The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews who lived in the land of Egypt, who lived at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Memphis, and in the country of Pathros, saying, “Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You have seen all the evil that I have brought on Jerusalem, and on all the cities of Judah. Behold, today they are a desolation, and no man dwells in them, because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke me to anger, in that they went to burn incense, to serve other gods that they didn’t know, neither they, nor you, nor your fathers. However I sent to you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, “Oh, don’t do this abominable thing that I hate.” But they didn’t listen and didn’t incline their ear. They didn’t turn from their wickedness, to stop burning incense to other gods. Therefore my wrath and my anger was poured out, and was kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they are wasted and desolate, as it is today.’
“Therefore now Yahweh, the God of Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘Why do you commit great evil against your own souls, to cut off from yourselves man and woman, infant and nursing child out of the middle of Judah, to leave yourselves no one remaining; in that you provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you have gone to live; that you may be cut off, and that you may be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth? Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? They are not humbled even to this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statutes, that I set before you and before your fathers.’
“Therefore Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, even to cut off all Judah. I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to live there, and they will all be consumed. They will fall in the land of Egypt. They will be consumed by the sword and by the famine. They will die, from the least even to the greatest, by the sword and by the famine. They will be an object of horror, an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach. For I will punish those who dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence; so that none of the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to live there, will escape or be left to return into the land of Judah, to which they have a desire to return to dwell there; for no one will return except those who will escape.’ ”
Then all the men who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, even all the people who lived in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, “As for the word that you have spoken to us in Yahweh’s name, we will not listen to you. But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of the sky, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
“When we burned incense to the queen of the sky, and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our husbands?”
Then Jeremiah said to all the people, to the men, and to the women, even to all the people who had given him an answer, saying, “The incense that you burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, didn’t Yahweh remember them, and didn’t it come into his mind? Thus Yahweh could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which you have committed. Therefore your land has become a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is today. Because you have burned incense, and because you have sinned against Yahweh, and have not obeyed Yahweh’s voice, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies; therefore this evil has happened to you, as it is today.”
Moreover Jeremiah said to all the people, including all the women, “Hear Yahweh’s word, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt! Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says, ‘You and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and with your hands have fulfilled it, saying, “We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to her.” “ ‘Establish then your vows, and perform your vows.’
“Therefore hear Yahweh’s word, all Judah who dwell in the land of Egypt: ‘Behold, I have sworn by my great name,’ says Yahweh, ‘that my name will no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, “As the Lord Yahweh lives.” Behold, I watch over them for evil, and not for good; and all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until they are all gone. Those who escape the sword will return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah few in number. All the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to live there, will know whose word will stand, mine or theirs.
“ ‘This will be the sign to you,’ says Yahweh, ‘that I will punish you in this place, that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for evil.’ Yahweh says, ‘Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of those who seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who was his enemy, and sought his life.’ ”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Jeremiah had already prophesied against the Jews, who had…
Jeremiah had already prophesied against the Jews, who had taken refuge in Egypt, as though there would be for them in that rich and almost unassailable land a safe and quiet retreat. But he now speaks against them for another reason, and denounces on them something more grievous than before, even because they had not only gone into Egypt against God’s will, but when they came there they polluted themselves with all kinds of superstition. God, no doubt, designed, in due time, to prevent this, when he forbade them to go into Egypt; for he knew how prone they were to idolatry, and to false and adulterous modes of worship. He was therefore unwilling that they should dwell in that land, where they might learn to pervert his worship. And this had happened, as it appears from the present prophecy. As then they had cast aside every shame, and given themselves up to the superstitions of the heathens, the Prophet again testified, that God would take vengeance on them. But we shall see that he had to do with refractory men; for without shewing any respect for him, they attacked him with impetuous fury. The sum of what is said then is, that the Jews who dwelt in Egypt were unworthy of any pardon, because they had, as it were, designedly rejected the favor of God, and their obstinacy had become altogether hopeless. We shall now consider the words:
A word is said to have been given to Jeremiah to all the Jews But God spoke to Jeremiah not in the same way as to the Jews; for he committed to him the words which he commanded him to deliver to others. Then the word was directly given to Jeremiah only; but as Jeremiah was God’s interpreter to the people, the word is said to be given in common to all, which yet at first, as it has been stated, was committed to Jeremiah alone. For he did not favor the Jews with such an honor as to speak to them, but he sent the Prophet as his messenger. He said then to the Jews who dwelt in Egypt, and afterwards he mentions certain places, first Migdol, then Tahpanhes, and thirdly, Noph. The first name some have rendered Magdal. That city was not so much known at the time when Egypt flourished, but it has been mentioned by heathen writers. Of Tahpanhes we spoke yesterday. Noph has been called Memphis; and it is generally agreed that what the Hebrews called Noph was that noble and celebrated city Memphis, which, as they suppose at this day, is called Cairo, Le Caire. He lastly mentions the country of Pathros, which is supposed by some to have been near Pelusia. But on such a matter as this I bestow no great labor; for even heathen writers have regarded this as an obscure country, of no importance. Pathros is elsewhere mentioned as a city, and some think it to have been Petra of Arabia. But the Prophet no doubt refers here to the country in which Memphis and other cities were situated, in which the Jews dwelt.
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But he says these things for this reason, because a question might have been raised, “As the Jews dwelt in Egypt, so large was the land, that the Prophet could not have announced the commands of God to all. This, then, was the reason why he intimates that. they were not dispersed everywhere throughout Egypt, from one end to the other, but that they were in one part only, and that they were so collected that his word might come to all. This, then, was the reason why he mentioned the places where the Jews sojourned.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 25, 26, 28, 30 These were all famous and strange cities in Egypt,…
These were all famous and strange cities in Egypt, where the Jews that were fled, dwelt for their safety: but the Prophet declareth that there is no hold so strong that can preserve them from God’s vengeance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–30 Jer 44:1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning…
Jer 44:1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros, saying,
Ver. 1. The word that came to Jeremiah.] No word of comfort - how could it be, as long as they lived in open rebellion against the Lord? - but all of reproof and threatening. For what reason? they were obdurate and obstinate, and did daily proficere in peius, grow worse and worse.
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Which dwell at Migdol.] To these chief cities Jeremiah resorted to speak unto them. Noph, alias Moph {Hos 9:6} is held to be Memphis, now Alcair.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 The patience and goodness of God to this remnant…
The patience and goodness of God to this remnant of his ancient people is very remarkable; he leaveth them not even in their rebellion, but sendeth Jeremiah, whom he had before sent to prevent their going into this idolatrous country, to try if in Egypt they would be brought to a better mind. It should seem that the generality of the Jews that went into Egypt had planted themselves at these four places. Of Migdol we read Exo 14:2; Num 33:7; from which places we may learn it was a city or town upon the borders of the Red Sea. We shall read of it again Jer 46:14. It was a place which might have minded them better of their obligations and duty to God, for upon their removal from thence God divided the Red Sea for their forefathers. Noph was another city in Egypt, of which we read Isa 19:13; Jer 2:16; 46:14; Eze 30:13,16. The Greeks and Latins call it Memphis; it is thought to be that city which is now called Cairo.
Pathros was a region or province, some think it derived its name from Pathrusim the son of Mizraim, Gen 10:14. It is the same (as some think) which is since called Thebais.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 15, 20 The Jews in Egypt were now dispersed into various…
The Jews in Egypt were now dispersed into various parts of the country, into Migdol, and Noph, and other places, and Jeremiah was sent on an errand from God to them, which he delivered either when he had the most of them together in Pathros (Jer 44:15) or going about from place to place preaching to this purport. He delivered this message in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, and in it,
I. God puts them in mind of the desolations of Judah and Jerusalem, which, though the captives by the rivers of Babylon were daily mindful of (Psa 137:1), the fugitives in the cities of Egypt seem to have forgotten and needed to be put in mind of, though, one would have thought, they had not been so long out of sight as to become out of mind (Jer 44:2): You have seen what a deplorable condition Judah and Jerusalem are brought into; now will you consider whence those desolations came? From the wrath of God; it was his fury and his anger that kindled the fire which made Jerusalem and the cities of Judah waste and desolate (Jer 44:6); whoever were the instruments of the destruction, they were but instruments: it was a destruction from the Almighty.
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II. He puts them in mind of the sins that brought those desolations upon Judah and Jerusalem. It was for their wickedness. It was this that provoked God to anger, and especially their idolatry, their serving other gods (Jer 44:3) and giving that honour to counterfeit deities, the creatures of their own fancy and the work of their own hands, which should have been given to the true God only. They forsook the God who was known among them, and whose name was great, for gods that they knew not, upstart deities, whose original was obscure and not worth taking notice of: "Neither they nor you, nor your fathers, could give any rational account why the God of Israel was exchanged for such impostors." They knew not that they were gods; nay, they could not but know that they were no gods.
III. He puts them in mind of the frequent and fair warnings he had given them by his word not to serve other gods, the contempt of which warnings was a great aggravation of their idolatry, Jer 44:4. The prophets were sent with a great deal of care to call to them, saying, Oh! do not this abominable thing that I hate. It becomes us to speak of sin with the utmost dread and detestation as an abominable thing; it is certainly so, for it is that which God hates, and we are sure that hid judgment is according to truth. Call it grievous, call it odious, that we may by all means possible put ourselves and others out of love with it. It becomes us to give warning of the danger of sin, and the fatal consequences of it, with all seriousness and earnestness: "Oh! do not do it. If you love God, do not, for it is provoking to him; if you love your own souls do not, for it is destructive to them." Let conscience do this for us in an hour of temptation, when we are ready to yield. O take heed! do not this abominable thing which the Lord hates; for, if God hates it, though shouldst hate it. But did they regard what God said to them? No: "They hearkened not, nor inclined their ear (Jer 44:5); they still persisted in their idolatries; and you see what came of it, therefore God's anger was poured out upon them, as at this day. Now this was intended for warning to you, who have not only heard the judgments of God's mouth, as they did, but have likewise seen the judgments of his hand, by which you should be startled and awakened, for they were inflicted in terrorem, that others might hear and fear and do no more as they did, lest they should fare as they fared."
IV. He reproves them for, and upbraids them with, their continued idolatries, now that they had come into Egypt (Jer 44:8): You burn incense to other gods in the land of Egypt. Therefore God forbade them to go into Egypt, because he knew it would be a snare to them. Those whom God sent into the land of the Chaldeans, though that was an idolatrous country, were there, by the power of God's grace, weaned from idolatry; but those who went against God's mind into the land of the Egyptians were there, by the power of their own corruptions, more wedded than ever to their idolatries; for, when we thrust ourselves without cause or call into places of temptation, it is just with God to leave us to ourselves. In doing this, 1. They did a great deal of injury to themselves and their families: "You commit this great evil against your souls (Jer 44:7), you wrong them, you deceive them with that which is false, you destroy them, for it will be fatal to them." Note, In sinning against God we sin against our own souls. "It is the ready way to cut yourselves off from all comfort and hope (Jer 44:8), to cut off your name and honour; so that you will, both by your sin and by your misery, become a curse and a reproach among all nations. It will become a proverb, As wretched as a Jew. It is the ready way to cut off from you all your relations, all that you shave have joy of and have your families built up in, man and woman, child and suckling, so that Judah shall be a land lost for want of heirs." 2. They filled up the measure of the iniquity of their fathers, and, as if that had been too little for them, added to it (Jer 44:9): "Have you forgotten the wickedness of those who are gone before you, that you are not humbled for it as you ought to be, and afraid of the consequences of it?" Have you forgotten the punishments of your fathers? so some read it. "Do you not know how dear their idolatry cost them? And yet dare you continue in that vain conversation received by tradition from you fathers, though you received the curse with it?" He reminds them of the sins and punishments of the kings of Judah, who, great as they were, escaped not the judgments of God for their idolatry; yea, and they should have taken warning by the wickedness of their wives, who had seduced them to idolatry. In the original it is, And of his wives, which, Dr. Lightfoot thinks, tacitly reflects upon Solomon's wives, particularly his Egyptian wives, to whom the idolatry of the kings of Judah owed its original. "Have you forgotten this, and what came of it, that you dare venture upon the same wicked courses?" See Neh 13:18, Neh 13:26. "Nay, to come to your own times, Have you forgotten your own wickedness and the wickedness of your wives, when you lived in prosperity in Jerusalem, and what ruin it brought upon you? But, alas! to what purpose do I speak to them?" (says God to the prophet, Jer 44:10) "they are not humbled unto this day, by all the humbling providences that they have been under. They have not feared, nor walked in my law." Note, Those that walk not in the law of God do thereby show that they are destitute of the fear of God.
V. He threatens their utter ruin for their persisting in their idolatry now that they were in Egypt. Judgment is given against them, as before (Jer 42:22), that they shall perish in Egypt; the decree has gone forth, and shall not be called back. They set their faces to go into the land of Egypt (Jer 44:12), were resolute in their purpose against God, and now God is resolute in his purpose against them: I will set my face to cut off all Judah, Jer 44:11. Those that think not only to affront, but to confront, God Almighty, will find themselves outfaced; for the face of the Lord is against those that do evil, Psa 34:16. It is here threatened concerning these idolatrous Jews in Egypt, 1. That they shall all be consumed, without exception; no degree nor order among them shall escape: They shall fall, from the least to the greatest (Jer 44:12), high and low, rich and poor. 2. That they shall be consumed by the very same judgments which God made use of for the punishment of Jerusalem, the sword, famine, and pestilence, Jer 44:12, Jer 44:13. They shall not be wasted by natural deaths, as Israel in the wilderness, but by these sore judgments, which, by flying into Egypt, they thought to get out of the reach of. 3. That none (except a very few that will narrowly escape) shall ever return to the land of Judah again, Jer 44:14. They thought, being nearer, that they stood fairer for a return to their own land than those that were carried to Babylon; yet those shall return, and these shall not; for the way in which God has promised us any comfort is much surer than that in which we have projected it for ourselves. Observe, Those that are fretful and discontented will be uneasy and fond of change wherever they are. The Israelites, when they were in the land of Judah, desired to go into Egypt (Jer 42:22), but when they were in Egypt they desired to return to the land of Judah again; they lifted up their soul to it (so it is in the margin), which denotes an earnest desire. But, because they would not dwell there when God commanded it, they shall not dwell they were they desire it. If we walk contrary to God, he will walk contrary to us. How can those expect to be well off who would not know when they were so, though God himself told them?
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–30 The word which came to Jeremiah concerning all the…
The word which came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt,.... Or, "unto all the Jews" (t); the word came to him, that it might be delivered to them; or, "against all the Jews" (u); they having gone into Egypt contrary to the will of God, and committing idolatry; and the word or sermon is full of threatenings and judgments denounced upon them:
which dwell at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros: this prophecy was delivered after the Jews were come to Tahpanhes, or Daphne; see Jer 43:7; and had divided themselves, and were settled in different parts of the kingdom: some continued at Tahpanhes, where were the king's court and palace: others went to Migdol, a place near the Red sea, just at the entrance into Egypt, from the land of Canaan, Exo 14:2; called, by Herodotus, Magdolus (w); and by Adrichomius (x) said to be distant about a mile and a quarter from Pelusium, or Sin, the strength of Egypt, Eze 30:15; others took up their residence at Noph, generally thought to be the city of Memphis. The Targum calls it Mappas; the same which is now called Grand Cairo; or, however, this city is near the place where Memphis stood: others dwelt in the country of Pathros, which perhaps had its name from Pathrusim, a son of Mizraim, Gen 10:13. It is thought by Bochart and others to be the country of Thebais in Egypt, the same with the Nomos Phanturites, or Phaturites, of Pliny (y); and in this country Jeremiah seems to have been when this word came to him, Jer 44:15; and from hence sent or carried it to the other places: saying; as follows:
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(t) "ad omnes Judaeos", V. L. Castalio, Cocceius, Schmidt; "erga omnes", Pagninus, Montanus. (u) "Contra omnes Judaeos", Junius & Tremellius; "de, vel contra", Piscator. (w) Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 159. (x) Theatrum Terrae Sanct. p. 121. (y) Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 9.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 14, 15, 26, 29 Jeremiah represents to the people in Egypt, the former…
Jeremiah represents to the people in Egypt, the former sins and punishment of Judah, ver. 1-10. He prophesies of their destruction in Egypt, ver. 11-14. Their obstinacy, ver. 15-19. Threatened, ver. 20-28. For a sign, the destruction of Egypt is foretold, ver. 29, 30.
At Migdol - It seems the Jews that went into Egypt had planted themselves at these four places. Migdol was a city upon the borders of the Red Sea. Noph was a city, which the Greeks and Latines called Memphis; it is thought to be that, which is now called Cairo. Pathros was the province, since called Thebais.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 15, 19, 22, 30 Jeremiah reproves the Jews in Egypt for continuing in…
CHAPTER XLIV
Jeremiah reproves the Jews in Egypt for continuing in idolatry
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after the exemplary judgments indicted by God on their nation
for that sin, 1-14;
and, upon their refusing to reform, denounces destruction to
them, and to that kingdom wherein they sought protection,
15-30.
NOTES ON CHAP. XLIV
Verse 1. The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews] Dahler supposes this discourse to have been delivered in the seventeenth or eighteenth year after the taking of Jerusalem.
Which dwell at Migdol] A city of Lower Egypt, not far from Pelusium.
Tahpanhes] Daphne Pelusiaca, the place to which the emigrant Jews first went.
Noph] מפס Maphes, Targum. Memphis. a celebrated city of Middle Egypt, and the capital of its district.
The country of Pathros] A district of Upper Egypt, known by the name of the Thebais. See Bochart, Lib. Phaleg, lib. iv., c. 22. Thus we find that the Jews were scattered over the principal parts of Egypt.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 15, 16, 20, 24, 29 Jer 44:1. The word which came to Jeremiah —…
Jer 44:1. The word which came to Jeremiah — The patience and goodness of God to this remnant of his ancient people are very remarkable; he leaves them not even in their rebellion, but commissions his prophet, whom he had before sent to forbid their going into this idolatrous country, to try if in Egypt they could be brought to repentance and reformation; concerning all the Jews which dwelt at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, &c. — They were now dispersed into divers parts of the country, and Jeremiah is sent with a message from God to them, which he delivered, either by going about from place to place to them; or when he had many of them together in Pathros, as is mentioned Jer 44:15. We find a place termed Migdol, mentioned Exo 14:2, as situate near the Red sea. “But I do not take this,” says Blaney, “to be here intended. Migdol properly signifies a tower, and may, in all probability, have been a name given to different cities in Egypt where there was a distinguished object of that kind. The city of Magdolus is mentioned by Herodotus, Hecatæus, and others, and placed by Antoninus at the entrance of Egypt from Palestine, about twelve miles from Pelusium. This was too far distant from the Red sea to be in the route of the Israelites; but its situation in the neighbourhood of Tahpanhes, or Daphnæ, and its distance from Judea, favour the supposition of its being the Migdol here spoken of. For then, as Bochart observes, we shall find the four places mentioned exactly in the order of their respective distances from that country; 1st, Migdol, or Magdolus; 2d, Tahpanhes, or Daphnæ; 3d, Noph, or Memphis; and lastly, the district of Pathros, or Thebais.” Near Memphis stands one of the pyramids which are yet remaining.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24 Migdol - Magdolum, a strong fortress on the northern…
Migdol - Magdolum, a strong fortress on the northern boundary of Egypt.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 26, 30 Magdal, the third station of the Israelites, (Exodus xiv.…
Magdal, the third station of the Israelites, (Exodus xiv. 2.) or another "tower" twelve miles from Pelusium, chap. xlvi. 14. --- Memphis, the capital of Nome, near the western banks of the Nile, and famous for its pyramids, which are standing, though the town be no more, chap. xlvi. 19. --- Phatures; perhaps in higher Egypt. Jeremias might go or send to these cities, this his last prediction, (Calmet) to reclaim his countrymen from idolatry. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 15, 20, 24 a. The charge against the stubbornly idolatrous people
10. JEREMIAH AT THE FESTIVAL OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN IN PATHROS. THE LAST ACT OF HIS PROPHETIC MINISTRY
a. The charge against the stubbornly idolatrous people
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Jer_44:1-14
1The word that came to Jeremiah concerning [for, to] all the Jews which dwell [who dwelt] in the land of Egypt, which dwell at, Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and 2at Noph, and in the country of Pathros, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no 3man dwelleth therein; because of their wickedness which they have committed to1 provoke me to anger, in that they went to burn incense, and to serve other 4gods, whom they knew not, neither they,2 ye, nor your fathers. Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, 5do not this abominable thing3 that I hate. But they hearkened not, nor inclined 6their ear to turn from their wickedness, to burn no incense unto other gods. Wherefore my fury and mine anger was poured forth, and was kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: and they are wasted and desolate, as at 7this day. Therefore now thus saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls,4 to cut off from you man 8and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, to leave you none to remain: In that ye provoke me unto wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense5 unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye be gone to dwell, that ye might cut yourselves6 off, and that ye might be a curse and a reproach among all 9the nations of the earth? Have you forgotten the wickedness [evil]7 of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their [his]8 wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they9 have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?10They are not humbled even, unto this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in 11my law, nor in my statutes, that I set before you and before your fathers. Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will set my face12against you for evil, and to cut off all Judah. And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all10 be consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be an execration, and13an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach. For I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, 14and by the pestilence: So that none [there shall be none escaped or remaining] of the remnant of Judah, which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that they should return [and then to return] into the land of Judah, to the which they have a desire to return to dwell there: for none shall return but such as shall escape.11
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The word of the Lord is communicated through Jeremiah to the Israelites dwelling in Egypt; ye have seen how I have punished Judah and Jerusalem for their idolatry (Jer_44:1-6). Why then do you continually commit the same wickedness? Have ye forgotten the lecture? It appears so, for they have not humbled themselves, nor endeavored to keep the law of God (Jer_44:7-10). Therefore shall the remnant of Judah in Egypt, even like unto Judah and Jerusalem, be destroyed by sword, famine and pestilence, and at most single fugitives shall return home (Jer_44:11-14).
Jer_44:1. The word … saying. We have here the last document of Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry. Far from home, after terrible judgments, he has still the same thing to say to the Jews as at first. They have not become wiser or better. From Tahpanhes they had spread abroad in the land. What occasion had brought them together in so large an assembly, is not indeed stated in the superscription, which is of the greater sort (comp. Jer_40:1; Jer_36:1; Jer_35:1; Jer_34:1, etc.), but is evident enough from what follows.—Dwelt. The fugitives have already established themselves in fixed abodes. Comp. rems. on Jer_43:8—Migdol (comp. Jer_46:14; Eze_29:10; Eze_30:6 coll. Exo_14:2; Num_33:7) was one of the north-eastern boundary points of Egypt [near Syene]. In Herodotus (II. 159) and the LXX. the place is called Μάγδωλον; according to the Itiner. Anton. (p. 171) it was twelve Roman miles from Pelusium.—On Tahpanhes comp. rems. on Jer_43:8.—Noph is Memphis, the ancient capital of lower Egypt. Comp. rems. on Jer_2:16.—Pathros (comp. Jer_44:15; Isa_11:11; Eze_29:14; Eze_30:14) is upper Egypt. Comp. Herzog, R.-Enc., I. S. 149. The assembly was held, according to Jer_44:15, in Pathros. A considerable time must have elapsed since the migration, because we find the colony already dispersed and settled in different places. On the other hand the meeting cannot have occurred so long after the migration that those who are addressed by Jeremiah can belong to the second generation. They were the Jews who had come into the country (Jer_44:8), and the longing for home was still strong in them. Comp. rems. on Jer_44:29-30
Jer_44:2-6. Thus saith … as at this day. The prophet presents before the Jews first the great catastrophe, portraying its genesis in the order of its elements.—Whom they know not. Comp. Jer_19:4—I sent, etc. Comp. Jer_7:13; Jer_7:25; Jer_29:19.—This abominable thing. Comp. Jer_32:35.—Was poured forth. Comp. Jer_42:18.—In the cities of Judah. Comp. Jer_44:9; Jer_44:17; Jer_44:21; Jer_7:17; Jer_11:6; Jer_33:10.—As at this day. Comp. Jer_44:2; Jer_44:22-23; Jer_11:5.
Jer_44:7-10. Therefore now thus … before your fathers. After the Jews had just learned in a different manner how fearfully Jehovah avenges apostasy from Him, how can they now again, to their unendurable shame and ruin, commit the same sins? It appears as if they had forgotten the lesson and not yet learned to bow in obedience to the divine law.—Man and woman. Comp. 1Sa_15:3; 1Sa_22:19; Lam_2:11.—The works of your hands. From Jer_1:16 coll. Jer_25:14 it is evident that the prophet wishes the expression to be understood in a physical sense of the idol images.—Burning incense in the wider sense. Comp. rems. on Jer_1:16.—That ye might be, etc. Comp. Jer_42:18; Zec_8:13.—Have ye forgotten, etc. The present unlawful conduct of the people is explained only by their forgetfulness of the former calamities occasioned by their idolatry.—Hitzig well calls attention to the fact, that the royal wives played an important part in the history of Jewish idolatry. Comp. the wives of Solomon (1Ki_11:1 sqq.) Maachah, the mother of Asa (Jer_15:13) and Athaliah (Jer_11:1).
Jer_44:10. They are not humbled. Comp. Isa_57:15. How unwillingly does the prophet turn away and address his discourse concerning these, to whom he has hitherto spoken, to others. Comp. Mic_1:2; Jer_50:8.—Nor walked. Comp. Jer_9:12; Jer_26:4.
Jer_44:11-14. Therefore … shall escape. Because the Jews, notwithstanding they had experienced the fearful severity of God’s punitive justice, again committed the same sins, therefore (לָכֵן Jer_44:11) will the Lord set his face against them, the last remnant of Judah, and by the destruction of this utterly exterminate the nation. Comp. Jer_44:7.—And I will take. The expression involves an antithesis to set their faces to go. They thought in their own power to take a path which would lead them away from the punitive hand. But the Lord seizes them as He once did the prophet Jonah.—Shall be an execration. Comp. rems. on Jer_42:18.—Them that dwell. Comp. Jer_9:24-25; Jer_46:25.—None escaped. The Jews had gone to Egypt to remain there temporarily, and then return home. On which are gone then depends not only to sojourn there but also and to return with the following relative sentence.—To the which. Comp. Jer_22:27.—But such as shall escape. Comp. Textual Note.
Footnotes:
[1]Jer_44:3.—In להכעסני and ללכת the לְ is the gerundial (comp. Naegelsb. Gr., § 95, e), in לְקַטֵּר לַעֲכֹד it is the supinal (Ib., § 93, f.). Comp. Jer_11:17; Jer_32:32.
[2]Jer_44:3.—המה is not to be regarded as accusative, since this has been already expressed by the suffix in יְדָעוּם, but as nominative. The third person stands in close connection with the preceding, the הֵמָּה with the sudden change of person (comp. infra Jer_44:5; Jer_44:10 and Naegelsb. Gr., § 101 Anm.) is however explained by אַתֶּם ו׳, with which a return is made to the second person used in the beginning of the sentence (Jer_44:2).
[3]Jer_44:4.—דְּבַר as in Jdg_19:24.
[4]Jer_44:7.—וָעָה must here have the same sense as רָעוֹת, Jer_44:9. For the connection is: the רָעָה that ye now do can only be explained, by your having forgotten the רָעוֹת of the past. Since now רָעוֹת must necessarily be taken in a double sense, so must also רָעָה in this passageּ.לְהַכְרִית ו׳ is a gerundial infinitive. On נפשׁרת comp. Naegelsb. Gr. § 81, 1 c.
[5]Jer_44:8.—לְהַכְעִיסֵנִי and לְקַטֶּר are also gerundial infinitives (comp. Jer_44:3).
[6]Jer_44:8.—In Jer_44:7 הַכְרית has a definitely expressed object. Many would supply this here. Others take לכם for אֶתְכֶם, according to the analogy of Jer_40:2. הכרית may, however, also be taken in a directly causative sense=prepare extermination, so that the dative would have nothing abnormal in it. Comp. הִרנּיז Jer_50:34; הוֹכיהַ Isa_2:4; הִצדִּיקIsa_51:11 with לְ; Naegelsb. Gr., § 69, 1 Anm. 2.
[7]Jer_44:9.—From עָשׂוּ אֲשֶׁר it would follow that רָעוֹת is to be taken in a moral sense. But can it be said of those who are censured on account of their persistence in these sins: Have you forgotten your sins? J. D. Michaelis is therefore disposed to read הִשְׁכַּחְתֶּם, with a marginal reading of a Königsberg Codex: mijus peccando memoriam peccatorum ante commissorum obliterastis. But this reading is not sufficiently authenticated. We must therefore take רָעוֹת, as in Jer_44:7, in a double sense, so as to designate at the same time the mala pœnæ and the mala culpæ (comp. Gen_50:15). Their forgetfulness of the sufferings which they had drawn on them by their sins is the cause of their obstinate persistence in the latter.
[8]Jer_44:9.—נשׁיו רעות. Both the introduction of the “wives” and the singular suffix are surprising. The LXX. read τῶν ἀρχόντων ὑμῶν. שְּׂרֵיכֶם or נְשִׂיאֵיכֶם would certainly correspond better to the connection, as well as to the usage of the prophet elsewhere (comp. Jer_44:17; Jer_44:21; Jer_1:18; Jer_2:26; Jer_24:8; Jer_25:18; Jer_32:32; Jer_34:21). But the more difficult reading is to be preferred. The singular suffix is not to be referred to Judah, since the expression “wives of Judah” is neither used elsewhere nor suitable to the connection, but to the king of the time. Comp. Hos_4:8; Zec_14:12; Naegelsb. Gr., § 105, 7, Anm. 2.
[9]Jer_44:9.—עָשׂוּ אֲשֶׁר. Change of person as in Jer_44:3; Jer_44:5. Comp. Naegelsb. Gr., § 101, 2, Anm.
[10]Jer_44:12.—כל ותמו. According to the accents the sentence is to be construed as in the translation. On כֹּל comp. Isa_30:5; Ewald, 286, e.
[11]Jer_44:14.—פְּלֵטִים אִם כִּי. Strictly taken these words form a direct contradiction to the beginning of the verse, which declares that there shall be a פָּלִיט or שָׂרִיד, and the words יָשׁוּבוּ לֹא כִּי are no other than the confirmation of this statement. It is therefore natural to regard the words as a later addition, as Hitzig does. The brevity of the previous sentence, and its apparent contradiction of Jer_44:28 seemed to require this supplementation. In Jer_44:28 it is expressly stated that some, having escaped, will return, and it is hence evident that the declaration here, Jer_44:14, is not to be taken with absolute literalness.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. “Obfirment animum suum ministri ecclesiæ hujus capitis meditatione, ne pertinacia auditorum se territuri patiantur, sed ut potius dehortando, objurgando, comminando intrepide instent ex præcepto apostoli 2Ti_4:2.” Förster.
2. On Jer_44:2-13. A mirror of the stubborn heart of man! For centuries unceasingly warned by the prophets—and how warned! Not by sentimental talk, but by words of thunder and strokes of power,—think only of Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Isaiah, etc.!—yet Judah bowed not his stubborn neck. Then at last when long-suffering love was exhausted, the judgment of just love was executed. And yet in the wretched remnant the old root of unbelief and disobedience remains still unbroken.
3. On Jer_44:9. “Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar with a pestle as vetches, yet will his foolishness not depart from him (Pro_27:22). And he that sings songs to a heavy heart, it is like a torn garment in winter, and vinegar on nitre (Pro_25:20).” Cramer.
4. On Jer_44:15. “Hoc loco imaginem quandam conspicere licet seditionis, de qua Ethnicus: ἐν τῆστάσει πᾶσα ἰδέα κακον͂ ἔνεστιν,—itemque confusionis plus quam cyclopicæ, de qua notum est illud tritum: οὐδεὶς οὐδενὸς οὐδὲν ἀκούει.” Förster.
5. On Jer_44:16. “Ungodliness continually extends and even goes beyond itself. In the foregoing chapter they wish it to be considered as having to do only with Jeremiah’s private person, but now they are become bolder so that they contradict him officially and thus God Himself, not considering that they know what he says to be spoken not on his own, but on God’s account, which is a great blasphemy of God.” Cramer.
6. On Jer_44:17. “The ungodly are blind. For they ascribe all their good fortune to their idolatry. When, however, a misfortune comes God and His word must be to blame, and they say: It is vain to serve God (Mal_3:14). The charge of the Papists is used again now-a-days. when times are dear and the country suffers such like chastisements, that it is the fault of the Gospel; since on the other hand their mass is regarded as a regular Egyptian Meleket, by which they think to obtain temporal and eternal blessings both for the living and the dead.” Cramer.
7. On Jer_44:17. “Non ovum ovo tam simile est atque huic Judæorum orationi nostrorum hominum vox contendentium, sub papatu aureum fuisse sæculum, cum tamen contrarium testentur historæ de bellis, peste et fame in papatu, præsertim ea, quæ incidit in annum Christi 1315, quo tempore fere tertia pars Germaniæ partim fame, partim peste extincta. Hinc versus: Ut lateat nullum tempus famis, ecce cucullum” Förster.
8. On Jer_44:17. “Non mirum, quod urbes peste vexentur, cum Æsculapius et Dii ab iis procul absint, nam ex quo Jesus colitur, nihil jam utilitatis a Diis consequimur. Porphyrius.” MS. note in my copy of Cramer’s Bible.
9. On Jer_44:19. “There is no doubt that the inconstant, frivolous women were the first to be seduced into idolatry, as Eve (2Co_11:3). When these are taken captive, he then proceeds farther, and knows how to bring in the Adam also. Therefore keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom (Mic_7:5).” Cramer.
10. On Jer_44:19. “The harmony and complaisance of married people is never more easily secured than when it is against the Lord, and it is nothing unusual for domestic peace to be adduced as the cause of a lack of zeal in religion. It is an ancient custom; Ahab, Ahaziah and Solomon only followed Adam. The wife had to be deceived by a subtle serpent; the man was bound to keep peace in the family; she gave him and he ate.” Zinzendorf.
11. On Jer_44:20. “God remembers the good and the evil; the good that He may reward it, the evil that He may punish it.” Cramer. [“God will have the last word. The prophets may be run down, but God cannot.” Henry.—S. R. A]
12. On Jer_44:26. “This is the severest punishment of all, that God takes away His holy name and word, as He says in Deu_32:20 : I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be. And this is the famine, not of bread, but of the word of God which they seek and yet do not find (Amo_8:11).” Cramer.
13. On Jer_44:29-30. Between Moses and Jeremiah, between the exodus from Egypt and the return thither of the remnant, there lies a period of almost a thousand years, and what a history! But the Pharaoh, under whom Israel made the exodus, Menephthes (comp. Lepsius in Herz., R.-Enc, I., S. 146) is described by Herodotus as an arrogant and ungodly man (II., 111), just like Hophra. And at both times Israel was a poor despised heap in the land of Egypt. But the heathen were to know that the God of this despised heap is the only true God, and that their idols were naught, as also Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Darius the Mede had also to learn (Daniel 2-6.).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1. On Jer_44:1-14. The holy love of God: 1. long-suffering; 2. just.
2. On Jer_44:9-14. How ruinous a course it is to forget the chastisements of the Lord. This will be shown, if we ponder that this forgetfulness 1. implies chastisement already suffered, 2. proves its want of good results, 3. calls forth severer chastisements from God.
3. On Jer_44:15-18. The utmost alienation of a people from their God, shown in the example of the Jews in Egypt. 1. They place the benefits received to the account of their idols. 2. The evils suffered they place to the account of the Lord. 3. They renounce their obedience to the Lord. 4. They vow their service to their idols.
4. On Jer_44:26-27. The severest punishment which the Lord can bring upon a people, who have hitherto served Him. 1. It consists in this, that the Lord removes the candlestick of His word from among this people, i.e. that by depriving them of the means of grace, He brings Himself into forgetfulness among the people. 2. It is founded in this, that this people on their part have striven to forget the Lord. 3. It has the effect, that this people is given up to the powers of evil to their complete destruction.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 evil . . . upon Jerusalem--If I spared not…
evil . . . upon Jerusalem--If I spared not My own sacred city, much less shall ye be safe in Egypt, which I loathe.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 Jeremiah’s Last Prophecy.
Jeremiah’s Last Prophecy.
JUDAH’S PRESENT DESOLATION THE RESULT OF IDOLATRY, Jer_44:1-7.
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1. Which dwell at Migdol — Literally, tower. Not the “Migdol” of Exo_14:2, but the fortress situated on the northern boundary of Egypt, twelve Roman miles from Pelusium. From this heading it appears that the Jews had settled in various parts of the land of Egypt; so that probably considerable time separates this chapter from the last. For Noph and Tahpanhes, see Jer_2:16; Jer_43:7. Pathros was Upper Egypt — the Thebais of the Greeks and Romans.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29 1. The word that came to Jeremiah] Apparently some…
1. The word that came to Jeremiah] Apparently some little time had elapsed since the arrival of the fugitives, so as to allow for the development of the worship here spoken of. We must remember, however, that there were colonies of Jews in Egypt already. The occasion was probably a gathering of a large number of that nation for a festival in connexion with this particular cult.
at Migdol] on the N.E. border of Egypt, a little to the E. of Tahpanhes.
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at Tahpanhes, and at Noph] See on Jer_2:16.
Pathros] Egyptian for “the land of the South,” Upper Egypt. See on Jer_44:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 24, 30 (1) At Migdol, and at Tahpanhes . . .—We…
XLIV.
(1) At Migdol, and at Tahpanhes . . .—We find from Jer_44:15 that the discourse that follows was delivered at a large gathering of the Jews at Pathros. The number of places named (the three appear in the same combination in Jer_46:14) indicates the extent of the emigration. Migdol (here, as elsewhere, meaning a “tower” or “fortress”) is named in Exo_14:2 as on the route of the Israelites before they crossed the Red Sea, between Pi-hahiroth and Baal-zephon, and again in Eze_29:10; Eze_30:6. It appears in the Itinerary of Antoninus, under the name Magdolo, as twelve miles south of Pelusium. The latter is thought by Lepsius to be different from the former, and to answer to the Stratopeda or “camp” which Herodotus mentions as having been founded by Psammetichus I. as a settlement for his Ionian or Carian mercenaries (Smith’s Dict. of the Bible, Art. Migdol). Noph was identical with Memphis, and appears in Isa_19:13; Jer_2:16; Eze_30:13; Eze_30:16 : and as Moph in the Hebrew of Hos_9:6. The position of Pathros is less certain, but it may be inferred from the mention of the other cities with it that it was in Lower Egypt, and possibly, from Jer_44:15, that it was the name of the region in which it was situated. So in Isa_11:11, it appears in conjunction with Mizraim (= Egypt) and Cush (= Ethiopia), both of which are names of regions and not of cities. By Brugsch (Egypt, I. 242) it has been identified with Upper Egypt, the region of the Thebaid. There is no certain note of the interval between the arrival of the Jews in Egypt and the delivery of the discourse, but it would appear that there had been time for the Jews to disperse and settle in the three or four cities here named, and to adopt the worship of the Egyptians. It is, however, implied throughout that the prophet is speaking to the emigrants themselves, and not to their descendants (Jer_44:17; Jer_44:21).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Jeremiah"s debate with the Jewish fugitives in Pathros; his…
Jeremiah"s debate with the Jewish fugitives in Pathros; his last prophecy.
Vers. 1-14. Accusation brought against the obstinately idolatrous people.
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Which dwell; rather, which dwelt. It appears from this verse that the Jewish fugitives had separated in Egypt, some going to the two northern frontier cities, Migdol (on which see R.S. Poole, "The Cities of Egypt," ch. 8) and Tahpanhes or Daphnae, others further south to Noph, i.e. Memphis, or, less probably, Napata, (see on Jer_2:16) andPathros. (i.e. Upper Egypt; comp. Isa_11:11)
Vers. 1-10. Warnings from the past.
History has its moral lessons. We who are heirs of the ages should learn wisdom from the mistakes as well as from the good examples of the past. Let us consider how this may be done.
I WARNINGS FROM THE SIN OF THE PAST. Jeremiah calls upon the Jews in Egypt to reflect on the wicked conduct of their nation, tracing it back from the present through successive generations of iniquitous court and private life. It is a gloomy task, but a wholesome one. Tacitus was, perhaps, the greatest moralist of his age, because he saw into the moral side of history, and ruthlessly exposed the vice and cruelty and treachery which underlay the splendour of Roman imperialism. Because we can read history with some measure of detachment from the passions and prejudices of the hour, we may learn to see therein the character of actions which are closely parallel to others nearer home. Thus the past may become a mirror of the present, and one that rectifies the images from the confusion which accompanies the direct vision of what is very closely connected with our own person.
II WARNINGS FROM THE DIVINE VOICE IN THE PAST. God had instructed and urged his people to forsake their sins. He had not left them in the dark or unchecked I sent unto you all my servants the prophets." This had been done with earnestness and emphasis early and sending them." It was a revelation of the evil character of their deeds abominable thing;" an appeal to them to cease from such wickedness do not this abominable thing!" and a declaration of the Divine abhorrence of their conduct I hate." All this has been said concerning the wickedness of the past; but it is to be reflected upon for its application to the present. We also may find profit in considering the ancient voices of heaven. The warnings of the Bible may be reread and reapplied in our own day. If we see no new Jeremiah, we have the inspired words of the old Hebrew prophet, and they are as true now as ever. What God hates he hates eternally. What he forbids is always wrong. The object of his urgent appeal should command submission at all times.
III WARNINGS FROM THE PUNISHMENTS OF THE PAST. The object of punishment is twofold. First, it concerns the guilty; secondly, it has lessons for witnesses. It is chastisement to the offender, it is warning to others. No punishment would be just if it were simply given as a deterrent. But being deserved and needful on account of the conduct of the victim, it is then utilized in perfect justice for the general benefit of the community. We should be thankful for the fact that the fate of others is not altogether obscure, so that we may profit by the sad lessons of their experience.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR Vers. 1-14. The (vide Jer_43:8-13) condition of hardened sinners desperate.
I WHY IS IT SO?
1. Because repeated warnings have been rejected. (Vers, 4, 5) These have been inspired and infallible. Had they believed ever so little they might have trusted implicitly what was spoken, accompanied as it was with such miraculous credentials. We, in these last times, have had the Lord himself. He has revealed the heart of the Father.
They were sufficiently numerous and seasonable. God "rose up early and sent them." He sent them all. No opportunity or peculiarity of individual influence was emitted. Christ is greater than all the prophets put together, and his gospel is universally declared and universally authoritative over the consciences of men. God cannot send another messenger, nor would it avail if he could.
2. Because the lessons of experience have been ignored. (Vers. 9, 10) How terribly severe had not these been! It was scarcely possible for greater temporal punishments to be inflicted. Yet it was in the discipline of these judgments they were to have been saved. The path of transgressions, as the sinner looks back upon it, is marked by ruin and death. Yet will he not repent.
3. Their persistent disobedience is an intolerable offence to God. (Ver. 8) God"s judgments are not exhausted, but his patience may be. The history of offence and punishment will not repeat itself indefinitely. There are abysses of wrath. There is an eternal fire. Let them beware lest they be utterly consumed.
II WHAT ARE THE SIGNS THAT IT IS SO?
1. The Word of God is wholly against them, The indictment has no redeeming feature.
2. The pathos and pitifulness of God"s entreaty. (Vers. 4, 7) There is compassion in the Divine mind because of the consequences that impend. Who so able to understand the sinner"s circumstances as his Father? He who can see before and after, and who can fathom the mystery of iniquity, fears for his erring child.
III WHAT ELEMENT OF HOPE, IF ANY, IS STILL LEFT FOR THEM?
1. God still pleads. Silence would mean hopelessness. Whilst his servant is authorized to speak, there may remain a way of escape.
2. The fatherly compassion his voice betrays. There are tears in the entreaty: "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!" It is the birth cry of an evangel; a prophecy of Jesus. Mercy may move and melt where judgment has failed. "For the love of Christ constraineth us," etc.; (2Co_5:14) "But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". M. (Rom_5:8)
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY Vers. 1-30. Jeremiah"s last sermon.
There are other prophecies of Jeremiah recorded in this book in the chapters that remain, but this discourse is the last that we know of his delivering. And with it the curtain falls upon this great prophet of God; upon Baruch, his beloved companion and helper; and upon the wretched Jews for whose good he had laboured, but in vain. A long interval separates it from that in the previous chapter; for we see the people not now at Tahpanhes, at the border of Egypt, but gathering from all parts of the land to Pathros, to a great heathen festival there. And a very awful discourse it is. There is not one word of gospel in it, but the boom of the heavy bell of doom is heard resounding all through it not one solitary chime of grace, or mercy, or hope anywhere. It is like the words of the Son of man when he comes to judge the world, and all nations are brought before him, to those on his left hand. They are told their sin and their doom. They make such defence as they can, which is rather a defiance than a defence; they are answered, and their sentence is pronounced again. There is throughout both these discourses nought but "a fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indignation." "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin." Such sermons might well have suggested these apostolic words. In this one note
I ITS COMMENCEMENT THE INDICTMENT OF THE CONDEMNED. The prophet reminds them that they had seen God"s judgments upon their brethren and fathers, and they knew the cause, that it was their sin against God. They had heard warning after warning addressed to themselves against the same sin. And not only had these warnings been repeated, but many messengers had been sent, and these had given their message with all earnestness and zeal, in season and out of season, and God himself had deigned to entreat with them and plead with them, saying, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!" But they had disregarded, despised, disobeyed all, and they were not humbled (ver. 10) even now. Therefore was their judgment pronounced against them and their doom was fixed.
II THE ANSWER OF THE PEOPLE. They would not believe in their doom. They resolved to persist in their sin. They declared they were every way better off in serving idols than in serving God.
III THE PROPHET"S REPLY AND REITERATON OF GOD"S JUDGMENT AGAINST THEM.
CONCLUSION. As we read and ponder this terrible chapter, and remember that as its declarations concerning the past were true, so also were those that related to the future; for the judgment came upon them to the uttermost, far more than fell on those in Babylon. What can our hearts say to this? "Who would not fear thee, O Lord?" "Keep back thy servant... from presumptuous sins. C.
Vers. 1-30. The end of Jeremiah; or, going down in clouds.
With this chapter Jeremiah disappears from view. The sadness which surrounded his first ministry accompanies it to the last and deepens at its close; like a sunset in clouds, going down in darkness and storm, The path along which he had been led had been via crucis, a via dolorosa indeed; a lifelong tragedy, an unceasing pain. We can only hope that death came soon to him after his recorded history closes. We have seen him torn from his native land and carried down to Egypt. We see him in the forty-third chapter at the border of the land; in this, in the heart of Egypt, at Pathros, probably forced to witness the degrading idolatry of his people, and unable to do aught to prevent it. An idol festival, accompanied, doubtless, with all the wonted pollutions of such worship, is proceeding, and he lifts up his voice once more in stern protest. But in vain, as heretofore. He vanishes from our view at an hour when his countrymen, so far from being less addicted to idols, were now open in their sin, vaunting it and declaring their determination to adhere to it, and their reset that they had ever done otherwise. What a farewell between a minister of God and the people of his charge! There never was but one other like it the farewell of him who said, as he wept over another doomed Jerusalem and a future Jewish people, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." What became of Jeremiah from this date we know not. "No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." "There is the Christian tradition resting doubtless on some earlier belief, that the long tragedy of his life ended in actual martyrdom, and that the Jews at Tahpanhes, enraged by his rebukes, at last stoned him to death." The testimony to the martyrs at the close of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews is thought to contain allusion to him: "They were stoned so we read. There is a Jewish tradition, however, which says that he made his escape to Babylon, but Josephus, like the Bible, is utterly silent as to the prophet"s end. And it has been suggested that the tradition of the Jew and the silence of the historian are alike owing to a desire to gloss over some great crime. The suggestion is a probable one. "But he did not need a death by violence to make him a true martyr. To die with none to record the time or manner of his death was the right end for one who had spoken all along, not to win the praise of men, but because the Word of the Lord was in him as "a burning fire." The darkness and doubt that brood over the last days of the prophet"s life are more significant than either of the issues which present themselves to men"s imaginations as the winding up of his career." "But a careful examination of his writings show that, whilst the earlier ones are calmer, loftier, more uniform in tone, the latter show marks of age and weariness and sorrow, and are more strongly imbued with the language of individual suffering." How glad we would have been had the clouds lifted ere he died, and a gleam of sunshine had irradiated the hitherto almost unbroken gloom! Some of the prophets were permitted to have a blessed onlook into the better days that were coming. He who wrote the closing portion of Isaiah"s prophecies did so; like Moses from Mount Pisgah. But it was not so to be with this prophet of God. His sun was to go down in clouds, and, though he had faithfully kept God"s commandments, there was not for him in this life any "great reward." Though out of love for his countrymen he had refused the offer of a peaceful and honoured home in Babylon, like Moses, "choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God" he yet failed to win their affection or obedience; and they remained in the same evil mind to the last. He had walked in the fear of the Lord. But those ways had. not been for him "ways of pleasantness," nor its paths "paths of peace." The brokenhearted old man appeals to God and man, "Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." The twenty-second psalm that which seems to tell so clearly of the sufferings of our Lord is thought by many to have been written by him, and tp tell of his own deep distress. Priest, patriot, prophet, martyr, hero of the faith indeed, what a life was thine from beginning to end, from thy first call by God to thy last rejection by men! These lines, translated for our day, and sung by our comfortable congregations with what consistency they who sing them best knowIf I find him, if I follow, What his guerdon here? Many a sorrow, many a labour, Many a tear; are applicable enough to one like that great prophet of God, whose career began, continued, and, most of all, ended, in sorrow, labour, and tears. But the review of such a ministry must assuredly have its lessons. As we think of it are we not reminded
I OF "THE MAN OF SORROWS," OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST? (Cf. homily on Jeremiah"s ministry, vol. 1, p. 9.) No doubt other great servants of God, whose ministry and especially whose end have been like that of Jeremiah, come into the mind. John the Baptist in Bible history, and Savonarola in later days. The parallel between this great Florentine preacher and our prophet has often been noticed. The insistence upon spiritual religion, the sad and terrible close of his career, these have led many to look upon Savonaroia as the Jeremiah of the Middle Ages. But these resemblances are incidental and undesigned. That, however, between our Lord and his honoured servant who, in so many ways, preceded him, is not incidental, nor can it be called undesigned. But whilst the prophet is like our Lord in so many respects, yet, great as were his sorrows, those of the Man of sorrows were greater still. For our Lord knew more of the evil of sin and hated it more intensely. He sacrificed more and endured more. And so the experience of the prophets, like that of all God"s servants, only goes to show that Christ has sounded deeper depths of sorrow than any that his servants can ever know. Christ leads us through no darker room Than he"s been through before. Hence always "underneath," however deep the depths out of which we cry, "are the everlasting arms" of his sympathy and love and help.
II OF THE LIGHTNESS OF OUR BURDENS COMPARED WITH THOSE OF MANY OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD? How it shames us to think of the things we murmur about, when we contrast them with what such men as Jeremiah continually endured! Surely as we think of the severity of his cross, and especially that of our Saviour, we shall cease to complain of what ours may be.
III OF WHAT THE GRACE OF GOD CAN DO? Did the prophet of God endure and contend so nobly, and was he faithful unto death? But is not "Jesus Christ the same yesterday," etc.? Then he who so strengthened his servants in days gone by will do the same still. Let us, therefore, go forward without fear.
IV OF THE NECESSITY OF COUNTING THE COST ERE WE ENTER UPON THE SERVICE OF GOD? We see in the career of Jeremiah what may be required of us. Our Lord said to one candidate for discipleship, "The foxes have holes, and," etc. He would have the man consider if he were prepared to bear a life like that. And as we read what has been demanded of the Lord"s servants, and may be of us, it is well that we, too, should count the cost. But do not count it so as to decline it; no, but that you may hasten to the treasure store of Christ, to the riches of his grace who will make his strength perfect in our weakness.
V OF THE GREAT ARGUMENT FOR A FUTURE LIFE WHICH SUCH A CAREER AS THAT OF JEREMIAH FURNISHES? We have seen how uninterruptedly sad his life was, and how darkly it ended. Now, can any say that there is nothing more for such a man as that; that he and all they "who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished that is, the noblest, the purest, the best; those whose lives were beautiful, brave, Godlike, that these have perished? And yet, if death ends all, they have. It is incredible.
VI IF SUCH MEN DEEMED IT WELL TO SACRIFICE ALL THEIR PRESENT FOR THE FAVOUR OF GOD, ARE WE WISE WHO REFUSE TO SACRIFICE ANYTHING, who love the world and cling to it and make it our good? C.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG Vers. 1-10. A severe lesson unlearned.
I OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN THE LESSON. The suffering had not happened a long way off and to a people of strangers. Those who were to be taught had seen for themselves. The suffering was the very cause that prompted them to seek a home in Egypt, and even at this moment it was no great distance that separated them from the land of desolation. And so also have we opportunities, only too many, to learn from the sufferings of others. All suffering teaches something, if only we are willing to learn, and the suffering that comes through sin should have a peculiarly instructing power. Opportunity is also given, not only to learn ourselves, but to teach others. The daily newspaper, with its records of crime, folly, violent death, and lifelong disgrace, puts all who read it under a great responsibility for ordering their lives aright.
II THE FULL EXPLANATION OF THE SUFFERING. The cause of it all is clearly stated. The unfaithfulness of a nation to their God. Even to have begun a departure from God was great wickedness, but persistency still further intensified the guilt. Other nations were faithful to their gods, though they were really no gods and had rendered no service, whereas Israel owed its growth, its position, its prosperity, its fame, to Jehovah. We do not know the origin and molding of any other people as we do those of the people of God. We cannot think of the great suffering connected with the desolated cities of Judah without thinking also of Jehovah"s long suffering, and of the continuous prophetic means he employed to set before his people their wickedness and peril. On the other hand, we have a lesson with respect to what seems unpunished iniquity. Suffering is surely being gathered up for it. Time is being given for repentance and amendment.
III THE LESSON IS ALTOGETHER UNLEARNED. We say "unlearned," because it effected no change. Suffering by itself cannot change. Suffering, indeed, appears to have different effects with different people, but the suffering is not really a cause. It but gives occasion to see whether men will yield to the new life and energy which comes from God. There had been a great upheaval in Judah, but so far as concerned the Jews dwelling in the land of Egypt the only change was one in the scene of their idolatries. They were the same men in Egypt as at Jerusalem. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv4, 16 Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.
Jer_44:4
Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.
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The thing which God hates
I. What sin itself is.
II. God hates it.
1. Because it is contrary to His own nature.
2. Because it is unnatural in His creatures.
3. Because it transgresses holy, just, and good laws.
4. Because it defiles and injures the entire human nature. It brings a withering curse upon every stage of life, and upon every development of life, and upon every phase of life, and upon every department of life.
5. Because it makes men curses to each other.
6. Because it ignores or it rejects the Divine government.
7. Because wherever sin exists, except as it is checked by Gods mercy, it has the dominion.
8. Because wherever it is introduced, it spreads.
9. Sin requires God to inflict upon men of every class and kind, that which He assures us, upon His oath, He has no pleasure in.
10. Their continuing in sin tramples under foot the blood of Jesus. (S. Martin.)
The popular estimate of sin
I. What is sin? Theology is determined by the answer. Sin is only negation as cold is the negation of heat; darkness, of light; disease, of health. So we are told. Well, I know that I shiver to-night under the negation of heat. I grope under the negation of light, and feel a very positive thorn in the flesh. Away with this juggling of words! Sin is a fact and must be dealt with.
II. What do you mean by the new life? If Sin be easy to control, no helplessness is felt, no great change of being is accepted, no outside help is needed. If you fancy that one bad deed is cancelled by another good one, and that you are all right at heart, although often wrong in action, you will not seek salvation.
III. What disclosure does Scripture make? An abominable thing. What does sin propose to do? It defies God and would usurp His throne were it possible. The smallest infringement of the principle of honesty in social life breaks up the confidence of man in man and introduces destructive tendencies. The greater the transgression, the more destructive are the results.
IV. What about the remedy of sin? We know not all the counsels of God, but we know enough of the covenant He made with His Son Jesus Christ to say that by His vicarious atonement we are freed from the penalty of sin, and by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Ghost we are made pure--the past and future are covered by His meritorious work. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
Gods expostulation with sinners
I. The description of sin here given by God.
1. We call those objects abominable which excite in us the sensations of loathing and abhorrence. That such is the nature of sin, even in its most agreeable forms, may be learned from the various figures under which it is represented in the Word of God. Whatever is revolting in corruption, loathsome in uncleanness, or hideous in deformity, is there brought forward, in order to give us some idea of its abominable nature.
2. It must be considered not only as loathsome to God, but as exciting in Him the desire of its destruction, and an inclination to execute vengeance upon all to whom it is an object of delight. From an abominable object we naturally turn away; but what we hate we seek to destroy.
(1) Sin is hateful to God, as it is the very reverse of His nature.
(2) Sin is hateful to God, as it is a transgression of His law.
(3) Sin is hateful to God, as it opposes His designs.
(4) Sin is hateful to God, as it is an expression of enmity in the heart against His very being.
II. The manner in which God beseeches us to abstain from sin.
1. We are naturally prone to wickedness.
2. God hath designs of mercy towards our guilty race.
3. The salvation of sinners is accomplished in a way perfectly consistent with their freedom as moral agents.
4. God is deeply concerned for the salvation of sinners.
III. Some considerations that ought to induce us to hearken to the voice of God, and do what He requires.
1. It is God why, expostulates with you,. and beseeches you to abstain from sin.
2. The extreme folly of sin is another consideration, that may induce you to abstain from it.
3. The fatal consequences of continuing in sin, especially after we haven been called to repentance, is a consideration that ought to induce you to hear, and do what the Lord requires. (G. Campbell.)
Argument against sinning
I. God denounces sin with abhorrence. He calls it an abominable thing. Sin is represented in the Bible as a loathsome, odious, revolting, execrable thing. All kinds of sin are an abomination. Lying lips (Pro_12:22). Pride (Pro_16:5). Wicked thoughts (Pro_15:26). Wickedness in all its forms (Pro_15:9). Sin is essentially an abomination. Three things show this:--
1. The misrepresenting conduct of the sinner. Sin has a self-hiding, self-dissimulating instinct.
2. The universal conscience of mankind. Injustice, falsehood, self-seeking impiety, with all their kindred sins, the conscience of the world abhors.
3. The history of the Divine conduct towards our world.
(1) Look at the judicial inflictions recorded in the Bible: expulsion from Eden, the deluge, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of Jerusalem, &c.
(2) Merciful interpositions. How has mercy wrought, through all past ages, to sweep abominations from the world! through patriarchs, prophets, apostles, holy ministers, and Christ Himself. He came to put away sin:
II. God hates sin with intensity. He says, I hate it. The Infinite heart revolts from it with ineffable detestation.
1. He hates it, for it is deformity, and He is the God of beauty. How offensive to the artist of high aesthetic taste and culture, are figures introduced into the realm of art, unscientific in their proportions, and unrefined in their touch!
2. He hates it, for it is confusion, and He is the God of order. Order, says the poet, is Heavens first law.
3. He hates it, for it is misery, and He is the Cod of love. Every sin has in it the sting of the serpent, which, if not extracted, will rankle with fiery anguish in the soul for ever. God hates this evil, for He desires the happiness of His creatures.
III. God prohibits sin with earnestness. Oh, do not this abominable thing. What depths of fervid loving solicitude are in this Oh!
1. Do it not; you are warring against your own highest interest.
2. Do it not; you are warring against the well-being of the creation.
3. Do it not; you are warring against Me. Every sin is a war against My ideas, My feelings, My plans, My institutions. (Homilist.)
Lifes lameness: the character of sin
The church bells were ringing out a merry peal of welcome as a bride and bridegroom left the church after the marriage service. The bride was given some flowers as she passed to her carriage, and a small drop of water fell from a flower on to the brides light dress. Soon after, a slight stain was noticed there, and the remark was made: A spot of sin as small as this would shut either of us out of heaven. That remark was perfectly true. A little speck of dust on the lens of a telescope will mar its powers of vision. A tiny hair in the mainspring of a watch will suffice to stop the machinery, So one little sin, secretly cherished and wilfully indulged, will choke up our soul s communion with God and destroy our spiritual comfort. What, then, is sin? Sin is rebellion against God. Self-love is the secret of sin. The hidden principle of all sin is rejection of the will of God. None of Gods commands are grievous, and therefore the question of our obedience is made to turn precisely on the will of God. God alone is independent. He has made us for Himself; and the more we seek to bring our wills into subjection to His, and our lives into complete dependence upon Him, the happier and the holier shall we become. As a train was speeding along the railroad in the north of England the other day, a spark from the engine set fire to a shrub in a plantation near the line, and then the fire spread to a forest, where it raged for two days, doing immense damage. Who would have thought that such a result would arise, from a little spark? Yet so it is in the world of life--great results spring from the most trivial causes. Our hearts are, like those dry trees, ready to burst into a blaze when touched by the spark of sin. Therefore we must beware of sin. When Canova, the great Italian sculptor, was about to commence his famous statue of the great Napoleon, his keenly observant eye detected a tiny red line running through the upper portion of the splendid block of marble which had been brought from Paros at enormous cost. Others saw no flaw, but the great sculptor detected it, and he refused to lay chisel upon it. The very perfection he aimed at compelled him to reject the marble block. Now if there is a flaw in your life, others may not see it, but God most assuredly will. And that there is such a flaw God declares. His Word asserts, All have sinned (Rom_3:23). There is none that doeth good, no, not one (Psa_14:3). During a naval engagement off Copenhagen, Admiral Parker signalled the ships to cease action. Nelson did not wish to retire his ship. When informed of the Admirals signal, he looked through the telescope with his blind eye, and exclaimed, I see no such signal He persistently deceived himself in order that he might continue the fight. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1Jn_1:8). But we deceive no one else. It is no excuse for a man to say he does not steal, does not lie, does not swear, does not covet. Neglect of known duty is sin. Man has a duty to God (Mat_22:37). Not to love God is sin. And the Bible not only charges man with not loving God, but it speaks of man as being in a state of enmity against God (Rom_8:7). Therefore he cannot restore himself. It is a stormy night by the sea-shore. The wind is howling and moaning, and ever and anon with boisterous gusts threatening violence to the shipping in the harbour. The sea is lashed into a seething foam. On the beach are scattered groups of people--men hurrying to and fro with excited determination, and women wringing their hands in mute agony and mingled prayer. You look out to sea. In the darkness of the night you can see nothing, but you can tell by the whirr and rush of the rocket apparatus, by the cries of the life boatmen, that a vessel is in danger. You know there is a ship in distress by these signs, though you may not know the extent or reality of her danger. So, when I see the Lord Jesus Christ leaving His throne in glory, living a life of anguish, and dying a cruel death, I learn that sin is a terrible reality. Oh, what a hideous, fiendish monster is sin, when it turns its cursed enmity against the blessed Son of God, and imbrues its cruel hands in His precious blood! The Emperor Arcadius and his wife Eudoxia had a very bitter feeling towards St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople. One day, in a fit of anger, the Emperor said to some of his courtiers, I would I were avenged of this bishop! Several then proposed how this should be done. Banish him and exile him to the desert, said one. Put him in prison, said another. Confiscate his property, said a third. Let him die, said a fourth. Another courtier, whose vices Chrysostom had reproved, said maliciously, You all make a great mistake. You will never punish him by such proposals. If banished the kingdom, he will feel God as near to him in the desert as here. If you put him in prison and load him with chains, he will still pray for the poor and praise God in the prison. If you confiscate his property, you merely take away his goods from the poor, not from him. If you condemn him to death, you open heaven to him. Prince, do you wish to be revenged on him? Force him to commit sin. I know him; this man fears nothing in the world but sin. Is there no lesson here for you and me? (A. Finlayson.)
Divine pleading
If anyone suffers very keenly from nervous exhaustion, it seems sometimes almost impossible for him to bear the noise of a child who persists in running heavily overhead. He will adopt a pleading rather than an angry tone: My child, do not do this again; I cannot bear it. Let us think of Gods holy nature as more sensitive to sin than the most highly-strung nerves to noise, and hear Him saying, whenever we are on the point of committing sin, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate. (F. B. ,Meyer, B. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Jeremiah 44
CHAPTER XV
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
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Jeremiah 44
"Since we left off burning incense and offering libations to the Queen of Heaven,
we have been in want of everything, and have been consumed by the sword and the famine."- Jer_44:18
THE Jewish exiles in Egypt still retained a semblance of national life, and were bound together by old religious ties. Accordingly we read that they came together from their different settlements-from Migdol and Tahpanhes on the northeastern frontier, from Noph or Memphis on the Nile south of the site of Cairo, and from Pathros or Upper Egypt-to a "great assembly, no doubt a religious festival. The list of cities shows how widely the Jews were scattered throughout Egypt."
Nothing is said as to where and when this "great assembly" met; but for Jeremiah, such a gathering at all times and anywhere, in Egypt as at Jerusalem, became an opportunity for fulfilling his Divine commission. He once again confronted his fellow countrymen with the familiar threats and exhortations. A new climate had not created in them either clean hearts or a right spirit.
Recent history had added force to his warnings. He begins therefore by appealing to the direful consequences which had come upon the Holy Land, through the sins of its inhabitants:-
"Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem and upon all the cities of Judah.
Behold, this day they are an uninhabited waste,
Because of their wickedness which they wrought to provoke Me to anger,
By going to burn incense and to serve other gods whom neither they nor their fathers knew."
The Israelites had enjoyed for centuries intimate personal relations with Jehovah, and knew Him by this ancient and close fellowship and by all His dealings with them. They had no such knowledge of the gods of surrounding nations. They were like foolish children who prefer the enticing blandishments of a stranger to the affection and discipline of their home. Such children do not intend to forsake their home or to break the bonds of filial affection, and yet the new friendship may wean their hearts from their father. So these exiles still considered themselves worshippers of Jehovah, and yet their superstition led them to disobey and dishonour Him.
Before its ruin Judah had sinned against light and leading:-
"Howbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets,
Rising up early and sending them, saying,
Oh do not this abominable thing that I hate.
But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ears, so as to turn from their evil,
That they should not burn incense to other gods.
Wherefore My fury and my anger was poured forth."
Political and social questions, the controversies with the prophets who contradicted Jeremiah in the name of Jehovah, have fallen into the background; the poor pretence of loyalty to Jehovah which permitted His worshippers to degrade Him to the level of Baal and Moloch is ignored as worthless: and Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, finds the root of the peoples sin in their desertion of Jehovah. Their real religion was revealed by their heathenish superstitions. Every religious life is woven of many diverse strands; if the web as a whole is rotten, the Great Taskmaster can take no account of a few threads that have a form and profession of soundness. Our Lord declared that He would utterly ignore and repudiate men upon whose lips His name was a too familiar word, who had preached and cast out devils and done many mighty works in that Holy Name. These were men who had worked iniquity, who had combined promising externals with the worship of "other gods," Mammon or Belial or some other of those evil powers, who place
"Within His sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things His holy rites and solemn feasts profane;
And with their darkness dare affront His light."
This profuse blending of idolatry with a profession of zeal for Jehovah had provoked the Divine wrath against Judah: and yet the exiles had not profited by their terrible experience of the consequences of sin; they still burnt incense unto other gods. Therefore Jeremiah remonstrates with them afresh, and sets before their eyes the utter ruin which will punish persistent sin. This discourse repeats and enlarges the threats uttered at Bethlehem. The penalties then denounced on disobedience are now attributed to idolatry. We have here yet another example of the tacit understanding attaching to all the prophets predictions. The most positive declarations of doom are often warnings and not final sentences. Jehovah does not turn a deaf ear to the penitent, and the doom is executed not because He exacts the uttermost farthing, but because the culprit perseveres in his uttermost wrong. Lack of faith and loyalty at Bethlehem and idolatry in Egypt were both symptoms of the same deep-rooted disease.
On this occasion there was no rival prophet to beard Jeremiah and relieve his hearers from their fears and scruples. Probably indeed no professed prophet of Jehovah would have cared to defend the worship of other gods. But, as at Bethlehem, the people themselves ventured to defy their aged mentor. They seem to have been provoked to such hardihood by a stimulus which often prompts timorous men to bold words. Their wives were specially devoted to the superstitious burning of incense, and these women were present in large numbers. Probably, like Lady Macbeth, they had already in private
"Poured their spirits in their husbands ears,
And chastised, with the valour of their tongues,
All that impeded."
those husbands from speaking their minds to Jeremiah. In their presence, the men dared not shirk an obvious duty, for fear of more domestic chastisement. The prophets reproaches would be less intolerable than such inflictions. Moreover the fair devotees did not hesitate to mingle their own shrill voices in the wordy strife.
These idolatrous Jews-male and female-carried things with a very high hand indeed:-
"We will not obey thee in that which thou hast spoken to us in the name of Jehovah. We are determined to perform all the vows we have made to burr incense and offer libations to the Queen of Heaven, exactly as we have said and as we and our fathers and kings and princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem."
Moreover they were quite prepared to meet Jeremiah on his own ground and argue with him according to his own principles and methods. He had appealed to the ruin of Judah as a proof of Jehovahs condemnation of their idolatry and of His power to punish: they argued that these misfortunes were a Divine spretae injuria formae, the vengeance of the Queen of Heaven, whose worship they had neglected. When they duly honoured her, -
"Then had we plenty of victuals, and were prosperous and saw no evil; but since we left off burning incense and offering libations to the Queen of Heaven, we have been in want of everything, and have been consumed by the sword and the famine."
Moreover the women had a special plea of their own:-
"When we burned incense and offered libations to the Queen of Heaven, did we not make cakes to symbolise her and offer libations to her with our husbands permission?"
A wifes vows were not valid without her husbands sanction, and the women avail themselves of this principle to shift the responsibility for their superstition on the mens shoulders. Possibly too the unfortunate Benedicts were not displaying sufficient zeal in the good cause, and these words were intended to goad them into greater energy. Doubtless they cannot be entirely exonerated of blame for tolerating their wives sins, probably they were guilty of participation as well as connivance. Nothing, however, but the utmost determination and moral courage would have curbed the exuberant religiosity of these devout ladies. The prompt suggestion that, if they had done wrong, their husbands are to blame for letting them have their own way, is an instance of the meanness which results from the worship of "other gods."
But these defiant speeches raise a more important question. There is an essential difference between regarding a national catastrophe as a Divine judgment and the crude superstition to which an eclipse expresses the resentment of an angry god. But both involve the same practical uncertainty. The sufferers or the spectators ask what god wrought these marvels and what sins they are intended to punish, and to these questions neither catastrophe nor eclipse gives any certain answer.
Doubtless the altars of the Queen of Heaven had been destroyed by Josiah in his crusade against heathen cults; but her outraged majesty had been speedily avenged by the defeat and death of the iconoclast, and since then the history of Judah had been one long series of disasters. Jeremiah declared that these were the just retribution inflicted by Jehovah because Judah had been disloyal to Him; in the reign of Manasseh their sin had reached its climax:-
"I will cause them to be tossed to and fro among all the nations of the earth, because of Manasseh ben Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem." {Jer_15:4}
His audience were equally positive that the national ruin was the vengeance of the Queen of Heaven. Josiah had destroyed her altars, and now the worshippers of Istar had retaliated by razing the Temple to the ground. A Jew, with the vague impression that Istar was as real as Jehovah, might find it difficult to decide between these conflicting theories.
To us, as to Jeremiah, it seems sheer nonsense to speak of the vengeance of the Queen of Heaven, not because of what we deduce from the circumstances of the fall of Jerusalem, but because we do not believe in any such deity. But the fallacy is repeated when, in somewhat similar fashion, Protestants find proof of the superiority of their faith in the contrast between England and Catholic Spain, while Romanists draw the opposite conclusion from a comparison of Holland and Belgium. In all such cases the assured truth of the disputants doctrine, which is set forth as the result of his argument, is in reality the premiss upon which his reasoning rests. Faith is not deduced from, but dictates an interpretation of history. In an individual the material penalties of sin may arouse a sleeping conscience, but they cannot create a moral sense: apart from a moral sense the discipline of rewards and punishments would be futile:-
"Were no inner eye in us to tell,
Instructed by no inner sense,
The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
That light would want its evidence."
Jeremiah, therefore, is quite consistent in refraining from argument and replying to his opponents by reiterating his former statements that sin against Jehovah had ruined Judah and would yet ruin the exiles. He spoke on the authority of the "inner sense," itself instructed by Revelation. But, after the manner of the prophets, he gave them a sign-Pharaoh Hophra should be delivered into the hand of his enemies as Zedekiah had been. Such an event would indeed be an unmistakable sign of imminent calamity to the fugitives who had sought the protection of the Egyptian king against Nebuchadnezzar.
We have reserved for separate treatment the question suggested by the referents to the Queen of Heaven. This divine name only occurs again in the Old Testament in Jer_7:18, and we are startled, at first sight, to discover that a cult about which all other historians and prophets have been entirely silent is described in these passages as an ancient and national worship. It is even possible that the "great assembly" was a festival in her honour. We have again to remind ourselves that the Old Testament is an account of the progress of Revelation and not a history of Israel. Probably the true explanation is that given by Kuenen. The prophets do not, as a rule, speak of the details of false worship; they use the generic "Baal" and the collective "other gods." Even in this chapter Jeremiah begins by speaking of "other gods," and only uses the term "Queen of Heaven" when he quotes the reply made to him by the Jews. Similarly when Ezekiel goes into detail concerning idolatry {Ezekiel 8} he mentions cults and ritual which do not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. The prophets were little inclined to discriminate between different forms of idolatry, just as the average churchman is quite indifferent to the distinctions of the various Nonconformist bodies, which are to him simply "dissenters." One might read many volumes of Anglican sermons and even some English Church History without meeting with the term Unitarian. It is easy to find modern parallels-Christian and heathen-to the name of this goddess. The Virgin Mary is honoured with the title Regina Caeli, and at Mukden, the Sacred City of China, there is a temple to the Queen of Heaven. But it is not easy to identify the ancient deity who bore this name. The Jews are accused elsewhere of worshipping "the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven," and one or other of these heavenly bodies-mostly either the moon or the planet Venus-has been supposed to have been the Queen of Heaven.
Neither do the symbolic cakes help us. Such emblems are found in the ritual of many ancient cults: at Athens cakes shaped like a full moon were offered to the moon goddess Artemis; a similar usage seems to have prevailed in the worship of the Arabian goddess Al-Uzza, whose star was Venus, and also in connection with the worship of the sun.
Moreover we do not find the title "Queen of Heaven" as an ordinary and well-established name of any neighbouring divinity. "Queen" is a natural title for any goddess, and was actually given to many ancient deities. Schrader finds our goddess in the Atarsamain (AtharAstarte) who is mentioned in the Assyrian descriptions as worshipped by a North Arabian tribe of Kedarenes. Possibly too the Assyrian Istar is called Queen of Heaven.
Istar, however, is connected with the moon as well as with the planet Venus. For the present, therefore we must be content to leave the matter an open question, but any day some new discovery may solve the problem. Meanwhile it is interesting to notice how little religious ideas and practices are affected by differences in profession. St. Isaac the Great, of Antioch, who died about A.D. 460, tells us that the Christian ladies of Syria-whom he speaks of very ungallantly as "fools"-used to worship the planet Venus from the roofs of their houses, in the hope that she would bestow upon them some portion of her own brightness and beauty. This experience naturally led St. Isaac to interpret the Queen of Heaven as the luminary which his countrywomen venerated.
The episode of the "great assembly" closes the history of Jeremiahs life. We leave him (as we so often met with him before) hurling ineffective denunciations at a recalcitrant audience. Vagrant fancy, holding this to be a lame and impotent conclusion, has woven romantic stories to continue and complete the narrative. There are traditions that he was stoned to death at Tahpanhes, and that his bones were removed to Alexandria by Alexander the Great; that he and Baruch returned to Judea or went to Babylon and died in peace; that he returned to Jerusalem and lived there three hundred years, -and other such legends. As has been said concerning the Apocryphal Gospels, these narratives serve as a foil to the history they are meant to supplement: they remind us of the sequels of great novels written by inferior pens, or of attempts made by clumsy mechanics to convert a bust by some inspired sculptor into a full-length statue.
For this story of Jeremiahs life is not a torso. Sacred biography constantly disappoints our curiosity as to the last days of holy men. We are scarcely ever told how prophets and apostles died. It is curious too that the great exceptions-Elijah in his chariot of fire and Elisha dying quietly in his bed-occur before the period of written prophecy. The deaths of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, Peter, Paul, and John, are passed over in the Sacred Record, and when we seek to follow them beyond its pages, we are taught afresh the unique wisdom of inspiration. If we may understand Deuteronomy 34 to imply that no eye was permitted to behold Moses in the hour of death, we have in this incident a type of the reticence of Scripture on such matters. Moreover a moments reflection reminds us that the inspired method is in accordance with the better instincts of our nature. A death in opening manhood, or the death of a soldier in battle or of a martyr at the stake, rivets our attention; but when men die in a good old age, we dwell less on their declining years than on the achievements of their prime. We all remember the martyrdoms of Huss and Latimer, but how many of those in whose mouths Calvin and Luther ave familiar as household words know how those great Reformers died?
There comes a time when we may apply to the aged saint the words of Brownings "Death in the Desert":-
"So is myself withdrawn into my depths,
The soul retreated from the perished brain
Whence it was wont to feel and use the world
Through these dull members, done with long ago."
And the poets comparison of his soul to
"A stick once fire from end to end
Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark"
Love craves to watch to the last, because the spark may
"Run back, spread itself
A little where the fire was
And we would not lose
The last of what might happen on his face."
Such privileges may be granted to a few chosen disciples, probably they were in this case granted to Baruch; but they are mostly withheld from the world, lest blind irreverence should see in the aged saint nothing but
"Second childishness, and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES.—1. Chronology of the Chapter.—A considerable…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES.—1. Chronology of the Chapter.—A considerable interval must be placed between this chapter and the two preceding, which record their arrival in Egypt; for we here find the fugitives coming together to Pathros from their different towns, so that we have to allow time for their dispersion through Egypt and settlement in widely separated cities there. Yet the address of Jeremiah assumes that he speaks to the people of the migration who have come into Egypt, and not to a later generation born in Egypt. Dr. Payne Smith puts the incident only a year after their arrival in Egypt, but this seems too early; and it may be nearer the case to conjecture the date as being from five to ten years after the flight into Egypt, probably about 580 B.C., though Lange suggests 510 B.C. See Introduction, p. 2, V. c.
2. Contemporaneous Scriptures.—Ezekiel’s visions in Babylon are synchronous. See also Psalms 137. Daniel also in Babylon (see chaps. 3, 4.) Obadiah also rises at this time in prophecy, denouncing Edom for its exultation over Zion’s overthrow.
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3. Geographical References.—Jer_44:1. “Migdol,” meaning “a tower,” a boundary city in the north of Egypt, now Magdolum, twelve miles from Pelusium. “Tahpanhes,” note on chap. Jer_43:8, and “Noph,” note on chap. Jer_2:16. Pathros, i.e. Upper Egypt (see Eze_29:14).
4. Personal Allusion.—Jer_44:30. PHARAOH-HOPHRA, vide Contemporaneous History, note to chap. 32. Hophra, known to the Greeks as Apries, succeeded Psammis, the successor to Pharaoh-Necho, whom Nebuchadnezzar defeated at Charchemish. Vide “Extermination of Jewish Exiles in Egypt,” below, p. 620.
Jer_44:19. “The Queen of Heaven.” Vide note in loc. Jer_7:18.
5. Literary Criticisms.—Jer_44:9. “The wickedness of your wives.” As the Hebrew suffix is singular, נָשֳׁיו, the LXX. alter the word and give “your princes.” But Henderson, Keil, Naegelsbach, and others would retain the word as referring to the Jewish queens, who were abettors of idolatry (1Ki_14:1-8; 1Ki_15:13), and take the singular suffix in a collective sense.
Jer_44:10. “Not humbled,” lit. “broken” (as Isa_19:10) or bruised” (Isa_53:6).
Jer_44:14. “They have a desire to return,” i.e. are lifting up their souls to return to Judah. Vide Literary Criticisms, Jer_22:27.
Jer_44:19. “To worship her,” i.e. the Queen of Heaven. The Hiph. of עצב. In the Piel form (Job_10:8) the word is rendered by the meaning to fashion, shape. The meaning is similar here, to represent her; the cakes being made in the form of a crescent to represent the moon. “Without our men,” i.e. our husbands.
SUBJECT OF CHAPTER 44
JEWISH IDOLATRY IN EGYPT
OCCASION OF THE IDOLATROUS ASSEMBLY. There had gathered together at Pathros “a great multitude” of the Jews resident in Egypt.
I. It was a public festival in honour of Astarte, the “Queen of Heaven” (Jer_44:17); and libations are being offered to her in accordance with a vow the worshippers had made, “Do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our mouth.” This is the usual phrase for a vow (Num_30:2; Num_30:12; Jdg_11:36). They had, therefore, bound themselves to this public homage of the queen of heaven, and were now intent upon carrying out the special object which brought them together (see Jer_44:25 : “Our vows that we have vowed,” &c.)
II. It was to an assembly of women that the prophet spake. For this “great multitude” is literally a great kahal, or congregation gathered for a religious purpose; and “except for such a purpose Jewish manners would not allow the women to be abroad in crowds” (Dr. Payne Smith). The women are now the speakers, replying to Jeremiah’s protest (see Jer_44:19, “without our men,” i.e., husbands).
III. The men, however, though excluded from such an assembly, knew what their wives and daughters were doing (Jer_44:15). Though they do not engage in this service of homage to the Queen of Heaven, they sympathise with and favour it; for they have come with the women to Pathros, thus sanctioning the occasion of their assembling.
IV. The festival observances consisted of fragrant incense burnt upon an altar, and libations poured out “unto her” (Jer_44:17), possibly before some image or representation of Astarte, and cakes made (either to be burnt or eaten) which were shaped like the crescent of the moon. Before this altar, and perhaps also image, of the moon-goddess the women advanced and passed in regular procession, chanting as they came, and reciting the benefits they had received from the hands of the goddess they adored (Jer_44:17).
V. The infatuation of these idolatrous worshippers. This adoration of Astarte was rife (Jer_44:17) when Josiah ascended the throne; its suppression by Josiah was regarded with much secret ill-will. In Jehoiakim’s reign the people hastened back to their idolatry (see note, National History, to chap. 7 p. 143; and homily on Section 16–20, p. 147; also on Jer_44:17-18, p. 158, 159). Zedekiah prohibited this form of worship during the miseries of his reign. The people now, from amid Egyptian scenes, look back over the history of their national misfortunes and ascribe them all to their neglect of this goddess (Jer_44:18).
VI. Specious excuses offered in extenuation of their apostasy. Several pleas are urged:—1. Their vows must be fulfilled (Jer_44:17); and this pledge they dare not violate, for that would entail the anger of Astarte. 2. Their idolatry had the sanction of national custom in the days gone by; for their ancestors had practised it generally and publicly with the sanction of their kings and princes (Jer_44:17). 3. It had entailed no calamity (Jer_44:18); for they persist in ignoring their wickedness (Jer_44:9) as the cause of their distresses, and now ascribe calamity to their neglect of this goddess. 4. These female worshippers of Astarte had the authority and protection of their husbands in their idolatry (Jer_44:19). Without the consent of their husbands the vows of women are not binding (Num_30:7-8); but as “our men” support us in these obligations to Astarte, we, their wives and daughters, are blameless and irreproachable. Thus they desire to shield themselves under the complicity of others.
AN INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST APOSTASY. Delivered amid the idol-scenes of Egypt, and to the assembly of Jewish apostates.
I. A bold and vehement expostulation. Jeremiah stops the procession of the women, and the festival of Astarte, to pronounce against it in the name of God. The prophet was undeterred by the violence he had endured at the hands of his nation, who had dragged him away into Egypt, but fearlessly rebuked their apostasy from God for the idolatries of Egypt (Jer_44:8). In this earnest remonstrance he declares—(a.) that the existing desolation and ruin of Judea were the evil consequences of their own past wickedness in apostatising from Jehovah (Jer_44:2-7); and (b.) that for them to continue such idolatries in Egypt would certainly entail destruction and ruin upon themselves (Jer_44:8-14). If God had not spared “Jerusalem” (Jer_44:2), the holy city, where He had made His name to dwell, and which He loved, will He, think you, spare Egypt—a scene He loathes? (Jer_44:8). And he heaps maledictions upon them—(a.) for their needless and voluntary and wilful departure into Egypt (Jer_44:8), “whither ye be gone to dwell”—not carried by force as your brethren in Babylon; and now (b.) for their flagrant insult of Jehovah’s honour before the very eyes of the heathen, “burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt” (Jer_44:8). For this their aggravating guilt, he declares their sure and terrible extermination (Jer_44:11-14).
II. Wilful refusal of the prophetic admonition. Here the men join the women in loud and obstinate rejection of God’s word (Jer_44:15-16). (a.) They implicitly acknowledge that this solemn protest of the prophet is Jehovah’s word (Jer_44:16); (b.) but insist that the happiest days of their nation were associated with Astarter’s worship (Jer_44:17): (c.) that the favour of the Queen of Heaven guarantees more advantages than the worship of Jehovah (Jer_44:18-19). It was thus a declaration of—(1.) Absolute faith in other gods; Polytheism, therefore. (2.) Preference for and a higher esteem of Astarte; which means abandonment of Jehovah as their national God. (3.) Indifference to all Jehovah’s displeasure and threatenings; they were better off, with His anger, in Astarte’s favour, for the Queen of Heaven was certainly more benign, whereas Jehovah’s protection had been of little good to them.
III. Refutation of popular fallacies and announcement of certain doom. Taking up the facts of their national misery and final expatriation, Jeremiah shows—(a.) That, though they played an idolatrous part in their own land, their idols had not preserved them from national destruction; for “your land is a desolation,” &c. (Jer_44:22). (b.) That their deeds of flagrant apostasy went up before God as a memorial and witness against them for their ingratitude and faithlessness (Jer_44:23); for He had established and honoured them as a nation by giving them “His law, His statutes, and His testimonies” (Jer_44:23). (c.) That because of their “evil doings and abominations” (Jer_44:22) God could no longer hold back the doom which at last overwhelmed the land and the people (Jer_44:22-23).
Then GOD ABANDONS THEM FOR EVER. (1.) They had allied themselves by vows to an idol (Jer_44:25), and resolutely kept their vows of allegiance though God pleaded with them (Jer_44:16). (2.) The Most High therefore divorces them from Himself by solemn oath (Jer_44:26), and breaks His covenant with them as His people. (3.) Declares that He will no longer extend His protection over them, but will be their enemy (Jer_44:27-28); and (4.) Gives them an ominous sign (in predicting the fate of their Egyptian king) of the certainty that He will avenge on them the insult of their open rejection of Him (Jer_44:29-30), and which will convince them that it is the hand of the God they have insulted which chastises them for their guilt.
THE FINAL WORD OF WOE: JEREMIAH’S FAREWELL PROPHECY
I. A long and painful ministry, closing amid saddest circumstances. See Introduction, V., Length of his Official Ministry, p. 2. Could any facts be wanting to complete the melancholy surroundings? (a.) His pleadings and warnings against a fatal national policy in trusting to Egypt, all unheeded. (b.) His nation vanquished and scattered; some in Babylon, others in Egypt. (c.) Jerusalem destroyed, God’s temple in ruins, the land given up to execration (Jer_44:22). (d.) Himself, an old and forlorn prophet, amid aliens, and even more alien fellow-countrymen. (e.) His people sunk into lower depths of iniquity than during his entire career; and now at last absolutely repudiating Jehovah as the object of their worship and obedience.
II. A brave and heroic career, shining out lustrously to the end. For over fifty years he had been God’s messenger: to this hardened people. He had suffered much at their hands; yet, undaunted till the last, and now at so great an age, between seventy and eighty years old, lifting up his voice in fearless protestation and fervent pleadings amid the people whom he had sought to keep faithful to God. His last outcry is full of grand prophetic power.
III. A lifelong witness against sinners, ending amid signs of fruitlessness and defeat. Not one feature of hope illumines the dense darkness and poignant melancholy of this last sight of Jeremiah. Every view looks mournful and piteous. (a.) No good seems to have resulted from all his earnest, prolonged, faithful, and self-sacrificing work. (b.) No prospect opens as a relief to the desolate retrospect. The sun sinks before him amid portending tempests of terror and woe. The Christian tradition respecting his death is that he was stoned to death at Tahpanhes by his own countrymen! Another tradition is that he escaped to Babylon. But no star rises on the dark night. This chapter gives the farewell glance at the hoary prophet; and his last utterance is one of severest gloom.
Note.—In 2 Maccabees 1, 2, there is a most interesting story of Jeremiah hiding the sacred fire, the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Altar of incense in a cave in Mount Nebo previous to his leaving Judea, where, says the record, they remain to this day, nor will be discovered until God collects Israel together again.
EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWISH EXILES IN EGYPT
I. Of their total extinction in Egypt they had been solemnly forewarned (chap. Jer_42:15-18). Their presence in Egypt, therefore, invited the punishment.
II. Their open abandonment of Jehovah now as their God added the fatal element to their rebellion (Jer_44:16-17).
III. God’s awful farewell to these guilty people is taken under the solemnity of an oath, as indicating its irrevocableness (Jer_44:26).
IV. Their absolute extermination, Jehovah will see to it that it is effected (Jer_44:27).
THE EXTERMINATION ACCOMPLISHED. Their asylum proved no shelter from the pursuing vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar.
I. The “sign” by which they should realise God’s destructive judgments. Pharaoh-Hophra, when defeated in battle by the Cyrenians, became regarded with suspicion as having betrayed his native troops for selfish ends, and hence a revolt arose. Amasis, whom Hophra sent to treat with these mutinous troops, himself went over to the rebels. Hophra, gathering an army of foreign auxiliaries, now fought against Amasis and the Egyptian troops, but was defeated and taken captive. After treating him kindly for some years, Amasis, because the Egyptians regarded this indulgence with ill-favour, surrendered Hophra to his enemies, by whom he was strangled. He came to the throne a year before the Jewish migration to Egypt, and continued king for eighteen years after, although his last ten years were spent a prisoner in his palace at Saïr. This civil war of Amasis with Hophra opened the way for Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Egypt in the twenty-third year of his reign.
II. The total extermination of the Jewish refugees in Egypt. A thousand years before God had led forth His people from Egypt with a mighty hand, and planted them in Zion; but Israel had failed of her mission; and now these most arrant rebels shall utterly perish in this land of Egypt, where they boasted they could find safe asylum (chap. Jer_42:14), abandoned and disowned by God (chap. Jer_44:26), exterminated by the rage of the king of Babylon, from whom they sought refuge in Egypt, but who avenged himself upon them there with merciless wrath (Jer_44:12).
HOMILIES AND OUTLINES ON VERSES OF CHAPTER 44
Jer_44:2-13. Theme: GOD’S APPEAL AGAINST JUDAH. In this wretched “remnant” the old root of disobedience and unbelief remains still.
I. A mirror of the stubborn heart of man.
1. Unceasingly warned. For centuries (Jer_44:10).
2. Faithfully and impassionedly warned (Jer_44:3). By words of thunder and strokes of power. Think only of Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Isaiah, &c.
II. The judgment of just love executed.
I. All reforming and redeeming agencies failed. Judah hardened his stubborn neck (Jer_44:5; Jer_44:10).
2. Long-suffering love became exhausted, and there remained nothing but the doom which outraged mercy demanded (Jer_44:6-13). Compare Naegelsbach.
Jer_44:4. Theme: GOD HATES SIN. “Oh, do not the abominable thing which I hate.”
God speaks these words of wickedness. All sin is in principle idolatry; the sinner leaves the true God, and pays homage to some idol.
He who searches the heart may see now that there is some “abominable thing” upon which you are intent—planned during the week, resolved upon. But the Almighty One stoops to beseech you, “Oh, do not,” &c. Do not pass this message of God on to another fellow-hearer; your sin is “the abominable thing.”
God hates sin; so hates it in all its forms—as a principle, an act, a course of life, that it is an “abominable thing.”
Why does He hate it? He hates nothing He has made. Many things you dislike He does not dislike—the reptile, &c.; but the one thing He hates is a thing He has not made; it is a thing the creature has made, not the Creator.
I. Let us inquire what sin is. Violation of God’s law (1Jn_3:4). Doing what God forbids; or not doing what He commands. To love, both God and our neighbour, is the fulfilling of the law (Mat_22:36-40). Right conduct, without love, is therefore sin. He hates it—
1. Because it is contrary to His own nature. “Holy is the Lord God.”
2. Because sin is unnatural in His creatures. It is no part of the human constitution, but a foreign element.
3. Because sin transgresses holy, just, and good laws. Not of some arbitrary commandment.
4. Because it defiles and injures the entire human nature. It pollutes what should be pure; blasts and blights.
5. Because it makes men curses to each other. What has changed children into profligates, mothers into brutes, fathers into beasts of prey? Do not wonder God says, “I hate it.”
6. Because it ignores, or rejects, the Divine government. And no government is so paternal, tender, and beneficent as God’s.
7. Because wherever sin exists, except it is checked by God’s mercy, it has the dominion. A cruel tyrant!
8. Because where it is introduced it spreads. In every clime; through every race; through every grade of society; a deadly pestilence.
9. Because sin requires God to inflict upon men, of every class and kind, that which He assures us upon His oath He has no pleasure in.
10. Because continuing in sin, while hearing the Gospel, tramples under foot the blood of Jesus.
II. Hear, then, God’s entreaty: “Do it not!”
1. What are you going to do? Persist in it? Think! Do you really mean to go on sinning in the face of such a message? With conscience smarting, memory weighted, remorse springing up in your soul like a tempest, with a fearful looking-for of judgment, with your miserable convictions and bitter tears, your gloomy forebodings and knowledge of penalties, are you determined to continue?
2. Then there can be but little hope, if this state of heart continue, concerning you. You may live, with a seared conscience, until you lay down on the bed of death; and there perhaps all your old fears will be awakened—when it is too late! Then, as you sink down into perdition, the millstone about your neck will be “the abominable thing which God hates.”—Rev. Samuel Martin (Westminster), 1858 A.D.
Jer_44:4. Theme: THE ABOMINABLE NATURE OF SIN. “Howbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.”
No man can think his guilt too great. We may confine our views to sin and exclude mercy, but we cannot overrate guilt. God long laboured in vain with the Jews, and at length Nebuchadnezzar carried the mass of them to Babylon. Jeremiah took the remnant to Egypt. While there he spoke to them the words of the text. The “abominable thing” was their idolatry; the same may be said of all sin. Sin is the “abominable thing” God hates. This appears—
I. From the nature of things. Sin is opposed to the wishes and designs of God. “God is love,” and His object is to raise all creatures to highest eternal happiness. They must therefore have the same love He possesses, and own Him for their Head, His law being their standard.
1. Sin sets up private interest against public good. The root of sin is self-love, and out of it arise all evil passions that hurry men and devils into evil against Heaven. Sin is the transgression of the law. And this being its nature, makes it the enemy of happiness. The Friend and Guardian of the universe hates and must punish sin. Love abominates it.
2. Sin opposes God in all good for His creatures; it resists all His loving purposes. That He does hate sin we see—
II. From His expressions of abhorrence.
1. In the penalty annexed to His law, the eternal exclusion from good, and eternal endurance of evil. This endless evil is the measure of God’s hatred of sin.
2. In His providential government. When angels sinned, not all God’s love nor their dignity could save them. When Adam and Eve sinned they were turned out of Eden. The Flood swept the world when it was filled with violence. For sin Egypt was lashed with ten plagues, and her king found a watery grave. And when Israel sinned, God brought upon them fiery serpents and fire from heaven; the ground opened and swallowed them up; and while they possessed the promised land His providence was a constant remembrancer of His hatred of sin. God’s anger against sin destroyed Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, Edom, Moab, and the Philistines.
(a.) All human suffering and death express God’s anger against sin. Sinners will be punished according to their guilt.
(b.) What strength of that abhorrence of sin is uttered in the cry, “Oh, do not this abominable thing,” &c.!
(c.) Yet one exhibition of God’s anger against sin is more amazing than the rest. For us God spared not His own Son, and will He then, O sinner, spare thee?
Who are sinners? “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” And, moreover, all are under the entire dominion of sin. “God saw that every imagination of the thoughts of” man’s “heart was only evil continually.” As is the fountain, so are the streams. Words and actions of the natural man are but sin.
III. Considering God’s abhorrence of sin, how astonishing His long forbearance, and how wonderful “the love of God which passeth knowledge”!
1. We have cause for humility. Self-importance and conscious worth are unbecoming. How fearful would have been our condition had not the Son of God left His glory to save us! We needed a Divine Saviour. Let us hide ourselves in His righteousness.
2. For sinners abhorred of God this is our only remedy. For many years God has pleaded, “Oh, do not this abominable thing which I hate.” Do not re-enact the rebellion of the Jews. Remember it is written, “Because I called and ye refused. I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh.” Seize the offered blessing now, ere God says, “Ye shall not see My rest.”—Rev. Edward Griffin, D.D.
Theme: SINNERS: A WARNING. “Have ye forgotten the wickedness,” &c.
I. Guilty careers offer a melancholy admonition to others.
II. Examples of ruin should deter us from sin.
III. Reckless indifference to the careers and penalties of sinners shows the most obdurate and hopeless impiety.
1. Beyond reformation (Pro_27:22).
2. Dead to all saving influences (Pro_25:20).
Jer_44:17. Theme: SELF-VINDICATING SINNERS. No one would perhaps justify these people; yet thousands will justify themselves!
I. Criminal impiety.
1. Their voluntary engagements. Johanan had inclined to hide in Egypt from Nebuchadnezzar, but sought God’s direction; pledging themselves, from the least to the greatest, to obey His voice (chap. Jer_42:1-6). Instead of fulfilling their engagements—
2. Their deliberate violation of them. God warned them (chap. Jer_42:13-17); but they charge Baruch with feigning this message (chap. Jer_43:1-4), and followed their own course.
3. Their self-vindicating effrontery. The people betook themselves to idolatry in Egypt. Being reproved, they boldly asserted that Jehovah’s worship had been profitless, and that the Queen of Heaven had proved their benefactress. So they would worship her, whatever God or His prophet might say (Jer_44:17-19).
II. Modern repetitions.
1. The profane sinner. See his engagements in baptism and confirmation! Yet millions repudiate their engagements, and vindicate their evil ways.
2. The self-righteous formalist. Hear him joining in the liturgy as a “penitent sinner;” yet tell him in private what a sinner he is, what duties should follow from penitence, how he should cleave humbly to Jesus Christ, and he repudiates it all.
3. The hypocritical professor. He finds excuses for his sin, “turns the grace of God into lasciviousness.”
III. Certain issues. God told these Jews, who defied His judgments, that they should see whose words should stand, His or theirs (Jer_44:28).
1. How did it fare with them? (Jer_44:12-14; Jer_44:29-30.)
2. How shall it fare with you? (Luk_19:27.) Address—
(a.) Those who disregard our testimony. “In the day that God shall visit for sin, ye shall be cast down and perish” (Jer_44:15-17).
(b.) Those who tremble at the word of God. That is the state of mind becoming to every sinner (Isa_66:2). Cultivate it, and then pay to God your vows.—Charles Simeon, M.A., 1828.
Theme: THE ADVANTAGES OF IRRELIGION! “For then had we plenty of bread, and were well, and saw no evil.”
No doubt there are times when the wicked prosper. Because of this it is too often thought that “godliness is (not) profitable for the life which now is,” &c. It was so with these idolaters (Jer_44:17-18). They argued that because they had more of this world’s comforts when living in idolatry, that therefore it was more advantageous than the worship of the true God.
I. Consider that God does not enter into judgment with wrongdoers immediately and forthwith, but reserves His displeasure. Punishment does not follow instantly upon transgression. Sinners may “see no evil” at the time of sinning; yet God’s displeasure is kindled by it, and will one day burst upon them. Sin never goes unpunished.
II. God does not connive at sin because He allows it to be committed at the time with impunity. Though they enjoyed abundance, and “saw no evil” at the time of their idolatry, yet now they were smarting under the penalties. “Because ye burned incense, and because ye sinned, therefore this evil happened unto you as at this day.”
Even though no manifestation of Divine displeasure comes during the commission of sin, God is assuredly displeased. And though during a course of iniquity there is no lack of life’s good things, yet iniquity is not profitable. The day of recompense will come.
III. As with these Jews it seemed better for them, in a worldly sense, when they lived in idolatry than when they abandoned it, so it sometimes appears to have been better with the sinner, in a worldly sense, when he lived in sin than when he became converted by God’s grace and professed Christianity. In early Christian times the profession of Christianity involved “the loss of all things,” but higher blessings more than compensated these worldly sacrifices. “No man hath left houses … for My sake, but shall receive manifold more,” &c. But though nothing was gained in this life; suppose that “since we left off” (Jer_44:18) our worldly and evil ways we only suffered misfortunes, yet what an ample compensation in the life to come!
IV. But experience testifies that more is gained by religion than lost. If a Christian lose the favour of man, he wins the favour of God; if he lose the “pleasures of sin,” he gains the joys of salvation. Let not good men, however great their privations, look back on their days of sin and lament, “Then had we plenty,” &c., as if the former days were better than these. Rather rejoice that, however poor they be, they are “rich in faith, and heirs of a kingdom,” that “all things are theirs, things present and things to come.”
V. Gaze not with envious eyes on the prosperity of the wicked. O men of God, look not back on the flesh-pots of Egypt, or the rewards of sin. By a holy content and joy in God let it be seen in you that—
“The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets,
Before you reach the heavenly fields,
Or walk the golden streets.”
—“Walks,” &c., Rev. D. Pledge.
Jer_44:25. Theme: KEEPING UNHOLY VOWS.
I. Conscientiousness in wrongdoing. Must keep vows!
II. Defiance of solemn prohibition. Idol worship!
III. Subtlety of self-delusion. Vows are too solemn to be broken!
IV. Flattery of spiritual infatuation. It is good for us to be faithful.
V. God’s law disobeyed in self-justification. Though God forbids, we are bound to “fulfil with the hand” our vows.
A SUPERSTITIOUS REGARD FOR VOWS. That they are inviolable, and should be sacredly fulfilled. But—
i. To cling to our vows when they are evidently unwise or ungodly is criminal.
ii. To fulfil our rash vows in proof that we are not fickle, is to add reckless deeds to reckless words.
iii. To persist in our vows when shown they break God’s laws is defiant obstinacy; substituting constancy to our words for obedience to God’s word.
iv. To retract wicked vows is the highest proof of wisdom and piety. Better break our words than provoke God’s wrath. Think of Herod’s vow, leading to murder!
Jer_44:25. Theme: OBSTINACY. “We will surely perform our vows.”
I. Resisting admonition (Jer_44:16).
II. Blinded by false judgment (Jer_44:17-18).
III. Wilful persistency (Jer_44:25).
IV. More obdurate as it continues.
Jer_44:26. Theme: FINALLY ABANDONED BY GOD. “Since ye will not hear Me speaking and warning, hear Me swearing—‘By my great name,’ ” &c.—Jamieson.
“God will have the last word; the prophets may be run down, but God cannot.”—Henry.
This is the severest punishment, when God takes away His holy name and word.
I. In what it consists. That the Lord removes the candlestick of His word from among His people; i.e., by depriving them of the means of grace He brings Himself into forgetfulness amongst them.
II. On what it is founded. That this people, on their part, have striven to forget God.
III. What is its effect? The people given up to the powers of evil, for their complete destruction.—Naegelsbach.
Note.—“The Jews, heretofore, amidst all their idolatry, had retained the form of appeal to the name of God and the law, the distinctive glory of their nation; God will allow this no more (Exo_9:29): there shall be left none there to profane His name thus any more.”—Jamieson.
Jer_44:29. Theme: ONE SINNER “A SIGN” TO MANY. In naming to this audience the then powerful Egyptian king, “Hophra,” Jeremiah exposed himself to greatest hazards. For the audience he addressed were all hostile to the prophet and his mission. Had any of Jeremiah’s hearers reported this daring utterance to the king himself, it would have insured the prophet’s swift doom. Yet God’s messenger dares to witness even against powerful kings, unterrified by danger, content to speak what God speaks in him. God names “Hophra” in this prediction; for He deals with men individually; has the fate of each in His hands; and “none shall stay His hand.”
I. “A sign” given as a premonition of coming judgments.
1. Signs given before events were intended to prepare the mind for events hereafter, and to fortify against doubt. Thus with Gideon’s fleece (Jdg_6:36-40).
2. Signs placed in the future, and to be waited for, were intended to keep the mind expectant and trustful. Thus with the sign to Moses (Exo_3:12), the event convinced them that God’s hand had wrought it, and called up their gratitude to Him.
3. This sign was thus prospective; buried for a time, but in due course it would rise into realisation, and its value would be—
(a.) In vindicating Jeremiah as being truly God’s spokesman.
(b.) As proving that God’s Mighty Hand was working.
(c.) As refuting their boasted trust in the security of Egypt.
(d.) As an announcement of the utter ruin of this rebellious people of which that sign was the forerunner.
II. A sign fulfilled guarantees accomplishment of the truth it forewarned.
1. The event seemed unlikely of fulfilment. For Apries (Pharaoh-Hophra) now flourished in great prosperity and power (so Herodotus records). Indeed he vaunted impiously that “no God has power to dethrone me.” But he was defeated by the rebel Amasis, and strangled by his own subjects. This Hophra became (what he was afterwards titled on Egyptian monuments) “hated” by his own nation; and this was only (according to Herodotus) satiated by Amasis giving him up to the people for a violent and degrading death. Hophra’s death occurred eighteen years after the burning of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. (See “Extermination of Exiles,” p. 620.) Many of these Jews would live to see this sign fulfilled.
2. The sign pledged the fate of these exiles. They vaunted their safety, as Hophra vaunted his power. They deemed their shelter in Egypt impregnable, and the shield of Pharaoh over them a sure protection; but Hophra should be “given into the hand of them that seek his life,” and so should they also perish. His fall should announce theirs.
Note:—
1. When God’s anger overtakes one man, it pledges the equal certainty of judgment on all who are alike guilty.
2. Fulfilled judgments in history, in the destruction of cities (Egypt, Nineveh, Jerusalem), and of nations (Israel, &c.), and of individuals (Nebuchadnezzar’s madness, Zedekiah’s fate), are all witnesses to the sure doom of sinners.
3. Hopeless deathbed scenes are a warning against those who neglect salvation.
4. Fatal and sudden accidents admonish those who reckon on years of opportunity.
5. The visions of torment, in Christ’s parable of the rich man and in the Revelation, warn us to “flee from the wrath to come.”
“Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luk_13:1-6).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Natural indications of God’s hatred of sin.
Jer 44:4
Natural indications of God’s hatred of sin.
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I. There are in this world gigantic tendencies which reveal themselves to our perception only by gentle and slight manifestations. The great magnetic influence which courses over the world will manifest itself to us in making a floating straw, cast loose on still water, gradually turn north and south. The vast tidal wave, that raises the ocean’s level for thousands of miles along the coastline, reveals itself by a gradual cease of the ripple of some little brook up among inland cornfields. Now the tremendous truth that God sides with right against wrong, that right will ultimately vanquish and supplant and annihilate wrong, that any wrong-doer is in fact knocking his head against the universe—that truth is made plain to us by gentle indices oftentimes and by little things, and that truth is not much perceived by coarse and bad natures.
II. Yet there are indications. There is—(1) the serious judgment of our own conscience against all wrong, a testimony hardly ever wholly quenched. (2) The effect of many forms of sin in wrecking the health and abridging the life of the transgressor. A life of vice will not be a merry one, but it is likely to be a short one. (3) If you unscrupulously drive to the utmost the capacities of enjoyment that are in us, utter satiety and disgust will come speedily. Those capacities which, used in righteous moderation, yield enjoyment, overdriven bring loathing. (4) All the deeds we do go to strengthen the dispositions and habits from which they spring, forming us into a character from which, good or evil, we cannot escape; and thus already we see that wrong-doing, persevered in, ties the wrong-doer to misery and degradation, always growing more miserable and more degraded. You see at a glance how awful is the outlook here, and how it makes an end of the recreant thought that, after all, the sinner sometimes makes the best at least of this world, and he may make a quite new start elsewhere, none the worse. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
A. K. H. B., From a Quiet Place, p. 140.
Why does God hate sin?
I. Because it is contrary to His own nature.
II. Because it is unnatural in His creatures.
III. It transgresses holy, just, and good laws.
IV. It defiles and injures the entire human nature.
V. It makes men curses to each other.
VI. It ignores or rejects the Divine government.
VII. Wherever sin exists, except as it is checked by God’s mercy, it has the dominion.
VIII. Wherever sin is introduced, it spreads.
IX. Sin requires God to inflict upon men of every class and kind, that which He assures us, upon His oath, He has no pleasure in.
X. Men’s continuing in sin tramples under foot the blood of Jesus.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 2nd series, No. 8.
References: Jer 44:4.—W. M. Taylor, Old Testament Outlines, p. 248; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 24; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii.. p. 235. Jer 44:29, Jer 44:30.—P. Thomson, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 397. Jer 45:5.—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 293. Jer 45—S. Cox, Expositions, 2nd series, p. 205. Jer 46:17.—Christian Chronicle, March 27th, 1884.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v4
Jeremiah
GOD’S PATIENT PLEADINGS
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Jer 44:4.
The long death-agony of the Jewish kingdom has come to an end. The frivolous levity, which fed itself on illusions and would not be sobered by facts, has been finally crushed out of the wretched people. The dreary succession of incompetent kings-now a puppet set up by Egypt, now another puppet set up by Babylon, has ended with the weak Zedekiah. The throne of David is empty, and the long line of kings, which numbered many a strong, wise, holy man, has dwindled into a couple of captives, one of them blind and both of them paupers on an idolatrous monarch’s bounty. The country is desolate, the bulk of the people exiles, and the poor handful, who had been left by the conqueror, flitting like ghosts, or clinging, like domestic animals, to their burnt homes and wasted plains, have been quarrelling and fighting among themselves, murdering the Jewish ruler whom Babylon had left them, and then in abject terror have fled en masse across the border into Egypt, where they are living wretched lives. What a history that people had gone through since they had lived on the same soil before! From Moses to Zedekiah, what a story! From Goshen till now it had been one long tragedy which seems to have at last reached its fifth act. Nine hundred years have passed, and this is the issue of them all!
The circumstances might well stir the heart of the prophet, whose doleful task it had been to foretell the coming of the storm, who had had to strip off Judah’s delusions and to proclaim its certain fall, and who in doing so had carried his life in his hand for forty years, and had never met with recognition or belief.
Jeremiah had been carried off by the fugitives to Egypt, and there he made a final effort to win them back to God. He passed before them the outline of the whole history of the nation, treating it as having accomplished one stadium-and what does he find? In all these days since Goshen there has been one monotonous story of vain divine pleadings and human indifference, God beseeching and Israel turning away-and now at last the crash, long foretold, never credited, which had been drawing nearer through all the centuries, has come, and Israel is scattered among the people.
Such are the thoughts and emotions that speak in the exquisitely tender words of our text. It suggests-
I. God’s antagonism to sin.
It is the one thing in the universe to which He is opposed. Sin is essentially antagonism to God. People shrink from the thought of God’s hatred of sin, because of-
An underestimate of its gravity. Contrast the human views of its enormity, as shown by men’s playing with it, calling it by half-jocose names and the like, with God’s thought of its heinousness.
A false dread of seeming to attribute human emotions to God. But there is in God what corresponds to our human feelings, something analogous to the attitude of a pure human mind recoiling from evil.
The divine love must necessarily be pure, and the mightier its energy of forth-going, the mightier its energy of recoil. God’s ‘hate’ is Love inverted and reverted on itself. A divine love which had in it no necessity of hating evil would be profoundly immoral, and would be called devilish more fitly than divine.
II. The great purpose of the divine pleadings.
To wean from sin is the main end of prophecy. It is the main end of all revelation. God must chiefly desire to make His creatures like Himself. Sin makes a special revelation necessary. Sin determines the form of it.
III. God’s tender and unwearied efforts.
‘Rising early’ is a strong metaphor to express persistent effort. The more obstinate is our indifference, the more urgent are His calls. He raises His voice as our deafness grows. Mark, too, the tenderness of the entreaty in this text, ‘Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!’ His hatred of it is adduced as a reason which should touch any heart that loves Him. He beseeches as if He, too, were saying, ‘Though I might be bold to enjoin thee’ that which is fitting, ‘yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee.’ The manifestation of His disapproval and the appeal to our love by the disclosure of His own are the most powerful, winning and compelling dehortations from sin. Not by brandishing the whip, not by a stern law written on tables of stone, but by unveiling His heart, does God win us from our sins.
IV. The obstinate resistance to God’s tender pleadings.
The tragedy of the nation is summed up in one word, ‘They hearkened not.’
That power of neglecting God’s voice and opposing God’s will is the mystery of our nature. How strange it is that a human will should be able to lift itself in opposition to the Sovereign Will! But stranger and more mysterious and tragic still is it that we should choose to exercise that power and find pleasure, and fancy that we shall ever find advantage, in refusing to listen to His entreaties and choosing to flout His uttered will.
Such opposition was Israel’s ruin. It will be ours if we persist in it. ‘If God spared not the natural branches, neither will He spare thee.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Jeremiah's Latest Prophecy (after 586 b.c.). (The prophecies against…
Jeremiah's Latest Prophecy (after 586 b.c.). (The prophecies against the Gentile nations (Jeremiah 46-51) were mostly uttered after the battle of Carchemish, 605 b.c.)
He denounces the unabated idolatry which still characterised the people now that they dwelt in Egypt. Their experience of suffering had taught them nothing.
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1-10. Jeremiah's countrymen rebuked.
1. Migdol] on the northern boundary of Egypt. For Noph and Tahpanhes see on Jer_2:16.
8. The works of your hands] i.e. your idols. Might cut yourselves off] RV 'may be cut off.'
11-14. Their punishment foretold.
15-19. They persist in their idolatry.
15. All the women that stood by] Probably the occasion was an idolatrous festival in which the women were taking a leading part. All the people, etc.] not, of course, to be taken literally, but meaning that they were very numerous and represented the whole.
17. Whatsoever thing goeth forth] RV 'every word that is gone forth.'They refer to their religious vows: cp. Num_30:2; Deu_23:23.
Queen of heaven] see on Jer_7:18. Then had we plenty of victuals] They perversely attribute the misfortunes which had befallen their country from the battle of Megiddo and death of Josiah onwards to the attack made upon idolatry (2 Kings 23) by that king, and not to the gradual degradation of the people through the medium of that idolatry during the reigns of Manasseh and A mon and the earlier part of that of Josiah.
19. Worship] RM 'pourtray,'refer-ring to the full moon, as represented either by the shape of the cake itself or by a'figure upon it. Men] RV 'husbands.'A wife's vow was not binding unless with the consent of the husband: see Num_30:6.
20-23. Jeremiah answers. It was, he says, owing to the idolatry, which had been so long rampant and which Josiah's reforms had scotched, not killed, that the overthrow at last came.
25. With your hand] BV 'with your hands,'pointing, perhaps, to the cakes which they were carrying. Ye will surely, etc.] RV 'Establish then.. and perform.'If ye persist, then be it so.
26. As being faithless to their covenant with God, they shall lose the right of calling upon His name as such.
29. The sign referred to, viz. Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Egypt, did not take place till 586 b.c. For other instances of a sign not to take effect for a considerable time after its announcement cp. Exo_3:12; 2Ki_19:29
It is not improbable that it was on this occasion that Jeremiah met with a martyr's death at the hands of his apostate countrymen, as tradition recounts.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv10, 17 (See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
feared
(See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. The message to the Jews (Jer 44:1-10)
CHAPTER 44
1. The message to the Jews (Jer 44:1-10)
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2. Their punishment (Jer 44:11-14)
3. Worshipping the queen of heaven (Jer 44:15-19)
4. Jehovah’s answer (Jer 44:20-28)
5. The sign: Pharaoh-Hophra’s Defeat (Jer 44:29-30)
Jer 44:1-10. The message is concerning all the Jews who were now dwelling in Egypt. Besides being in Tahpanhes, they were also in Noph (Memphis) and in Pathros, which was in the upper Egypt. Not long ago ancient papyri in Aramaic were discovered which show that there was a Jewish colony in that part of Egypt. Jeremiah reminds them in his message how God had dealt with Jerusalem and Judah on account of their idolatries, though He had sent prophets to warn them. And now they were doing the same thing in Egypt. “You too bring now utter ruin upon yourselves and all your own.”
Jer 44:11-14. This announces their coming punishment. “Behold I will set my face against you for evil, and to cut off all Israel.” They are to be punished as Jerusalem was.
Jer 44:15-19. What heart-hardness to say to the man of God, “We will not hearken.” They intended to perform their vows to worship “the queen of Heaven.” All they said was, it was well with us when we worshipped the queen of Heaven in the homeland. The women seem to have been concerned mostly in this, but they did so with the knowledge and the consent of their husbands. See about the queen of Heaven and the worship, chapter 7 and the annotations there. They claimed that all the disaster which had come on them was the result of abandoning their evil practices. What defiance and wickedness, the fruit of their unbelieving hearts! Still greater is the defiance and wickedness of today, when the cross and the gospel of Christ are deliberately rejected.
Jer 44:20-28. The answer is plain enough, and they heard what their fate would be for their deliberate unbelief and disobedience. These are solemn words, and the Lord said, “They shall know whose Word shall stand, Mine or theirs.” God’s Word will always stand, and so will those who stand by the Word of God and put their trust in it.
Jer 44:29-30. He gives them a sign that such will be the case. Hophra is to be given into the hands of his enemies. This happened a few years before Nebuchadrezzar defeated Amasis, who had succeeded Hophra.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 15 Jeremiah’s First Warning
Jeremiah’s First Warning
v. 1. The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt, where they had settled in spite of the earnest remonstrances of Jeremiah, which dwell at Migdol, on the northeastern boundary of Egypt, and at Tahpanhes, in the delta of the Nile, and at Noph, or Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt, and in the country of Pathros, that is, Upper Egypt,—for in the intervening years the Jews had selected different parts of Egypt for temporary homes, but Jeremiah was still the faithful messenger of God and here addressed them in a large assembly, possibly upon the occasion of some great festival,—saying,
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v. 2. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem and upon all the cities of Judah, most of the Jews addressed having been witnesses of the terrible catastrophe which brought destruction to the southern kingdom; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwelleth therein, the entire land, formerly so rich, fruitful, and populous, had become an uninhabited desert,
v. 3. because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke Me to anger, in that they went, leaving the path of right and duty set before them by the Word of God, to burn incense and to serve other gods, by such act of worship, whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers. That was the first cause of the calamity which came upon Jerusalem.
v. 4. Howbeit, I sent unto you all My servants, the prophets, rising early and sending them, full of merciful eagerness to prevent the threatened catastrophe, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate, which filled Him with loathing.
v. 5. But they hearkened not nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness, they paid not the slightest attention to Jehovah’s admonitions and warnings, to burn no incense unto other gods.
v. 6. Wherefore My fury and Mine anger was poured forth, like an overturned vessel spilling all its contents at once, and was kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for the fire of destruction was a manifestation of the divine anger; and they are wasted and desolate, as at this day, their ruin being entirely the fault of the stubbornness of the rebellious Jews, and the consequences were still evident.
v. 7. Therefore, now, thus saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to the destruction of their own lives, for they were not injuring the Lord, but merely themselves, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, in a judgment of complete extermination, to leave you none to remain,
v. 8. in that ye provoke Me unto wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye be gone to dwell, having profited nothing by the example of Jerusalem’s destruction, that ye might cut yourselves off, and that ye might be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?
v. 9. Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, their manifold evil doings, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The queens of Judah, together with the women throughout the country, had been the chief promoters of idolatry; for just as women may be the chief upholders of virtue, they may also be the chief agents for the spreading of wickedness.
v. 10. They are not humbled, even unto this day, they had not yet learned to turn to the Lord with contrite hearts, neither have they feared, nor walked in, My Law nor in My statutes that I set before you and before your fathers. They had deliberately ignored the norm and rule which the Lord had given them to follow, and the Lord speaks of them partly in the third person to give expression to the supreme disgust which filled His heart at their behavior.
v. 11. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will set My face against you for evil and to cut off all Judah, namely, those who had gone to Egypt against His will. The Lord was absolutely determined to carry out His plans in this instance, to exterminate the rebels who had been so flagrantly disobedient to His will.
v. 12. And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed and fall in the land of Egypt, in a total destruction; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine, they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine, and they shall be an execration, an object of cursing, and an astonishment, an object of surprise, and a curse, and a reproach.
v. 13. For I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence,
v. 14. so that none of the remnant of Judah which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there shall escape or remain that they should return into the land of Judah, to the which they have a desire to return to dwell there, they were literally, "lifting up their souls with eagerness" and hoped to make Judea their home once more; for none shall return but such as shall escape. Since the Lord was speaking in general terms. He pictured the destruction as so universal that practically no one would escape, and the heaping of similar expressions heightens the impression of grim determination on His part. He is a jealous God, who visits the iniquity of sinners upon them with all the sternness which His justice demands.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 29 The word came to Jeremiah
The word came to Jeremiah
It is implied that the word that came to Jeremiah was from Yahweh. This idiom is used to introduce a special message from God. See how you translated a similar phrase in Jeremiah 7:1. AT: "This is the message that Yahweh gave to Jeremiah" or "This is the message that Yahweh spoke to Jeremiah" (See: Idiom)
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Migdol
This is the name of a city. (See: How to Translate Names)
Tahpanhes ... Memphis
Translate the names of these cities as you did in Jeremiah 2:16. (See: How to Translate Names)
in Upper Egypt
This refers to the southern region of Egypt. It is sometime called "Pathros."
Yahweh of hosts ... says
Jeremiah often uses these words to introduce an important message from Yahweh. See how you translated a similar phrase in Jeremiah 6:6.
You yourselves have seen
The word "yourselves" is used for emphasis to specify the people of Judea who live in the land of Egypt. (See: Reflexive Pronouns)
all the disasters that I brought on Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah
Causing disasters is spoken of as if disasters were an object that can be put on something. AT: "all the disaster that I caused to happen to Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah" (See: Metaphor)
See
"Look" or "Listen" or "Pay attention to what I am about to tell you."
they did to offend me
"the people of Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah did to offend me"
they themselves
The word "themselves" is used for emphasis to specify the people of Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah. AT: "the people from the ruined cities" (See: Reflexive Pronouns)
translationWords
word
Jeremiah
Judea
life
Egypt
Yahweh of hosts
God
Israel
Jerusalem
kingdom of Judah
ruin
evil
incense
worship
false god
know
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 24, 26, 30 44:1 After their arrival in Egypt, the refugees of…
44:1 After their arrival in Egypt, the refugees of Judah scattered throughout the country. Migdol was a fortress near Tahpanhes in the northeastern corner of Egypt. Memphis was the original capital of Egypt. It became the religious center of northern Egypt, and its ruins are located on the west side of the Nile River, about thirteen miles southwest of Cairo. Some refugees had already moved to southern Egypt, following the Nile River upstream.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.