Commentary on Jeremiah Volume 1 John Calvin (continued)
COMMENTARY ON JEREMIAH
He repeats again the word {}מאיןmain, of which we spoke yesterday. 265 It is the same as though the Prophet had said, ``Let all the wise men and philosophers come forth, let all those counsellors who assume great wisdom appear, and let them adduce whatever they can allege; doubtless God will ever defend his own glory against all their frivolous arguments, so that they must depart confounded; nor shall they be able, however willing they may be, to bring any solid objection against him.'' By these words, then, the Prophet intimates that it is vain to boast of philosophic reasons, and that the counsels of princes, who esteem themselves very acute in civil affairs, will be adduced in vain; for all will be covered with shame, and be constrained to be silent, when God makes known his glory. Indeed the glory of God appears everywhere so conspicuously, that the rudest ought to perceive it, that the wise, who fly above the heavens as philosophers, who search all the secrets of nature, do not understand what is, as they say, abroad in the open air; for God manifests himself to the simple, and even to children. We now perceive the design of the Prophet, when he says, From no times has been found any like to God, not only among the vulgar or common men, but among the wise, and princes, and kings' counsellors.
He afterwards adds ---
Jeremiah 10:8
8. But they are altogether brutish and foolish; the stock is a doctrine of vanities.
8. Et in uno stulti sunt et fatui sunt; eruditio vanitatum lignum est.
The Prophet shews here, in one sentence, that the wisest in the whole world could be proved guilty of the greatest madness, or of a twofold folly, because they willingly worshipped the trunks of trees, and they worshipped stones; for Under one kind he includes the other. There is no one, he says, however intelligent, who does not approve of the superstitions of the people, who does not bend the knee before a wood or a stone. There have been, indeed, a few in the world who ridiculed such sottishhess, but no one dared openly to condemn it, and no one introduced anything better.
And even the Platonics hold that the Greeks had not without reason invented gods like men; and they say that there was not so much judgment among the barbarians as to form such ideas of the gods as were suitable to their nature. However this may have been, it is evident that the grossest superstitions of the nations were ever approved by all their wise men.
The Prophet then shews that there was no need of a long discussion to discover the vanity of the wise; In one, in one thing, he says; and there is emphasis in this word, when he says, In one thing they are foolish and fatuitous; for there is to be understood a contrast, as though he had said, ``I will not here join together many heads of accusation against them to expose their folly, one thing is sufficient; this one sentence is enough to condemn them, --- that wood is the teaching of vanities.'' 266 We have stated what the Prophet means, even that all the wise, who together
265All the versions and the Targum, as in the former instance, do not regard the {{מas a preposition, but render the word by ``none,'' or no one. --- Ed
266The word {{באחתis rendered by the Versions and the Targum, alike, equally or together. Literally, ``in one,'' that is, altogether. Calvin rather refines here. The verse may be thus rendered, --- But they are together brutish and stupid; The teaching of vanities the wood is. Literally, ``the wood it,'' but as Gataker says, the pronoun is often used in Hebrew for the substantive verb. The phrase is elliptical, no unusual thing in Hebrew. It may be thus, rendering in full, --- The teaching of vanities, is the teaching of the wood, or respecting the wood. What they taught respecting the wooden idols was ``vanities,'' that is, very or