Commentary on Jeremiah Volume 1 John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
This meaning is confirmed by what follows, that it is cut off from their mouth 210
We hence learn that their perfidy is condemned because they acted falsely; and as their heart was full of duplicity, so also was their tongue. He intimates, in short, that there was no hope as to their repentance; for had they promised a hundred times to God to be teachable and obedient, and shewed before the world any appearance of integrity, their promises would have passed off into mere fallacies and deceptions.
He then adds ---
Jeremiah 7:29
29. Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places; for the LORD hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.
29. Tonde comam tuam et projice et attolle super excelsa lamentationem; quid reprobavit (vel, vilipendit; sed verbum reprobandi magis placet hoc loco) Jehova, et reliquit aetatem indignationis suae.
Here again Jeremiah exhorts his own people to lament; and he uses the feminine gender, as though he called the people, the daughter of Sion, or the daughter of Jerusalem. He then, according to a common mode of speaking, calls the whole people a woman. 211
He first bids her to shave off the hair The word {,}נזרnesar, means the hair, derived from the Nazarites, who allowed their hair to grow: and there may be here a striking allusion to the Nazarites who were sacred to God; as though he had said, ``This people are profane, and therefore ought to have nothing in common with the Nazarites.'' Hence also is derived {,}נזרnesar, a crown. Though then the word means the hair, yet the allusion is not to be overlooked, --- that this people, rejected by God, are bidden to cut off and to throw away the hair. After the throwing away of the hair there was to be great lamentation; Raise, he says, on high places a lamentation This may seem to be an exhortation to repentance: but as we have seen elsewhere, though the prophets often gave the people the hope of pardon and reconciliation, yet in this place the Prophet no doubt denounces a final judgment, and is a herald of lamentation, because the prevailing impiety was irreclaimable. He does not then perform here the duty of a teacher, but in a hostile manner denounces ruin: for it immediately follows ---
For rejected hath Jehovah and forsaken the generation of his wrath The word
{,}דורdur, means an age, not time, but men of the same age: as we call that our generation which now lives in the world, and that which is dead the generation of our fathers, and what succeeds us the next generation. It is indeed true, that the Israelites in every age were worthy of a similar vengeance; but God no doubt shews here, that his vengeance was at hand, for he had long borne with the perverse conduct of the people, and suspended his judgment. As then vengeance was now to 210All the ancient versions and the Targum render {by{{ אמוגהπίστις}, fides --- faith, fidelity or faithfulness.
The first verb, ``perished'' or lost, is omitted by the Septuagint and Arabic, but is retained by the Vulgate, Syriac, and the Targum.
The second verb is stronger than the first; faithfulness was lost from the mouth, yea, it was completely separated from it. Lost is faithfulness, yea, wholly separated from the mouth.
211The emendations of Houbigant, adopted by Blayney, are by no means to be approved; for without the authority of any MSS. or versions, he changes the gender of these verbs in succession. It is a common thing in the prophets to call the people the daughter of Sion: and probably they are here so addressed, because the hair is an ornament to a female, and to cut it off is a token of deep distress. — Ed.