Bibelkommentare

In this chapter we have, I. The general inscription or title of this book, with the time of the continuance of Jeremiah's public ministry, Jer 1:1-3. II. The call of Jeremiah to the prophetic office, his modest objection against it answered, and an ample commission given him for the execution of it, Jer 1:4-10. III. The visions of an almond-rod and a seething-pot, signifying the approaching ruin of Judah and Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, Jer 1:11-16. IV. Encouragement given to the prophet to go on undauntedly in his work, in an assurance of God's presence with him, Jer 1:17-19. Thus is he set to work by one that will be sure to bear him out.

INTRODUCTION

JEREMIAH, son of Hilkiah, one of the ordinary priests, dwelling in Anathoth of Benjamin

(Jer 1:1),

not the Hilkiah the high priest who discovered the book of the law

(2Ki 22:8);

had he been the same, the designation would have been "the priest", or "the high priest". Besides, his residence at Anathoth shows that he belonged to the line of Abiathar, who was deposed from the high priesthood by Solomon

(1Ki 2:26-35),

after which the office remained in Zadok's line. Mention occurs of Jeremiah in

2Ch 35:25; 36:12, 21.

In 629 B.C. the thirteenth year of King Josiah, while still very young

(Jer 1:5),

he received his prophetical call in Anathoth

(Jer 1:2);

and along with Hilkiah the high priest, the prophetess Huldah, and the prophet Zephaniah, he helped forward Josiah's reformation of religion

(2Ki 23:1-25).

Among the first charges to him was one that he should go and proclaim God's message in Jerusalem

(Jer 2:2).

He also took an official tour to announce to the cities of Judah the contents of the book of the law, found in the temple

(Jer 11:6)

five years after his call to prophesy. On his return to Anathoth, his countrymen, offended at his reproofs, conspired against his life. To escape their persecutions

(Jer 11:21),

as well as those of his own family

(Jer 12:6),

he left Anathoth and resided at Jerusalem. During the eighteen years of his ministry in Josiah's reign he was unmolested; also during the three months of Jehoahaz or Shallum's reign

(Jer 22:10-12).

On Jehoiakim's accession it became evident that Josiah's reformation effected nothing more than a forcible repression of idolatry and the establishment of the worship of God outwardly. The priests, prophets, and people then brought Jeremiah before the authorities, urging that he should be put to death for his denunciations of evil against the city

(Jer 26:8-11).

The princes, however, especially Ahikam, interposed in his behalf

(Jer 26:16, 24),

but he was put under restraint, or at least deemed it prudent not to appear in public. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (606 B.C.), he was commanded to write the predictions given orally through him, and to read them to the people. Being "shut up", he could not himself go into the house of the Lord

(Jer 36:5);

he therefore deputed Baruch, his amanuensis, to read them in public on the fast day. The princes thereupon advised Baruch and Jeremiah to hide themselves from the king's displeasure. Meanwhile they read the roll to the king, who was so enraged that he cut it with a knife and threw it into the fire; at the same time giving orders for the apprehension of the prophet and Baruch. They escaped Jehoiakim's violence, which had already killed the prophet Urijah

(Jer 26:20-23).

Baruch rewrote the words, with additional prophecies, on another roll

(Jer 36:27-32).

In the three months' reign of Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, he prophesied the carrying away of the king and the queen mother

(Jer 13:18; 22:24-30;

compare

2Ki 24:12).

In this reign he was imprisoned for a short time by Pashur

(Jer 20:1-18),

the chief governor of the Lord's house; but at Zedekiah's accession he was free

(Jer 37:4),

for the king sent to him to "inquire of the Lord" when Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem

(Jer 21:1-3, &c.; Jer 37:3).

The Chaldeans drew off on hearing of the approach of Pharaoh's army

(Jer 37:5);

but Jeremiah warned the king that the Egyptians would forsake him, and the Chaldeans return and burn up the city

(Jer 37:7, 8).

The princes, irritated at this, made the departure of Jeremiah from the city during the respite a pretext for imprisoning him, on the allegation of his deserting to the Chaldeans

(Jer 38:1-5).

He would have been left to perish in the dungeon of Malchiah, but for the intercession of Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian

(Jer 38:6-13).

Zedekiah, though he consulted Jeremiah in secret yet was induced by his princes to leave Jeremiah in prison

(Jer 38:14-28)

until Jerusalem was taken. Nebuchadnezzar directed his captain, Nebuzar-adan, to give him his freedom, so that he might either go to Babylon or stay with the remnant of his people as he chose. As a true patriot, notwithstanding the forty and a half years during which his country had repaid his services with neglect and persecution, he stayed with Gedaliah, the ruler appointed by Nebuchadnezzar over Judea

(Jer 40:6).

After the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael, Johanan, the recognized ruler of the people, in fear of the Chaldeans avenging the murder of Gedaliah, fled with the people to Egypt, and forced Jeremiah and Baruch to accompany him, in spite of the prophet's warning that the people should perish if they went to Egypt, but be preserved by remaining in their land

(Jer 41:1-43:13).

At Tahpanhes, a boundary city on the Tanitic or Pelustan branch of the Nile, he prophesied the overthrow of Egypt

(Jer 43:8-13).

Tradition says he died in Egypt. According to the PSEUDO-EPIPHANIUS, he was stoned at Taphnæ or Tahpanhes. The Jews so venerated him that they believed he would rise from the dead and be the forerunner of Messiah

(Mt 16:14).

HAVERNICK observes that the combination of features in Jeremiah's character proves his divine mission; mild, timid, and susceptible of melancholy, yet intrepid in the discharge of his prophetic functions, not sparing the prince any more than the meanest of his subjects--the Spirit of prophecy controlling his natural temper and qualifying him for his hazardous undertaking, without doing violence to his individuality. Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Daniel, and Ezekiel were his contemporaries. The last forms a good contrast to Jeremiah, the Spirit in his case acting on a temperament as strongly marked by firmness as Jeremiah's was by shrinking and delicate sensitiveness. Ezekiel views the nation's sins as opposed to righteousness--Jeremiah, as productive of misery; the former takes the objective, the latter the subjective, view of the evils of the times. Jeremiah's style corresponds to his character: he is peculiarly marked by pathos, and sympathy with the wretched; his Lamentations illustrate this; the whole series of elegies has but one object--to express sorrow for his fallen country; yet the lights and images in which he presents this are so many, that the reader, so far from feeling it monotonous, is charmed with the variety of the plaintive strains throughout. The language is marked by Aramæisms, which probably was the ground of JEROME'S charge that the style is "rustic". LOWTH denies the charge and considers him in portions not inferior to Isaiah. His heaping of phrase on phrase, the repetition of stereotyped forms--and these often three times--are due to his affected feelings and to his desire to intensify the expression of them; he is at times more concise, energetic, and sublime, especially against foreign nations, and in the rhythmical parts.

The principle of the arrangement of his prophecies is hard to ascertain. The order of kings was--Josiah (under whom he prophesied eighteen years), Jehoahaz (three months), Jehoiakim (eleven years), Jeconiah (three months), Zedekiah (eleven years). But his prophecies under Josiah (the first through twentieth chapters) are immediately followed by a portion under Zedekiah (the twenty-first chapter). Again,

Jer 24:8-10,

as to Zedekiah, comes in the midst of the section as to Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jeconiah (the twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fifth chapters, &c.) So the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth chapters as to Jehoiakim, follow the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, thirty-third, thirty-fourth chapters, as to Zedekiah; and the forty-fifth chapter, dated the fourth year of Jehoiakim, comes after predictions as to the Jews who fled to Egypt after the overthrow of Jerusalem. EWALD thinks the present arrangement substantially Jeremiah's own; the various portions are prefaced by the same formula, "The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord"

(Jer 7:1; 11:1; 18:1; 21:1; 25:1; 30:1; 32:1; 34:1, 8; 35:1; 40:1; 44:1;

compare

Jer 14:1; 46:1; 47:1; 49:34).

Notes of time mark other divisions more or less historical

(Jer 26:1; 27:1; 36:1; 37:1).

Two other portions are distinct of themselves

(Jer 29:1; 45:1).

The second chapter has the shorter introduction which marks the beginning of a strophe; the third chapter seems imperfect, having as the introduction merely "saying"

(Jer 3:1,

Hebrew). Thus in the poetical parts, there are twenty-three sections divided into strophes of from seven to nine verses, marked some way thus, "The Lord said also unto me". They form five books: I. The Introduction, first chapter II. Reproofs of the Jews, the second through twenty-fourth chapters, made up of seven sections: (1) the second chapter (2) the third through sixth chapters; (3) the seventh through tenth chapters; (4) the eleventh through thirteenth chapters; (5) the fourteenth through seventeenth chapters; (6) the seventeenth through nineteenth and twentieth chapters; (7) the twenty-first through twenty-fourth chapters. III. Review of all nations in two sections: the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth through forty-ninth chapters, with a historical appendix of three sections, (1) the twenty-sixth chapter; (2) the twenty-seventh chapter; (3) the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters. IV. Two sections picturing the hopes of brighter times, (1) the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters; (2) the thirty-second and thirty-third chapters; and an historical appendix in three sections: (1)

Jer 34:1-7;

(2)

Jer 34:8-22;

(3)

Jer 35:1-19.

V. The conclusion, in two sections: (1)

Jer 36:2;

(2)

Jer 45:1-5.

Subsequently, in Egypt, he added

Jer 46:13-26

to the previous prophecy as to Egypt; also the three sections, the thirty-seventh through thirty-ninth chapters; fortieth through forty-third chapters; and forty-fourth chapter. The fifty-second chapter was probably (see

Jer 51:64)

an appendix from a later hand, taken from

2Ki 24:18, &c.; 2Ki 25:30.

The prophecies against the several foreign nations stand in a different order in the Hebrew from that of the Septuagint; also the prophecies against them in the Hebrew (the forty-sixth through fifty-first chapters) are in the Septuagint placed after

Jer 25:14,

forming the twenty-sixth and thirty-first chapters; the remainder of the twenty-fifth chapter of the Hebrew is the thirty-second chapter of the Septuagint. Some passages in the Hebrew

(Jer 27:19-22; 33:14-26; 39:4-14

Jer 48:45-47)

are not found in the Septuagint; the Greek translators must have had a different recension before them; probably an earlier one. The Hebrew is probably the latest and fullest edition from Jeremiah's own hand. See on

Jer 25:13.

The canonicity of his prophecies is established by quotations of them in the New Testament (see

Mt 2:17; 16:14; Heb 8:8-12;

on

Mt 27:9,

see on

Introduction to Zechariah);

also by the testimony of

Ecclesiasticus 49:7,

which quotes

Jer 1:10;

of PHILO, who quotes his word as an "oracle"; and of the list of canonical books in MELITO, ORIGEN, JEROME, and the Talmud.

Introduction to Jeremiah

1. jeremiah was by birth a priest, and dwelt at Anathoth, a village in the tribe of Benjamin, about three miles north of Jerusalem. The name is not found until the time of David, when, however, it seems to have become common (see 1 Chronicles 12:4, 1 Chronicles 12:10, 1 Chronicles 12:13), and most probably it signifies that Yahweh shall exalt.

It is a subject of dispute whether or not Hilkiah, the father of Jeremiah, was the high priest of that name, who found the Book of the Law in the Temple 2 Kings 22:8. It is at least possible that he was. The more than ordinary respect felt for the prophet by Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, and other reasons support the supposition that Jeremiah was a man of high birth.

His call to the prophetic office came in the 13th year of Josiah. It was a time when danger was once again gathering around the little kingdom of Judah, and to Jeremiah was assigned a more directly political position than to any other of "the goodly fellowship of the prophets;" as both the symbols shown to him and the very words of his institution prove. If we glance back at the previous history, we find that the destruction of Sennacherib's army in the 14th year of Hezekiah (693 b.c.), though it had not freed the land from predatory incursions, had nevertheless put an end to all serious designs on the part of the Assyrians to reduce it to the same condition as that to which Salmaneser had reduced Samaria. The danger of Judaea really rose from Egypt on the one hand and Babylon on the other. In Egypt Psammetichus put an end to the subdivision of the country, and made himself sole master in the 17th year of Assurbanipal (649 b.c.), being the 24th of Manasseh. Since he reigned for 54 years, he was - during the last 18 or 19 years of his life - contemporary with Josiah, but it was his successor Necho who killed Josiah at Megiddo. Meanwhile, as Egypt grew in strength, so Nineveh declined, partly from the effects of the Scythian invasion, but still more from the growing power of the Medes, and from Babylon having achieved its independence.

Two years after the battle of Megiddo, Nineveh fell before a combined attack of the Medes under Cyaxares and the Babylonians under Nabopalassar. But Nabopalassar does not seem to have been otherwise a warlike king, and Egypt remained the dominant power until the fourth year of Jehoiakim. In that year, 586 b.c., according to the cylinders, Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish. Having peaceably succeeded his father, he returned to Judaea, and Jehoiakim became his vassal. After three years of servitude Jehoiakim rebeled 2 Kings 24:1, and died. Three months afterward, his son Jehoiachin, the queen-mother, and a large number of nobles and artificers, were carried captive to Babylon.

The growth of Egypt into a first-rate power under Psammetichus Jeremiah 2:18, Jeremiah 2:36, raised the question of a close alliance with him. The youthful Jeremiah gave his voice against it. Josiah recognized that voice as inspired, and obeyed. His obedience cost him his life at Megiddo; but four years later Necho was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish. On that day, the fate of the Jewish nation was decided, and the primary object of Jeremiah's mission then ceased.

The ministry of Jeremiah really belonged to the last 18 years of Josiah's reign. Judah's probation was then going on, her salvation still possible; though each year Judah's guilt became heavier, her condemnation became more certain. But to the eye of man, her punishment seemed more remote than ever. Jehoiakim was the willing vassal of Egypt, the supreme power. No wonder that, being an irreligious man, he scorned all of Jeremiah's predictions of utter and early ruin. It is no wonder that he destroyed Jeremiah's scroll, as merely the record of the outpourings of mere fanaticism. It was his last chance, his last offer of mercy: and as he threw the torn fragments of the scroll onto the fire, he symbolically threw there his royal house, his doomed city, the Temple, and all the people of the land. It was in this fourth year of Jehoiakim that Jeremiah boldly foretold the greatness of Nebuchadnezzars empire, and the wide limits over which it would extend. This prophecy Jeremiah 25 placed his life in danger, so that "the Lord hid" him and Baruch Jeremiah 36:26. When Jeremiah appears again, Nebuchadnezzar was advancing upon Jerusalem to execute the prophecy contained in Jeremiah 36:30-31. And with the death of Jehoiakim, the first period of Judah's history was brought to a close. Though Jeremiah remained with Zedekiah, and tried to influence him for good, yet Jeremiah's mission was over. Jeremiah himself testifies that the Jewish Church had gone with Jehoiachin to Babylon. Zedekiah and those who remained in Jerusalem were only the refuse of a fruit-basket from which everything good had been culled Jeremiah 24:1-10, and their destruction was only a matter of course. Jeremiah held no distinctive office toward them.

Such was the political state of things in the evil days in which Jeremiah was commissioned to make Yahweh's last appeal to His covenant-people. However, to understand the prophet's position fully, the moral change which had come over the Jews, and which was the real cause of the nation's ruin, must be noted.

Up to the time of Manasseh, though there had been bad as well as good kings, and though there had probably always been a certain amount of nature-worship and of unauthorized rites upon the hill-tops, yet the service of Yahweh had been the sole established and even dominant religion of the people. But upon Manasseh's accession a new order of things began; and, in spite of his repentance, it continued throughout his long reign of 55 years. Not only was there the open establishment of idolatry, but a reign of terror commenced, during which not only the prophets, but all who were distinguished for religion and virtue, were cruelly murdered. The reign of Manasseh was important in another particular. During it the land was slowly recovering from its utterly exhausted state at the end of the Assyrian wars; and when Josiah came to the throne, there was both great prosperity among the people, and also a better state of feeling. Great and good men stood forward as leaders in defense of their national religion and covenant-God. And the nation itself had become as dissatisfied with Baal and Moloch as their forefathers had been with Yahweh. In his 18th year Josiah entered with all his heart into the work of restoring the national religion, and labored with a stern earnestness to remove every vestige of idol-worship from the land. This was half the work; the other half was entrusted to Jeremiah. The king could cleanse the land; the word of God alone, speaking to their consciences, could cleanse men's hearts. Therefore, the office of Jeremiah was to show that a change of morals must accompany the public reformation effected by Josiah, or it would not be accepted.

It was in Josiah's 13th year, when entire quiet prevailed in the political world, and Jeremiah was himself little more than 20 years of age, that his appointment took place, and two symbols were shown to him by which he learned the main reasons why the word of Yahweh was entrusted to his charge. By the first, the branch of an almond-tree, he was taught that judgment was awake in the land. Judah must decide at once whether she will serve Yahweh or Baalim, and her choice must be real. If she chooses Yahweh, she must prove that such is her choice by worshipping Him in purity and holiness. For, secondly, by the symbol of the seething caldron, he learned that a dreadful calamity was impending over his country.

There are in Jewish history two overwhelming catastrophes: The first being the destruction of the holy city and temple by Nebuchadnezzar. And the second was the destruction of the holy city and temple by Titus. The preaching of Jeremiah caused the first to be a new birth to the chosen people. The preaching of Christ caused the Christian Church to spring forth from the other. But if their preaching had been more generally listened to, Jerusalem might have been saved each time. It was because people passed on without heeding the warning that the nation thus fell twice Luke 19:42.

Jeremiah was not, however, one "dumb before the shearers, and that opened not his mouth" Isaiah 53:7. Of all the prophets there is not one who so frankly lays open to us his brooding melancholy nature. He discloses to us his innermost thoughts. We find him sensitive to a most painful degree, timid, shy, hopeless, desponding, constantly complaining, and dissatisfied with the course of events, with the office which had been thrust upon him, and with the manner of the Divine Providence. Jeremiah was not one whose sanguine temperament made him see the bright side of things, nor did he quickly find peace and happiness in doing his Master's will. And yet we never find him rebuked, because he was doing his duty to the utmost extent of his powers. Timid in resolve he was unflinching in execution. As fearless when he had to face the whole world as he was dispirited and prone to complaining when alone with God. He is a noble example of the triumph of the moral over the physical nature. His whole strength lay in his determination to do what was right at whatever cost. He made everything yield to whatever his conscience told him he ought to do. Danger, opposition, mockery without; fear, despondency, disappointment within, availed nothing to shake his constant mind. The sense of duty prevailed over every other consideration; and in no saint were the words of Paul 2 Corinthians 12:9 better exemplified.

Many of the same characteristics may be seen in Jeremiah's style of writing. He did not possess those gifts which make the orator.

He did not have any of that strength and vigor, nor of that warmth of imagination, which characterize Isaiah and Micah. His usual method is to set his main thought before the mind in a succession of images. They seldom grow out of one another, but simply form a succession of illustrations, each of which is full of poetry, but with this remarkable peculiarity, that Jeremiah never uses his picture as such, but mixes up with it words which are appropriate, not to the metaphor, but to the idea which he is illustrating (e. g., Jeremiah 1:15; Jeremiah 6:3-5). His simile is constantly dismissed almost before it has been fully presented to the mind in order that he may declare his meaning in plain and unvarnished prose. This fullness of illustration, often diffuse and inconsecutive, is exactly in harmony with Jeremiah's subject. No lot could have been more dreary to a man of intense patriotism like Jeremiah than to see the ruin of his country steadily approaching, to mark each step of its advance, to have to point out its causes, and to know the sole remedy, but also to know that none would heed his words. Could he have only witnessed the return of the exiles, and have known that the restoration of the Jewish Church was, humanly speaking, His work, his despondency would have given way to joy. But no such comfort was vouchsafed him. He was required to give up all the innocent joys of life Jeremiah 15:17; to abandon the most cherished privilege of a Jew, and live unmarried Jeremiah 16:2; and to abstain even from the civilities and sympathies of society Jeremiah 16:5; only to be an object of universal abhorrence. This was Jeremiah's calling; not to be a poet or orator, but to persuade people by the force of his moral character, and to conquer by suffering.

And his style is in keeping with the man. He spoke as he thought. Ever brooding over his message to his people it presented itself to his mind in many aspects, but was in substance ever the same. We have no change of subjects in his prophecy. He has only the single cry of Woe! All he can do is to adapt his unvarying tale to the existing state of things, and to present it under new images. He is a true poet, but the poet of sorrow. Though sorrow comes only occasionally, yet it comes to all, and then Jeremiah, the prophet of suffering, is full of instruction for us. Perhaps no book of Holy Scripture sets so plainly before people the great issues which depend upon right and wrong.

2. There can be little doubt that the Book of Jeremiah grew out of the scroll which Baruch wrote down at the prophet's mouth in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and which was completed and read before the king in his fifth year, in the ninth month Jeremiah 36. This scroll contained a record of "all that God had spoken unto Jeremiah against Israel and against Judah and against all the nations" during the 23 years which had elapsed since the prophet's call Jeremiah 36:2. However, since Jeremiah 21:1-14 was written during the reign of Zedekiah, Jeremiah 19:1-15, along with (perhaps) Jeremiah 20 written as a sort of appendix, is the last chapter which can have formed part of that collection. Apparently, therefore, we have at most only fragments of Jehoiakim's roll, the largest of which consists of Jeremiah 2-10. Probably also the prophecies against the Gentiles in Jeremiah 46-49 were contained in the scroll, but were placed in their present position in order to connect them with the prophecies against Babylon Jeremiah 50-51 written in Zedekiah's fourth year. So, also excepting Jeremiah 13, we must include in the scroll the short prophecies which precede that of "the potter's vessel" Jeremiah 19:1-15. From Jeremiah 20 all signs of any general arrangement vanish. Attempts indeed have been made to show that these later chapters are grouped together upon some sort of system, but they are far-fetched and unsatisfactory.

Therefore, the conclusion forced upon the mind is that Jeremiah had proposed to himself to gather into one volume all his prophecies, and that this is the reason why Jehoiakim's scroll has not come down to us as a whole, but that he died in Egypt before he had been able to accomplish his design, and that, at his death, whoever had charge of his writings (probably Baruch) did not feel himself at liberty to attempt any arrangement of them. Jeremiah 52 was added to complete the history, and, since it contains a notice of events more than 20 years after Jeremiah's death, it is probable, that, long before this time, his prophecies had become current in their present disorder. The superscription of the Book of Jeremiah confirms the foregoing statements in a remarkable manner, because it bears upon its surface plain marks of repeated alterations.

The text of the Septuagint Version offers very considerable differences from that of the Masorites, contained in our Hebrew Bibles. From first to last there are innumerable variations, which sometimes affect only single letters, syllables or words, but sometimes whole verses. On the other hand the omissions are unimportant, and we nowhere find in either text anything altogether independent of the other. There is however a remarkable dislocation of the whole series of the prophecies against the nations: and not only do they hold a different place generally, but are arranged on a different plan among themselves.

The earlier position of the Gentile prophecies in the Septuagint was probably more nearly that which they held in Jehoiakim's roll.

It was in Egypt that Jeremiah died. It is then at least probable that this Egyptian copy dates from the time when Baruch was about to depart from the country, and was transcribed (of course in Hebrew) for the private use of such Jews as believed Jeremiah to be a true prophet. It would gradually obtain currency and be copied again and again, and would in time become the authoritative form of the Book of Jeremiah among the Egyptian exiles. Its critical authority negatively is little, because of the extreme haste with which the copy was necessarily made, and because the exigencies of time required all that was not absolutely indispensable to be omitted: affirmatively its authority is very great, for it assures us that all that is common to the two texts is as old as the time when they first separated from one another. Whenever Jeremiah 52 was added in Palestine it would not long remain unknown in Egypt. New colonists took with them copies of the fuller Hebrew text with the added appendix: but the shorter form was looked upon as that which had local authority. Patriotic Egyptian Jews doubtless held that it was the genuine text; and as such the Alexandrian translators gave it the preference, but they could have no objection to adding to their Version so useful an annex as the fifty-second chapter.

Even independently of the evidence of this Egyptian text the genuineness of nearly every part of the Book of Jeremiah is so generally acknowledged that an occasional footnote on some impugned passage is all that is necessary. The value of the double text rather lies in its shewing how quickly the writings of the prophets became generally current, and how impossible it was to interpolate them or introduce falsification on a large scale. The acknowledged genuineness of the Book of Jeremiah is also valuable in another respect, because no prophet so constantly quotes the words of his predecessors. He evidently knew the other Scriptures by heart, and perpetually reproduces them, but in his own way. He never quotes them briefly and succinctly, but developes them, so as to give them something of his own soft luxuriance; but his testimony to the existence of them in the same state as that in which we have them at present, is most clear. Most numerous are his quotations from the Pentateuch, and especially from the Book of Deuteronomy. It had been so lately found 2 Kings 22:8 that this is just what we should expect; his young mind must have been deeply penetrated by such a scene as that described in 2 Kings 23:1-3. And such quotations in a book of which the genuineness is acknowledged, are of the greatest possible value for the criticism of the writings from which they are taken.

Introduction to the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah

The Prophet Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, was of the sacerdotal race, and a native of Anathoth, a village in the tribe of Benjamin, within a few miles of Jerusalem, which had been appointed for the use of the priests, the descendants of Aaron, Joshua 21:18. He was called to the prophetic office when very young; probably when he was fourteen years of age, and in the thirteenth of the reign of Josiah, A.M. 3375, b.c. 629. He continued to prophesy till after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, which took place A.M. 3416; and it is supposed that about two years after he died in Egypt. Thus it appears that he discharged the arduous duties of the prophetic office for upwards of forty years.

Being very young when called to the prophetic office, he endeavored to excuse himself on account of his youth and incapacity for the work; but, being overruled by the Divine authority, he undertook the task, and performed it with matchless zeal and fidelity in the midst of a most crooked and perverse people, by whom he was continually persecuted, and whom he boldly reproved, often at the hazard of his life.

His attachment to his country was strong and fervent; he foresaw by the light of prophecy the ruin that was coming upon it. He might have made terms with the enemy, and not only saved his life, but have gained ease and plenty; but he chose rather to continue with his people, and take his part in all the disasters that befell them.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar having made Gedaliah governor of Judea, the fractious Jews rose up against him, and put him to death; they then escaped to Tahpanhes in Egypt, carrying Jeremiah with them; who, continuing to testify against their wickedness and idolatry, at length fell a victim to his faithfulness: they filled up the measure of their iniquity, as tradition reports, by stoning the prophet to death. God marked this murderous outrage by his peculiar displeasure; for in a few years after they were almost all miserably destroyed by the Chaldean armies which had invaded Egypt; and even this destruction had been foretold by the prophet himself, chap. 44: "They were consumed by the sword and by the famine until there was an end of them, a small remnant only escaping," Jeremiah 44:14, Jeremiah 44:27, Jeremiah 44:28.

The pitch of desperate wickedness to which the Jews had arrived previously to their captivity was truly astonishing. They had exhausted all the means that infinite mercy, associated with infinite justice, could employ for the salvation of sinners; and they became in consequence desperately wicked; no wonder, therefore, that wrath fell upon them to the uttermost. It seems that their hardness and darkness had proceeded to such lengths that they abandoned themselves to all the abominations of idolatry to avenge themselves on God, because he would not bear with their continual profligacy. Were ever people more highly favored, more desperately ungrateful, or more signally punished! What a lesson is their history to the nations of the earth, and especially to those who have been favored with the light of revelation!

I should have entered into a particular discussion relative to the history of those times mentioned by this prophet, had they not passed already in review in the Books of Kings and Chronicles; in which much of the historical parts of this prophet has been anticipated; and to which, in order to avoid repetition, I must refer my readers. What is farther necessary to be added will be found in the following notes.

As a writer, the character of Jeremiah has been well drawn by Bishop Lowth. On comparing him with Isaiah, the learned prelate says: "Jeremiah is by no means wanting either in elegance or sublimity; although, generally speaking, inferior to Isaiah in both. St. Jerome has objected to him a certain rusticity in his diction; of which, I must confess, I do not discover the smallest trace. His thoughts, indeed, are somewhat less elevated, and he is commonly more large and diffuse in his sentences; but the reason of this may be, that he is mostly taken up with the gentler passions of grief and pity, for the expressing of which he has a peculiar talent. This is most evident in the Lamentations, where those passions altogether predominate; but it is often visible also in his Prophecies; in the former part of the book more especially, which is principally poetical. The middle parts are for the most part historical; but the last part, consisting of six chapters, is entirely poetical; and contains several oracles distinctly marked, in which this prophet falls very little short of the loftiest style of Isaiah." It has often been remarked, that although several of the prophecies in this book have their dates distinctly noted, and most of the rest may be ascertained from collateral evidence; yet there is a strange disorder in the arrangement. "There is," says Dr. Blayney, "a preposterous jumbling together of the prophecies of the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah in the seventeen chapters which follow the twentieth, according to the Hebrew copies; so that, without any apparent reason, many of the latter reigns precede those of the former; and in the same reign, the last delivered are put first, and the first, last." In order to prevent the confusion arising from this, Dr. Blayney has transposed the chapters where he thought it needful, without altering the numerals as they stand in our common Bibles.

This defect has been noticed, and attempts made to remedy it, by others. Dr. John George Dahler, Professor of Theology in the Protestant seminary of Strasburg, has just now published the first volume of a work, entitled, Jeremie, traduit sur le Texte original, accompagne de Notes Explicatives, Historiques, et Critiques, 8vo., (antedated) Strasbourg, 1824. After a preface, and very judicious historical introduction, consisting, the first of twenty-two, the second of thirty-six pages, the text and notes follow. The poetical parts of the text are translated in the hemistich manner, as the original appears in the best copies; and the whole is divided into sections; each of which is introduced with judicious observations relative to time, place, circumstances, and the matter contained in that section. The discourses or prophecies delivered under a particular reign, are all produced under that reign in their chronological order. A table of this arrangement I shall here introduce, and refer to the use of it afterwards:

Table I Prophecies under Josiah 1:1-19 3:6-4:4 4, 5, Jeremiah 6:30 Jeremiah 17:19-27 -Jer 3:1-5 Jeremiah 47:1-7 Under Jehoiakim 7:1-9:25 Jeremiah 20:14-18 Jeremiah 26:1-24 Jeremiah 23:9-40 Jeremiah 46:2-12 Jeremiah 35:1-19 Jeremiah 10:1-16 Jeremiah 25:1-38 Jeremiah 14:1-15:21 Jeremiah 36:1-32 Jeremiah 16:1-17:18 Jeremiah 45:1-5 Jeremiah 18:1-23 Jeremiah 12:14-17 Jeremiah 19:1-20:13 Jeremiah 10:17-25 Under Jeconiah 13:1-27 Under Zedekiah 22:1-23:8 Jeremiah 34:1-7 Jeremiah 11:1-17 Jeremiah 37:1-10 Jeremiah 11:18-12:13 Jeremiah 34:8-22 Jeremiah 24:1-10 Jeremiah 37:11-21 Jeremiah 29:1-32 Jeremiah 38:1-28 Jeremiah 27:1-28:17 Jeremiah 39:15-18 Jeremiah 49:34-39 Jeremiah 32:1-44 Jeremiah 51:59-64 Jeremiah 33:1-26 Jeremiah 21:1-14 Jeremiah 39:1-10 After the destruction of Jerusalem Jeremiah 39:11-14 Jeremiah 42:1-43:7 Jeremiah 40:1-41:18 Jeremiah 30:1-31:40 Prophecies delivered in Egypt Jeremiah 43:8-13 Jeremiah 44:1-30 Jeremiah 46:13-28 Prophecies relative to strange nations Jeremiah 46:1 Jeremiah 49:23-27 Jeremiah 49:14 Jeremiah 49:28-33 Jeremiah 48:1-47 Jeremiah 50:1-51:64 Jeremiah 49:7-22 Historical Appendix 52:1-34

The kings under whom Jeremiah prophesied succeeded each other in the following order:

1Josiah;

2Jehoahaz;

3. Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah;

4. Jehoiakim;

5. Zedekiah.

To render the transpositions evident which have taken place in these prophetical discourses, we have only to look at those which bear the date of their delivery.

Table II Jeremiah 1:1. Delivered the thirteenth year of Josiah Jeremiah 35:1. Under Jehoiakim Jeremiah 3:6. Under Josiah Jeremiah 36:1. Under Jehoiakim Jeremiah 21:1. Under Zedekiah Jeremiah 37:1. Under Zedekiah during the siege of Jerusalem Jeremiah 24:1. After the carrying away of Jeconiah, son of Jehoiakim Jeremiah 37:11. Under Zedekiah Jeremiah 25:1. The fourth year of Jehoiakim Jeremiah 38:1. Under Zedekiah Jeremiah 26:1. The beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim Jeremiah 39:15. Under Zedekiah while Jeremiah was in prison Jeremiah 28:1. The beginning of the reign of Zedekiah Jeremiah 45:1. The fourth year of Jehoiakim Jeremiah 29:1. After the carrying away of Jeconiah Jeremiah 46:2. The fourth year of Jehoiakim Jeremiah 32:1. The tenth year of Zedekiah Jeremiah 49:34. In the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah Jeremiah 34:1. (Under Zedekiah) during the siege of Jerusalem Jeremiah 51:59. The fourth year of Zedekiah Jeremiah 34:8. (Under Zedekiah) when he had obliged his subjects to give liberty to the Israelites whom they had reduced to slavery

Taking into consideration the order of the reigns, a child may perceive that the above prophecies are not in the order of the times of their delivery; and that the sheets or skins on which the text of that MS. was written, from which the present copies have derived their origin, have been pitifully interchanged, huddled and tacked together, without connection or arrangement.

To remedy this defect, Dr. Blayney has arranged the chapters in the following order which he terms a new arrangement of the chapters in Jeremiah, from chap. 20, to chap. 46, inclusive: 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 35, 36, 45, 24, 29, 30, 31, 27, 28, 21, 34, 37, 32, 33, 38, 39:15-18, 39:1-14, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, etc.

The preceding and subsequent chapters Dr. Blayney thought sufficiently correct for all the general purposes of chronology; and it is according to this order that he prints the text in his edition and translation of this prophet.

Dr. Dahler, as we have seen, is more circumstantial. Where he has dates, as are shown in the preceding table, he produces the text in that order; where there are not positive dates, he ascertains several by circumstantial intimations, which bear great evidence of accuracy; but there is a numerous class of discourses which he is obliged to insert in this work by critical conjecture. In such a case as this, when the arrangement of the common text is so evidently defective, and in many respects absurd, this procedure is quite allowable; for although the present text as to its arrangement has the sanction of antiquity, yet when a remedy is found, it would be absurd, if not sinful, to follow an order which we may rest satisfied never did proceed from the inspired writer.

I hope none will suppose that these observations detract any thing from the Divine inspiration of the book. The prophet delivered his discourses at particular times in select portions, during forty or forty-three years; these were afterwards gathered together and stitched up without any attention to chronological arrangement. Though the Spirit of the Lord directed the prophet, yet it would be absurd to suppose that it guided the hand of every collector or scribe into whose custody these several parcels might come. Suppose a man buy a copy of the Bible in sheets, and not knowing how to collate them, stitches the whole confusedly together, so that in many places the sense cannot be made out from a preceding to a following sheet, would it not be singularly foolish for any person to say, "As God is the Fountain of wisdom and Author of reason, such incongruities cannot proceed from him, therefore this book was not given by Divine revelation." A child in a printer's office might reply, "Cut the stitching asunder, that is man's work; collate the sheets and put them in their proper order, and you will soon see that every paragraph is in harmony with the rest, and contains the words of Divine wisdom." Many an ancient MS., which appeared mutilated and imperfect, I have restored to order and perfection by cutting the binding asunder, and restoring the sheets and leaves to those places from which the ignorance and unskilfulness of the binder had detached them. May we not be allowed to treat the dislocations in the writings of a prophet in the same way, when it is evident that in the lapse of time his work has suffered by the hand of the careless and ignorant.

But it may be asked, "After all the evidence I have, and the concessions I have made, why I have not transposed those disjointed chapters, and produced them in the order in which I think they should be read?" I answer, Were I to give a new translation with notes of this prophet separately, as Drs. Blayney and Dahler have done, I should feel it my duty to do what the objection states; but as my province as a general commentator requires me to take up all the books of the sacred volume in the order in which I find them in the present authorized version, though convinced that this arrangement is neither correct nor convenient; so I take up the parts of each, however transposed, in the same manner, directing the reader by tables and notes to regulate his use of the work so as to produce general edification with as little embarrassment as possible.

For general purposes, Dr. Blayney's chronological arrangement may be sufficient; but for greater accuracy Table I. may be preferred. These may at least be considered in the light of helps to a better understanding of these several prophecies; but no man is bound to follow either, farther than he is convinced that it follows what is specifically set down by the prophet himself, or fairly deducible from strong circumstantial evidence.

In my notes on this prophet I have availed myself, as far as my plan would permit, of the best helps within my reach. The various readings of Kennicott and De Rossi I have carefully consulted, and occasionally strengthened the evidence in behalf of those readings, more particularly recommended by collations from my own M,SS. I regret that I have not been able, for the reasons mentioned at the conclusion of the notes on Isaiah, to produce all the various readings of importance found in these ancient MSS., and especially in the Book of Lamentations, which is contained in five of them; but like the woman in the Gospels, I have done what I could, and must leave the rest to those who, with better abilities, may possess the greater advantages of youth and strength, with unimpaired sight.

Reader! God designs thee a blessing by every portion of his word: in thy reading seek for this; and if these notes be helpful to thee, give Him the glory.

A.C.

Eastcott, Nov. 1, 1824.

General title to the whole Book, Jeremiah 1:1-3. Jeremiah receives a commission to prophesy concerning nations and kingdoms, a work to which in the Divine purpose he had been appointed before his birth, Jeremiah 1:4-10. The vision of the rod of an almond tree and of the seething pot, with their signification, Jeremiah 1:11-16. Promises of Divine protection to Jeremiah in the discharge of the arduous duties of his prophetical office, Jeremiah 1:17-19.

INTRODUCTION TO JEREMIAH

The title of the book in the Vulgate Latin version is, "the Prophecy of Jeremiah"; in the Syriac and Arabic versions, "the Prophecy of the Prophet Jeremiah". According to a tradition of the Jews (a), this book stands the first of the Prophets, the order of which is, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the twelve. Kimchi makes mention of it in a preface to his comment on this book; and Dr. Lightfoot from hence concludes, that this is the reason why a passage in Zechariah is cited under the name of Jeremy, Matthew 27:9, because he standing first in the volume of the Prophets gave name to the whole; just as the book of Psalms, being the first of the Hagiographa, they are called the Psalms from it, Luke 24:44. The name of the writer of this book, Jeremiah, signifies, "the Lord shall exalt", or "be exalted"; or, "exalting the Lord"; being composed of "he shall exalt", and "Jehovah", according to Hillerus (b). Though others (c) take it to be a composition of and "the Lord shall cast down"; as he did his enemies, and also himself, he being greatly afflicted; and which suits with the argument of his book, foretelling the casting away of the people of the Jews. His style of writing, according to the opinion of Jerom (d), is more rustic than that of Isaiah and some other prophets, and which he attributes to his being born and brought up in a country village; and Abarbinel to his age, being a child when he began to prophesy. The duration of his prophesying was forty years and upwards. He began to prophesy in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign; in 3375 A.M. or before the era of Christ 629, according both to Bishop Usher (e) and Mr. Whiston (f), and the Universal History (g); and according to Mr. Bedford (h) 627. If any credit can be given to Epiphanius (i), or to the writer that bears his name, he was stoned to death by the people at Taphnas in Egypt, and was buried where Pharaoh dwelt. Abulpharagius, an Arabic writer (k), says, that he went to Egypt, where some of the Jews took him and put him into a well, and afterwards took him out and stoned him, so that he died, and he was buried in Egypt; and was from thence removed by Alexander, in his time, to Alexandria, and buried there. And both Tertullian (l) and Jerom (m) affirm that he was stoned by the people. This prophecy contains several discourses delivered to the people of the Jews; charging them with many sins they were guilty of; exhorting them to repentance; threatening them with the destruction of their city and temple, and with captivity in Babylon; and comforting the saints, not only with a promise of deliverance from thence, but of spiritual redemption by the Messiah. And it also has in it several predictions of judgments upon other nations; and gives a particular account of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the carrying of the Jews captive into Babylon; which he lived to see, as the fulfilment of his prophecies.

(a) T. Bab. Bava Bathra, fol. 14. 2.((b) Onomastic. Sacr. p. 326, 508. (c) Schmidt in loc. (d) Praefat. in Hieremiam, tom. 3. fol. 9. B, (e) Annales Vet. Test, A. M. 3375. (f) Chronological Tables, cent. 9. (g) Vol. 21. p. 56. (h) Scripture Chronology, p. 673. (i) De Vit. Prophet. c. 8. Vid. Isidor. Hispalens. de Vit. & Mort. Sanct. c. 38. (k) Hist. Dynast. p. 46. Vid. Elmacin. Hist. Eccl. p. 128, Apud Hottinger. Thesaur. Phil. p. 478. (l) Scorpiace, c. 8. (m) Adv. Jovinian. l. 2, tom. 2. fol. 32. I.

INTRODUCTION TO Jeremiah 1

This chapter contains the title or inscription of the book; the call of the prophet to his office, and the encouragement he had to enter upon it. In the inscription the prophet is described by his name, by his descent, by the place of his birth, and the time of his prophesying, Jeremiah 1:1, the appointment and ordination of him to his office, which was very early, and the signification of it to him, are in Jeremiah 1:4, his excuse, on account of his childhood and weakness, Jeremiah 1:6, the encouragement given him, notwithstanding this, from the mission and command he had from the Lord, and the promise of his presence with him, Jeremiah 1:7, and not only is he encouraged by words, but also by signs; by the Lord's touching his mouth with his hand, as a symbol of putting his words into his mouth, and setting him over nations and kingdoms, to publish in a prophetic way their destruction, Jeremiah 1:9, and by a vision of an almond tree, signifying the quick and hasty performance of the word of the Lord by him, Jeremiah 1:11, and by another vision of a seething pot northwards, intimating the coming of the Chaldeans from the north against Jerusalem, and their taking it, and carrying the Jews captive because of their wickedness, which was a principal part of the message he was sent with, Jeremiah 1:13 and the chapter is concluded with an exhortation to him to take heart, and be of good courage, and not be dismayed; since he was made a defenced city, an iron pillar, and brasen wall, against the whole land of Judea, its kings, princes, priests, and people; who, though they should fight against him, should not prevail, because God was with him, Jeremiah 1:17.

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET

JEREMIAH.

Jeremiah.

BY

THE VERY REV. E.H. PLUMPTRE, D.D.,

Late Dean of Wells.

INTRODUCTION

TO

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET

JEREMIAH.

I. Life.—The materials for a biography of Jeremiah are supplied in his collected writings with unusual fulness. We know more of his personal history than we do of that of Isaiah or Ezekiel, much more than of that of the minor prophets, who have left for the most part only a few chapters as the record of their work. With the help of inferences from acknowledged facts, and of a few fairly authenticated traditions, we are able to enter into the circumstances in the midst of which he worked, and into the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, of which they were the occasion. Of him it may be said, more than of any other of the goodly fellowship of the prophets, that his whole life lies before us as in an open scroll.

It will be convenient to arrange the main facts of the history thus laid open to us under the reigns of the several kings with whom he was a contemporary.

1. UNDER JOSIAH (B.C. 638-608).—In the thirteenth year of this king the prophet speaks of himself as still “a child.” That word is, however, somewhat vague in its significance, extending from infancy, as in Exodus 2:6; 1Samuel 4:21, to adult manhood, as in 1Samuel 30:17; 1Kings 3:7. All that it can be held to imply is that the prophet felt himself to be relatively young for the work to which he had been called, that he had not attained the average age of a prophet; and this, it may be inferred, was not far distant from that at which the Levites entered on their work, which varied, at different periods, from twenty to thirty (Numbers 4:3; Numbers 8:24; 1Chronicles 23:3; 1Chronicles 23:24). We may reasonably infer, then, from the way in which the prophet speaks of himself, that he was, at the time when he felt himself called to his high and perilous work, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five, i.e., that the first seven, or, it may be, the first twelve years of his life, were passed in the reigns of Manasseh and his son Amon.

He is described, further, as “being the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth” (Jeremiah 1:1). That name, it will be remembered, was borne by the high priest who played so prominent a part in Josiah’s reformation. (2Kings 22:8.) There are, however, no sufficient grounds for identifying that Hilkiah with the father of the prophet. The manner in which the latter is named, without any mention of special dignity, is against it. The priests of Anathoth were of the line of Ithamar (1Kings 2:26; 1Chronicles 24:3), while the high priests, from Zadok downwards, were of the line of Eleazar. The identity of name may, however, be regarded as probably indicating some close connection of affinity or friendship. Other coincidences point in the same direction. The uncle of Jeremiah, Shallum (Jeremiah 32:7), bore the same name as the husband of Huldah the prophetess (2Kings 22:14). Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, the great supporter of Hilkiah the high priest and Huldah in their work (2Chronicles 34:20), was also throughout the protector of the prophet (Jeremiah 26:24). The strange Rabbinic tradition that eight of the persons most conspicuous in the history of this period (Jeremiah, Baruch, Seraiah, Maaseiah, Hilkiah, Hananeel, Huldah, Shallum) were all descended from the harlot Rahab (Carpzov, Introd. in lib. V.T. Jerem.) may possibly have been a distortion of the fact that the persons so named were united together, as by community of feeling, so also by affinity or friendship. With regard to two others of the number, we know that both Baruch and Seraiah, who appear as disciples of the prophet (Jeremiah 36:4; Jeremiah 51:59), were sons of Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, and that Maaseiah (2Chronicles 34:8) was governor of Jerusalem, acting with Hilkiah, Huldah, and Shaphan in the reforms of Josiah.

With these facts we can picture to ourselves some of the influences which entered into Jeremiah’s education, and prepared the way for his prophetic mission. The name given to him by his father, with its significance as “Jehovah exalts,” or “is exalted.” or “Jehovah throws down” (the latter meaning resting on the more accurate etymology), may fairly be looked on as embodying what was contemplated and prayed for as the ideal of his life. It may be noted that the name was common at that time, e.g., in the case of the father of the wife of Josiah (2Kings 23:31), and of one of the Rechabites (Jeremiah 35:3). That name may be thought of, accordingly, as not without its influence on the prophet’s early years. As he grew to boyhood he would hear of the cruelties and the apostasy of Manasseh and of Amon. For him, as for Isaiah, there would be a training in the law and literature of Israel, in whatever form it then existed, in Job, and Proverbs, and such of the Psalms and the writings of the earlier prophets as were then extant. The so-called Alphabetic Psalms (9, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, 145) may have helped to form the taste and style which afterwards displayed themselves in the alphabetic structure of the Lamentations. The writings of the greatest of his predecessors, Isaiah, at least, as far as Jeremiah 1-39 are concerned, could scarcely have been otherwise than familiar to him. His early manhood must have coincided with the earlier reforms of Josiah, whose life would seem to have run parallel with his own, each being apparently about the same age when the prophet received his call, Josiah having ascended the throne at the age of eight (2Kings 22:1). The reverence with which he looks on the Rechabites, the fact that one of those Rechabites bears the same name (Jeremiah 35:3), the probability that one trained in the household of a devout priest would not be unmindful of the teaching of Isaiah (Isaiah 28:7) and Amos (Amos 2:11-12), as to the perils of wine and strong drink, make it probable that he too was one of the Nazarites to whom the latter prophet looked as the strength of Israel, and whom Jeremiah himself names with reverence and admiration (Lamentations 4:7). To such an outward consecration to an ascetic life, the words which speak of him as having been “sanctified from his mother’s womb” (Jeremiah 1:5) naturally seem to point. The child was to be the father of the man, the priestly Nazarite boy was already half-way on the road to a prophet’s work, was already, by God’s calling and election, “ordained a prophet unto the nations (Jeremiah 1:5).

In such a character, reminding us, in many of its features, of the young Timotheus, we find, as might be expected, the notes of the ascetic temperament. He is devout, sensitive, easily depressed and made self-distrustful, kindling all too easily into a bitter and angry indignation, gifted, in a special measure, with the gift of tears. The circumstances of his call imply a previous preparation, as did those of Isaiah’s. He had mourned over his people’s sins, and yearned to bear his witness against them; but then there came the question, which has been asked a thousand times by men of like character, Who is sufficient for these things? The burden of the task of being a prophet of the Lord seemed too heavy to be borne. The answer to this feeling came in the special call, neither to be ignored nor resisted, for the circumstances of which the reader is referred to the Notes on Jeremiah 1. His weakness was to be fortified with a strength higher than his own. As in the case of Isaiah, so also here, it would seem that the call was not followed by immediate prophetic action. Jeremiah is not named in the history of Josiah’s reformation, which he must have watched, however, with intense interest, not, perhaps, without some misgivings, like those which Isaiah had felt during the like work of Hezekiah, as to its reality and inward thoroughness. The prophet’s keen eye, in this as in other things, saw below the surface, and discerned that something more was wanted than the breaking down of idol sanctuaries, or the abolition of the worship of the high places. He looked in vain for the righteousness without which national restoration was impossible. It can scarcely be doubted, too, that he must have seen with some disquietude the foreign policy which led statesmen and people to seek safety, as their fathers had done, in an alliance with Egypt (Jeremiah 2:36). For Josiah personally, who, acting on a different policy, opposed that alliance, and fell in battle against Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo (2Kings 23:29), he would naturally feel a warm and admiring affection, and it is probable that his first appearance as a writer was in the lamentations which he composed on that king’s death, but which are not now extant, their fame having apparently been overshadowed by the greater elegies that now bear that name. Possibly we may also refer to this period some of the earlier chapters of the prophet’s writings, which have the character of a general survey of the moral and religions condition of the people, and to which no specific date is assigned, as in the case of most of the later chapters.

2. UNDER JEHOAHAZ (OR SHALLUM).—The short reign of this king, who was chosen by the people on hearing of Josiah’s death, and deposed after three months by Pharaoh Necho, gave little scope for direct prophetic action. As representing an anti-Egyptian policy, and thus continuing in the line of action which Josiah had adopted, the prophet probably sympathised with and supported him, and the tone of respectful sorrow with which he speaks of him in his exile (Jeremiah 22:10), contrasts strikingly with the stern rebuke which he addresses to his successor (Jeremiah 22:13-19). It lies in the nature of the case, that most of those who were Jeremiah’s protectors in the reigns that followed—Shaphan, Ahikain, Maaseiah, and others—were supporters of his policy at this crisis.

3. UNDER JEHOIAKIM (B.C. 607-597).—The eleven years of this king’s reign were for the prophet a time of conspicuous activity. He found little ground for hope in the Egyptian alliance of which the king was the representative, still less in the self-indulgent and luxurious character of the king himself (Jeremiah 22:13-16), or in the priests and prophets, the Pashurs, Hananiahs, and the rest, who were dominant in his council and his court. For him the rising power of the Chaldæans under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar was to be accepted, not only as inevitable, but as appointed for the punishment, and therefore for the education, of his people. The King of Babylon was God’s servant doing His work (Jeremiah 25:9; Jeremiah 27:6). To resist him was to resist the ordinance of God. As he had foretold (Jeremiah 46), the short-lived triumph of Pharaoh Necho in the capture of Carchemish was followed by a crushing defeat, which placed Jehoiakim at the mercy of the Chaldaean king, and compelled him to renounce his dependence on the “broken reed” of Egypt, and to accept the position of a vassal king under Nebuchadnezzar. Some of the more striking incidents of this time of conflict call for a special notice. At the opening of Jehoiakim’s reign, the prophet foretells the desolation of the Temple. It should be laid waste, even as Shiloh had been (Jeremiah 26:6). Priests, prophets, people are enraged, and threaten him with death (Jeremiah 26:8), but are foiled by the influence of his lay protectors, who urge the precedent of a like prediction uttered by Micah in the days of Hezekiah, as an argument in his defence (Jeremiah 26:10-18). The fate of a contemporary prophet, Urijah, is recorded by him at this juncture, apparently as showing how narrow his own escape had been (Jeremiah 26:23). The catastrophe of Carchemish naturally led to a fuller utterance. He foretells the seventy years of the captivity (Jeremiah 25:11), and symbolically gives the cup of Jehovah’s wrath to all the nations which, one after another, were to fall under the Babylonian yoke, ending in predicting. under the cypher form of Sheshach, the fate of Babylon itself (Jeremiah 25:17-26). To this period, when the armies of the Chaldæans were driving those who lived in tents of villages to take refuge in Jerusalem, or other fortified cities, we must refer the interesting episode of the Rechabites in Jeremiah 35.

In the same year we have the first indication of the prophet’s work as the editor of his own prophecies. His secretary and disciple Baruch writes, as he dictates, a collection of his more striking prophecies, probably corresponding roughly with the earlier chapters of our present book. Jeremiah himself was hindered, we know not how, whether by illness or by prudence, from appearing in public, but Baruch solemnly read what he had written in the crowded courts of the Temple. Once again priests and prophets were stirred to wrath. The matter came to the ears of the king, who, in his impotent anger, burnt the parchment roll, in spite of the protest of Jeremiah’s friends. Orders were given to arrest the prophet and the scribe; but they again escaped, and re-wrote all that had been destroyed with many like words (Jeremiah 36). The contrasted characters of the two friends—one seeking great things for himself, eager to play a prominent part in the history of the time, the other content, and wishing to make his disciple content, if his life was “given him for a prey”—come out in the interesting episode of Jeremiah 45, which belongs probably to this period.

To this reign we may also probably refer the symbolic teaching which was presented in a somewhat startling form, when Jeremiah, having first been directed to learn the lesson of the potter’s work as a parable of God’s teaching with the nations of the world (Jeremiah 18), was afterwards told to go to the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and to warn king and people of the destruction that was coming upon them by breaking in their presence the potter’s vessel, which was condemned as worthless (Jeremiah 19). This was followed by another outburst of malignant rage on the part of Pashur the priest, from which this time the prophet did not escape. The painful and ignominious punishment of the stocks entered into his soul, and called forth a burst at once of denunciation and passionate despair which, except in Psalms 69, 109, has scarcely a parallel in the literature of the Old Testament (Jeremiah 20).

If we accept the received text and the literal interpretation of Jeremiah 13:1-11, we have to assign to this period of Jeremiah’s life the two journeys to Euphrates which are there narrated. Such journeys were not in the nature of the case improbable. Jonah, and probably Nahum, had already found their way to Nineveh (Jonah 3:3). Manasseh and other members of his royal household had been taken to Babylon (2Chronicles 33:11). Over and above the symbolism of the narrative there may have been a personal motive connected with such a journey, the desire to do what he could for his country’s welfare by becoming acquainted with its destined conquerors. Possibly we may trace the special orders which were given by Nebuchadnezzar for his protection (Jeremiah 39:11) to the acquaintance thus begun. If we might assign the visits to a period after the first deportation of Jewish captives to Babylon in the third year of Jehoiakim (Daniel 1:1), we might connect them with the desire to watch over the fortunes of the exiles, and to renew his intercourse with the prophet who was settled with his companions on the banks of Chebar (Ezekiel 1:1), or with Daniel and his friends in the court at Babylon. The fact that the former prophet was with him at Jerusalem during great part of the reign of Jehoiakim, and that his teaching shows many traces of Jeremiah’s influence (comp. in particular Ezekiel 18:2 and Jeremiah 31:29), may, at all events, be noted as throwing light upon the surroundings of the latter’s life, and on the influence which he exercised over his contemporaries.

4. UNDER JEHOIACHIN (B.C. 597).—The short three months’ reign of this king witnessed the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s predictions, in the captivity first of his predecessor, and then of Jehoiachin himself, together with all the officers of their courts and the wealthier part of the population. We may infer, from the fact of his being deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, that he was led by his counsellors (he himself was a mere boy) to enter into intrigues against the Chaldaean sovereignty; and the tone in which Jeremiah speaks of him (Jeremiah 22:24-30) implies that he and the queen-mother—probably the master-mind of the policy of the court (2Kings 24:15)—were disposed to reject his counsels. In him and in his childless age the prophet saw the close of the dynasty, in the direct line of succession, of the house of David. It is noticeable that Jeremiah, though a priest, escaped the doom of exile which probably fell on his friend and disciple Ezekiel, and the difference in their fortunes may be traced without much risk of error to the prominent part which the former had taken from first to last as counselling subjection, possibly to the personal favour with which he was already regarded by the Chaldæan rulers. The effect of the separation must, however, have added to his sense of loneliness. Not a few of his friends and protectors must have shared in the captivity. He had to fight the battle of his life during his remaining years more single-handed than before.

5. UNDER ZEDEKIAH (B.C. 597-586).—As might be expected from the fact that he had been appointed by Nebuchadnezzar, as likely to be a more submissive vassal than his predecessors, appointed possibly with Jeremiah’s approval, the prophet receives at the hands of this prince, on the whole, a better treatment than at those of his predecessors. The king respects him, keeps his counsel, endeavours to protect him (Jeremiah 37:3-17; Jeremiah 38:16). The very name which he adopted on his accession to the throne, “Righteous is Jah,” or “Jehovah” (2Kings 24:18), seems to have been intended to identify him with the acceptance of the prophet’s teaching that in “the Lord our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6) was to be found the archetype and the source of all righteous government. The king, however, was weak and vacillating. The prophet felt keenly that only the most worthless remnant of the people, the “vile figs” of the crop, were left in Judah (Jeremiah 24:5-8). It was to the other remnant in the exile of Babylon that he turned with words of counsel in the letter, which more than any other Old Testament document seems to foreshadow the epistles of the New (Jeremiah 29). Even there also, however, there were false prophets, among whom Zedekiah, Ahab, and Shemaiah were conspicuous, who spoke of him as a “madman” (Jeremiah 29:26), and urged the priests at Jerusalem to more active measures of persecution, not knowing that they were thus drawing upon themselves a quick and terrible retribution.

Soon matters came to a crisis. The apparent revival of the power of Egypt under Apries (the Pharaoh-hophra of Jeremiah 44:30) raised false hopes in the minds of Zedekiah and his advisers, and drew Judah and the neighbouring nations into projects of revolt (Jeremiah 37:5). The clearness with which Jeremiah foresaw the ultimate destruction of Babylon, made him all the more certain that it was not to come at once or through the intervention of Egypt. He appeared in the streets of Jerusalem with bonds and yokes upon his neck, announcing that they were meant for Judah and its cities (Jeremiah 27:2). The false prophet Hananiah, who broke the offensive symbols, and predicted the destruction of the power of Babylon within two years, learnt that a yoke of iron was upon the neck of all the nations, and died himself while it was still pressing heavily on Judah (Jeremiah 28:3-17). The approach of an Egyptian army, however, and the consequent departure of the Chaldæans, made the position of Jeremiah full of danger, and he sought to effect his escape from a city in which he seemed powerless for good, and to take refuge in his own town of Anathoth (Jeremiah 37:12), the men of that city who had sought his life (Jeremiah 11:21) having probably been taken into exile after the first Chaldæan invasion. The discovery of this plan led not unnaturally to the charge of desertion. He was arrested, as “falling away to the Chaldæans,” as others were doing (Jeremiah 37:14), and, in spite of his denial, was thrown into a dungeon (Jeremiah 37:16). The interposition of the king, who still respected and consulted him, led to some mitigation of the rigours of his confinement (Jeremiah 37:21); but as this milder treatment left him able to speak to the people, the princes of Judah, bent on the Egyptian alliance, and counting on the king’s being unable to resist them, threw him into the prison-pit, and would have left him to die there in its foulness (Jeremiah 38:6). From this horrible fate he was delivered by the kindness of the Ethiopian eunuch, Ebed-Melech, and the king’s lingering regard for him, and was restored to the milder custody in the king’s house where Baruch and other friends could visit him (Jeremiah 32:16). The king himself sent Pashur (not the one already named) and Zephaniah, both, it would appear, friendly to the prophet (Jeremiah 29:29), to consult him. The prophet, as if touched by this humility, speaks to the king in gentler terms. Exile is inevitable, but he shall at least “die in peace,” and receive, in marked contrast with Jehoiakim, an honourable burial (Jeremiah 34:3-5). At no period of his life is the prophet truer to his calling. He had before to fight against false hopes of liberation. He has now to contend against the despair which made men lose all faith in the promises of God and in their own future. That danger the prophet was taught to meet in the most effectual way. With a confidence in that future which has been compared to that of the Roman who bought at its full value the very ground on which the forces of Hannibal were encamped (Livy xxvi. 11), he too bought, with all requisite formalities, the field at Anathoth, which his kinsman Hanameel wished to get rid of (Jeremiah 32:6-9), and proclaimed not only that “fields and vineyards should again be possessed in the lands,” but that the “voice of gladness” should once more be heard there, and that under “the Lord our Righteousness” the house of David and the priests the Levites should never be without representatives (Jeremiah 33:21-26). To this period also we may assign the prophecy of a New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31), which was destined to have so marvellous a fulfilment, and which has fashioned, under the teaching of Him who came to be the Mediator of that covenant, the faith and the terminology of Christendom. His influence may also be traced in the renewal of the national covenant with Jehovah (Jeremiah 34:18-19), princes, priests, and people walking in procession between the two parts of the sacrifice (Jeremiah 34:19), and in the proclamation of liberty to the Hebrew servants and handmaids whom the oppression of the rich had brought into bondage (Jeremiah 34:9-14). The reformation thus effected was, however, only on the surface. Covenant and proclamation were alike disregarded. The law of the Sabbatic year was set at nought as that of the Sabbath day had been before (Jeremiah 17:21-27). The cup of iniquity was full, and the judgment came. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, and it was exposed to all the horrors of famine (Lamentations 2:12; Lamentations 2:20; Lamentations 4:9). At last the city was taken, and the Temple burnt. The king and his princes endeavoured to escape, but were taken prisoners in the plains of Jericho. Zedekiah had to see his children slain before his eyes, and, as if that were to be the last sight he was to look upon, was afterwards blinded, and taken, as Jehoiachin had been, to pass the remainder of his days as a prisoner at Babylon (Jeremiah 52:10-11).

6. AFTER THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM (B.C. 586—?)—The prophet and his protectors, who had all along counselled submission to the king of Babylon, had now the prospect of better treatment than their fellows. A special charge was given to Nebuzar-adan to protect the person of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 39:11), and after being carried to Ramah with the crowd of prisoners, he was set free, and offered his choice whether he would go to Babylon with the prospect of rising, as Daniel and his friends had risen, to an honourable position in the king’s court, or remain under the protection of Gedaliah, the son of his steadfast friend Ahikam, who had been appointed governor over the cities of Judah (Jeremiah 40:1-5). The prophet’s love for his people led him to choose the latter alternative, and the Chaldæan commander “gave him a reward,” and set him free. Then followed a short interval of peace, soon broken, however, by the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael and his confederates. We are left to conjecture how the prophet himself escaped with life, but the fulness of his narrative of these events leads to the conclusion that he was among the captives whom Ishmael carried off to the Ammonites, and who were released by the intervention of Johanan (Jeremiah 41). Jeremiah was thus deprived of one of his most valued friends, but Baruch was still with him, and it is significant that the people turned to him for counsel. They wanted, it would seem, his sanction to the foregone conclusion that their only chance of escaping the punishment, likely enough to be indiscriminate, which the Chaldæans would exact for the murder of Gedaliah, was in an immediate flight to Egypt (Jeremiah 42:14). That sanction he refused, at the risk of bringing on himself and Baruch the old charge of treachery (Jeremiah 43:3), but the people, bent on following their own plans, forced him and his disciple to accompany them to Tahpanhes. There we have the last recorded scene of the prophet’s life. He once more rebukes the people vehemently for their multiplied idolatries, among which the worship of the Queen of Heaven had been the most conspicuous (Jeremiah 44), does not shrink from again speaking of Nebuchadnezzar as “the servant of Jehovah” (Jeremiah 43:10), and foretells that he will conquer Egypt as he had conquered Judah. After all this all is uncertain. If we were to accept Jeremiah 52 as the work of the prophet, we should have to think of him as living for twenty-six years after the destruction of Jerusalem. Probabilities are, however, against this conclusion, and there is greater likelihood on the side of the tradition, reported by Tertullian (adv. Gnost. c. 8), Jerome (adv. Jovin. ii. 37), and others, that he was stoned to death at Tahpanhes by the Jews whom he had provoked by his rebukes. Most commentators on the New Testament see a reference to this in Hebrews 11:37, just as they refer the words “were sawn asunder to the martyrdom of Isaiah. An Alexandrian tradition reported that his bones were brought to that city by Alexander the Great (Chron. Pasch, p. 156, ed. Dindorf), and up to the eighteenth century travellers were told that he was buried near the pyramid of Ghizeh (Lucas, Travels in the Levant, p. 28). On the other hand, there is the Jewish statement (quoted in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible), that he and Baruch escaped to Babylon or Judaea, and died there in peace. Josephus is silent as to his fate. Other traditions have, at least, the interest of showing the impression which Jeremiah’s work and life left on later generations. His prophecy of the seventy years’ exile, which had at first been full of terror, came to be a ground of hope (Jeremiah 25:11; Daniel 9:2; 2Chronicles 36:21). The fulfilment of that prophecy probably impressed itself on the mind of Cyrus. On the return from Babylon his writings were received, probably under Ezra or the scribes of the Great Synagogue, among the sacred books of Israel, and in the Babylonian recension they, and not those of Isaiah, took the foremost place in the company of the prophets, Ezekiel coming between the two. The Jewish saying “that the Spirit of Jeremiah dwelt in Zechariah” bears witness to the influence which the one prophet was believed to have exercised on the mind of the other. The fulfilment of his prediction of the return of the exiles from the Babylonian captivity led to his being regarded, so to speak, as the patron saint of his country. It was believed that he had taken the tabernacle and the ark and the altar of incense, and had concealed them in a cave on Mount Nebo till the time when God should gather His people together once again (2 Maccabees 2:1-8). He appeared to Judas Maccabeus as “a man with gray hairs and exceeding glorious,” as one who “prayed much for the holy city,” and gave the hero a “golden sword” with which to “fight the battles of the Lord” (2 Maccabees 15:13-16). He is recognised as having a chief place among the prophets of Israel, sanctified from his mother’s womb (Ecclesiasticus 49:6-7). His authority is claimed for an apocryphal letter to the captives of Babylon, containing a long polemic against the follies of idolatry (Baruch 6). At a later period his name was attached, as in Matthew 27:9, to prophecies from another book in the sacred canon, either as having been their original author, or in the belief that he was the representative of all the prophets of the captivity. In the time of our Lord’s ministry, his re-appearance was expected, like that of Elijah, to prepare the way for the Christ. Some said of Jesus of Nazareth that He was “Jeremiah, or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:14). Probably he was “that prophet” referred to in John 1:21. The belief that he was the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:18, has been held by later Jewish commentators (Abarbanel, in Carpzov, Introd. in V. T. Jerem). The traditions as to his re-appearance lingered even in the Christian Church, and appeared in the belief that he was one of the “two witnesses” of Revelation 11:3 (Victorinus, in loc.). Yet wilder forms of legends were found in Egypt. It was he who had foretold that the idols of that country should one day fall to the ground, at the presence of the “Virgin and her child. He had played the part of a St. Patrick, and had delivered the region of the Delta of the Nile, where he dwelt, from serpents (Epiphan. de Vit., proph. op. ii. p. 239). He had returned from Egypt to Jerusalem, and had lived there for three hundred years (D’Herbelot, Bibl. Orient., p. 499). The narrative of his sufferings was expanded into a history like that of a Christian martyrdom (Eusebius, Praep. Evang. ix. 39).

II. Character and Style.—In the popular description of Jeremiah as the “weeping prophet,” in the form in which Michael Angelo has portrayed him in the Sistine Chapel, as brooding, with downcast eyes, in sorrowful meditation, we have a true conception of the prophet’s character and life. Of all the prophets of the Old Testament, he would seem to have had the hardest lot of suffering. He was pre-eminently “the man who had seen affliction:” “no sorrow was like unto his sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12; Lamentations 3:1). His whole life was spent in what seemed a fruitless strife with the evils of his time. Cassandra-like, he had to utter warnings which were disregarded. Like Phocion, in the history of Athens, he had to counsel submission to an alien conqueror, and to incur the reproach of being treacherous and faint-hearted. Had the horizon of his hopes been that of his own times only, his heart must have shrunk back into despair. That which sustained him was the inextinguishable hope, which he had inherited from Isaiah, of the kingdom of God, the restoration of the true Israel of God, the new and better Covenant, the faith in “the Lord our Righteousness.” In his loneliness and his sorrows, in his susceptibility to intensest suffering and keenest indignation, his nearest parallel in the history of literature may, perhaps, be found in Dante. In him, at all events, the great Florentine found one of the founts of his inspiration, quotes him again and again, both in his poetry and his prose writings, and borrows from him the opening symbolism of the Divina Commedia. (Comp. Jeremiah 5:6 with Dante’s Inferno, c. i.)

To associate the name of Jeremiah with other portions of the Old Testament than those which bear his name, is to pass from the region of history into that of conjecture; but the fact that some commentators (e.g., Hitzig) assign not less than thirty Psalms to his authorship (sc., Psalms 5, 6, 14, 22-41, 52-55, 69-71), indicates at least what were the hymns in his national literature with which he had most affinity, and which exercised most influence on his thoughts and language. The hypothesis of some later critics (e.g., Bunsen, God in History, b. ii. c. 2), who assign the second part of Isaiah to the time of the exile, and to the authorship of Baruch, that Jeremiah was the Servant of the Lord, who is there conspicuous, has a like suggestiveness. Reference to others of the earlier books of the Old Testament canon show parallelisms with the Law, a special prominence being given to Deuteronomy, as, e.g.—

Comp. Jeremiah 11:3-5 with Deuteronomy 4:20; Deuteronomy 7:12; Deuteronomy 27:26.

Comp. Jeremiah 34:14 with Deuteronomy 15:12

Comp. Jeremiah 32:18 with Exodus 20:6

Comp. Jeremiah 32:21 with Exodus 6:6,

with Job (comp. Job 3 with Jeremiah 15:10; Jeremiah 20:14), with both parts of Isaiah.

Comp. Isaiah 4:2; Isaiah 11:1 with Jeremiah 33:15

Comp. Isaiah 40:19-20 with Jeremiah 10:3-5

Comp. Isaiah 42:16 with Jeremiah 31:9

Comp. Isaiah 13, 47 with Jeremiah 50, 51.

and with the earlier prophets.

The style of Jeremiah, if less conspicuous for its loftiness and majesty than that of Job or Isaiah, has yet a passionate intensity, a vividness of imagery, a capacity for invective or for pathos, which are not surpassed and scarcely equalled elsewhere, in this also reminding us of Dante. It was characteristic both of the man and of the time that this passionate temperament welcomed, when it uttered itself in the Lamentations, the artificial restraints of the alphabetic arrangement which had appeared before in some of the Psalms, and seems to have been a fashion of the times. (See Introduction to Lamentations.) Connected, perhaps, with this, as concentrating attention upon the alphabet and its possible uses, is Jeremiah’s use of a peculiar cypher writing, the use of an inverted alphabet, known among the later Jews as the Atbash (A standing for T, and B for SH), by which the Sheshach of Jeremiah 25:26 became for the initiated the symbol of Babylon; and the Hebrew letters of “in the midst of those who rise up against’ me” of Jeremiah 51:1, was equivalent to “the Chaldæans,” which accordingly takes its place in the LXX. version.

III. Arrangement.—It is a noticeable fact, as throwing light upon the chances to which even the writings of a prophet may be subject, that the order of the LXX. version of the greater part of Jeremiah is altogether different from that of the Hebrew. Up to Jeremiah 25:13 they agree. From that point onward to the end of Jeremiah 51 the divergency may be presented as follows :—

LXX.

Hebrew.

Jeremiah 25:14-18.

49:34-39.

Jeremiah 15

Jeremiah 27, 28.

50, 51.

Jeremiah 29:1-7.

47:1-7.

Jeremiah 29:8-22.

49:7-24.

Jeremiah 30:1-5.

49:1-6.

Jeremiah 30:6-11.

49:28-33.

Jeremiah 30:12-16.

49:23-27.

Jeremiah 31

48

Jeremiah 33-51

25:13-39.

Jeremiah 52.

26-45 .

It is obvious that the Alexandrian translators must have had before them a MS., or, more probably, a mass of MSS., arranged by them, or for them, in a different order from that adopted by the scribes of Judaea, to whom we owe our present Hebrew recension. It is a natural inference from this (1) that the prophet’s writings were left by him in a scattered, unarranged state, in the hands of his disciples, Baruch and others, and that two of these, or some later scribes, thought fit to arrange them in a different order. It was, so to speak, as if the sermons of an eminent preacher in later times had come to us as they were found in his drawers, unsorted. (2) That the large sections in which the order is the same in Jeremiah 1:1 to Jeremiah 25:13 (Heb.), and Jeremiah 26-45 (Heb.) represent two collections, which contained the chief prophecies that were connected with the prophet’s work in relation to Judah, while the others, bearing chiefly on the heathen nations, were left in a less continuous form, and were arranged by the two editors at their discretion.

It is to be noted that in neither case is the arrangement chronological. To read the prophet’s writings in the order of time, either as regards the facts to which they refer, or the date of their composition, we must adopt an arrangement different from both of those which are now before us. In regard to some of the sections where we have a definite note of time, specifying, if not the exact year, at least the reign to which they of right belong, the task is comparatively easy. In regard to the others, we are in the wider, and therefore more difficult, field of conjecture. Taking the dates given in the Authorised version as approximately right, the following gives the order in which Jeremiah’s prophecies ought to be read in connection with his life, and which has been practically followed in the preceding biography :—

B.C.

629

… Jeremiah 1, 2, 3 (probably written later).

B.C.

612

… Jeremiah 3-6

B.C.

610

… Jeremiah 22, 26

B.C.

608

… Jeremiah 11, 12

B.C.

607

… Jeremiah 35, 45

B.C.

606

… Jeremiah 25, 30, 31

B.C.

605

… Jeremiah 18, 19, 20

B.C.

602

… Jeremiah 13

B.C.

601

… Jeremiah 14, 15, 16, 17

B.C.

600

… Jeremiah 7, 8, 9, 10, 47, 48

B.C.

599

… Jeremiah 23, 29

B.C.

598

… Jeremiah 24, 26, 27 (Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 27:1 is clearly an error of transcription for Zedekiah).

B.C.

596

… Jeremiah 28

B.C.

595

… Jeremiah 50, 51

B.C.

591

… Jeremiah 34

B.C.

590

… Jeremiah 32, 33

B.C.

590-588

… Jeremiah 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44

B.C.

589

… Jeremiah 21, 37, 38

B.C.

587

… Jeremiah 44

B.C.

598-562

… Jeremiah 52 Appendix and historical summary.

The wide divergency of this order from that of either of the two recensions that have come down is not without its teaching (1) as showing that during the length of time over which the prophet’s work was spread but little care was taken by him to provide for their transmission in any definite order. Like a true prophet, he did his work for his own generation, thinking little of himself and his after-fame. Like the Sibyl of classical antiquity, he gave his writings, as it were, to the winds, careless of their fate, and left it to others, through his long career, to collect, copy, and arrange them as they could. (2) As suggesting the probability that what happened in his case may have befallen the writings of other prophets also, such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, whose labours were spread over a considerable period of time; and, consequently, as leaving it open to us to deal freely with the order in which we find them, so as to connect them, as we best can, with the successive stages of the prophet’s life.

It need not be inferred, however, from this chronological dislocation, that the order of the chapters in the Hebrew, and, therefore, in the English version, is altogether without a plan. The following scheme gives, it is believed, an adequate explanation of the principles on which the Palestine editor may have acted :—

1. Jeremiah 1-21—Containing probably the substance of the book of Jeremiah 36:32, and including prophecies from the thirteenth year of Josiah (with a long interval of silence) to the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Jeremiah 1:3, however, indicates a later revision, and the whole of Jeremiah 1 may have been added as the prophet’s retrospect of his whole work from this its first beginning. Jeremiah 21 belongs to a later period, but may have been placed here, as connected by the recurrence of the name of Pashur with Jeremiah 20.

2. Jeremiah 22-25—Short prophecies against the kings of Judah and the false prophets. Jeremiah 25:13-14, evidently marks the conclusion of a series, and that which follows (Jeremiah 25:15-38), the germ of the fuller predictions of Jeremiah 46-49, has apparently been placed here, as a completion to that of the seventy years of exile.

3. Jeremiah 26-28—The two great prophecies of the fall of Jerusalem. Jeremiah 26 belongs to the earlier, Jeremiah 27, 28 to the later portion of the prophet’s work.

4. Jeremiah 29-31—The message of comfort to exiles in Babylon.

5. Jeremiah 32-44—The history of Jeremiah’s work immediately before and after the capture of Jerusalem. Jeremiah 35, 36 are remarkable as interrupting the chronological order, which would otherwise have been followed here more closely than elsewhere. The position of Jeremiah 45 as an isolated fragment, suggests that it may have been added by Baruch at the close of his narrative of his master’s life.

6. Jeremiah 46-51—The prophecies against foreign nations, ending with the great utterance against Babylon.

7. Jeremiah 52—Historical appendix.

IV. Text and Authenticity.—Over and above the variations in order, the LXX. presents some noticeable variations and omissions, which have led some critics to reject some portions of the present Hebrew text as being probably interpolations. Other passages have been questioned on grounds more or less subjective as prophecies after the event, or for other reasons. The limits of this Introduction will not admit of a full description of each portion, but a statement of the objections will, in the one case, direct attention to some striking variations, and in the other, in some instances at least, to parallelisms of some interest. To the present writer, who holds (1) that there are antecedent probabilities in favour of the Hebrew text as compared with the Greek, and (2) that the inspiration of the prophet implies, at least the possibility of a prediction before the event, neither ground of objection seems conclusive.

(a) Questioned, as omitted in the LXX.

-1Jeremiah 10:6-8; Jeremiah 10:10.

-2Jeremiah 27:7.

-3Jeremiah 27:16-21 (not omitted, but with many variations).

-4Jeremiah 33:14-26.

-5Jeremiah 39:4-13.

(b) Questioned on other grounds.

-1Jeremiah 10:1-16.—On being the work of a later writer, probably the so-called Deutero-Isaiah. The Aramaic of verse 11 is urged in favour of this view.

-2Jeremiah 27:14.

-3Jeremiah 47:7

-4Jeremiah 33:14-26.

-5Jeremiah 39:1-2; Jeremiah 39:4-13.

as having the character of prophecies after the event.

(6) Jeremiah 27-29—As showing, in the shortened form of the name (Jeremiah instead of Jeremiahu), and in the epithet “the prophet,” the work of a later writer.

(7) Jeremiah 30-33—As showing the influence of the Deutero-Isaiah.

(8) Jeremiah 48, for the same reason as (7).

(9) Jeremiah 50, 51.—As being a prophecy after the event, foreign in style and thought to Jeremiah’s writings.

(10) Jeremiah 52—As an historical summary compiled from 2 Kings 25 and other sources by the editor of the collection.

In the notes that follow I have been mainly indebted to Ewald, Hitzig, and Keil, and to the notes on Jeremiah by Dr. Payne Smith in the Speaker’s Commentary, and those by Nägelsbach in Lange’s Commentary, edited by Dr. Philip Schaff. The Introduction is mainly based upon an article on Jeremiah which I contributed to Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, and on the very able dissertation by Nagelsbach in the Commentary just named.

Jer 1:1-19.

THE GENERAL TITLE OR INTRODUCTION

Jer 1:1-3,

probably prefixed by Jeremiah, when he collected his prophecies and gave them to his countrymen to take with them to Babylon [MICHAELIS].

1. Anathoth--a town in Benjamin, twenty stadia, that is, two or three miles north of Jerusalem; now Anata (compare

Isa 10:30,

and the context,

Isa 10:28-32).

One of the four cities allotted to the Kohathites in Benjamin

(Jos 21:18).

Compare

1Ki 2:26, 27;

a stigma was cast thenceforth on the whole sacerdotal family resident there; this may be alluded to in the words here, "the priests . . . in Anathoth." God chooses "the weak, base, and despised things . . . to confound the mighty."

The words of Jeremiah - The usual title of the prophetic books is "the Word of the Lord," but the two books of Amos and Jeremiah are called the words of those prophets, probably because they contain not merely the words of those prophets, probably because they contain not merely prophecies, but also the record of much which belongs to the personal history of the writers. This title might therefore be translated the "life of Jeremiah" or "acts of Jeremiah," though some understand by it a collection of the prophecies of Jeremiah. One derivation of Jeremiah's name is "God exalteth."

Hilkiah, may have been the high priest of that name.

That were - Or, who was, i. e., dwelt. The meaning is, that Jeremiah was a priest who dwelt at Anathoth.