_The word which came to Jeremiah_ The patience and goodness of God to this remnant of his ancient people are very remarkable; he leaves them not even in their rebellion, but commissions his prophet, whom he had before sent to forbid their going into this idolatrous country, to try if in Egypt they c... [ Continue Reading ]
_Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought on Jerusalem_ He refers to the late destruction of it by the king of Babylon: this remnant of the people was a brand plucked out of the burning, and their eyes had been witnesses of the desolations which God had wrought. _Because of their wickedness_, &... [ Continue Reading ]
_Wherefore my fury, &c., was poured forth_, &c. As if he had said, For these very reasons, their idolatry and contempt of my word by my prophets, the very sins you are now committing, I gave Judah and Jerusalem into the hand of the king of Babylon, and they are, as you see this day, waste and desola... [ Continue Reading ]
_Ye provoke me unto wrath with the works of your hands_ By making and setting up idols to worship. _That ye might cut yourselves off_, &c. This is not to be so taken as if they did these things with a design to cut off themselves and their posterity: but only as signifying that their utter ruin woul... [ Continue Reading ]
_I will set my face against you for evil_ See note on Jeremiah 21:10. _And I will take_ Or, _I will take away_, namely, by destruction; _the remnant of Judah_, &c. The direful punishments denounced against those who went to Egypt were not denounced because it was a sin in itself for the Jews to leav... [ Continue Reading ]
_Then all the men and all the women that dwelt in Pathros_ Which was Upper Egypt; _answered Jeremiah_, &c. From this it appears with how much reason it was that God ordered Jeremiah to endeavour to prevent their going into Egypt, since the Israelitish women imitated the idolatry of the inhabitants o... [ Continue Reading ]
_As for the word thou hast spoken unto us, we will not hearken unto thee_ Johanan and the rest (Jer 43:5) only denied that God had said such things, and told Jeremiah he had spoken falsely: but now these people rise higher; they acknowledge Jeremiah had spoken to them in the name of the Lord, but, n... [ Continue Reading ]
_Then Jeremiah said, The incense that ye burned_, &c. In these verses the prophet shows that they interpreted the dispensations of God's providence toward them in a sense directly contrary to their true intent and meaning. They concluded that their omission of late to _burn incense to the queen of h... [ Continue Reading ]
_Jeremiah said, Hear all Judah that are in the land of Egypt_ That is, all you men and women that belong to Judah, and are now come to dwell in Egypt; _ye and your wives have spoken_ The Hebrew word תדברנה, rendered _have spoken_, is of the feminine gender, and implies that the women were first and... [ Continue Reading ]
_And this shall be a sign unto you_ Signs are usually antecedent to the thing signified, as Isaiah 38:7; but here, as Exodus 3:12; Isaiah 37:30, and Luke 2:12, the word is taken, in a larger sense, for a circumstance that should attend the thing signified. It may be observed, however, that although... [ Continue Reading ]