Chapter 4: The Second Discourse
Chapter 4: The Second Discourse
(JEREMIAH 3-6).
"Surely the time is short,
Endless the task and art,
To brighten for the ethereal court
A soiled earth-drudging heart:
But He, the dread Proclaimer of that hour,
Is pledged to thee in Love, as to thy foes in Power.
KEBLE.
WE DO NOT know how Jeremiah's first address was received. It was impossible for Jerusalem to have heard the eager pleadings of the young preacher, protesting so earnestly against the policy of its leaders, and the practices of its priests, without becoming aware that a new force had entered the arena of its public life. And from that moment, through the forty-four years that followed, the influence of his holy example and fervent words was destined to make itself mightily felt. One more star of hope shone over that hotbed of corruption, the very atmosphere of which was charged with symptoms of impending dissolution. Another voice was audible through which God could utter his pleadings and remonstrances.
In his second discourse, lasting from the third to the sixth chapters inclusive—and which perhaps is preserved as a specimen of Jeremiah's words at this period—there is an added power and pathos. The flame burns higher; the sword has a keener edge; yet the tone is more tremulous and tender. There is more than ever of the spirit of Jesus, bewailing the blindness and obstinacy of men, as the vision of impending judgment looms clearer before the soul, and the violence done to the redeeming love of God is more clearly apprehended. In his own touching words, Jeremiah was as a gentle lamb led to the slaughter (xi. 19): but he was also strong as a lion, in the vehemence with which he strove to avert the doom, already gathering on the horizon, and threatening to devastate his beloved fatherland. If any pure and holy soul could have saved Judah by its pleadings, tears, and warnings, Jeremiah would have done it.
But it was not to be. The upas had struck its roots too deeply; the ulcer was too inveterate. The evil that Manasseh had sown had too thickly impregnated the soil. This, however, did not appear in those early days of Jeremiah's ministry; and with all the hopefulness of youth, he thought that he might yet avert the disaster. Surely a voice warning of the rocks that lay direct in the vessel's course, and a firm hand on the tiller, might yet steer the good ship into calm, deep water!
This discourse is occupied with a clear prevision of the Chaldean invasion; with plaintive expressions of pity and pain; and with eloquent assertions of the redeeming grace of God.
I. THE PROPHET'S PREVISION OF APPROACHING JUDGMENT.-At the opening of Jeremiah's ministry, as we have seen, the land was rejoicing in a brief parenthesis of peace; like a glint of light on a mountain side, in a cloudy and dark day. It was a welcome contrast to the experience of the previous centuries. And it appeared probable that it might last. The mighty empire of Assyria was weakened by internal dissension; Babylon was becoming a formidable rival of Nineveh; the Medes, under Cyaxares, were beginning to descend the western slopes of the Taurus; whilst in Egypt Psammetichus was too deeply engaged in expelling the Assyrian garrisons, consolidating his kingdom, and founding his dynasty, to have leisure or desire to interfere with the tiny neighbouring kingdom.
Thus Josiah was able to pursue his reforms in peace, and there was no war-cloud on the horizon. It was on one of these days of Josiah the king (iii. 6) that the newly-appointed prophet startled the men of Jerusalem and Judah, as he made known what he had seen on his watch-tower.
He had heard the trumpet summoning the peasantry from the open country to the fenced cities, leaving their crops at the mercy of the invader, to save their lives. He had descried the lion stealing up from his lair in the thicket, to destroy the nations. He had caught the cries of the watchers from the northern heights of Dan to Ephraim, and so to Jerusalem, as they announced the advent of the invader. He had beheld the desolation of the land, the hurried retreat of the defenders of the holy city herself, some to thickets, and others to holes in the jagged rocks. Yes, and he had seen the daughter of Zion gasping in the extreme of her anguish, and crying, "Woe is me now!"
So real was the whole scene to him that we find him turning to his brother Benjamites, who had fled for shelter to the metropolis, bidding them flee still further south. He beholds the preparations for the siege, and the chagrin of her assailants that the evening shadows of declining day interpose between them and her inevitable capture. He describes the invader as a mighty and ancient nation, gleaning Israel as men gather the last grapes into their basket; cruel and merciless as evening wolves. Their quiver a sepulchre; their sword a terror; their charging cry hoarse and deafening as the roar of the sea; their chariots and cavalry irresistible. The mere reports of their deeds were sufficient to induce in each hearer, as it were, the pangs of travail (i. 15; 4:6, 7, 16, 19; 6:9, 19, 21). And the words of the young prophet were as fire to wood (v. 14).
It has been supposed that these words referred to the invasion of the Scythians, who about this time poured in countless hordes over "Western Asia. The cities of Nineveh and Babylon alone, because of their great strength, escaped; the open country was swept utterly bare; all who could not escape were barbarously massacred or carried off as slaves; villages and towns were turned into charred and smoking ruins. But these barbarian hordes do not fulfil the entire scope of the prophet's words. They do not appear to have entered Palestine but to have passed down on the eastern or western frontier, skirting the territory of Josiah, and driving the panic-stricken people to the shelter of the larger cities, whence they traced the path of the invader, lit by conflagrations kindled on their ruthless march. It is better, therefore, to refer these ominous words to the invasion of Judah by Babylon, which was to take place in thirty years, but of which the people were amply warned, that they might put away their abominations and return to the Fountain of Living Waters.
II. HIS PLAINTIVE EXPRESSION OF PITY AND PAIN.—The tender heart of Jeremiah was filled with the utmost sorrow at the heavy tidings he was called to announce. Throughout the book we constantly encounter the expressions of his anguish. True patriot as he was, it was hard for him to contemplate the impending destruction of the holy city. The noblest traditions of his people were represented in those cries, which for a little demand our consideration.
"The sword," he says, "reaches to the soul." And again, "My heart! my heart! I writhe in pain! the walls of my heart will break! my heart groans within me; I cannot keep it still" (iv. 19, free translation). He identifies himself with his land, and it seems as though the curtains of his own tents are being spoiled, as in a moment. He struggles against uttering his message of judgment till he can no longer contain himself, and becomes weary with holding in (vi. 11). He addresses Jerusalem as the daughter of his people, and bids her gird herself with sackcloth and sit in ashes, mourning as for an only son (vi. 23). He asks how he may comfort himself against sorrow, because his heart faints within him (viii. 18). He wishes that his head were waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears, that he might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of his people (ix. 1). He wanders alone over the mountains, weeping and wailing because the pasture lands are dry, because the lowing of the cattle and the song of the bird are hushed (ix. 10). "Woe is me!" he exclaims; "my wound is grievous."
He had no alternative but to announce the judgments which he saw upon their way; but there was a sob in the voice that predicted them. So far from desiring the evil day, very gladly would he have laid down his life to avert it. The chalice of his life was full of that spirit which led the Master in after years to weep as he beheld the guilty and doomed city. Many a great preacher of repentance in all the centuries of Church history has known something of this bewailing. Side by side with vehement denunciations of coming judgment, there has been the pitiful yearning over lost men.
We need more of this. Nothing is so terrible as to utter God's threatenings against sin, which are predictions of its natural and inevitable outworking, with no sign of anguish or regret. If we are called to speak of judgment to come, it should be after hours of solitary prayer, weeping, and soul travail. It is only in proportion as we have felt for sinners, that we can warn them. It is only in so far as we have known the Saviour's pity, that we can dare to take up the woes He pronounced against Pharisee and Sadducee, or threaten the fate which He so clearly and awfully denounced.
Our mistake is in dealing with generals and not with particulars; or in using terms which have passed from hand to hand, until their inscription is worn away. We have not realized the loss of one soul; nor the unutterable woe of hell for one apostate; nor the meaning of the undying worm and the unquenched flame. And probably the best way of entering into the meaning of any of these terrible conceptions is to try and realize what they would mean for any one soul who was dear to us as life. Then from the one we may pass to the many; from the one lost soul we may understand the meaning of a lost world. Let us look at these things from the standpoint of the Saviour, or of a parent's love, or of the soul itself; and when thoughts have saturated our hearts of the dishonour done to God, the loss sustained by Christ, the anguish wrought into the texture of one disobedient life—we shall be able to speak to men of the judgment to come, with streaming tears, tremulous voice, and breaking heart. Such preaching will always be a convincing and irresistible argument to turn sinners from the error of their ways. Nothing is more awful than to speak of the great mysteries of life and death, of heaven and hell, of the right and left of the Throne, without that compassion of heart which is borrowed from close communion with the Saviour of the world.
III. HIS ASSERTION OF REDEEMING GRACE.—Few of the sacred writers have had truer or deeper views of the love of God. It is to the earlier chapters of Jeremiah that backsliders must always turn for comfort and assurance of abundant pardon. The word backslide is characteristic of this prophet.
To Jeremiah' s thought, sin could not quench God's love. —It may come in between man and wife, severing the marriage tie, and leading the husband to divorce her whom he had taken to be his other self; but though our sin be more inveterate and repeated than woman ever perpetrated against man, or man against woman, it cannot cut off that love which is from everlasting to everlasting. The clouds may dim, but they cannot extinguish the sun. Sin may hide the manifestation of the love of God, but can never make God abandon his love to us (Jer. 3:1).
The love of God goes forth in forgiving mercy.—He only asks that the people should acknowledge their iniquity, and confess to having perverted their way, and forgotten their God. It were enough that they should accept the terms of the confession which he himself suggested: "Behold we come unto Thee, for thou art the Lord our God; and he assures them that though their sin and iniquity were sought for, there should be none (iv. 1; 5:20).
The love of God does not deal with us after our sins.—He gives showers immediately on repentance. He does not keep his anger for ever. He intervenes between us and trouble, as the soft sand between the homes of men and the yeasty foaming ocean. He waits to receive us back, saying, "If thou wilt return, O Israel, unto Me, thou shalt return." Ours may be the pleasant land; ours the goodly heritage; ours the rest for the soul—all of which we had forfeited, but all of which are restored to us when we return.
What true and delightful conceptions of the love of God were vouchsafed to the young prophet Many similarities between his expressions and those of Deuteronomy suggest that it was his favourite book—as, if we may venture to say so, it was our Lord's; and perhaps it was from that ancient writing, then newly discovered, that he derived his inspiration. But, in any case, his living spirit had drunk deep draughts of the everlasting, forgiving, pitiful love of God, revealed and given to men in Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, blessed love:—through which backsliding hearts may be admitted again to the inner circle, and have restored the years that the canker worm has eaten.