Ver. 1. O ye children of Benjamin.] These were the prophet’s countrymen, for Anathoth was in that tribe; so was also part of Jerusalem itself. He forwarneth them of the enemy’s approach, and bids them begone. The Benjamites were noted for valiant, but vicious. (Judges 19:16,22-25 Hosea 9:9 10:9) And blow the trumpet in Tekoah.] A place that had its name from trumpeting; so there is an elegance in the original. See the like, Micah 1:10,14. It was twelve miles from Jerusalem, and six from Bethhaccerem. Here dwelt that wise woman brided by Joab. (2 Samuel 14:2) Set up a sign of fire.] A beacon, or such as the cross of fire is in Scotland, where (for a signal to the people when the enemy is at hand) two firebrands set across, and pitched upon a spear, are carried about the country. Life of Edward VI, by Sir F. Heywood.
Ver. 2. I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman.] Certatim amatae bucolicae puellae; some fair shepherdess, to whom the kings with their armies make love (but for no love), that they may destroy and spoil her.
Ver. 3. The shepherds.] See on Jeremiah 6:2.
Ver. 4. Prepare ye war against her.] Say those Chaldean sweethearts. This is their wooing language, like that of the English at Musselburgh. Let us go up at noon.] Let us lose no time; why burn we daylight by needless delays?
Ver. 5. Let us destroy her palaces.] Where we shall find all precious substance; we shall fill our hands with spoil. [as Proverbs 1:13]
Ver. 6. For thus hath the Lord of hosts said,] q.d., It is he who setteth these Chaldean warriors to work, and giveth them these words of command. So Totilas, Gensericus, and others, were the scourge in God’s hand, as now also the Turks are. She is wholly oppression.] She was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in her; but now nothing less. “ Nomen Alexandri ne te fortasse moretur, Hospes, abi: iacet hic et scelus et vitium.” De Alex. VI, Papa. Pasquil.
Ver. 7. As a fountain casteth out her waters.] Incessantly and abundantly. In Ieremia est continua quasi declamatio contra peccatum, &c. Before me continually.] This showeth their impudence.
Ver. 8. Be thou instructed.] Affliction is a schoolmaster, or rather an usher to the law, which the apostle calleth a schoolmaster to Christ. Affliction bringeth men to the law, and the law to Christ. Affliction is a preacher, saith one; “Blow the trumpet in Tekoah”; what saith the trumpet? “Be instructed, O Jerusalem.” Lest my soul depart from thee.] Heb., Be loosed or disjointed; lest I loathe thee more than ever I loved thee, and so thy ruin come rushing in, as by a sluice. Maturant aspera mentem.
Ver. 9. They shall thoroughly glean the remnant.] They shall make clean work of them. [as Judges 20:45]
Ver. 10. To whom shall I speak and give warning?] Heb., Protest— q.d., I know not where to meet with one teachable hearer in all Jerusalem. Behold, their ear is uncircumcised.] Obstructed and stopped with the “superfluity of naughtiness,” worse than any ear wax, or thick film overgrowing the organ of hearing. Tanquam monstra marina, surda aure Dei verba praetereunt. The word of the Lord is unto them a reproach.] They take reproofs for reproaches. [as Luke 11:45]
Ver. 11. Therefore I am full of the fury of the Lord,] i.e., Of curses and menaces against this obstinate people. [as Jeremiah 4:19] I am weary with holding in.] As hitherto I have done, and could still in compassion, but that of necessity I must obey God’s will, and be the messenger of his wrath. It is a folly to think that God’s ministers delight to fling daggers at men’s breasts, or handfuls of hell fire in their faces. Non nisi coactus, said he. I will pour it forth.] I will denounce it, and then God will soon effect it. See on Jeremiah 1:10.
Ver. 12. With their fields and wives together.] These are mentioned as most dear to them; who could haply say as he did— “ Haec alii capiant; liceat mihi paupere cultu Secure chara coniuge posse frui.”
Ver. 13. Every one is given to covetousness.] Avet avaritia, eager for greed, is coveting covetise or excessively; crieth still, Give, give, with the horse leech; of which creature Pliny observeth, and experience showeth, that it hath no through passage, but taketh much in, and letting nothing out, breaks and kills itself with sucking. So doth the covetous man. Every one dealeth falsely.] Heb., Each one is doing falsehood, as if that were their common trade. Lib. xi. cap. 34.
Ver. 14. They have healed also the hurt of…slightly.] Heb., Upon a slight or slighted thing. Secundum curationem mali leviculi; as men use to cure the slight hurts of their children by blowing on them only, or stroking them over. Thus these deceitful workers dealt by God’s people, dallying with their deep and dangerous wounds, which they search not, neither cauterise, according to necessary severity. Saying, Peace, peace.] Making all fair weather before them, whenas the storm of God’s wrath was even breaking out upon them, such a storm as should never blow over. Secundum leviculum. -Jun.
Ver. 15. Were they at all ashamed] Their shamelessness was no small aggravation of their sin. Ita licet multas abominationes commiserunt Papistae sine verecundia, verecundari tamen non possunt, saith Dr John Raynolds. Papists are frontless and shameless. Dr Story, for instance:—I see nothing, said he, before the parliament in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth, to be ashamed of, so less I see to be sorry for; but rather because I have done no more, &c.; wherein he said there was no default in him, but in the higher powers, who much against his mind had laboured only about the young and little sprigs and twigs, whiles they should have struck at the root and rooted it out, meaning thereby the Lady Elizabeth, whom also he afterwards daily cursed in his grace before his meal. And concerning his persecuting and burning the Protestants, he denied not but that he was once at the burning of an earwig (for so he termed it) at Uxbridge (Mr Denley, martyr), where he tossed a faggot at his face as he was singing psalms, and set a spiny evergreen bush of thorns under his feet, a little to prick him, &c. De Idolat. Rom., p. 85. Acts and Mon., fol. 1925.
Ver. 16. Stand ye in the ways and see.] Duly deliberate and take time to consider whether you are in the right or not. Ask for the old paths.] Chalked out in the Word, and walked in by the patriarchs. Think not, as some do today, by running through all religions to find out the right; for this is viam per aria quaerere, as Junius phraseth it; to seek a way where none is to be found. How many religions are there now among us! So many men, so many minds. Non est sciens hodie qui novitates non invenit, as one complained of old. He is nobody that cannot invent a new way; but as old wine is better, so is the old way; hold to it therefore. Quod primum verum, That which was first is true; but beware of new truths that cannot be proven to be old. [as 1 John 2:7] “ Qui veteres linquit, calles sequiturque novatos Saepius in fraudes incidet ille suns.” But they said, We will not walk therein.] So Jeremiah 6:17, “But they said, We will not hearken.” See the like resolute answers, Jeremiah 22:21 44:16, savouring of a self-willed obstinace. It is easier to deal with twenty men’s reasons than with one man’s will. A wilful man stands as a stake in the midst of a stream, lets all pass by him, but he stands where he was. Luther saith of some of his Wittembergians, that so great was their obstinace, so headstrong and headlong they were, that the four elements could not bear it. Jeremiah seems here to say as much of his Jerusalemites. See Jeremiah 6:18,19. Alnar. Pelagius.
Ver. 17. Also I set watchmen over you,] i.e., Priests and prophets to watch for your welfare. Hearken to the sound of the trumpet.] See on Jeremiah 6:8. We will not hearken.] See on Jeremiah 6:16.
Ver. 18. Therefore hear, O ye nations.] For this people will not hear me, though I speak never so good reason. Scaliger telleth us that the nature of some kind of amber is such that it will draw to itself all kind of stalks of any herb, except basilisk, a herb called capitalis, because it makes men heady, filling their brains with black exhalations. Thus those who by the fumes of their own corrupt wills are grown headstrong, will not be drawn by that which draweth others who are not so prejudicated. What is among them?] What their sins are; or, Quid in eos -sc., constituerim; what I have resolved to bring upon them; or, Quae in eis, know, O congregation (of the saints) which art among them. Exercit. 140, Num. xii. Malitiam eorum, their malice.— Piscat.
Ver. 19. Hear, O earth.] In case none else will hear. Even the fruit of their thoughts.] Why, then, should any man think that “thought is free?” Free they are from men’s courts and consistories, but not from God’s eye, law, or hand.
Ver. 20. To what purpose cometh there to me incense?] Cui bono, so long as it smelleth of the foul hand that offereth it, so long as you think to bribe me with it? See Isaiah 1:14. From Sheba.] Whence the Greeks seem to have their word σεβειν, to worship; and the Arabians call God—the adequate object of divine worship— Sabim, and a mystery, Saba. And the sweet cane.] Heb., Cane the good. The Septuagint render it cinnamon; and the Vulgate, calamus; of which see Pliny, lib. xii. cap. 22. From a far country.] From India, saith Jerome. Haec omnia bene in nostros Papistas quadrabunt.
Ver. 21. Behold, I will lay stumblingblocks.] Heb., Stumblements— i.e., occasions, preparations, and means to work their ruth and ruin; what these are, see Jeremiah 6:22. Strages -sc., et clades in quas incident et corruent., Slaugher and defeat in which they fell and were riuned.
Ver. 22. Thus saith the Lord.] It is not in vain that this is so oft prefaced to the ensuing prophecies. Dictum Iehovae The word the Lord is very emphatic and authoritative. Behold, a people cometh from the north.] This the prophet had oft foretold for forty years together; sed surdis fabulam, but he could not be believed.
Ver. 23. They shall lay hold on bow and spear.] To destroy et eminus et comminus, both afar off and at hand. Their voice roareth like the sea.] Which is so dreadful, that the horrible shriekings of the devils are set out by it { James 2:19). They who would not hear the prophet’s sweet words, shall hear the enemies roaring in the midst of their congregations. (Psalms 74:4) φρισσουσι.
Ver. 24. Our hands wax feeble.] He modestly reckoneth himself among the rest, though the “arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob,” (Genesis 49:24) and his “heart was fixed, trusting in the Lord.” (Psalms 112:7)
Ver. 25. Go not out into the field.] Since there is “no peace to him that goeth out, nor to him that cometh in”; (2 Chronicles 15:5) but “ Luctus ubique, pavor, et plurima mortis imago. ” “Everywhere grief, panic and the images of the most dead.”
Ver. 26. Gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes.] The very heathens do so when in danger of a merciless enemy: Veniam irarum coelestium poscentes, saith Livy, seeking the pardon of their sins and the favour of their gods. Lib iii.
Ver. 27. I have set thee for a tower and a fortress.] Or, A fortified watch tower have I made thee among my people— i.e., to spy out and discover their dispositions and affections.
Ver. 28. They are all grievous revolters.] Heb., Revolters of revolters. Chald., Princes of revolters, archrebels. Jeremiah, God’s champion, such as was wont to be set forth completely armed at the coronation of a king in this nation, findeth and reporteth them such here, and proveth it. Walking with slanders.] Trotting up and down as pedlars, dropping a tale here and another there, contrary to Leviticus 19:16. They are brass and iron.] Base and drossy, false and feculent metals. Silver and gold they would seem to be, a sincere and holy people; but they are malae monetae, base coinage, a degenerate and hypocritical generation. Adulterini sunt, nihil habentes probi, as Theodoret hath it here; naught, and good for nought; not unlike those stones brought home in great quantity by Captain Frobisher in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He thought them to be minerals and of good worth; but when there could be drawn from them neither gold nor silver, nor any other metal, they were cast forth to repair the highways. They are all corrupters.] Of themselves and of others. Camden’s Elisabeth, 189.
Ver. 29. The bellows are burnt.] The prophet’s lungs are spent; all their pains spilt upon a perverse people. See Ezekiel 24:6,12,13. Jeremiah had blowed hard, as a smith or metallary doth with his bellows; he had suffered, as it were, by the heat of a most ardent fire in trying and melting his ore; he had used his best art also by casting in lead, as today they do quicksilver, to melt it the more easily, and with less loss and waste; but all to no purpose at all. Let us, to the wearing of our tongues to the stumps, preach never so much, men will on in sin, said Bradford. The lead is consumed.] All the melting judgments which, as lead is cast into the furnace to make it the hotter, God added to the ministry of the prophets to make the Word more operative, they will do no good. The founder melteth in vain.] Whether God, the master founder, or the prophets, God’s co-founders or fellow workmen, as the apostle calleth them. (1 Corinthians 6:1) The wicked are not plucked away.] Or, Their wickednesses; they will not part with their dross, or be divorced from their dilecta delicta, beloved sins. The vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord. (Isaiah 32:6) Mr Case’s Treatise of Afflictions.
Ver. 30. Reprobate silver shall men call them.] Dross and refuse, rather than pure metal; “silver” they would seem to be, but their hypocrisy shall be made known to all men, who shall count them and call them “reprobate,” because impurgabiles and inexpiabiles, uncounsellable and incorrigible; a sure sign of reprobation, as Aquinas noteth from Hebrews 6:7,8. For the Lord hath rejected them.] As refuse and counterfeit, such as will not pass in payment. Hence they are to be cast into Babylon’s iron furnace (quasi antro Aetnaeo et Cyclopico adhuc decoquendi), a type of that eternal fire of hell prepared of old for the devil and reprobates. Αδοκιμος, unapproved. Jerome, Lyra. Deus est sapiens nummularius, God is a wise banker.