Commentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations Volume 2 John Calvin
JEREMIAH AND LAMENTATIONS
seen elsewhere, were only ministers and executioners of God's vengeance; Jehovah of hosts then says, Behold, I will pursue you, etc.
He then adds, And I will make them like worthless figs He calls the figs here
worthless; but in the twenty-fourth chapter he called them bad; still the meaning is the same. There is no doubt but that he refers to the prophecy which we there explained. For the Prophet saw two baskets of figs, in one of which were sweet figs, and in the other bitter. God asked, ``What seest thou?'' he said, ``Good figs, very good, and bad figs, very bad.'' God afterwards added, ``The good and sweet figs are the captives; for I will at length shew mercy to them, and liberty to return shall be given them. They shall then be good figs, though now a different opinion is formed; for they who still lived at Jerusalem, think themselves more happy than the exiles; but the bad and bitter figs,'' he says, ``are this people who pride themselves, because they have not been led into captivity; for I will consume them with the pestilence, and the famine, and the sword.'' This was the Prophet's language in that passage. He now again declares that King Zedekiah and all the people would be like bitter and putrid figs, which, being so bad, are not fit to be eaten. He then adds, ---
Jeremiah 29:18-19
18. And I will persecute them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations whither I have driven them:
18. Et persequar (ad verbum est, post eos: persequar eos) gladio, fame et peste; et ponam eos in commotionem (vel, concussionem) cunctis regnis terrae, in execrationem, et in stuporem, et in sibilum, et in probrum inter cunctas gentes ad quas expulero eos (vel, quo expulero eos illuc:)
19. Because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the LORD, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith the LORD.
19. Propterea quod non audierunt sermones meos, inquit Jehovah, quos misi ad eos peer servos meos Prophetas, mane surgendo et mittendo; et non audistis, inquit
Jehova.
He goes on with the same subject, --- that he would not cease to consume them with pestilence, famine, and the sword, until he wholly destroyed them, according to what we find in the twenty-fourth chapter. He repeats what is in that chapter; but the words are taken from the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, and from the twenty-ninth. The prophets, we know, drew the substance of their doctrine from the fountain of the Law, and, strictly speaking, brought forward nothing new, but accommodated the doctrine of Moses to the circumstances of the time in which each lived.
Hence we find among the curses of the Law these words, I will set them for a commotion, or a concussion. The word may be explained in two ways, --- either that the nations would tremble at such a sad spectacle, --- or that they would shake their head. The second view is to be preferred, according to what I have stated elsewhere,