new worship.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["hissing-- (Kg1 9:8). In sign of contempt. That which was to be only the event is ascribed to the purpose of the people, although altogether different from what they would have been likely to hope for. Their purpose is represented as being the destruction of their country, because it was the inevitable result of their course of acting. \n\nwag . . . head--in mockery (Kg2 19:21; Mat 27:39). As \"wag . . . head\" answers to \"hissing,\" so \"astonished\" answers to \"desolate,\" for which, therefore, MUNSTER and others rather translate, \"an object of wonder\" (Jer 19:8).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["as with an east wind--literally, \"I will scatter them, as an east wind (scatters all before it)\": a most violent wind (Job 27:21; Psa 48:7; Isa 27:8). Thirty-two manuscripts read (without as), \"with an east wind.\" \n\nI will show them the back . . . not . . . face--just retribution: as \"they turned their back unto Me . . . not their face\" (Jer 2:27).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["(Jer 11:19). Let us bring a capital charge against him, as a false prophet; \"for (whereas he foretells that this land shall be left without priests to teach the law, Mal 2:7; without scribes to explain its difficulties; and without prophets to reveal God's will), the law shall not perish from the prophet,\" &c.; since God has made these a lasting institution in His church, and the law declares they shall never perish (Lev 6:18; Lev 10:11; compare Jer 5:12) [GROTIUS]. \n\nthe wise--scribes and elders joined to the priests. Perhaps they mean to say, we must have right on our side, in spite of Jeremiah's words against us and our prophets (Jer 28:15-16; Jer 29:25, Jer 29:32; Jer 5:31); \"for the law shall not perish,\" &c. I prefer GROTIUS' explanation. \n\nwith . . . tongue--by a false accusation (Psa 57:4; Psa 64:3; Psa 12:4; Psa 50:19). \"For the tongue\" (Margin), that is, for his speaking against us. \"In the tongue,\" that is, let us kill him, that he may speak no more against us [CASTALIO].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["Give heed--contrasted with, \"let us not give heed\" (Jer 18:18). As they give no heed to me, do Thou, O Lord, give heed to me, and let my words at least have their weight with Thee.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["In the particulars here specified, Jeremiah was a type of Jesus Christ (Psa 109:4-5; Joh 15:25). \n\nmy soul--my life; me (Psa 35:7). \n\nI stood before thee . . . to turn away thy wrath--so Moses (Psa 106:23; compare Eze 22:30). So Jesus Christ, the antitype of previous partial intercessors (Isa 59:16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["pour out their blood by the force of the sword--literally, \"by the hands of the sword.\" So Eze 35:5. MAURER with JEROME translates, \"deliver them over to the power of the sword.\" But compare Psa 63:10, Margin; Isa 53:12. In this prayer he does not indulge in personal revenge, as if it were his own cause that was at stake; but he speaks under the dictation of the Spirit, ceasing to intercede, and speaking prophetically, knowing they were doomed to destruction as reprobates; for those not so, he doubtless ceased not to intercede. We are not to draw an example from this, which is a special case. \n\nput to death--or, as in Jer 15:2, \"perish by the death plague\" [MAURER]. \n\nmen . . . young men--HORSLEY distinguishes the former as married men past middle age; the latter, the flower of unmarried youth.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["cry--by reason of the enemy bursting in: let their houses be no shelter to them in their calamities [CALVIN]. \n\ndigged . . . pit-- (Jer 18:20; Psa 57:6; Psa 119:85).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["forgive not-- (Psa 109:9-10, Psa 109:14). \n\nblot out--image from an account-book (Rev 20:12). \n\nbefore thee--Hypocrites suppose God is not near, so long as they escape punishment; but when He punishes, they are said to stand before Him, because they can no longer flatter themselves they can escape His eye (compare Psa 90:8). \n\ndeal thus--exert Thy power against them [MAURER]. \n\ntime of thine anger--Though He seems to tarry, His time shall come at last (Ecc 8:11-12; Pe2 3:9-10).\n\nReferred by MAURER, &c., to the beginning of Zedekiah's reign.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Jeremiah Chapter 19\n\n"]}],"introduction":"GOD, AS THE SOLE SOVEREIGN, HAS AN ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO DEAL WITH NATIONS ACCORDING TO THEIR CONDUCT TOWARDS HIM; ILLUSTRATED IN A TANGIBLE FORM BY THE POTTER'S MOULDING OF VESSELS FROM CLAY. (Jer. 18:1-23)\n\ngo down--namely, from the high ground on which the temple stood, near which Jeremiah exercised his prophetic office, to the low ground, where some well-known (this is the force of \"the\") potter had his workshop.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/18.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":18},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/19.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":19},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/17.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":17},"numberOfVerses":18}