the Week of Proper 22 / Ordinary 27
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Bible Commentaries
Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible Henry's Complete
Jeremiah's Calling and Divine Appointment.Chapter 2
Israel's Unfaithfulness; Call to Repentance.Chapter 3
Call to Return to God; Israel's Waywardness.Chapter 4
Impending Judgment and Call for Repentance.Chapter 5
The People's Sin and Coming Judgment.Chapter 6
Imminent Judgment; Call to Flee from Danger.Chapter 7
Temple Sermons; Rejection of Empty Rituals.Chapter 8
Judgment and Sorrow over Israel's Sin.Chapter 9
Lament over Judah's Sin; Call for Truth.Chapter 10
God's Sovereignty versus Idolatry; Judgment on Nations.Chapter 11
The Covenant Broken; Conspiracy against Jeremiah.Chapter 12
Jeremiah's Complaint; Divine Response about Judgment.Chapter 13
Symbolic Acts Illustrating Judah's Sin and Judgment.Chapter 14
Drought; Jeremiah's Plea for Mercy.Chapter 15
God's Judgment; Jeremiah's Lament and Call for Deliverance.Chapter 16
Restrictions on Jeremiah; Prophecy of Judgment and Restoration.Chapter 17
Judah's Sin and its Consequences; Blessing of Trust in God.Chapter 18
The Potter's House; Israel's Choice and Consequences.Chapter 19
Symbolic Act of the Broken Jar; Judgment.Chapter 20
Jeremiah's Suffering and Complaint; Confidence in God.Chapter 21
Judgment against Jerusalem; Promise of Deliverance.Chapter 22
Judgment on Judah's Kings; Call for Justice.Chapter 23
The Righteous Branch; False Prophets and True Shepherds.Chapter 24
Vision of Good and Bad Figs; Exile's Outcome.Chapter 25
Seventy Years of Captivity; Judgment on Nations.Chapter 26
Jeremiah's Message; Opposition and Deliverance.Chapter 27
The Yoke of Babylon; Warning to Surrounding Nations.Chapter 28
False Prophet Hananiah's Prophecy and Judgment.Chapter 29
Letter to the Exiles; Promise of Restoration.Chapter 30
Restoration and Future Blessings for Israel.Chapter 31
New Covenant and Restoration; Future Hope.Chapter 32
Purchase of the Field; Confirmation of God's Promise.Chapter 33
Promises of Restoration and Righteous Leadership.Chapter 34
Judgment on Zedekiah; Broken Covenant.Chapter 35
The Rechabites' Example; Judgment on Judah.Chapter 36
Baruch's Scroll; Jehoiakim's Rejection and Destruction.Chapter 37
Jeremiah's Imprisonment; Warnings to Zedekiah.Chapter 38
Jeremiah's Trial and Rescue from the Pit.Chapter 39
Jerusalem's Fall and Exile; Jeremiah's Release.Chapter 40
Gedaliah Appointed Governor; Warning of Further Invasion.Chapter 41
Murder of Gedaliah; Flight to Egypt.Chapter 42
Jeremiah's Warning against Going to Egypt.Chapter 43
Flight to Egypt; Idolatry Condemned.Chapter 44
Judgment on Those Who Worshipped Idols in Egypt.Chapter 45
Message to Baruch; Reassurance amid Trials.Chapter 46
Prophecies against Egypt and its Allies.Chapter 47
Prophecy against the Philistines.Chapter 48
Prophecy against Moab and its Destruction.Chapter 49
Prophecies against Ammon, Edom, Damascus, and Elam.Chapter 50
Prophecy against Babylon; Future Restoration of Israel.Chapter 51
Further Prophecy against Babylon; Call to Flee.Chapter 52
Fall of Jerusalem; Final Note on Zedekiah.
- Jeremiah
by Matthew Henry
AN
EXPOSITION,
W I T H P R A C T I C A L O B S E R V A T I O N S,
OF THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET
J E R E M I A H.
THE Prophecies of the Old Testament, as the Epistles of the New, are placed rather according to their bulk than their seniority--the longest first, not the oldest. There were several prophets, and writing ones, that were contemporaries with Isaiah, as Micah, or a little before him, as Hosea, and Joel, and Amos, or soon after him, as Habakkuk and Nahum are supposed to have been; and yet the prophecy of Jeremiah, who began many years after Isaiah finished, is placed next to his, because there is so much in it. Where we meet with most of God's word, there let the preference be given; and yet those of less gifts are not to be despised nor excluded. Nothing now occurs to be observed further concerning prophecy in general; but concerning this prophet Jeremiah we may observe, I. That he was betimes a prophet; he began young, and therefore could say, from his own experience, that it is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth, the yoke both of service and of affliction, Lamentations 3:27. Jerome observes that Isaiah, who had more years over his head, had his tongue touched with a coal of fire, to purge away his iniquity (Jeremiah 6:7; Jeremiah 6:7), but that when God touched Jeremiah's mouth, who was yet but young, nothing was said of the purging of his iniquity (Jeremiah 1:9; Jeremiah 1:9), because, by reason of his tender years, he had not so much sin to answer for. II. That he continued long a prophet, some reckon fifty years, others above forty. He began in the thirteenth year of Josiah, when things went well under that good king, but he continued through all the wicked reigns that followed; for when we set out for the service of God, though the wind may then be fair and favourable, we know not how soon it may turn and be tempestuous. III. That he was a reproving prophet, was sent in God's name to tell Jacob of their sins and to warn them of the judgments of God that were coming upon them; and the critics observe that therefore his style or manner of speaking is more plain and rough, and less polite, than that of Isaiah and some others of the prophets. Those that are sent to discover sin ought to lay aside the enticing words of man's wisdom. Plain-dealing is best when we are dealing with sinners to bring them to repentance. IV. That he was a weeping prophet; so he is commonly called, not only because he penned the Lamentations, but because he was all along a mournful spectator of the sins of his people and of the desolating judgments that were coming upon them. And for this reason, perhaps, those who imagined our Saviour to be one of the prophets thought him of any of them to be most like to Jeremiah (Matthew 16:14), because he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. V. That he was a suffering prophet. He was persecuted by his own people more than any of them, as we shall find in the story of this book; for he lived and preached just before the Jews' destruction by the Chaldeans, when their character seems to have been the same as it was just before their destruction by the Romans, when they killed the Lord Jesus, and persecuted his disciples, pleased not God, and were contrary to all men, for wrath had come upon them to the uttermost,1 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Thessalonians 2:16. The last account we have of him in his history is that the remaining Jews forced him to go down with them into Egypt; whereas the current tradition is, among Jews and Christians, that he suffered martyrdom. Hottinger, out of Elmakin, an Arabic historian, relates that, continuing to prophesy in Egypt against the Egyptians and other nations, he was stoned to death; and that long after, when Alexander entered Egypt, he took up the bones of Jeremiah where they were buried in obscurity, and carried them to Alexandria, and buried them there. The prophecies of this book which we have in the first nineteen chapters seem to be the heads of the sermons he preached in a way of general reproof for sin and denunciation of judgment; afterwards they are more particular and occasional, and mixed with the history of his day, but not placed in due order of time. With the threatenings are intermixed many gracious promises of mercy to the penitent, of the deliverance of the Jews out of their captivity, and some that have a plain reference to the kingdom of the Messiah. Among the Apocryphal writings an epistle is extant said to be written by Jeremiah to the captives in Babylon, warning them against the worship of idols, by exposing the vanity of idols and the folly of idolaters. It is in Baruch, Jeremiah 6:1-30; Jeremiah 6:1-30 But it is supposed not to be authentic; nor has it, I think, any thing like the life and spirit of Jeremiah's writings. It is also related concerning Jeremiah (2 Mac. ii. 4) that, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans, he, by direction from God, took the ark and the altar of incense, and, carrying them to Mount Nebo lodged them in a hollow cave there and stopped the door; but some that followed him, and thought that they had marked the place, could not find it. He blamed them for seeking it, telling them that the place should be unknown till the time that God should gather his people together again. But I know not what credit is to be given to that story, though it is there said to be found in the records. We cannot but be concerned, in the reading of Jeremiah's prophecies, to find that they were so little regarded by the men of that generation; but let us make use of that as a reason why we should regard them the more; for they are written for our learning too, and for warning to us and to our land.