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Jeremiah
AN
EXPOSITION,
W I T H P R A C T I C A L O B S E R V A T I O N S,
OF THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET
J E R E M I A H.
THE Prophecies of the Old Testament, as the
Epistles of the New, are placed rather according to their bulk than
their seniority–the longest first, not the oldest. There were several
prophets, and writing ones, that were contemporaries with Isaiah, as
Micah, or a little before him, as Hosea, and Joel, and Amos, or soon
after him, as Habakkuk and Nahum are supposed to have been; and yet the
prophecy of Jeremiah, who began many years after Isaiah finished, is
placed next to his, because there is so much in it. Where we meet with
most of God’s word, there let the preference be given; and yet those of
less gifts are not to be despised nor excluded. Nothing now occurs to
be observed further concerning prophecy in general; but concerning this
prophet Jeremiah we may observe,
I. That he was betimes a prophet; he began young, and therefore could
say, from his own experience, that it is good for a man to bear the
yoke in his youth, the yoke both of service and of affliction,
Jerome observes that Isaiah, who had more years over his head, had his
tongue touched with a coal of fire, to purge away his iniquity
(ch. vi. 7),
but that when God touched Jeremiah’s mouth, who was yet but young,
nothing was said of the purging of his iniquity
(ch. i. 9),
because, by reason of his tender years, he had not so much sin to
answer for.
II. That he continued long a prophet, some reckon fifty years, others
above forty. He began in the thirteenth year of Josiah, when things
went well under that good king, but he continued through all the wicked
reigns that followed; for when we set out for the service of God,
though the wind may then be fair and favourable, we know not how soon
it may turn and be tempestuous.
III. That he was a reproving prophet, was sent in God’s name to tell
Jacob of their sins and to warn them of the judgments of God that were
coming upon them; and the critics observe that therefore his style or
manner of speaking is more plain and rough, and less polite, than that
of Isaiah and some others of the prophets. Those that are sent to
discover sin ought to lay aside the enticing words of man’s wisdom.
Plain-dealing is best when we are dealing with sinners to bring them to
repentance.
IV. That he was a weeping prophet; so he is commonly called, not only
because he penned the Lamentations, but because he was all along a
mournful spectator of the sins of his people and of the desolating
judgments that were coming upon them. And for this reason, perhaps,
those who imagined our Saviour to be one of the prophets thought him of
any of them to be most like to Jeremiah
because he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
V. That he was a suffering prophet. He was persecuted by his own
people more than any of them, as we shall find in the story of this
book; for he lived and preached just before the Jews’ destruction by
the Chaldeans, when their character seems to have been the same as it
was just before their destruction by the Romans, when they killed
the Lord Jesus, and persecuted his disciples, pleased not God,
and were contrary to all men, for wrath had come upon them to the
uttermost,
1 Thess. ii. 15, 16.
The last account we have of him in his history is that the remaining
Jews forced him to go down with them into Egypt; whereas the current
tradition is, among Jews and Christians, that he suffered martyrdom.
Hottinger, out of Elmakin, an Arabic historian, relates that,
continuing to prophesy in Egypt against the Egyptians and other
nations, he was stoned to death; and that long after, when Alexander
entered Egypt, he took up the bones of Jeremiah where they were buried
in obscurity, and carried them to Alexandria, and buried them there.
The prophecies of this book which we have in the first nineteen
chapters seem to be the heads of the sermons he preached in a way of
general reproof for sin and denunciation of judgment; afterwards they
are more particular and occasional, and mixed with the history of his
day, but not placed in due order of time. With the threatenings are
intermixed many gracious promises of mercy to the penitent, of the
deliverance of the Jews out of their captivity, and some that have a
plain reference to the kingdom of the Messiah. Among the Apocryphal
writings an epistle is extant said to be written by Jeremiah to the
captives in Babylon, warning them against the worship of idols, by
exposing the vanity of idols and the folly of idolaters. It is in
Baruch,
But it is supposed not to be authentic; nor has it, I think, any thing
like the life and spirit of Jeremiah’s writings. It is also related
concerning Jeremiah
(2 Mac. ii. 4)
that, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans, he, by direction
from God, took the ark and the altar of incense, and, carrying them to
Mount Nebo lodged them in a hollow cave there and stopped the door; but
some that followed him, and thought that they had marked the place,
could not find it. He blamed them for seeking it, telling them that the
place should be unknown till the time that God should gather his people
together again. But I know not what credit is to be given to that
story, though it is there said to be found in the records. We cannot
but be concerned, in the reading of Jeremiah’s prophecies, to find that
they were so little regarded by the men of that generation; but let us
make use of that as a reason why we should regard them the more; for
they are written for our learning too, and for warning to us and to our
land.
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