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, Lam.
iii. 27. 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 (Matt. xvi. 14), 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, ch. vi. 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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