Commentary on Jeremiah Volume 1 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
land would not only be spoiled by the united army, but also by every individual in it. 321
He then adds that the land was in mourning before him. The Prophet seems to me to touch here the torpor of his own nation, because there was no one who had any regard for God; nay, they laughed at the judgments which were nigh at hand, and of which he had often spoken. Hence God says, that they would at length come to him when calamities oppressed them and caused them to mourn. ``As then in peaceable times,'' he says, ``they are unwining to come to me, but are so refractory and untameable, that I can effect nothing by so many warnings, they shall come,'' he says, ``but in another state of mind, even in extreme mourning.''
He afterwards adds, No one lays on the heart What this means we have elsewhere explained. But the particle {,}כיki, which is properly a causative, may be here rendered as an adversative. If we take it in its first and most proper sense, then a reason is here given why the Jews would be brought to a most grievous mourning, even because they had despised all the prophets, and wholly disregarded as a fable what they had so often heard from God's mouth: and this is the view taken by most interpreters. But it may be also taken as an adversative, as in many other places, --- ``Though no one lays on the heart;'' and thus it will be a complaint as to their perverse stupor, inasmuch as, when smitten by God's hand, they did not perceive that they were punished for their sins, not that they were wholly insensible as to their evils. But what avails it to cry and to howl, as God's Spirit speaks elsewhere, except, the hand of the smiter be perceived? The Jews then ought, had a spark of wisdom been in them, to have considered their sins, to have prayed for forgiveness, and to have repented, and also to have embraced the favor promised to them. But when they perversely added sins to sins, God justly expostulated with them, because they did not attend to the signs of his wrath, by which they ought not only to have been taught, but also subdued. It follows ---
Jeremiah 12:12
12. The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness: for the sword of the LORD shall devour from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land: no flesh shall have peace.
12. Super omnes oras (vel, quomodo alii vertunt, super omnia loca excelsa, {,}שפיםuno verbo dicere licebit, prominentias; accipitur etiam pro rupibus; sed loquitur de finibus extremis; ergo super fines extremos) in desertum venerunt perditores; quid gladius Jehovae voravit a fine terrae usque ad finem terrae; non est pax universae carni.
Jeremiah here proceeds farther --- that no corner of the land would be exempt from the attacks of enemies. Desert is not put here for solitude not inhabited, but for high places; and as such places fbr the most part are fit for pastures, there is 321The Septuagint and Arabic render the verb as passive in the singular number, "It has been set a desolation." We may take {{שמהas a passive participle, the {}וbeing omitted, with ,{}הit, affixed. Then the verse would run thus, --- 11. Set it is an utter desolation; It has mourned before me (or, to me) being utterly desolate: Desolate has been the whole land, Though no man lays it to heart. ``Utter desolation'' is the meaning, for it is a reduplicate noun. Both the Vulgate and the Targum connect ``being utterly desolate'' with the next line, though not rightly: but both, as well as the Syriac, render the first verb, as though it were {`` }שמוהThey have set it.'' Venema and Houbigant render ,{}עליin the second line, a preposition, and render the line thus, --- It has mourned on account of desolation. --- Ed.