Commentary on Jeremiah Volume 1 John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
so much severity without the most just cause; for it could not be expected that he should treat them with more gentleness, since they rejected him and had recourse to vain confidences. I also, he says; for the particle {,}גםgam, denotes something mutual, as though he had said, ``I also will have my turn; for I have it in my power to avenge myself: I will retaliate,'' he seems to say, ``this thine ingratitude; for as thou hast despised me, so will I expose thee to reproach and shame.'' For God was shamefully despised by the Jews, when they substituted the Egyptians and their idols in his place: they could not have done him more dishonor than by transferring his glory to the ungodly and to their own figments. We hence see that there is an emphasis in the particle also, I will also make bare, or discover, thy skirts on thy face; that is, I will cast thy skirts on thy face. 357
This mode of speaking often occurs in the Prophets; and as I have elsewhere explained, it means the uncovering of the uncomely parts: it is as though a vile woman was condemned to bear the disgrace of being stripped of her garments and exposed to the public, that all might abhor a spectacle so base and disgraceful. God, as we have before seen, assumed the character of a husband to his people: as then he had been so shamefully despised, he now says, that he had in readiness the punishment of casting the skirts of his people over their faces, that their reproach or baseness might appear by exposing their uncomely parts. It then follows ---
Jeremiah 13:27
27. I have seen thy adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?
27. Adulteria tua et hinnitus tuos, cogitationem scortationis tuae super montes in agro vidi, abominationes tuas: vae tibi Jerusalem; non mundaberis posthac? quousque adhuc?
Here the Prophet explains at large what I have before stated, --- that the people were justly punished by God, though very grievously, because they had provoked
God, not at one time only, but for a long time, and had obstinately persisted in their evil courses. Moreover, as their sins were various, the Prophet does not mention them all here; for we have seen elsewhere, that they were not only given to superstitions, but also to whoredoms, drunkenness, plunders, and outrages; but here he only speaks of their superstitions, --- that having rejected God, they followed their own idols. For by adulteries he no doubt means idolatries; and he does not speak here of whoredom, which yet prevailed greatly among the people; but he only condemns them for having fallen away into ungodly and false forms of worship. To the same thing must be referred what follows, thy neighings; for by this comparison, we know, is set forth elsewhere, by way of reproach, that furious ardor with which the Jews followed their own inventions. The word indeed sometimes means exultation; for the verb {,}צהלtsel, is to exult; but here, as in Jeremiah 5 it signifies neighing.
357This is no doubt the meaning. See Nahum 3:5. The verb means to strip off, so as to make bare. The threatening is, to strip off the skirts and throw them over the face; and this is the rendering of the Syriac. Probably the most literal rendering would be the following, — And I also will strip (or roll) up thy skirts over thy face. The versions all differ, but the Septuagint convey this idea. Blayney's uncovering "thy skirts before thee," imparts no meaning. — Ed.