If thou wilt return,...and if thou wilt put away thine abominations...then shalt thou not remove. Jeremiah 4:1-4 The pleadings of God J. Parker, D. D. A strange ministry is that of Almightiness. It is almightiness — almost. So we come upon a mysterious "if" in all the history of God's administration. "If thou wilt return" — why not make them return? Here man is stronger than God. We have seen in innumerable instances how true it is that God, who can handle universes, can do nothing with the heart He has made except with the heart's consent. Behold God, then, as a pleader. "If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the Lord, return unto Me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of My sight," — if thou wilt swear, "The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness," — if thou wilt do these things, the issue will be glorious; it will also be beneficent, it will have an evangelistic effect upon the world. The meaning is, the heathen nations round about shall see thy return, and they will begin to own the power of God. That is the converting force that must be brought to bear upon the whole of the nations. The Church must be so beautiful as to attract attention. When Christians do right, pagans will believe; when Christians claim their uniqueness of quality and exemplify it, the men who get up arguments against Christianity will be ashamed of their own ingenuity, and run away from the things their hands have piled, saying, We cannot build fortresses against such quality of character. This is true missionary work. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Putting away of sin T. Meade. A great warrior was once persuaded by his enemies to put on a beautiful robe which they presented him. Not suspecting their design, he wrapped himself tightly in it, but in a few moments found that it was coated on the inside with a deadly poison. It stuck to his flesh as if it had been glued. The poison entered into his flesh, so that in trying to throw off the cloak, he was left torn and bleeding. But did he for that reason hesitate about taking it off? Did he stop to think whether it was painful or not? Did he say, Let me wait and think about it awhile? No! he tore it off at once, and threw it from him, and hastened away from it to the physician. This is the way you must treat your sins if you would be saved. They have gone into your soul. If you let them alone you perish. You must not fear the pain of repentance. You must east them from you as poison, and hasten away to Jesus Christ. Do this, or your sins will consume you like fire. ( T. Meade. ) And thou shalt swear. On swearing R. Clerke, D. D. I. THE COMMAND. Did Christ countermand this? ( Matthew 5:34 .) The Son forbid in the Gospel what the Father bids in the law? God bids thee swear, so thy oath be truthful and needful; Christ forbids swearing which is truthless and needless. II. THE FORM. God bade us swear; now He tells us how. "The Lord liveth." It is, then, impiety to swear by creatures. God prevents all evasion by the name He here gives — "the Lord"; not any god the swearer would substitute, as some swear by angels, called in Scripture "Elohim," and superstition worships them as gods. III. THREE PARTICULARS. 1. "In truth." Perjury is impious — makes that which is the sign and seal of truth, the cloak of falsehood. 2. "In judgment." Swear not upon guess only. 3. "In righteousness." To any act against right or religion bind not thyself, let not any bind thee. ( R. Clerke, D. D. ) Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns Soul agriculture Homilist. I. Proper attention to the SOIL. 1. Variety of condition. 2. Capability of improvement. II. Proper attention to the SEED. 1. Care in selection of true spiritual seed. The Gospel — (1) Perfect in itself. (2) Fitted to grow in all climates. (3) It does not sow itself. (4) It is the support of life. 2. Attention must also be paid to its growth. III. Proper attention to the SEASON. 1. Youth. 2. The season of moral seriousness, when the heart has been softened. ( Homilist. ) The life of the sinner a foolish agriculture Homilist. The people referred to as sowing among thorns are those, perhaps, who are endeavouring by religious study and effort to get the seeds of Divine good into them when their hearts remain full of worldly things. I. A GRAND EVIL. Sowing precious seed in bad soil involves three things. 1. Loss of seed. The precious grain has been thrown away. 2. Loss of labour. All the efforts employed go for nothing. 3. Loss of hope. All the bright anticipations of a glorious future frustrated. II. AN URGENT DUTY. "Break up your fallow ground." This means in one word evangelical repentance for sin. 1. This in moral, as well as material, agriculture is hard work. A skilful ploughman, a strong plough and a vigorous team are necessary. It is hard work to repent. 2. This in moral, as well as in material, agriculture is indispensable work. ( Homilist. ) The fallow ground broken W. Clayton. I. THE NECESSITY OF FALLOWING THE GROUND is obvious to all who are practically acquainted with tillage: and such as are experimentally informed on the subject of the evil and barrenness of their own hearts, will admit the absolute requirement of a similar mental process. All your carnal hopes, and criminal opposition to the Divine will, must be completely eradicated. II. THE NATURE of this part of a farmer's business will well Illustrate the correspondent toil of a believer. No attempt to cleanse the heart, however disagreeable, is intentionally neglected by the sincere believer — no effort is relied upon; all is subservient to the expected influences of heaven. III. THE ADVANTAGES of this procedure. Those who make thorough work with their own hearts, will find that their religious joys and better hopes, though delayed, shall be most vigorous; their subsequent sufferings from the grieving thorn and pricking brier shall be fewer; and a richer harvest shall at length crown their toil. 1. If you desire permanent prosperity and joy in the Holy Ghost, break up the fallow ground — sow not among thorns. 2. Be personal in this labour. Turn your eyes from others to yourself. 3. Remember your own unworthiness, and the poverty of your unassisted endeavours. ( W. Clayton. ) Ploughing and sowing W. Simpson. This season of spring, with its ploughing, and sowing, and opening of life, typifies the time which God has given for forming in us enlightened principles and virtuous habits, holy motives and pure desires, and for becoming possessed of the grace and goodness which Jesus has to impart, in order that we may grow up into the Divine life of God, which shall abide with us through old age as the source of true enjoyment, and as the first beginnings of eternal glory. The ploughshare of the Divine Word must pierce into us, and break up our hardness and indifference, and make us impressible and movable, to fit us for bringing forth the fruits of righteousness. For example, the seedtime of life, like that of spring, regulates and determines the moral results which the future shall unfold, whether in time or in eternity. Our life on earth is the scene of moral causes and operations — the sowing time of our spirit — the period for the earnest cultivation of our moral nature; and it is to us all the more important, because it is far-reaching in its effects, stretching beyond the present earthly existence into eternity, bearing the flowers and blossoms of spiritual beauty and grace, a manifestation of Deity in humanity. And if these moral causes do not operate — if the seed time of life be wasted — if the cultivation of the moral nature be neglected, equally true the effects of such a life are eternal, stretching beyond the present earthly existence, and bearing into eternity the fruits of moral depravity and corruption. Now, this cultivation of our moral nature is no easy task. Even in matters connected with this life, if we neglect any duty from time to time, or if we delay entering upon any employment necessary to our material or social well-being, indolence increases, disinclination to perform the duty strengthens, dislike to the employment springs up, until habit entirely unfits us for action. In the same way, to ignore religious truth in its relation to our heart, and to neglect religious duties, is to deepen false impressions, strengthen ignorant prejudices, and confirm evil habits. This also is certain, that if good seed is not germinating in our hearts, thorns of evil are, do what we will. If, for instance, our mind is not exercised with religious truth, and no effort made on our part to understand intelligently the revelation which God has made of human salvation; or if the heart be unopened to the power of the Divine Spirit and the moral impressions of Divine truth; and if we continue to refuse accepting Christ as the Saviour of our soul; then our mental and moral nature will become as hard-baked fallow ground, almost impenetrable to the ploughshare of heaven. The indifference of the mind to religious truth keeps the heart spiritually cold, and the coldness of the heart induces in the mind a distaste for spiritual things. On the other hand, any powerful awakening in connection with religion or religious truth, whether it affect the mind alone, or the heart alone, or both together, is in the highest sense beneficial to our soul. Whatever acts on the mind so as to turn it in upon itself, whatever makes the soul depend upon God, and believe in an invisible spiritual world as a reality, though accompanied with strong excitement or inward conflict, is good, and leads to spiritual power. Besides, the precise form of treatment that does good to one spiritual nature, is not always successful with every other, even in like circumstances, any more than the same culture would be successful with different soils in the same climate. We cannot, therefore, project our own feelings and experience into the mind and soul of others, as if we were examples of the only way in which Divine grace and power plough all human souls for the seed of salvation. This breaking up of our moral nature is nothing else than the softening of our hearts under the influence of Divine truth — a humble, penitent spirit, a constant sense of the evil of sin, a willingness to be reconciled to God, whom our transgressions have offended, and an earnest desire after a holier life in God. It is only in such a heart as this that Divine truth will take root, and grow up and bring forth fruit. As the ground must be broken before the tiny fibrils of the root can descend into the earth, which they do, as by a sensitive instinct, in search of vegetable nourishment and life; so the spiritual nature must be humbled and made penitent — broken under a sense of sin, and under the operation of Divine law — in order that the seed of the Divine Word may hide itself deep down into the subsoil of the soul, until it establishes itself firmly there. While the tangled threads of the root are shooting themselves downwards, and gathering strength and nourishment from the soil, the blade in spiral form shoots itself upwards to the light, and the leaf opens, then comes the ear, and then the full corn in the ear, ripe for the sickle of harvest. In the same way Divine truth and heavenly principles, spiritual thought, emotion, and life descend and ascend, as by an unchangeable law. In every truly spiritual life there is this two-fold operation — a movement upwards and downwards, a working within and without, a meditative disposition expressing itself in active habits, believing prayer, conjoined with earnest effort in doing good. ( W. Simpson. ) The duty of moral cultivation Our nature at its largest is but a small farm, and we had need to get a harvest out of every acre of it, for our needs are great. Have we left any part of our small allotment uncultivated? If so, it is time to look into the matter and see if we cannot improve this wasteful state of things. What part of our small allotment have we left fallow? We should think very poorly of a farmer who for many years allowed the best and richest part of his farm to lie altogether neglected and untilled. An occasional fallow has its benefits in the world of nature; but, if the proprietor of rich and fruitful land allowed the soil to continue fallow, year after year, we should judge him to be out of his wits. The wasted acres ought to be taken from him and given to another husbandman who would worthily cherish the generous fields, and encourage them to yield their harvests. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) A fallow field Do you know what happens to a fallow field? how it becomes caked and baked hard as though it were a brick? All the friable qualities seem to depart, and it hardens as it lies caked and unbroken; I mean, of course, if year succeed year, and the fallow remains untouched. And then the weeds! If a man will not sow wheat, he shall have a crop for all that, for the weeds will spring up, and they will sow themselves, and in due time the multiplication table will be worked out to a very wonderful extent; for these seeds, multiplying a hundredfold, as evil usually does, will increase and increase again, till the fallow field shall become a wilderness of thorns and briars and a thicket of dock nettle and thistle. If you do not cultivate your heart, Satan will cultivate it for you. If you bring no crop to God, the devil will be sure to reap a harvest. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) A dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of My people, not to fan, nor to cleanse. Jeremiah 4:11-13 Untempered judgments T. G. Selby. The prophet intimates that God will one day send a judgment upon His people comparable only to the sirocco of the desert. The harvestman welcomes almost all the winds of the summer time but this. Their gentle currents lend themselves to the winnowing processes that are necessary to complete the toil of the year. But the sirocco comes with no element of help. fulness or beneficent service in its terrible wings. It is the agent of unmixed ruin, overthrow, death; the symbol of judgment without mercy. The successive invasions that were soon to close in upon the Holy Land were to be of this unmixed character. The flower of one generation was to perish in the overthrow. Whole districts were to be depopulated and re-peopled by alien races. The wind that came from the desert Came to crash and to scorch and to destroy. It was "not to fan, nor to cleanse." Some men claim that all judgment must be ultimately puttying. This inspired utterance however assures us that there is such a thing in the Divine economy as punishment that is purely punitive and not disciplinary. I. LET US INQUIRE IF THIS PENAL ELEMENT HAS A PLACE IN THE BEST HUMAN GOVERNMENTS. If we work out to its logical conclusion the theory that all punishment must be disciplinary only, we shall be bound to adopt methods of procedure in our law courts more grotesque than the most audacious caricature has ever imagined. We must have no short sentences if all penalty is to be educating. We have no right to discharge a man, however slight his transgression, till he has given sufficient assurance that his character has been entirely transformed. Judge and jury would no longer need to concern themselves with the particular category into which his crime came. The only question for them to ask would be, how far does the root of evil go down in this man's character? and what amount of force will be necessary to pull it up? Some men, who are incapable of amendment through pain, can perhaps be stirred to better desires, or at least taken away from their criminal tendencies, by wholesome excitements. Experts would have to step into the witness box. In some cases it might be found that a garrotter would be more sensibly improved by wholesome excitements than by flogging. Carlyle inveighed from time to time against this unhealthy sentimentalism which would sap the foundation of all human and Divine law alike. In the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce" reference is made to a party at which Monckton Milnes, Thomas Carlyle, and other distinguished men were present. The conversation turned upon the question of capital punishment. .Mr. Monckton Milnes was arguing against death-penalties, on the ground that we could not know how far the offender was responsible and consciously wrong. Carlyle broke out, "None of your heaven-and-hell amalgamation companies for me! We do know what is wickedness. I know wicked men I would not live with: men whom under some conceivable circumstances I would kill or they should kill me. No, Milnes; there is no truth or greatness in that. It's just poor, miserable littleness. There was far more greatness in the way of your German forefathers, who, when they found one of those wicked men, dragged him to a peat bog, and thrust him in, and said, "There! go in there. There is the place for all such as thee:" II. IF THIS PENAL ELEMENT IS ADMITTED INTO HUMAN GOVERNMENTS, UPON WHAT CONCEIVABLE PRINCIPLE CAN IT BE EXCLUDED FROM THE DIVINE? Many causes combine to weaken the sense we have of our own authority to punish wrong-doing. It is a strictly delegated authority. We always feel ourselves bound to greater restraint and circumspection in the exercise of delegated than original rights. We often feel ourselves incompetent judges of all that has transpired. We judge and punish in dim twilights. That tends to make us hesitating and indeterminate. And then the sense of our own authority to judge and to punish is weakened by the recollection we have of our own desert of punishment in many things. Unless the offence is very flagrant, we fear to incriminate ourselves by judging another. And yet, notwithstanding all these things, we are absolutely sure of our clear abstract right to punish even in cases where the punishment has no educating purpose to fulfil to the individual, whatever it may have to the community. How much stronger is God's right! His authority is original, and not delegated. He guarantees in every soul He judges the sufficiency of the past training and discipline. He dwells in the perfect light. His judgment can never be unnerved by the fear of error. III. Disciplinary are distinguished from penal judgments, not so much by any quality in the judgments themselves, as by THE TEMPER OF THOSE WHO BECOME THE SUBJECTS OF SUCH JUDGMENTS. The question whether purely penal elements can enter into God's government is one that must be looked at from the standpoint of the transgressor rather than that of the Judge. Are there incorrigible elements in human nature? As a matter of fact, judgments very often fail to sober and to purify here. There are men who can never be taught wisdom by the longest succession of business reverses. There are men who, humanly speaking, can never be taught common morality, however heavy the penalties they are made to pay for its breach. There are worldly men whom no number of sicknesses and providential bereavements can discipline into religiousness. Where there are unreformable elements in human character, disciplinary judgment necessarily passes into the purely punitive stage. It is often argued that the keener judgments of the life to come will produce penitence in those who have continued stubborn under the milder judgments of the present life. There is not only no proof of that, but nothing even to suggest that it is probable. We cannot predicate anything from the cumulative power of pain. The wind does not become purifying by mere increase of the force with which it blows. After reaching a certain pitch of violence it can neither "fan nor cleanse." IV. The judgment that has passed out of the disciplinary into the penal stage for the individual is still DISCIPLINARY IN ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE RACE AT LARGE. The wind that blows to crush and to scorch and to uproot in one zone of the earth, after it has passed into new latitudes, and been tempered by the seas over which it travels, may become a wind of winnowing beneficence. The penal visitation of one generation may become the saving chastisement of the generation that follows it. We must not get into the habit of supposing that God's purposes ever terminate in the individual. That mystery of unending punishment, which seems to frustrate the Divine purpose of mercy to the individual, may fulfil a purpose of gracious admonition to the race. The law of vicariousness pervades the moral universe just as widely as the law of gravitation overspreads the natural universe. There is a priesthood of vicarious judgment as well as of mercy. As great fires are kindled in times of plague to burn up the germs of infection floating in the air, so the atmosphere of God's universe may need to be kept pure by the flames of a quenchless Gehenna. ( T. G. Selby. ) Wash thine heart from wickedness. Jeremiah 4:14 Purity necessary to salvation Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons. I. THE NATURAL DEPRAVITY OF THE HUMAN HEART. 1. This doctrine requires definition. Depravity of the heart includes — (1) The entire absence of the Divine image. (2) A natural aversion to God and godliness. (3) A universal propensity or disposition to evil. 2. This doctrine demands evidence. (1) Divinely revealed. (2) Practically exemplified. (3) Deeply lamented. II. THE SPIRITUAL PURITY WHICH THE LORD REQUIRES. 1. The possibility of obtaining purity of heart. This appears from — (1) The design of redemption ( Hebrews 9:13, 14 ). (2) The ability of the Saviour ( John 1:16 ; 1 Corinthians 1:30 ). (3) The promises of Scripture ( Ezekiel 36:26, 27 ; 1 Peter 1:3, 4 ). (4) The experience of believers ( Romans 6:22 ; 1 John 1:7 ). 2. The important duty of seeking purity of heart. III. THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF PERSONAL HOLINESS. 1. A necessary property of religion. 2. A necessary meetness for heaven. ( Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons. ) The heart to be kept pure John Foster. "You have seen," said Spurgeon , "the great reservoirs provided by our water companies, in which the water to supply thousands of houses is kept. Now the heart is the reservoir of man, and our life is allowed to flow in its proper season. That life may flow through different pipes — the mouth, the hand, the eye; but still all the issues of hand, of eye, of lip derive their source from the great fountain and central reservoir, the heart; and hence there is great necessity for keeping this reservoir in a proper state and condition, since otherwise that which flows through the pipes must be tainted and corrupt." How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? — Vain thoughts : — I. CHARACTERISTICS. Those thoughts are vain — 1. From which we do not and cannot reap any good. 2. Which cannot associate in any agreement with useful and valuable ones. 3. Which have to be kept out in order for the mind to attend to any serious or good purpose. 4. Which dwell largely and habitually on trifling things. 5. Which trifle with important things. 6. Which are fickle, not remaining with any continuance on a subject. 7. When the mind has some specially favourite trifle, some cherished, idolised toy. 8. Which continually return to things justly claiming a measure of attention, when the thinking of them can be no advantage. 9. When the mind dwells on fancies of how things might be or might have been, when the reality of how they are is before us. 10. Which men indulge concerning notions and schemings of worldly felicity. II. CORRECTIVE. 1. Have specified subjects of serious interest to turn to when thought reverts to these vanities. 2. Make a sudden charge of guilt on your mind when vain thoughts prevail. 3. Have recourse to the direct act of devotion. 4. Interrupt and stop them by the question, What is just now my most pressing duty? 5. Have recourse to some practical occupation, matter of business, or a visit to some house of mourning. 6. Constrain your habitual thinking to go along with the thoughts of those who have thought the best, by reading the most valuable books. 7. Think to a certain purpose — towards a purposed end. 8. Reflect on how many things we have to do with which vain thoughts interfere; and also, what would have been the result of good thoughts instead of so many vain. 9. Discipline of the thoughts greatly depends on the company a man keeps ( Proverbs 13:20 ). 10. If the complaint be urged, that this discipline involves much that is hard and difficult, we answer, It is just as hard as to do justice to a rational and immortal spirit placed here a little while by God for its improvement, and then to go where appoints. Hard, but indispensable. ( John Foster. ) Bad lodgers, and how to treat them I. HERE ARE CERTAIN BAD LODGERS. 1. Many thoughts may be called vain because they are proud, conceited thoughts. Thus, whenever a man thinks himself good by nature, we may say of his thoughts, "Vanity of vanities: all is vanity." If you are unrenewed, and dream that you are better than others because your parents were godly, it is a vain thought. Every thought of self-righteousness is a vain thought; every idea, moreover, of self-power — that you can do this and do that towards your own salvation, and that at any time when it pleases you you can turn and become a Christian, and so there is no need to be in a hurry, or to seek the help of the Holy Spirit: — that also is a vain thought. 2. Another sort of vain thoughts may be ranged under the head of carnal security. The poet says, "All men think all men mortal but themselves," and often as the saying is quoted never was a proverb more generally true. 3. I know another set of thoughts: they are better looking, but they are equally vain, for they promise much and come to nothing: they are vain because they are fruitless. These vain thoughts are like the better order of people in Jerusalem — good people after a sort — that is to say, they really thought that as God threatened them with judgments, they would turn to Him. Certainly they would. They had no intention of being hard hearted. Far from it; they owned the power of the prophet's appeal; they felt a degree of awe in the presence of the just God as He threatened them, and of course they meant — they meant to wash their hearts, and they meant to put away all their forbidden practices; not just yet, but by and by. Some men brood so long over their future intentions that they all of them become addled eggs, and nothing whatever is hatched. O man, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it," do it, do it "with thy might." II. NOW, LET ME SHOW WHAT BAD LODGERS THEY ARE. 1. First, they are deceitful. The man that says, "When I have a more convenient season I will send for thee," does not send for Paul any more: he never intended to do so. A man says, "Tomorrow"; but tomorrow never comes. When that comes which would have been "tomorrow" it is "today"; and then he cries, "Tomorrow," and so multiplies lies before God. 2. Vain thoughts are bad lodgers, for they pay no rent; they bring in nothing good to those who entertain them. There is the ledger of self-righteousness, for instance: what good does self-righteousness ever do to the man who entertains it? It pretends to pay in brass farthings: it pretends to pay, but the money is counterfeit. What good does it do to any man to harbour in his mind the empty promise of future repentance? It often prevents repentance. 3. The next reason for the ejectment of these lodgers is this: that they are wasting your goods and destroying your property. For instance, every unacted resolution wastes time, and that is more precious than gold. It also wastes thought, for to think of a thing and to leave it undone is a waste of reflection. It is a waste of energy to be energetic about merely promising to be energetic; it is a great waste of strength to be forever resolving to be strong, and yet to remain weak. 4. Worst of all, these vain thoughts are bad lodgers because they bring you under condemnation. There have been times when to entertain certain persons was treason, and many individuals have been put to death for harbouring traitors. Rebels condemned to die have been discovered in a man's house, and he has been condemned for affording them a hiding place. Now, God declares that these vain thoughts of yours are condemned traitors. Are you going to harbour them any longer? III. LET US SEE WHAT TO DO WITH THESE BAD LODGERS. 1. The first thing is to give them notice to quit at once. Let there be no waiting. When a man is converted it is done at once. There is a line, thin as a razor's edge, which divides death from life, a point of decision which separates the saved from the lost. 2. Suppose that these vain thoughts will not go just when you bid them begone. I will tell you what to do to get rid of them: starve them out. Lock the door, and let nothing enter upon which they can feed. 3. The best way in all the world that I know of to get rid of vain thoughts out of your house — these bad lodgers that have gone in and that you cannot get out — is to sell the house over their heads. Let the house change owners. When you have dope that, you know, it will be the new owner that will have the trouble of turning them out; and He will do it. I recommend every sinner here that wants to find salvation to give himself up to Christ. Ah, now the stronger than they are has come, and He will bind the strong ones, and He will fling them out of window, and so break them to pieces with their fall that they shall never be able to crawl up the stairs again. He knows how to do it. He can expel them; you cannot. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) Vain thoughts Heart compared to house, to entertain and lodge guests; into which, before conversion, all the light wanton thoughts that post up and down in the world have open access; while they, like unruly gallants, revel day and night, and defile those rooms they lodge in. "How long?" whilst I, with My Spirit, and Son, and train of graces, stand and knock, and cannot find admittance? I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THOUGHTS? 1. The internal acts of the mind; reasonings, resolutions, consultations, desires, cares, etc.(1) The thinking, meditating, musing power in man, which enables him to conceive, apprehend, fancy.(2) Thoughts which the mind frames within itself ( Proverbs 6:14 ; James 1:15 ; Isaiah 59:4-7 ).(3) Thoughts which the mind in and by itself begets and entertains. 2. What vanity is.(1) Unprofitableness ( Ecclesiastes 1:2, 3 ).(2) Lightness ( Psalm 62:9 ).(3) Folly ( Proverbs 12:11 ).(4) Inconstancy ( Psalm 144:4 ; Psalm 146:4 ).(5) Wicked and sinful ( 2 Chronicles 13:7 ; Proverbs 24:9 ). II. THE PARTICULARS WHEREIN THIS VANITY OF THE THINKING, MEDITATING POWER OF MAN CONSISTS. 1. In regard to thinking what is good.(1) A want of ability to raise and extract holy and useful considerations and thoughts from the occurrences and occasions which surround us.(2) A loathness to entertain holy thoughts.(3) The mind will not be long intent on good thoughts.(4) If the mind think of good things, it does so unseasonably; intrudes on prayer and interrupts it ( Proverbs 16:3 ). 2. The readiness of the mind to think on evil and vain things.(1) This vanity shows itself in foolishness ( Mark 7:22 ), which proves itself in the unsettledness and independence of our thoughts.(2) If any strong lust or passion be up, our thoughts are too fixed and intent.(3) A restless curiosity concerning things not affecting us.(4) Taking thought to fulfil the lusts of our flesh.(5) Acting sins over again in our imagination. III. REMEDIES AGAINST VAIN THOUGHTS. 1. Get the heart furnished and enriched with a good stock of sanctified and heavenly knowledge in spiritual truths. 2. Endeavour to preserve and keep up lively, holy, and spiritual affections in the heart. 3. Get the heart possessed with deep and powerful apprehensions of God's holiness, majesty, omniscience, and omnipresence. 4. In the morning when thou awakest, as did David ( Psalm 119:18 ), prevent the vain thoughts the heart naturally engenders by filling it with thoughts of God. 5. Have a watchful eye upon thy heart all day; though vain thoughts crowd in, let them know that they pass not unseen. 6. Please not thy fancy too much with vanities and curious flights ( Job 31:1 ; Proverbs 4:25 ). 7. Be diligent in thy calling ( 2 Thessalonians 3:11 ; 1 Timothy 5:13 ); only, encumber not the mind too much ( Luke 10:41 ). 8. In thy calling and all thy ways commit thy goings to the Lord ( Proverbs 16:3 ). ( T. Goodwin , B. D. ) Vain thoughts J. Jowett, M. A. I. WHAT ARE VAIN THOUGHTS? 1. Unprofitable imaginations. 2. Unscriptural opinions. 3. Unholy desires. 4. Unseasonable ideas. II. THE SOLEMN INQUIRY. "How long?" 1. Shall it be till some temporal judgment be sent to awaken you out of your carnal sec

Benson Commentary Jeremiah 4:1 If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. Jeremiah 4:1 . If thou wilt return, O Israel, return unto me — Israel having promised repentance in the latter part of the preceding chapter, they are here directed what sort of a repentance it must be; that it must not be hypocritical and feigned, but real and hearty; not deferred to another time, but immediate, without any delay; the words being not improperly interpreted, as they are by many, If thou wilt return, return now. Repentance, if it be delayed from time to time, is seldom ever put in execution; and therefore there cannot be a more useful admonition than to put our good resolutions immediately in practice. Blaney, who considers the clause as being principally intended to assure them “that upon their conversion they should be accepted and received again into the bosom of God’s church, from which they had before apostatized,” translates it very literally, thus, “If thou wilt turn again, O Israel, saith Jehovah, unto me shalt thou return.” And if thou wilt put away thine abominations — Thine evil practices, and especially thine idolatries, as the word ?????? commonly signifies: out of my sight — Hebrew, ???? , from before me: though God’s eye be everywhere, and therefore, as is implied, idols are nowhere to be admitted, either in public or private, yet the expression particularly relates to the place of his more immediate presence, as their land and the place of his solemn worship. Then shalt thou not remove — Thou shalt be restored to thine ancient inheritance, and shalt be established in the peaceable possession of it. As if he had said, If thou wilt remove thy idols, thou shalt not be removed. The Hebrew, ??? ???? , may be properly rendered, Then thou shalt not wander, that is, be an unsettled, fugitive, and vagabond people. “In the former part,” says Houbigant, “the conversion of their morals is spoken of; in the latter, the stability of their republic.” Jeremiah 4:2 And thou shalt swear, The LORD liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory. Jeremiah 4:2 . And thou shalt swear, &c. — In taking a solemn oath, thou shalt appeal, not to dead and vain idols, but to Jehovah, the living and true God. This is put here for the whole worship of God, acknowledging and owning God as the only God, which is strongly expressed by this act: see Isaiah 48:1 ; Isaiah 65:16 . In truth — In sincerity, knowing that the matter of the oath is strictly true; in judgment — Deliberately, advisedly, and reverently, the occasion being great and important; in righteousness — That none be injured by it, that the things we engage to do, or to see done, be both lawful and possible, and that we look to the performance of our oaths. And the nations shall bless themselves in him — This shall be a means of inducing the heathen nations to turn to the true God, and embrace the same way of worship. They shall think themselves happy to be incorporated with thee, that it may be with them according to the promise, Genesis 12:3 . And in him, shall they glory — Whereas before they gloried in their idols, they shall now glory in Jehovah alone. This is evidently “a prediction of gospel times, when the heathen should join with the Israelites in paying all solemn acts of worship and devotion to the true God only, and in ascribing all honour and glory to him, and to his only Son, the Messiah, in whom all the nations were to be blessed.” Jeremiah 4:3 For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Jeremiah 4:3-4 . For thus saith the Lord — The prophet now addresses himself to the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem, and exhorts them to repentance and reformation in metaphorical language. Break up your fallow ground, &c. — That is, purge and purify the field of your hearts, by godly sorrow for your sins, and hatred to them; prepare your hearts for receiving the seed of the divine word, by making them soft, tender, and pliable, fit to believe and obey it. And sow not among thorns — Eradicate the lusts and vices, the corrupt principles and dispositions, habits, and practices, which, unless rooted out, will effectually choke the good seed of truth and grace, and prevent the growth of piety and virtue in your souls. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord — Put away your corruptions; mortify your vicious inclinations and passions: the same thing with the former, expressed in other words. Take away the foreskin of your heart — Let your repentance and renovation be inward in your soul and spirit, and not merely outward in your flesh; lest my fury come forth like fire — Which it is now ready to do, as that fire which came forth from the Lord, and consumed the sacrifices; and burn that none can quench it — Which wrath is not only fierce and consuming like fire, but unquenchable; because of the evil of your doings — Which is the thing that kindles the fire of God’s wrath against us. Observe, reader, that which is to be dreaded by us more than any thing else, in time or eternity, is the wrath of God kindled against us by the evil of our doings, for it is the spring and bitterness of all present miseries, and will be the quintessence and perfection of everlasting misery. And the consideration of the imminent danger we are in of falling and perishing under this wrath, should awaken us with all possible care to sanctify ourselves to God’s glory, and to see to it that we be sanctified by his grace. Jeremiah 4:4 Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it , because of the evil of your doings. Jeremiah 4:5 Declare ye in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow ye the trumpet in the land: cry, gather together, and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities. Jeremiah 4:5-6 . Blow ye the trumpet — The Lord, being now about to bring enemies upon them, speaks in martial language, warning them of the nature of their approaching judgment. It is the beginning of a new discourse, in which the prophet describes the dreadful preparations of war, such as blowing a trumpet, and setting up a standard, for the assembling men together, in order to their leaving the open country, and retiring with their families and goods into the defenced cities, both for their own safety, and that they might maintain those garrisons against the power of the enemy. Retire, stay not — Make haste away. I will bring evil from the north — I am about to bring a great destruction upon you from Chaldea. Jeremiah 4:6 Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction. Jeremiah 4:7 The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant. Jeremiah 4:7-8 . The lion is come up from his thicket — Nebuchadnezzar, so called from his fierceness and strength, shall come up from Babylon, where his chief seat is, as lions are principally among the thickets of the forests, in coverts. Babylon being remote and little known to the Jews, they did not expect trouble to arise from thence. The destroyer of the Gentiles — Or, rather, the nations; is on his way — Is already on his march: another description of the same person, who is so called, because God had given, not only Judea, but all the neighbouring countries, into his hands. To make thy lands desolate — With a resolution to do so, and with power to effect his purpose. For this gird you with sackcloth — Put on the habit of mourners. It is intended to express the dreadfulness of the approaching calamity. Lament and howl — You will do so when the cry is made through the kingdom, Arm, arm. Then all will be seized with terror, and put to confusion. For the fierce anger of the Lord — Which makes the army of the Chaldeans thus fierce and powerful; is not turned back from us — Is not appeased, but still burns against us. The LXX., with whom the Syriac and Vulgate agree, read ?? ’ ???? , from you. Jeremiah 4:8 For this gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl: for the fierce anger of the LORD is not turned back from us. Jeremiah 4:9 And it shall come to pass at that day, saith the LORD, that the heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the princes; and the priests shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder. Jeremiah 4:9 . At that day the heart of the king shall perish — Both his wisdom and his courage: despairing of success, he shall have no spirit to do any thing, and if he had, he would be at a loss what to do; and the heart of the princes — His privy counsellors, who ought to animate and advise him, shall be as much at a loss, and as much in despair as he. And the priests shall be astonished — Shall be in such a consternation that they shall have no heart to execute their office, and therefore not likely to put spirit into the people. The prophets shall wonder — The false prophets, that had nothing but visions of peace for them, shall be thrown into the greatest amazement imaginable, seeing their own guilty blood ready to be shed by that sword, of which they had frequently told the people there was no danger. Jeremiah 4:10 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul. Jeremiah 4:10 . Then said I, Ah, Lord God! — The Hebrew word, Aha, is a word expressive both of admiration and lamentation. Surely thou hast greatly deceived this people — Hast suffered them to be deceived by their false prophets. These pretenders to prophecy studied only to speak pleasing things to the people, and sooth them up in their impenitency and carnal security; and thou hast, in thy just judgment, given them up to follow these delusions: compare 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 . Saying, Ye shall have peace — The word peace here comprises all good, signifying that all things should go on prosperously with them; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul — Whereas the sword is at the door, not only to take away the comforts of life, but even life itself. Jeremiah 4:11 At that time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem, A dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, not to fan, nor to cleanse, Jeremiah 4:11 . At that time — When that calamity commences; shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem — There shall be tidings brought both to the country and city; A dry wind of the high places — “The prophet here describes the Chaldean army coming up for the destruction of Judea, under the metaphor of a hot, pestilential wind, which sweeps away multitudes in a moment, blasts the fruits of the earth, and spreads desolation everywhere around. The passage, like that in the preceding verses, is spirited and sublime; but it loses a good deal of its elegance in our version. Houbigant renders it thus: ‘Behold, a wind hangs over the mountains of the deserts; behold, it shall come upon the daughter of my people, but not to fan or to cleanse, Jeremiah 4:12 . A mighty wind shall come from thence upon her, and then at length will I declare my judgment concerning them, or her, Jeremiah 4:13 . Behold, as clouds it shall hang over; its chariots shall be as a whirlwind; its horses swifter than eagles,’“ &c. See Lowth and Dodd. Jeremiah 4:12 Even a full wind from those places shall come unto me: now also will I give sentence against them. Jeremiah 4:13 Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled. Jeremiah 4:14 O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? Jeremiah 4:14-15 . O Jerusalem, wash thy heart — O ye inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, cleanse your inward parts; not your hands only, as hypocrites do, but your hearts, James 4:8 ; from wickedness — Namely, from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, 2 Corinthians 7:1 . See note on Isaiah 1:16 . That thou mayest be saved — As the means to prevent the judgments that are impending. How long shall vain thoughts lodge within thee? — Hopes of safety by the help of foreign forces, or any other such means, while thou continuest in the practice of thine idolatries and other sins. The reformation of a corrupt state is absolutely necessary in order to its salvation. There is no other way of preventing the divine judgments, or turning them away when we are threatened with them, but putting away the sins by which we have procured them to ourselves. And no reformation is saving, but that which reaches the heart and makes it new. And it is made new by the washing of regeneration, and the renovating power of the Holy Ghost; or, by the exercise of repentance toward God, and that faith in him and his word which is productive of new obedience. For a voice declareth from Dan — For, lo! a sound of devastation comes from Dan; lo! a tumult is heard from the mountains of Ephraim. — Houbigant. As if he had said, It is high time to repent, because reports succeed reports of the enemy’s swift approach toward you. Dan, being the most northern part of Judea, was first invaded by the Chaldean army, which did not march directly through Mesopotamia and Arabia Deserta into Judea, because of the vast sandy deserts which lay in the way, but took a compass, and passed over the Euphrates at Thapsacus, which lay far northward of Judea, and thence marched through Syria: so that, of course, the rumour of the enemy’s approach was first heard from Dan. And the evil tidings still increased as the army marched forward toward Jerusalem, by the way of mount Ephraim. Jeremiah 4:15 For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim. Jeremiah 4:16 Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah. Jeremiah 4:16-17 . Make ye mention to the nations — Tell the nations that now inhabit the cities of the ten tribes, that the Chaldean army is approaching, that they may provide for their own safety. Behold, publish against Jerusalem — Let her be made acquainted with what is coming upon her. Let her have notice beforehand, that she may be warned. That watchers come from a far country — That is soldiers from Chaldea, that will watch all opportunities to do mischief. By watchers, some think, are meant those scouts who usually precede an army, and announce its approach, whom Cesar, in his Commentaries, calls antecessores, or antecursores. But Blaney and others are of opinion that besiegers are intended, placing sentinels round the city to prevent any from coming in or going out, and keeping the place in continual alarm by shouts of war. As keepers of the field, &c. — Those couriers or spies of the Chaldean army will be as diligent in their observation of Judah and Jerusalem, or those besiegers will as strictly watch her on all sides, as the keepers of a field watch the cattle, or the vineyards and fruits thereof, under their care. “As in the East,” says Sir John Chardin, in a MS. note on this place, quoted by Harmer, “pulse, roots, &c., grow in open and unenclosed fields, when they begin to be fit to be gathered, they place guards; if near a great road, more; if distant, fewer, who place themselves in and round about these grounds, as is practised in Arabia,” chap. 5. obser. 15. Jeremiah 4:17 As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the LORD. Jeremiah 4:18 Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart. Jeremiah 4:18 . Thy way and thy doings — Thy manner of life, and particularly thy idolatries; have procured these things unto thee — Have been the causes of this thy grievous affliction, of bringing such a bitter enemy against thee, which hath reached unto thy very heart. “Whatsoever happens to you,” says Jerome on the place, “happens by your own fault, who have turned the sweet goodness of God into bitterness, and have compelled him, however unwilling, to rage against you.” Jeremiah 4:19 My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Jeremiah 4:19-20 . My bowels, &c. — Or, as Dr. Waterland renders it, My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at the centre, or in the midst, of my heart; my heart is tumultuous within me! It is an exclamation of the prophet, moved beyond measure at the calamities coming on his country, in being made the seat of war, and utterly ruined by a hostile invasion: which was so strongly represented to him in his vision, that he, as it were, saw the army of Nebuchadnezzar before his eyes, and the destruction and desolation made by it, heard the noise of the trumpets, the shouts of the soldiers, the outcries and lamentations of his countrymen, and the groans of the wounded and dying. And “the calamities described are presented to the mind in such lively colours, the images are so crowded, and arranged with so much art, and the breaks and apostrophes are so animated, that we seem to be involved in the same scene of misery with the prophet.” — Bishop Lowth’s 9th and 17th Prelec. I cannot hold my peace — I am so troubled I cannot forbear my complaints. Because thou hast heard, O my soul, &c. — I have heard in the spirit of prophecy; the calamity will as certainly come as if I now heard the trumpet sounding. Destruction upon destruction — Dr. Waterland reads, Breach upon breach, or, destruction dashes upon destruction; one sad calamity, like Job’s messengers, treading upon the heels of another. First, good Josiah is slain in battle; within three months after, his son and successor, Jehoahaz, is deposed by the king of Egypt; within two or three years after, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and took it, and from thence forward was continually making descents on the land of Judah with his armies, during the reigns of Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, till, about nineteen years after, he completed their ruin by the destruction of Jerusalem. For the whole land is spoiled — This is more particularly described Jeremiah 4:23-26 . Suddenly are my tents spoiled — The enemy makes no more of overthrowing my stately cities than if he were overturning tents made of curtains. Jeremiah 4:20 Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. Jeremiah 4:21 How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? Jeremiah 4:21-22 . How long shall I see the standard, &c. — This dreadful war continued a great while, not in the borders, but in the bowels of the country; for the people were very obstinate, and would not submit to, but took all opportunities of rebelling against, the king of Babylon, which did but lengthen out and aggravate the calamity, as Jeremiah did not fail to warn them it would do. Had they taken his advice, and yielded sooner, their country would have escaped the utter destruction which came upon it. But God, as a punishment for their sins, suffered them to be infatuated. For my people is foolish — Some commentators have considered these words, as well as those preceding, as being spoken by God, in answer to the prophet’s complaints of his grievous vision, to show that such sad images were presented to him, because, on account of the people’s obstinacy and wickedness, it was necessary that they should feel the effects of his just anger, even until Jerusalem should be levelled with the ground. But the passage seems to suit the prophet much better, speaking here as one commissioned by the divine authority to preach to this people. They have not known me — Namely, they have not known the Lord, in whose name the prophet speaks. Those are foolish indeed, who, calling themselves God’s people, and having the advantage of becoming acquainted with him, yet have not known him. They are sottish children — Stupid and senseless; and have no understanding — They cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood, good and evil; cannot discern the mind of God, either in his word or in his providence; they do not understand what their true interest is, nor on which side it lies. They are wise to do evil — To plot mischief against the quiet of the land; wise to contrive the gratification of their lusts, and then to conceal or palliate their conduct; but to do good they have no knowledge — No contrivance, no application of mind; they know not how to make a good use either of the ordinances or providences of God, nor how to bring about any design for the good of their country. They are perfect strangers to the obligations of religion and virtue, and never show any quickness of thought but when they are contriving to bring about some mischief. Jeremiah 4:22 For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. Jeremiah 4:23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. Jeremiah 4:23-26 . I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void — “The images under which the prophet here represents the approaching desolation, as foreseen by him, are such as are familiar to the Hebrew poets on the like occasions.” See note on Isaiah 13:10 , and Bishop Lowth, De Sac. Poesi Hebrews, Præl. 9. “But the assemblage is finely made, so as to delineate altogether a most striking and interesting picture of a ruined country, and to justify what has been before observed of the author’s happy talent for pathetic description. The earth is brought back, as it were, to its primitive state of chaos and confusion; the cheerful light of the heavens is withdrawn, and succeeded by a dismal gloom; the mountains tremble, and the hills shake under dreadful apprehensions of the Almighty’s displeasure; a frightful solitude reigns all around; not a vestige to be seen of any of the human race; even the birds themselves have deserted the fields, unable to find any longer in them their usual food. The face of the country, in the once most fertile parts of it, now overgrown with briers and thorns, assumes the dreary wilderness of the desert. The cities and villages are either thrown down and demolished by the hand of the enemy, or crumble into ruins of their own accord, for want of being inhabited.” — Blaney. Jeremiah 4:24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. Jeremiah 4:25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. Jeremiah 4:26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. Jeremiah 4:27 For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. Jeremiah 4:27 . Yet will I not make a full end — That is, say some commentators, neither shall the punishment suffice, nor my anger stop here: but it rather seems to be a word of comfort, signifying that they should not be utterly destroyed, but that, in the midst of judgment, God would remember mercy, and preserve a remnant; accordingly, in fact, after seventy years’ captivity, he brought a remnant back again into their own land. Jeremiah 4:28 For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it , I have purposed it , and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it. Jeremiah 4:28-29 . For this shall the earth mourn, &c. — More expressions to set forth the dreadfulness of the judgment: he makes the elements to personate mourners. And the heavens above be black — Under sad calamities every thing looks dismal; even the heavens themselves do not seem to shine with their usual brightness. Because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, &c. — Blaney, following the LXX., changes a little the order of the words, and reads, “I have spoken, and do not repent: I have purposed, and will not recede from it.” God’s purpose of delivering up the Jews into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar was irreversible, because he foresaw that the greatest part of them would continue impenitent, and that it would be expedient and necessary, in order to their being humbled and brought to repentance, that they should be carried into captivity. Otherwise the removal of judgments, either those inflicted or threatened to be inflicted, is promised upon repentance, to which God frequently exhorted these Jews by his prophets. The whole city shall flee — The inhabitants of all ranks and qualities shall seek to escape the fury of the Chaldean army, chap. Jeremiah 39:4 . They shall go into thickets — Either upon the report of the coming of their enemies, the prophet hereby, as it were, deriding their confidence, or rather at the approach of their vast armies: for they were closely besieged before they fled, as appears 2 Kings 25:4 . Such a consternation there shall be upon them, that they shall run into every hole to hide themselves; thus Manasseh was taken among the thorns, 2 Chronicles 33:11 . The Hebrew is, ??? ????? , they shall go into the clouds; meaning, probably, dark places on the tops of hills, reaching, as it were, to the clouds, or among the cloudy shades of trees and groves that usually grew there. The LXX. render it, ????????? ??? ?? ??????? , they entered into the caves; adding, ??? ??? ?? ???? ????????? , they were hid in the groves. And climbed up upon the rocks — Namely, to save their lives. Every city shall be forsaken — There shall be an utter desolation, their cities being quite deserted, and none left to inhabit them. Jeremiah 4:29 The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein. Jeremiah 4:30 And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life. Jeremiah 4:30 . And when thou art spoiled — When this destruction shall come upon thee, which is very near; what wilt thou do? — When thou, O daughter of Zion, art besieged by the Babylonians, what course wilt thou take? As if he had said, Thy condition will be desperate. Though thou clothest thyself, &c. — The prophet proceeds in a kind of insulting speech, in which he, as it were, upbraids them with their pride and false confidence. With crimson, or scarlet. Though thou deckest thyself with ornaments, &c. — Though thou superinduce those ornaments, or jewels of gold, that may render thy attire the most rich and splendid. Though thou rendest thy face with painting — The Hebrew is, Though thou rendest thine eyes, &c. “This alludes to the custom of the eastern ladies, who, esteeming large eyes beautiful, make use of stibium, a sort of black paint, which is laid upon the eyelids with a pencil, and being of all astringent quality, partly contracts the eyelids, and partly, by the contrast of colour, tends to enlarge the appearance of the white part of the eyes.” — Blaney. See Bishop Lowth’s note on Isaiah 3:16 . Dr. Durrell has remarked, that the Ethiopians, to this day, paint their eyebrows with antimony mixed with moist soot. See Ludolphi, Hist. Ethiop., lib. 7. cap. 7. In vain shalt thou make thyself fair — The prophet carries on the idea wherewith he began, representing Jerusalem under the figure of a harlot, dressing herself up to captivate lovers; seeking, by the finery of her dress and other allurements, to engage their affections, but in vain: so, he signifies, it should be with them; all the arts they had made use of to engage the Egyptians, or other foreigners, to assist them against the Chaldeans, should stand them in no stead; nay, those very allies of theirs would join with their enemies. Jeremiah 4:31 For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying , Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers. Jeremiah 4:31 . For I have heard a voice of a woman in travail — Here Jerusalem is very pathetically described by the character of a woman under the pangs of her first child-bearing, when her pains as well as her fears are usually greatest. Such, saith the prophet, shall be the anguish of Jerusalem, bewailing the loss of her children by the devouring sword of the Chaldeans, and in vain imploring comfort and assistance. That spreadeth her hands, &c. — Spreading out the hands is the gesture of one displaying the helplessness of her condition, and imploring the aid of others. “Ingemit, et duplices tendens ad sidera palmas, Talia voce refert — — — .” VIRGIL ÆN., I. 50:97. “Struck with unusual fright, the Trojan chief, With outspread hands and eyes, invokes relief.” DRYDEN. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Jeremiah 4:1 If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. 5 CHAPTER III ISRAEL AND JUDAH: A CONTRAST Jeremiah 3:6-25 ; Jeremiah 4:1-2 THE first address of our prophet was throughout of a sombre cast, and the darkness of its close was not relieved by a single ray of hope. It was essentially a comminatory discourse, the purpose of it being to rouse a sinful nation to the sense of its peril, by a faithful picture of its actual condition, which was so different from what it was popularly supposed to be. The veil is torn aside; the real relations between Israel and his God are exposed to view; and it is seen that the inevitable goal of persistence in the course which has brought partial disasters in the past, is certain destruction in the imminent future. It is implied, but not said, that the only thing that can save the nation is a complete reversal of policies hitherto pursued, in Church and State and private life; and it is apparently taken for granted that the thing implied is no longer possible. The last word of the discourse was: "Thou hast purposed and performed the evils, and thou hast conquered." { Jeremiah 3:5 } The address before us forms a striking contrast to this dark picture. It opens a door of hope for the penitent. The heart of the prophet cannot rest in the thought of the utter rejection of his people; the harsh and dreary announcement that his people’s woes are self-caused cannot be his last word. "His anger was only love provoked to distraction; here it has come to itself again," and holds out an offer of grace first to that part of the whole nation which needs it most, the fallen kingdom of Ephraim, and then to the entire people. The all Israel of the former discourse is here divided into its two sections, which are contrasted with each other, and then again considered as a united nation. This feature distinguishes the piece from that which begins Jeremiah 4:3 , and which is addressed to Judah and Jerusalem rather than to Israel and Judah, like the one before us. An outline of the discourse may be given thus. It is shown that Judah has not taken warning by Iahvah’s rejection of the sister kingdom ( Jeremiah 3:6-10 ); and that Ephraim may be pronounced less guilty than Judah, seeing that she had witnessed no such signal example of the Divine vengeance on hardened apostasy. She is, therefore, invited to repent and return to her alienated God, which will involve a return from exile to her own land; and the promise is given of the reunion of the two peoples in a restored theocracy, having its centre in Mount Zion ( Jeremiah 3:11-19 ). All Israel has rebelled against God; but the prophet hears the cry of universal penitence and supplication ascending to heaven; and Iahvah’s gracious answer of acceptance. { Jeremiah 3:20-25 ; Jeremiah 4:1-2 } The opening section depicts the sin which had brought ruin on Israel, and Judah’s readiness in following her example, and refusal to take warning by her fate. This twofold sin is aggravated by an insincere repentance. "And Iahvah said unto me, in the days of Josiah the king, Sawest thou what the Turncoat or Recreant Israel did? she would go up every high hill, and under every evergreen tree, and play the harlot there. And me thought that after doing all this she would return to Me; but she returned not; and the Traitress, her sister Judah saw it." And I saw that when for the very reason that she, the Turncoat Israel, had committed adultery, I had put her away, and given her her bill of divorce, the Traitress Judah, her sister, was not afraid, but she too went off and played the harlot. And so, through the cry {cf. Genesis 4:10 ; Genesis 18:20 sq.} of her harlotry (or defect through her manifold or abounding harlotry) she polluted the land ( Jeremiah 3:2 ), in that she committed adultery with the Stone and with the Stock. And yet though she was involved in all this guilt (lit. and even in all this.) Perhaps the sin and the penalties of it are identified; and the meaning is: "And yet for all this liability," cf. { Isaiah 5:25 } the Traitress Judah returned not unto Me with all her heart (with a whole or undivided heart, with entire sincerity) but in falsehood, saith Iahvah. "The example of the northern kingdom is represented as a powerful influence for evil upon Judah. This was only natural; for although from the point of view of religious development Judah is incomparably the more important of the sister kingdoms; the exact contrary is the case as regards political power and predominance. Under strong kings like Omri and Ahab, or again, Jeroboam II, Ephraim was able to assert itself as a first-rate power among the surrounding principalities; and in the case of Athaliah, we have a conspicuous instance of the manner in which Canaanite idolatry might be propagated from Israel to Judah. The prophet declares that the sin of Judah was aggravated by the fact that she had witnessed the ruin of Israel, and yet persisted in the same evil courses of which that ruin was the result. She sinned against light. The fall of Ephraim had verified the predictions of her prophets; yet she was not afraid," but went on adding to the score of her own offences, and polluting the land with her unfaithfulness to her Divine Spouse. The idea that the very soil of her country was defiled by Judah’s idolatry may be illustrated by reference to the well known words of Psalm 106:38 : "They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and their daughters whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan; and the land was defiled with the bloodshed." We may also remember Elohim’s words to Cain: "The voice of thy brother’s blood is crying unto Me from the ground!" { Genesis 4:10 } As Iahvah’s special dwelling place, moreover, the land of Israel was holy; and foreign rites desecrated and profaned it. and made it offensive in His sight. The pollution of it cried to heaven for vengeance on those who had caused it. To such a state had Judah brought her own land, and the very city of the sanctuary; and yet in all this amid this accumulation of sins and liabilities she turned not to her Lord with her whole heart. The reforms set on foot in the twelfth year of Josiah were but superficial and halfhearted; the people merely acquiesced in them, at the dictation of the court, and gave no sign of any inward change or deep-wrought repentance. The semblance without the reality of sorrow for sin is but a mockery of heaven, and a heinous aggravation of guilt. Hence the sin of Judah was of a deeper dye than that which had destroyed Israel. And Iahvah said unto me, The Turncoat or Recreant Israel hath proven herself more righteous than the Traitress Judah. Who could doubt it, considering that almost all the prophets had borne their witness in Judah; and that, in imitating her sister’s idolatry, she had resolutely closed her eyes to the light of truth and reason? On this ground, that Israel has sinned less and suffered more, the prophet is bidden to hold out to her the hope of Divine mercy. The greatness of her ruin, as well as the lapse of years since the fatal catastrophe, might tend to diminish in the prophet’s mind the impression of her guilt; and his patriotic yearning for the restoration of the banished Ten Tribes, who, after all, were the near kindred of Judah, as well as the thought that they had borne their punishment, and thus atoned for their sin, { Isaiah 11:2 } might cooperate with the desire of kindling in his own countrymen a noble rivalry of repentance, in moving the prophet to obey the impulse which urged him to address himself to Israel. Go thou, and cry these words northward (toward the desolate land of Ephraim), and say: Return, Turncoat or Recreant Israel, saith Iahvah; I will not let My countenance fall at the sight of you; {lit. against you, cf. Genesis 4:5 } for I am loving, saith Iahvah, I keep not anger forever. Only recognise thy guilt, that thou hast rebelled against Iahvah thy God, and hast scattered {or lavished: Psalm 112:9 } thy ways to the strangers hast gone now in this direction, now in that, worshipping first one idol and then another; cf. Jeremiah 2:23 ; and so, as it were, dividing up and dispersing thy devotion under every evergreen tree; "but My voice ye have not obeyed, saith Iahvah." The invitation, "Return Apostate Israel!"-contains a play of words which seems to suggest that the exile of the Ten Tribes was voluntary, or self-imposed; as if, when they turned their backs upon their true God, they had deliberately made choice of the inevitable consequence of that rebellion, and made up their minds to abandon their native land. So close is the connection, in the prophet’s view, between the misfortunes of his people and their sins. "Return, ye apostate children" (again there is a play on words-"Turn back, ye back-turning sons," or "ye sons that turn the back to Me) saith Iahvah; for it was I that wedded you" ( Jeremiah 3:14 ), and am, therefore, your proper lord. The expression is not stranger than that which the great prophet of the Return addresses to Zion: "Thy sons shall marry thee." But perhaps we should rather compare another passage of the Book of Isaiah, where it is said: "Iahvah, our God! other lords beside Thee have had dominion over us," { Isaiah 26:13 } and render: "For it is I that will be your lord"; or perhaps, "For it is I that have mastered you," and put down your rebellion by chastisements; "and I will take you, one of a city and two of a clan, and will bring you to Zion." As a "city" is elsewhere spoken of as a "thousand," { Micah 5:1 } and a "thousand" is synonymous with a "clan," as providing a thousand warriors in the national militia, it is clear that the promise is that one or two representatives of each township in Israel shall be restored from exile to the land of their fathers. In other words, we have here Isaiah’s doctrine of the remnant, which he calls a "tenth," { Isaiah 6:13 } and of which he declared that "the survivors of the house of Judah that remain, shall again take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards." { Isaiah 37:31 } And as Zion is the goal of the returning exiles, we may see, as doubtless the prophets saw, a kind of anticipation and foreshadowing of the future in the few scattered members of the northern tribes of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun, who "humbled themselves," and accepted Hezekiah’s invitation to the passover; { 2 Chronicles 30:11 ; 2 Chronicles 30:18 } and, again, in the authority which Josiah is said to have exercised in the land of the Ten Tribes ( 2 Chronicles 34:6 ; 2 Chronicles 34:9 ). We must bear in mind that the prophets do not contemplate the restoration of every individual of the entire nation; but rather the return of a chosen few, a kind of "firstfruits" of Israel, who are to be a "holy seed," { Isaiah 6:13 } from which the power of the Supreme will again build up the entire people according to its ancient divisions. So the holy Apostle in the Revelation hears that twelve thousand of each tribe are sealed as servants of God. { Revelation 7:1-17 } The happy time of restoration will also be a time of reunion. The estranged tribes will return to their old allegiance. This is implied by the promise, "I will bring you to Zion," and by that of the next verse: "And I will give you shepherds after My own heart; and they shall shepherd you with knowledge and wisdom." Obviously, kings of the house of David are meant; the good shepherds of the future are contrasted with the "rebellious" ones of the Jeremiah 2:8 . It is the promise of Isaiah: { Isaiah 1:26 } "And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning." In this connection, we may recall the fact that the original schism in Israel was brought about by the folly of evil shepherds. The coming King will resemble not Rehoboam but David. Nor is this all; for "It shall come to pass, when ye multiply and become fruitful in the land, in those days, saith Iahvah, men shall not say any more, The ark of the covenant of Iahvah," or, as LXX, "of the Holy One of Israel; nor shall it" (the ark) "come to mind; nor shall men remember it, nor miss it; nor shall it be made any more" (although the verb may be impersonal.) I do not understand why Hitzig asserts " Man wird keine andere machen " (Movers) oder; " sic wird nicht wieder gemacht " (Ew., Graf) " als ware nicht von der geschichtlichen Lade die Rede, sondern von ihr begrifflich, konnen die Worte nicht bedeuten. " But cf. Exodus 25:10 ; Genesis 6:14 ; where the same verb is used. Perhaps, however, the rendering of C.B. Michaelis, which he prefers, is more in accordance with what precedes: "nor shall all that be done any more," Genesis 29:26 ; Genesis 41:34 . But it does not mean " nachforschen ." {cf. 1 Samuel 20:6 ; 1 Samuel 25:15 } "In that time men will call Jerusalem the throne of Iahvah; and all the nations will gather into it," { Genesis 1:9 } "for the name of Iahvah" (at Jerusalem: LXX om.); "and they" (the heathen) "will no longer follow the stubbornness of their evil heart." { Jeremiah 7:24 ; Deuteronomy 29:19 } In the new Theocracy, the true kingdom of God, the ancient symbol of the Divine presence will be forgotten in the realisation of that presence. The institution of the New Covenant will be characterised by an immediate and personal knowledge of Iahvah in the hearts of all His people. { Jeremiah 31:31 sq.} The small object in which past generations had loved to recognise the earthly throne of the God of Israel, will be replaced by Jerusalem itself, the Holy City, not merely of Judah, nor of Judah and Israel, but of the world. Thither will all the nations resort "to the name of Iahvah"; ceasing henceforth "to follow the hardness (or callousness) of their own evil heart." That the more degraded kinds of heathenism have a hardening effect upon the heart; and that the cruel and impure worships of Canaan especially tended to blunt the finer sensibilities, to enfeeble the natural instincts of humanity and justice, and to confuse the sense of right and wrong, is beyond question. Only a heart rendered callous by custom, and stubbornly deaf to the pleadings of natural pity, could find genuine pleasures in the merciless rites of the Molech worship; and they who ceased to follow these inhuman superstitions, and sought light and guidance from the God of Israel, might well be said to have ceased "to walk after the hardness of their own evil heart." The more repulsive features of heathenism chime in too well with the worst and most savage impulses of our nature; they exhibit too close a conformity with the suggestions and demands of selfish appetite; they humour and encourage the darkest passions far too directly and decidedly, to allow us to regard as plausible any theory of their origin and permanence which does not recognise in them at once a cause and an effect of human depravity. {cf. Romans 1:1-32 } The repulsiveness of much that was associated with the heathenism with which they were best acquainted, did not hinder the prophets of Israel from taking a deep spiritual interest in those who practised and were enslaved by it. Indeed, what has been called the universalism of the Hebrew seers-their emancipation in this respect from all local and national limits and prejudices-is one of the clearest proofs of their divine mission. Jeremiah only reiterates what Micah and Isaiah had preached before him; that "in the latter days the mountain of Iahvah’s House shall be established as the chief of mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all the nations will flow unto it". { Isaiah 2:2 } In Jeremiah 16:19 sq. our prophet thus expresses himself upon the same topic. "Iahvah, my strength and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of distress! unto Thee shall nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say: Our forefathers inherited naught but a lie, vanity, and things among which is no helper. Shall a man make him gods, when they are no gods?" How largely this particular aspiration of the prophets of the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. has since been fulfilled in the course of the ages is a matter of history. The religion which was theirs has, in the new shape given it by our Lord and His Apostles, become the religion of one heathen people after another, until at this day it is the faith professed, not only in the land of its origin, but by the leading nations of the world. So mighty a fulfilment of hopes, which at the time of their first conception and utterance could only be regarded as the dreams of enthusiastic visionaries, justifies those who behold and realise it in the joyful belief that the progress of true religion has not been maintained for six and twenty centuries to be arrested now; and that these old world aspirations are destined to receive a fulness of illustration in the triumphs of the future, in the light of which the brightest glories of the past will pale and fade away. The prophet does not say, with a prophet of the New Covenant, that "all Israel shall be saved". { Romans 11:26 } We may, however, fairly interpret the latter of the true Israel, "the remnant according to the election of grace," rather than of "Israel according to the flesh," and so both will be at one, and both at variance with the unspiritual doctrine of the Talmud, that "All Israel," irrespective of moral qualifications, will have "a portion in the world to come," on account of the surpassing merits of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and even of Abraham alone. {cf. St. Matthew 3:9 ; St. John 8:33 } The reference to the ark of the covenant in the sixteenth verse is remarkable upon several grounds. This sacred symbol is not mentioned among the spoils which Nebuzaradan (Nabuziriddin) took from the temple; { Jeremiah 52:17 sqq.} nor is it specified among the treasures appropriated by Nebuchadrezzar at the surrender of Jehoiachin. The words of Jeremiah prove that it cannot be included among "the vessels of gold" which the Babylonian conqueror "cut in pieces". { 2 Kings 24:13 } We learn two facts about the ark from the present passage: (1) that it no longer existed in the days of the prophet; (2) that people remembered it with regret, though they did not venture to replace the lost original by a new substitute. It may well have been destroyed by Manasseh, the king who did his utmost to abolish the religion of Iahvah. However that may be, the point of the prophet’s allusion consists in the thought that in the glorious times of Messianic rule the idea of holiness will cease to be attached to things, for it will be realised in persons; the symbol will become obsolete, and its name and memory will disappear from the minds and affections of men, because the fact symbolised will be universally felt and perceived to be a present and self-evident truth. In that great epoch of Israel’s reconciliation, all nations will recognise in Jerusalem "the throne of Iahvah," the centre of light and source of spiritual truth; the Holy City of the world. Is it the earthly or the heavenly Jerusalem that is meant? It would seem, the former only was present to the consciousness of the prophet, for he concludes his beautiful interlude of promise with the words: "In those days will the house of Judah walk beside the house of Israel; and they will come together from the land of the North" ("and from all the lands": LXX add. cf. Jeremiah 16:15 ) "unto the land that I caused your fathers to possess." Like Isaiah { Isaiah 11:12 sqq.} and other prophets his predecessors, Jeremiah forecasts for the whole repentant and united nation a reinstatement in their ancient temporal rights, in the pleasant land from which they had been so cruelly banished for so many weary years. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." If, when we look at the whole course of subsequent events, when we review the history of the Return and of the narrow religious commonwealth which was at last, after many bitter struggles, established on mount Sion; when we consider the form which the religion of Iahvah assumed in the hands of the priestly caste, and the half-religious, half-political sects, whose intrigues and conflicts for power constitute almost all we know of their period; when we reflect upon the character of the entire post-exilic age down to the time of the birth of Christ, with its worldly ideals, its fierce fanaticisms, its superstitious trust in rites and ceremonies; if, when we look at all this, we hesitate to claim that the prophetic visions of a great restoration found fulfilment in the erection of this petty state, this paltry edifice, upon the ruins of David’s capital; shall we lay ourselves open to the accusation that we recognise no element of truth in the glorious aspirations of the prophets? I think not. After all, it is clear from the entire context that these hopes of a golden time to come are not independent of the attitude of the people towards Iahvah. They will only be realised, if the nation shall truly repent of the past, and turn to Him with the whole heart. The expressions "at that time," "in those days" ( Jeremiah 3:17-18 ), are only conditionally determinate; they mean the happy time of Israel’s repentance, "if such a time should ever come." From this glimpse of glorious possibilities, the prophet turns abruptly to the dark page of Israel’s actual history. He has, so to speak, portrayed in characters of light the development as it might have been; he now depicts the course it actually followed. He restates Iahvah’s original claim upon Israel’s grateful devotion, { Jeremiah 2:2 } putting these words into the mouth of the Divine Speaker: "And I indeed thought, How will I set thee among the sons" (of the Divine household), "and give thee a lovely land, a heritage the fairest among the nations! And me thought, thou wouldst call Me ‘My Father,’ and wouldst not turn back from following Me." Iahvah had at the outset adopted Israel, and called him from the status of a groaning bondsman to the dignity of a son and heir. When Israel was a child, He had loved him, and called His son out of Egypt, { Hosea 11:1 } to give him a place and a heritage among nations. It was Iahvah, indeed, who originally assigned their holdings to all the nations, and separated the various tribes of mankind, "fixing the territories of peoples, according to the number of the sons of God". { Deuteronomy 32:8 Sept.} If He had brought up Israel from Egypt, He had also brought up the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir. { Amos 9:7 } But He had adopted Israel in a more special sense, which may be expressed in St. Paul’s words, who makes it the chief advantage of Israel above the nations that "unto them were committed the oracles of God". { Romans 3:2 } What nobler distinction could have been conferred upon any race of men than that they should have been thus chosen, as Israel actually was chosen, not merely in the aspirations of prophets, but as a matter of fact in the divinely directed evolution of human history, to become the heralds of a higher truth, the hierophants of spiritual knowledge, the universally recognised interpreters of God? Such a calling might have been expected to elicit a response of the warmest gratitude, the most enthusiastic loyalty and unswerving devotion. But Israel as a nation did not rise to the level of these lofty prophetic views of its vocation; it knew itself to be the people of Iahvah, but it failed to realise the moral significance of that privilege, and the moral and spiritual responsibilities which it involved. It failed to adore Iahvah as the Father, in the only proper and acceptable sense of that honourable name, the sense which restricts its application to one sole Being. Heathenism is blind and irrational as well as profane and sinful; and so it does not scruple to confer such absolutely individual titles as "God" and "Father" upon a multitude of imaginary powers. "Methought thou wouldst call Me ‘My Father,’ and wouldst not turn back from following Me. But" { Zephaniah 3:7 } "a woman is false to her fere; so were ye false to Me, O house of Israel, saith Iahvah." The Divine intention toward Israel, God’s gracious design for her everlasting good, God’s expectation of a return for His favour, and how that design was thwarted so far as man could thwart it, and that expectation disappointed hitherto; such is the import of the last two verses ( Jeremiah 3:19-20 ). Speaking in the name of God, Jeremiah represents Israel’s past as it appears to God. He now proceeds to show dramatically, or as in a picture, how the expectation may yet be fulfilled, and the design realised. Having exposed the national guilt, he supposes his remonstrance to have done its work, and he overhears the penitent people pouring out its heart before God. Then a kind of dialogue ensues between the Deity and His suppliants. "Hark! upon the bare hills is heard the weeping of the supplications of the sons of Israel, that they perverted their way, forgot Iahvah their God." The treeless hill tops had been the scene of heathen orgies miscalled worship. There the rites of Canaan performed by Israelites had insulted the God of heaven ( Jeremiah 3:2 and Jeremiah 3:6 ). Now the very places which witnessed the sin, witness the national remorse and confession. The ‘high places’ are not condemned even by Jeremiah as places of worship, but only as places of heathen and illicit worships. The solitude and quiet and purer air of the hill tops, their unobstructed view of heaven and suggestive nearness thereto, have always made them natural sanctuaries both for public rites and private prayer and meditation: cf. 2 Samuel 15:32 ; and especially St. Luke 6:12 . In this closing section of the piece { Jeremiah 3:19-25 ; Jeremiah 4:1-2 } "Israel" means not the entire people, but the northern kingdom only, which is spoken of separately also in Jeremiah 3:6-18 , with the object of throwing into higher relief the heinousness of Judah’s guilt. Israel-the northern kingdom-was less guilty than Judah, for she had no warning example, no beacon light upon her path, such as her own fall afforded to the southern kingdom; and therefore the Divine compassion is more likely to be extended to her, even after a century of ruin and banishment, than to her callous, impenitent sister. Whether at the time Jeremiah was in communication with survivors of the northern Exile, who were faithful to the God of their fathers, and looked wistfully toward Jerusalem as the centre of the best traditions and the sole hope of Israelite nationality, cannot now be determined. The thing is not unlikely, considering the interest which the prophet afterwards took in the Judean exiles who were taken to Babylon with Jehoiachin (chapter 29) and his active correspondence with their leaders. We may also remember that "divers of Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves" and came to keep passover with king Hezekiah at Jerusalem. It cannot, certainly, be supposed, with any show of reason, that the Assyrians either carried away the entire population of the northern kingdom, or exterminated all whom they did not carry away. The words of the Chronicler who speaks of "a remnant escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria," are themselves perfectly agreeable to reason and the nature of the case, apart from the consideration that he had special historical sources at his command. { 2 Chronicles 30:6 ; 2 Chronicles 30:11 } We know that in the Maccabean and Roman wars the rocky fastnesses of the country were a refuge to numbers of the people, and the history of David shows that this had been the case from time immemorial. {cf. Jdg 6:2 } Doubtless in this way not a few survived the Assyrian invasions and the destruction of Samaria (B.C. 721). But to return to the text. After the confession of the nation that they have "perverted their way" (that is, their mode of worship, by adoring visible symbols of Iahvah, and associating with Him as His compeers a multitude of imaginary gods, especially the local Baalim, Jeremiah 2:23 , and Ashtaroth), the prophet hears another voice, a voice of Divine invitation and gracious promise, responsive to penitence and prayer: "Return, ye apostate sons, let Me heal your apostasies!" or "If ye return, ye apostate sons, I will heal your apostasies!" It is an echo of the tenderness of an older prophet. { Hosea 14:1 ; Hosea 14:4 } And the answer of the penitents quickly follows: "Behold us, we are come unto Thee, for Thou art Iahvah our God." The voice that now calls us, we know by its tender tones of entreaty, compassion, and love to be the voice of Iahvah our own God; not the voice of sensual Chemosh, tempting to guilty pleasures and foul impurities, not the harsh cry of a cruel Molech, calling for savage rites of pitiless bloodshed. Thou, Iahvah-not these nor their fellows-art our true and only God. "Surely, in vain" (for naught, bootlessly, 1 Samuel 25:21 ; Jeremiah 5:2 ; Jeremiah 16:19 ) "on the hills did we raise a din" (lit. "hath one raised";) surely in Iahvah our God is the safety of Israel! The Hebrew cannot be original as it now stands in the Masoretic text, for it is ungrammatical. The changes I have made will be seen to be very slight, and the sense obtained is much the same as Ewald’s "Surely in vain from the hills is the noise, from the mountains" (where every reader must feel that "from the mountains" is a forcible feeble addition which adds nothing to the sense). We might also perhaps detach the mem from the term for "hills," and connect it with the preceding word, thus getting the meaning: "Surely, for Lies are the hills, the uproar of the mountains!" that is to say, the high places are devoted to delusive nonentities, who can do nothing in return for the wild orgiastic worship bestowed on them; a thought which contrasts very well with the second half of the verse: "Surely, in Iahvah our God is the safety of Israel!" The confession continues: "And as for the Shame"-the shameful idol, the Baal whose worship involved shameful rites, { Jeremiah 11:13 ; Hosea 9:10 } and who put his worshippers to shame, by disappointing them of help in the hour of their need { Jeremiah 2:8 ; Jeremiah 2:26-27 } -"as for the Shame"-in contrast with Iahvah, the Safety of Israel, who gives all, and requires little or nothing of this kind in return-"it devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters." The allusion is to the insatiable greed of the idol priests, and the lavish expense of perpetually recurring feasts and sacrifices, which constituted a serious drain upon the resources of a pastoral and agricultural community; and to the bloody rites which, not content with animal offerings, demanded human victims for the altars of an appalling superstition. "Let us lie down in our shame, and let our infamy cover us! for toward Iahvah our God we trespassed, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and obeyed not the voice of Iahvah our God." A more complete acknowledgment of sin could hardly be conceived; no palliating circumstances are alleged, no excuses devised, of the kind with which men usually seek to soothe a disturbed conscience. The strong seductions of Canaanite worship, the temptation to join in the joyful merriment of idol festivals, the invitation of friends and neighbours, the contagion of example, -all these extenuating facts must have been at least as well known to the prophet as to modern critics, but he is expressively silent on the point of mitigating circumstances in the case of a nation to whom such light and guidance had come as came to Israel. No, he could discern no ground of hope for his people except in a full and unreserved admission of guilt, an agony of shame and contrition before God, a heartfelt recognition of the truth that from the outset of their national existence to the passing day they had continually sinned against Iahvah their God and resisted His holy Will. Finally, to this cry of penitents humbled in the dust, and owning that they have no refuge from the consequences of their sin but in the Divine Mercy, comes the firm yet loving answer: "If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith Iahvah, unto Me wilt return, and if thou wilt put away thine Abominations" ("out of thy mouth and," LXX) "out of My Presence, and sway not to" and 1 Kings 14:15 , "but wilt swear ‘By the Life of Iahvah!’ in good faith, justice, and righteousness; then shall the nations bless themselves by Him, and in Him shall they glory." { Jeremiah 4:1-2 } Such is the close of this ideal dialogue between God and