Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Jeremiah 2:1 - 2:13

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Jeremiah 2:1 - 2:13


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Israel's Lack of Faithfulness

v. 1. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, this being an introduction both to the first prophetic discourse and to the whole cycle of Jeremiah's prophetic messages,

v. 2. Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem,
the expression "in the ears" showing that the prophet should preach to the people living in this center of idolatry with clamoring insistence, saying, Thus 'saith the Lord: I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love which Israel bore the Lord in Egypt and at the time of the Exodus, or the merciful kindness which Israel experienced from the earliest days of its history, the love of thine espousals, at the period between the Exodus from Egypt and the formal establishment of the covenant upon Mount Sinai, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown, with no strange god in evidence in the midst of the arid desert.

v. 3. Israel was holiness unto the Lord,
consecrated to Him and to His service, and the first-fruits of His increase, the people chosen by Him as the first among all nations, produced as the first in the garden of His love and mercy. All that devour him shall offend, all those who dared to prey upon Israel became guilty before the Lord; evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord. His punishment descended upon the Amalekites, the Amorites, and upon all other nations that interfered with His plans of love toward His chosen people. Such were the manifestations of Jehovah's mercy and kindness to Israel, and therefore His rebuke certainly came with good reason.

v. 4. Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel,
individually and collectively, the whole nation, all of them being in the same condemnation.

v. 5. Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in Me,
what wrong done to them by Jehovah, that they are gone far from Me, deserting Him for the false gods of the heathen, and have walked after vanity, the nothingnesses of their idols, and are become vain? The worshipers of idols become just as vain and worthless as their empty gods, and are therefore despised and condemned by God in the same degree. Cf Deu_7:26; Psa_115:8; 2Ki_17:15; Rom_1:21.

v. 6. Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness,
that of Sinai, Paran, and Arabia, through a land of deserts and of pits, where chasms and sink-holes abounded, endangering the lives of man and beast, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, as the way led under overhanging rocky precipices, through a land that no man passed through and where no man dwelt? Israel is thus pictured as having utterly forgotten the Lord's protection and blessings, wherefore the Lord asks such reproachful questions.

v. 7. And I brought you into a plentiful country,
a well-cultivated and fruitful land, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof, to enjoy all the blessings it offered to the full; but when ye entered, ye defiled My land, namely, by becoming addicted to idolatry, and made Mine heritage an abomination, so that He was filled with loathing for the land which He had chosen for them. V. 8. The priests said not, Where is the Lord? The very ones who were supposed to expound the Law ignored the very Giver of the Law. And they that handle the Law knew Me not, the teachers who were occupied with it as the subject of their profession paid no attention to the Lord. The pastors also, the princes of the people, who were supposed to be its shepherds both in a civil and in a spiritual sense, transgressed against Me, being themselves in rebellion against the Chief Shepherd, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, in his name and by his authority, and walked after things that do not profit, that are vain and worthless beside the eternal truths of God's will.

v. 9. Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord,
by citing them before His tribunal and pronouncing judgment upon them, and with your children's children will I plead, since they follow their parents in all their wicked ways.

v. 10. For pass over the isles of Chittim,
applied first of all to the island of Cyprus, but later to the entire coast of the Mediterranean, especially to Greece, and see, and send unto Kedar, the descendants of Ishmael in the Arabian Desert, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. The children of Israel were bidden to search both the West and the East for an instance in which a heathen nation had become guilty of such foolish behavior as exhibited by them.

v. 11. Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods?
In spite of the fact that their idols were false gods, the heathen at least had the pride and the decency of clinging to their gods. But My people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit, exchanging their possession of Jehovah, the true God, for vain idols, with less consistency than that shown by the ignorant and despised heathen. In astonishment and horror the Lord cries out:

v. 12. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this,
at the unspeakable wickedness of their behavior, and be horribly afraid, be filled with shuddering loathing, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord, exceedingly aghast at the monstrous spectacle thus presented.

v. 13. For My people have committed two evils,
thus exceeding even the heathen with their one transgression of foolish idolatry: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, the only true and living God, and hewed them out cisterns, whose waters lack the freshness and the sparkle of spring- or well-water, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. Putting aside the one and only Source of spiritual life and power, they placed their trust in gods which belied even the outward appearance that men had given them. The same foolish and harmful course is pursued by all those who in our days deny the inspiration of the Bible, the deity of Christ, and other fundamental doctrines and turn to man-made doctrines instead.