Backsliding Israel

tree, and there hath played the harlot. (7) And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous 1 or, fame. sister Judah saw it. (8) And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. (9) And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks. (10) And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, ch. 23. 4. saith the LORD.

(11) And the LORD said unto me, The backsliding Israel hath justified her

b

(7) And I said. . .-The call to Israel to return had been slighted, and Judah, the traitress or faithless, "one with falsehood," had not taken warning from the sin or its punishment.

Turn thou unto me.-The verb may be either the second or third person, I said, thou shalt return; or, I said, she will return, as expressing a hope rather than a direct return. The latter seems, on the whole, the preferable rendering.

(8) And I saw, when for all the causes.-Better, perhaps (following a conjectural emendation, which gives a much better sense), And she saw that for all the causes. The technical fulness of the words suggests the thought that they were actually the customary formula with which every writing of divorcement began, recapitulating the offences which were alleged by the husband against the wife. The actual repudiation consisted, of course, in the bitter exile and loss of national life, which Hosea (ii. 1-13) had predicted under a like figure. Judah had witnessed the sin and the punishment, and yet was following in the same path.

(9) The lightness of her whoredom.-Lightness in the ethical sense of "levity." Apostasy was treated once more as if it had been a light thing (1 Kings xvi. 31). The word is, however, very variously interpreted, and the meaning of "voice," or cry," in the sense in which the cry" of Sodom and Gomorrah was great (Gen. xviii. 20), seems more satisfactory. On "stones" and "stocks," see Note on chap. ii. 27.

(10) And yet for all this .-Judah was so far worse than Israel that there had been a simulated repentance, as in the reformations under Hezekiah and Josiah, but it was not with the whole heart and soul, but "feignedly," or, more literally, with a lie.

(11) Hath justified herself.-Literally, hath justified her soul, has put in a better plea in her defence. The renegade was better than the traitress. Even open rebellion was better than hypocrisy, as the publicans and sinners in the Gospel story were better than the Pharisees (Matt. xxi. 31).

(12) Toward the north.-The prophet utters his message as towards the far land of Assyria and the cities of the Medes to which the ten tribes of Israel had been carried away captive (2 Kings xvii.

and Treacherous Judah.

self more than treacherous Judah. (12) Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am "merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever. (13) Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the LORD thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the LORD. (14) Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: (15) and I will give you 'pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and under

6, 23). He had a word of glad tidings for the far-off exiles.

-

Return, thou backsliding Israel. It is hard to reproduce the pathetic assonance of the original, Shubah, mashubah,"-turn back, thou that hast turned away; return, thou renegade.

I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you. -Literally, my face; the face so awful in its wrath.

I will not keep anger for ever. With perhaps a latent reference to the hope held out in Hosea iii. 5, and to the words which Judah had uttered in her hypocrisy (verse 5), but which were truer of Israel.

(13) Only acknowledge. .-This was the one sufficient, indispensable condition of pardon-the confession that kept nothing back, and made no vain

excuses.

Hast scattered thy ways.-The phrase is a strong one, thou hast left traces of thy way everywhere, i.e., hast gone this way and that in search of new and alien forms of worship. The “ green tree" as before (chap. ii. 20) was the familiar scene of the hateful worship.

(14) Turn, O backsliding children.-In his desire to individualise his call to repentance, the prophet drops his parable, or rather combines the sign and the thing signified, with the same assonance as before-turn back, ye children who have turned away.

I am married unto you.-The tender pity of Jehovah leads Him to offer pardon even to the adulterous wife. Jeremiah had learned, in all their fulness, the lessons of Hosea i.-iii.

One of a city, and two of a family.-The latter word is the wider in its range of the two-a clan, or tribe, that might embrace many cities. The limitation to the "one" and the "two" is after the manner of Isaiah's reference (i. 9) to the "remnant " that should be saved, and reminds of the "ten righteous men" who might have saved the cities of the plain (Gen. xviii. 32).

(15) Pastors.-As in chap. ii. 8, of kings and rulers, not of priests. Compare chap. xxiii. 1-5. The phrase "according to mine heart" brings David to our thoughts (1 Sam. xiii. 14). There should be a return to the true pattern of the ideal ruler. In the "knowledge and understanding" we have an echo from Isa. xi. 1-4.

2

d.

4 Or, to.

3

and Restoration..

sire.

de

me.

(16) In those days.-No time had been named, but the phrase had become familiar for the far-off better time of the true king of the Messianic kingdom.

They shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord.-Noteworthy both for its exceeding boldness and as containing the germ, or more than the germ, of the great thought of the New Covenant developed in chap. xxxi. 31. The ark, the very centre of the worship of Israel, the symbol and, it might seem, more than the symbol, of the Divine presence, that, too, should pass away, as the brasen serpent had become Nehushtan (2 Kings xviii. 4), and take its place as belonging only to the past. Foremost among the prophets was Jeremiah to perceive and proclaim that

"God fulfils Himself in many ways."

The legend of 2 Macc. ii. 4, 5, that Jeremiah had hidden the tabernacle and the ark in a cave that they might be restored in the latter days, presents a singular contrast to the higher thoughts of the prophet.

Neither shall it come to mind.-Literally, come upon the heart, which throughout the Old Testament implies the intellect rather than the affections.

Neither shall they visit it.-Better, shall they miss it, as men miss what they value. The words probably refer to the feelings with which the ark had been restored to its place by Josiah (2 Chron. xxxv. 3) after its displacement by Manasseh (2 Chron. xxxiii. 7). Neither shall that be done any more.-Better, neither shall it [the ark] be made any more. It shall be left to decay and perish, and none shall care to reconstruct it. The words had, of course, a fulfilment in the ritual of the second Temple, where there was no ark in the Holy of Holies, and that loss was probably what Jeremiah foresaw most clearly, and for which he sought to prepare his people, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (viii. 13) did to prepare those of his time for the more entire destruction of the Temple and its worship. But even within this horizon the thought was bold in itself and pregnant with yet greater truths.

(17) They shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord.-Up to Jeremiah's time that title, "the throne of God," though the language of the Old Testament had referred it to the "heavens (Ps. xi. 4, ciii. 19), had probably been applied, in popular language, to the ark where the Lord "dwelt between the cherubim" (1 Sam. iv. 4; 2 Kings xix. 15). The prophet extends it to the whole city, in that future of which he was doubtless thinking. To him, as to Micah (iv. 1, 2) and Isaiah (ii. 1-3), there came a vision of the holy city as the

centre of the divine Kingdom. It was not given to him to see what even the Apostles were slow to understand, that there is no holy city upon earth, and that his hopes would only be fulfilled in the heavenly Jerusalem which is the Church or family of God.

The imagination.-Better, stubbornness, as in the margin.

(18) In those days. . .-As with Isaiah (xi. 13), so with Jeremiah, the hope, however distant, of national reformation was bound up with that of a restoration of national unity. The healing of the long-standing breach between Israel and Judah, coeval almost with the commencement of Israel as a people, was to be the glory of the Messiah's kingdom.

Out of the land of the north.-The thoughts of the prophet turn chiefly to the land of the exile of the ten tribes; but his words imply that he foresees a like exile also in the north for Judah. In that far-off land the house of Judah shall walk to (rather than with) the house of Israel, seeking its alliance, asking for reconciliation, and both should once again dwell in the land of their inheritance.

(19) But I said.-Better, And I said. There is no contrast with what precedes. The speaker is, of course, Jehovah. The How shall I put thee! is an exclamation rather than a question, the utterance of a promise as with an intensity of affirmation. Special stress is laid on the pronoun "I." The words have been rendered by some commentators, following the Targum, How shall I clothe thee with children?

A pleasant land.-Literally, as in the margin, a land of desire, i.e., desirable.

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A goodly heritage of the hosts of nations.More accurately, a heritage of the beauty of beauties (Hebrew for chief beauty") of the nations. The English version rests on the assumption that the word translated "beauties" is the same as that elsewhere rendered" Sabaoth," or "hosts," which it closely resembles.

And I said.-Not, as in the English, the answer to a question, but the continuance of the same thought. God will treat repentant Israel as His child: He will lead Israel to trust Him as a father. The days of apostasy ("turning away") will then be over. The original Hebrew seems, to judge from the LXX. version, to have had the plural "ye shall call," "ye shall not turn away," the prophet passing from the collective unity to the individuals that composed it.

(20) Surely as a wife. In the midst of the bright vision of the future there comes unbidden the thought of the dark present: the faithless wife is not yet restored to her true friend and husband. Her

(21) A voice was heard.-Yes, the guilty wife was there, but she was also penitent. The high places' which had been the scene of the guilt of the sons of Israel, where the cries of their orgiastic worship had been heard, now echoed with their weeping and supplication (or, more literally, the weeping of suppliant prayers), as they called to mind the hateful sins of the past.

(22) Return, ye backsliding children · .-We lose, as before, the force of the Hebrew repetition of the same root, Turn, ye children that have turned, I will heal your turnings. As so often in Hebrew poetry, we have the answer to the invitation given in dramatic form, and hear the cry-we might almost call it the litany of the suppliants, "Behold, we come unto thee." They at last own Jehovah as their one true God.

(23) Truly in vain ..-The italics show the difficulty of the verse, and represent an attempt to get over it. According to the senses given to the word translated "multitude" we get, in vain (literally, as a lie) from the hills is the revelry (as in Amos v. 23), or the wealth, or the multitude, of the mountains. The first gives the best meaning, and expresses the confession of the repentant Israelites that their wild ritual on the high places had brought them loss and not gain.

(24) Shame.-The Hebrew noun has the article, "the shame," and is the word constantly used as the interchangeable synonym for Baal, as in Jerubbaal and Jerubbesheth (Judges vi. 32; 2 Sam xi. 21), Mephibosheth and Merib-baal (2 Sam. iv. 4; 1 Chron. viii. 34). The words point accordingly to the prodigal waste of victims, possibly of human life also, in the worship of Baal and that of Molech, which in the prophet's mind was identified with it, and which had brought with it nothing but a lasting shame. This also forms part of the confession of the repentant people (comp. chap. xi. 13).

(25) We lie down.-Better, We will lie down-Our confusion shall cover us. The words are those of penitents accepting their punishment: "We chose the shameful thing, therefore let us bear our shame."

to the Backsliding Children. covereth us for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.

CHAPTER IV.-(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. (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. (3) For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not (4) Circumcise youramong thorns. selves to the LORD, and take away the

с

IV.

(1) If thou wilt return.-The "if" implies a return from the hopes with which chap. iii. ended to the language of misgiving, and so, inferentially, of earnest exhortation.

Abominations.-Literally, things of shame, as in chap. iii. 24; the idols which Israel had worshipped.

Then shalt thou not remove.-Better, as continuing the conditions of forgiveness, if thou wilt not wander.

(2) And thou shalt swear.-The conditions are continued: If thou wilt swear by the living Jehovah ["the Lord liveth" being the received formula of adjuration], in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness.

And the nations shall bless themselves in him. This forms the completion of the sentence. If the conditions of a true repentance are fulfilled by Israel, then the outlying heathen nations shall bless themselves in Jehovah-i.e., shall own Him and adore Him, be blessed by Him.

.-The words

(3) For thus saith the Lord seem the close of one discourse, the opening of another. The parable of Israel is left behind, and the appeal to Judah and Jerusalem is more direct.

To the men of Judah.-Literally, to each man individually.

Break up your fallow ground.-The Hebrew has the force which comes from the verb and noun being from the same root, Break up for you a broken ground or fallow a fallow field. The metaphor had been used before by Hosea (x. 12). What the spiritual field needed was to be exposed to God's sun and God's free air, to the influences of spiritual light and warmth, and the dew and soft showers of His grace.

Sow not among thorns.-Not without a special interest as, perhaps, containing the germ of the Parable of the Sower in Matt. xiii. 7. Here, as there, the seed is the "word of God," spoken by the prophet, and taking root in the heart, and the thorns are the "cares of this world," the selfish desires which choke the good seed and render it unfruitful.

(4) Circumcise yourselves to the Lord.-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.

(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. (6) Set up the standard toward Zion: 1 retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction. (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. (8) For this 'gird

the Coming Invasion.

& 6. 1, 22.

b ch. 6. 26.

words show that the prophet had grasped the meaning of the symbol which to so many Jews was merely an outward sign. He saw that the "foreskin of the heart” was the fleshly, unrenewed nature, the “flesh as contrasted with the "spirit," the " old man" which St. Paul contrasts with the new (Rom. vi. 6, viii. 7). The verbal coincidence with Deut. x. 16, xxx. 6 shows the influence of that book, of which we find so many traces in Jeremiah's teaching.

Lest my fury come forth like fire .-The words, which describe the righteousness of Jehovah as a consuming fire, have their parallel in chap. vii. 20, Amos v. 6, and form the transition to the picture of terror which opens in the next verse.

(5) Declare.-i.e., proclaim as a herald proclaims. The cry is that of an alarm of war. The prophet sees, as it were, the invading army, and calls the people to leave their villages and to take refuge in the fortified cities.

(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.

(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. (12) Even 3 a full wind from those places shall come unto me:

invasion (as seen in chap. xxxix. 9) must have been extreme.

(8) Gird you with sackcloth.-From the earliest times the outward sign of mourning, and therefore of repentance (Joel i. 8; Isa. xxii. 12).

(9) The heart of the king shall perish.-The heart, as representing the mind generally. Judgment and wisdom were to give way to panic and fear.

(10) Ah, Lord God! (literally, my Lord Jehovah !) surely thou hast greatly deceived this people. -The words are startling, but are eminently characteristic. Jeremiah had been led to utter words that told of desolation and destruction. But if these were true, what was he to think of the words of the other prophets, who, speaking in the name of the Lord, had promised peace through the reign of Josiah, and even under Jehoiakim? Had not Jehovah apparently sanctioned those prophets also? and, if so, had He not deceived the people? (Comp. chap. xx. 7.) This seems, on the whole, preferable to the interpretations which see in it a dramatic irony representing the prophet as having shared in the hopes of the people and awaken

Retire.-Withdraw, in the transitive sense," gather, with a view to removing" (as in Exod. ix. 19), and this is followed by "stay not," linger not, be quick. The call to retreat was urgent.

I will bring.-Literally, I am bringing. From the north.-The Chaldæan, and possibly the Scythian, invasion, as in chap. i. 14.

(7) The lion is come up 66 .-The lion" is, of course, the Chaldæan invader, the destroyer, not of men only, but of nations. So in Dan. vii. 4 the lion is the symbol of the Assyrian monarchy. The winged lions that are seen in the palaces of Mosul and Nimroud gave a special character to what was in any case a natural metaphor. The word "Gentiles" answers to the meaning, but there is no special reason why it should be used here, rather than nations.

Is on his way.-Literally, has broken up his encampment, i.e., has started on his march.

Without an inhabitant.-The language, like that of Isaiah (vi. 11), was probably in some measure hyperbolical, but the depopulation caused by the Chaldæan

the contrast between the glorious visions of the future in Isaiah and his own terrible predictions, or to the bolder course of an alteration of the text, so that the words would run "it is said," the complaint being represented as coming from the people.

(11) At that time.-i.e., when the lion and destroyer of verse 7 should begin his work of destruction.

A dry wind.-Literally, a clear wind, the simoom, the scorching blast from the desert, coming clear and without clouds. Other winds might be utilised for the threshing-floor, but this made all such work impossible, and was simply devastating, and was therefore a fit symbol of the terrible invader.

(12) A full wind from those places.-Better, a wind fuller than those, or, fuiler than for this. i.e., more tempestuous than those which serve for the work of the thresher, and blowing away both grain and chaff together.

Shall come unto me.-Better, for me, as doing my pleasure.

Give sentence against them.-sc., against the sinful people of Judah and Jerusalem.

ments.

the Alarm of War.

50. 1.

(1) O Jerusalem, "wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. ch. 8. 15. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? (15) For a voice declareth 'from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim. (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. (17) As keepers of a field, are they against her

(13) He shall come up as clouds.-He, the destroyer of nations, with armies that sweep like stormclouds over the land they are going to destroy. (Comp. Ezek. xxxviii. 16.)

Swifter than eagles.-A possible quotation from David's lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i. 23). The fact that another phrase is quoted in verse 30 ("clothest thyself with crimson," where the Hebrew is the same as the "scarlet" of 2 Sam. i. 24), makes the possibility something like a certainty. It was natural that one who himself wrote two sets of lamentations, one early (2 Chron. xxxv. 25), the other late, in life, should have been a student of earlier elegies. For the flight of the eagle as representing the swift march of the invader, comp. Lam. iv. 19; Hos. viii. 1; Hab. i. 8.

Woe unto us! for we are spoiled.-Probably the cry of the terrified crowds of Jerusalem, with which the prophet, with dramatic vividness, as in chap. ix. 18, 19, interrupts his description.

(14) O Jerusalem.-The prophet's answer to the cry that comes from the city. In that "washing of the heart" which had seemed impossible before (chap. ii. 22), but is thought of now as "possible with God," is the one hope of salvation. (Comp. Isa. i. 16.)

Vain thoughts.-The Hebrew has a force which the English does not reproduce, thoughts of vanity, thoughts of aven, i.e., of the word which had been specially applied, as in Beth-aven for Beth-el (the "house of vanity" for the "house of God") to the idols which Israel and Judah worshipped (Hosea iv. 15, x. 5; Amos v. 5).

(15) Dan.. Mount Ephraim.-The two places are chosen, not like Dan and Beer-sheba, as extreme limits, but as stages in the march of the invader: first Dan (as in chap. viii. 16), the northernmost point (Deut. xxxiv. 1; Judg. xx. 1) of the whole land of Israel, then Mount Ephraim, as the northern boundary of Judæa. The verbs grow in strength with the imagined nearness, first announce, as of a rumour from a distance, then proclaim, as of a danger more imminent.

Affliction.-In the Hebrew the same word (aven) as in the "thoughts of vanity." Playing on the two aspects of the word, the prophet says that aven comes as the penalty of aven-the "nothingness" of destruction as that of the "nothingness" of the idol.

(16) Make ye mention.-Better, Proclaim ye to the nations; behold. Call them to gaze on the ruin of

Jerusalem, then, Cry aloud as for Jerusalem, that watchers (i.e., the besieging armies) are coming from a far country, and that they will give out their voice (i.e., raise the cry of war) against the cities of Judah.

(17) Field. With the meaning, as in all early English, of "open," not "enclosed," country (Lev. xiv. 7, xvii. 5). The image is that of a nomadic tribe encamped in the open country, or of men watching their flocks (Luke ii. 8) or crops (Job. xxvii. 18). So shall be the tents of the invaders round Jerusalemkeeping, or (as in 2 Sam. xi. 16) "observing," i.e., "blockading" the city.

(18) This is thy wickedness.-Better, this is thy evil. She was reaping the fruit of her own doing, and this gave her sorrows a fresh bitterness. The Hebrew word, like the English "evil," includes both guilt and its punishment.

(19) My bowels, my bowels!-As with verse 13, the words may be Jeremiah's own cry of anguish, or that of the despairing people with whom he identifies himself. The latter gives more dramatic vividness, as we thus have the utterances of three of the great actors in the tragedy: here of the people, in verse 22 of Jehovah, in verse 23 of the prophet. The "bowels" were with the Hebrews thought of as the seat of all the strongest emotions, whether of sorrow, fear, or sympathy (Job xxx. 27; Isa. xvi. 11).

At my very heart.-Literally (reproducing the physical fact of palpitation), I writhe in pain; the walls of my heart! my heart moans for me. The verb for "I am pained" is often used for the " travail" or agony of childbirth (Isa. xxiii. 4, xxvi. 18).

Thou hast heard, O my soul . . .-Silence at such a time was impossible. The prophet, as in the language of strong emotion, addresses his own soul, his very self (Comp. Ps. xvi. 2, xlii. 5, 11).

(20) Destruction upon destruction is cried.— Literally, Breaking upon breaking, or crash upon crash, is reported.

Suddenly are my tents spoiled.-The tent dwelling retained its position even amid the cities and villages of Israel (2 Sam. xviii. 17; 1 Kings viii. 66). The curtains are, of course, those of the tent (Isa. liv. 2). Conspicuous among such survivals of the nomad form of life we find the Rechabites of chap.

XXXV.

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(21) How long shall I see . . .-The "standard," as in verse 6, is the alarm signal given to the fugitives. The "trumpet" sounds to give the alarm, and quicken