JEREMIAH
16
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2003 James Melough
16:1. “The word
of the Lord came also unto me, saying,”
16:2. “Thou
shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this
place.”
This declares in
unmistakable language the wickedness of Judah. It was destined for utter
destruction, and God would spare His servant the sorrow of seeing his family
perish; for even if they didn’t become infected with the general abounding
wickedness, and weren’t killed by the invaders, they would still be carried
captive into Babylon.
16:3. “For thus
saith the Lord concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born
in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning
their fathers that begat them in this land;”
16:4. “They
shall die of grievous deaths (deadly diseases); they shall not be lamented;
neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the
earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine, and their
carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the
earth.”
The description is of
destructive judgment of such magnitude that there would be none left to lament
the death of loved ones; nor would enough survive to bury the dead: the
carcases would lie rotting in the streets and fields, to be devoured by the
wild beasts and birds of prey, famine and the sword of the enemy being God’s
instruments to cleanse the land from the contamination of its wicked
inhabitants.
The type will be fulfilled,
not just in Israel, but world-wide in the Great Tribulation.
16:5. “For thus
saith the Lord, Enter not into the house of mourning, neither go to lament nor
bemoan them: for I have taken away my peace from this people, saith the Lord,
even loving kindness and mercies.”
In forbidding His servant to
participate in any of the normal funeral activities, God was in effect
commanding Jeremiah to thus demonstrate his complete approval of God’s
judgment on the sinful nation. Their wickedness had compelled God to withdraw
his blessing, and He would demonstrate the fierceness of His anger by
forbidding His servant to do anything that might give the slightest degree of
comfort to those who had incurred His wrath.
God is as perfect in the
execution of His judgment as in the extension of His mercy.
16:6. “Both the
great and the small shall die in this land: they shall not be buried, neither
shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for
them:”
So great would be the number
of the dead that the usual funeral rites would be abandoned, the extent to
which the people had adopted pagan ways being demonstrated in that the
mourners normally cut themselves and shaved their heads - heathen practices
which God had forbidden.
16:7. “Neither
shall men tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead;
neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father
or for their mother.”
“... tear” is misleading.
It is from a primitive root meaning “to break bread,” that being the sense in
which it is used here.
God forbade the preparation
of the customary funeral meal by friends of the bereaved as a gesture of
comfort; as He did also the presentation of the cup of wine customarily given
to those bereft of a parent. Since, in the present context, all of these
gestures of sympathy and comfort would be virtual subtle protests against
God’s having sent this judgment, He would permit none of them. The day of
mercy for Judah had ended: that of unmitigated judgment had come.
16:8. “Thou
shalt not also go into the house of feasting, to sit with them to eat and to
drink.”
Even though the judgment
hadn’t yet fallen, Jeremiah was forbidden to participate in any feast, for
their feasting was nothing less than the evidence that the people didn’t
believe God’s warning, and He would not have His prophet encourage their
unbelief.
The practical lesson for
believers today is that our participation in the giddy amusements of those we
are responsible to warn of eternal judgment, is a contradiction in terms. How
can we carouse and play with them if we really believe that the only thing
between them and eternal torment is the present fleeting breath they draw? Do
we ever stop to think that it may be their last?
16:9. “For thus
saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will cause to cease out
of this place in your eyes, and in your days, the voice of mirth, and the
voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride.”
“... in your eyes, and in
your days,” is literally “in your lifetime.” Revelry ill became a people who
were but a step from death, nor would they have engaged in any of their
frivolous activity had they believed Jeremiah’s warning.
The specific mention of
bridegroom and bride is of particular ominous significance in the present
context, for marriage is the virtual assurance of future generations. Judah was to be destroyed. The generation that will inherit
the blessings promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will be that which will
emerge in repentant belief from the Great Tribulation - a generation separated
from the unbelieving one of Jeremiah’s day by at least twenty-six hundred
years.
16:10. “And it
shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all these words, and they
shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil
against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed
against the Lord our God?”
Long continuance in sin had
so inured the people that they had no consciousness of guilt. They could
conceive of no reason why God should want to punish them. And so is it with
today’s equally guilty Christendom. They also have no awareness of guilt.
Judah was convinced that the
maintenance of the outward ritual of worshiping Jehovah guaranteed her
absolution from the penalty of all sin; and having that false assurance she
worshiped also a host of idols in the superstitious belief that they too would
bestow blessing. Thus convinced that she had insured every possible blessing
she then plunged headlong into every form of sin and the indulgence of every
lust.
Only those who are
spiritually blind will fail to see her folly replicated by today’s
Christendom. She too, convinced that maintenance of the outward ritual of
worshiping God absolves her from the penalty of every sin, puts in a brief
appearance in church on Sunday; and then seeks to secure temporal blessing and
pleasure by worshiping also money, education, sport, art, etc., and having
thus placated all the gods, she too plunges headlong into every form of sin
and the indulgence of every lust.
And as Judah disbelieved
God’s warnings of imminent destruction, so does Christendom, and like Judah,
she too will be destroyed, her destruction coming in the foretold and now
imminent Great Tribulation.
16:11. “Then
shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the
Lord, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have
worshiped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;”
The sin hadn’t begun with
the generation addressed by the prophet: their fathers had begun the departure
from God, and each succeeding generation had widened the distance between Him
and them. And so has it been with Christendom. Departure from God is
invariably a gradual thing, and today’s abounding wickedness has been
developing over many generations, but every word of Scripture points to the
fact that this is the generation in which wickedness has culminated - and will
be judged.
16:12. “And ye
have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the
imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me:”
This continues to emphasize
that Judah’s wickedness had reached its zenith in that evil generation.
16:13.
“Therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not,
neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and
night; where I will not shew you favor.”
“...cast you out” is
literally “hurl you out headlong,” and it indicates the violence of their
expulsion from the land.
The land to which they would
be carried captive was Babylon, and since there is nothing to indicate that
they were compelled to worship the Babylonian gods, it may be that the meaning
here is correctly stated in Taylor’s translation of this verse, “... and there
you can go ahead and worship your idols all you like - and I will grant you no
favors.”
16:14.
“Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be
said, the Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land
of Egypt;”
Judah’s coming captivity in
Babylon would render meaningless the popular reference to Jehovah as the One
Who had delivered Israel out of Egyptian bondage, and the saying would
therefore fall into disuse, for it would be absurd to continue designating as
a deliverer One Who had delivered the people into captivity.
16:15. “But, the
Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the
north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring
them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.”
The future deliverance
spoken of here certainly may include the return of the remnant from Babylon at
the end of foretold seventy years, but the words “and from all the lands
whither he had driven them” indicate that the reference is to that regathering
which will occur at the end of the Tribulation, when the believing remnant
will be brought back from all the lands to which they were scattered in AD 70,
to enjoy the promised millennial blessings so long forfeited by national
unbelief.
16:16. “Behold,
I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and
after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every
mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.”
This verse continues to
indicate that the reference is to what has occurred since the Diaspora; and
what is written will be more easily perceived if we stop first to consider the
significance of fishing and hunting. Fishing is associated with the sea, but
the sea is a biblical symbol of the rebellious Gentile nations, see Isa 57:20,
“The wicked (unbelieving) are like the troubled sea...” so Israel’s being
“fished” is the symbolic announcement of the persecution she has suffered at
the hand of the Gentiles for the past two thousand years during which she has
been scattered amongst them. Her sorry history during those two millennia has
been one of persecution, slaughter, and flight from one country to another in
search of refuge.
But notice the words which
follow, “and after....” After being the prey of the fishers, she is to become
the prey of the hunters, hunting being associated with the land in contrast
with the sea. The message couldn’t be clearer. She is to be brought back to
the land after her long sojourn amongst the Gentiles, but she is to return
still in unbelief, that return having begun with the restoration of Jewish
autonomy in 1948, and continuing today.
And now the “the hunters”
continue the evil work of “the fishers.” No longer in the sea of the nations,
but back in the land (Palestine), she is still hunted for her life, the Arabs
being those who now seek to destroy her, the persecution reaching its zenith
in the fast approaching Great Tribulation when the Gentiles will join the
Arabs in the attempt to destroy her. There will be no peace for Israel until
the Tribulation judgments will have brought a remnant to repentant faith in
their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
16:17. “For mine
eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their
iniquity hid from mine eyes.”
Flee where she may, that
nation whose hands are stained with the blood of God’s Son, cannot escape.
Her blinded eyes may fail to see it, but all her persecutors have been but
instruments in the hand of Him she calls her God, His hand continuing to be
against her until the Tribulation judgments will have elicited sorrowful
confession of her terrible sin, and brought her to repentant faith in the One
she slew at Calvary: the Lord Jesus Christ.
16:18. “And
first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have
defiled my land, they have filled mine inheritance with the carcases of their
detestable and abominable things.”
It seems that the double
recompense of their iniquity may have been not only the Babylonian captivity,
but also the then future Diaspora, and the still future but now imminent
Tribulation judgments, their wickedness consisting of having defiled the land
with the multitudinous idols they worshiped; the defilement of the land by the
presence of the dead idols being the same in God’s sight as that caused by the
presence of unburied corpses. The one was as dead and as abominable to Him as
was the other.
16:19. “O Lord,
my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the
Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth and shall say, Surely
our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no
profit.”
The speaker is Jeremiah
acknowledging his implicit trust in Jehovah, and expressing his confidence in
the fact that a day was coming when the Gentiles also would be brought to see
that in worshiping idols they and their fathers had been deluded, each
succeeding generation having inherited the foolish false teaching that there
was power in their idols, worthless inanimate things their own hands had
formed out of metal and wood.
16:20. “Shall a
man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?”
Whether the speaker here is
God or the prophet is unclear, and is unimportant, for the truth declared is
axiomatic: if the thing worshiped has been formed by man’s own hand then
clearly it cannot be a god at all, for it is absurd to believe that a man
could make anything greater than himself.
16:21.
“Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to
know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is the Lord.”
The truth declared in the
preceding verse was that Israel should have believed what God had spoken
concerning Himself, His power, and His might; but since they had refused to
believe His word, they would now learn by bitter experience just how very
great His might and power were as He exercised both against them. The
demonstration of His omnipotence in His destruction of the Egyptians at the
time of Israel’s deliverance from that bondage should never have been
forgotten, but it had been, and now they were to experience his might in their
own destruction. And so will it be with every man who dies in unbelief. He
will experience eternally God’s omnipotence exercised against him, while the
believer will enjoy eternally that power exercised for his blessing.
“... hand” is literally
“power or authority,” while “might” refers to the ability to enforce that
power or authority. Judah was about to learn that the One she had despised
was not only the Source of all power, but also the One capable of enforcing
His will, she having mistaken His patience for weakness. Apostate Christendom
has made the same mistake, and is about to learn the lesson she should have
learned from the record of God’s destruction of that rebellious generation of
Judah.
“... this once” has about it
an ominous air of finality and doom: it was the last demonstration of God’s
omnipotence that Judah would be given. It would destroy her because she had
ignored all the warnings previously given to bring her to repentance and
blessing. The impending Tribulation judgments will be of the same character,
and will be sent for the same reason: they will destroy apostate Christendom
because she too has exhausted God’s patience by ignoring all previous
warnings.
[Jeremiah
17]