Commentary on Jeremiah Volume 1 John Calvin
COMMENTARY ON JEREMIAH
the suitable time for going and returning. Hence, then, is exaggerated more fully the insensibility of that people, who, while sitting leisurely at home, did not consider what God did set before them.
The particle {,}גםgam, even, is emphatical; Even the stork, he says. What means this, that birds, though not possessed of understanding, do yet know their time?
But my people, etc. By saying ``my people, ``the Prophet no doubt intended more clearly to set forth their wickedness. For, as I have before said, such blindness in heathens would not have been so strange; but as they were the holy and peculiar people of God, it was far more shameful and monstrous that they knew not his judgment.
Christ uses other words in condemning the Pharisees for not attending to the time of their visitation; for he says, ``Ye are wont to conclude what will be the state of the heavens in the morning; for if the sky be red in the evening, ye say, It will be fine to --- morrow; and ye know the signs of future and approaching rain: ye possess, he says, judgment sufficiently acute in external things, which conduce to the benefit of the present life; yet ye know not the time of your visitation, and still ye seek signs: but were ye attentive, God would shew to you in a way clear enough, and as it were by the finger, that the time of deliverance which ye pretend to expect is now nigh at hand.'' But the Prophet reproves the Jews in a severer strain, when he says that there was more fatuity and madness in them than in birds. They know not, he says, the judgment of Jehovah, though it had been shewn to them many times, and for a long season.
But some one might have objected and said, ``No wonder if we perceive not God's judgment, for his judgments are a great deep; and since these exceed what we can comprehend, there is no reason to find fault with us.'' But the Prophet speaks not here of hidden judgments, which elude the comprehension of men, but of punishments, of which they had been so often warned. Since, then, they were so blind as not to see what was clear and evident, the Prophet justly says that they were more foolish than cranes, and the other birds which he mentions. It follows ---
Jeremiah 8:8
8. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.
8. Quomodo dicetis (pro dicitis; significat continuum actum) sapientes nos (hoc est, nos sumus sapientes,) et lex Jehovae nobiscum est (vel, penes nos, melius:) certe ecce frustra aptavit stylum (vel, calamum) scriptor; frustra sunt seribae.
Interpreters think that the Prophet here directs his words to the priests, and the false prophets, and the other chiefs of the people, because they proudly arrogated to themselves the knowledge of the law: but what is said may be no less extended to the whole people; for, as we shall presently see, all of them, from the least to the greatest, no doubt boasted that they were sufficiently wise. I hence think that the Prophet here inveighs against the whole body of the people; for all, almost without exception, rejected his teaching, as we see also to be done at the present day; for who is there that can bear to be admonished and reproved? All say that they are wise enough: ``Oh! do you think that I am a child?'' or, as it is commonly said, ``Do you think that I am a goose? I know how I am to live, and I am not without reason.''