Jeremiah (1-31) 14:19 Commentary and Bible Study

Jeremiah has been forbidden to pray for this people (verse 11), and yet he now prays for them again. How can we explain this? Was he simply ignoring what the Lord had said to him? Was this prayer an act of disobedience? That cannot be the case, for it is recorded in Scripture, and is here for us to learn from. It is true that the failings of God’s servants are recorded for us, but Jeremiah is not rebuked, and nothing is said here to show that he was disobeying God in uttering his prayer. But the prayer is rather a response to what God has just said to him. It is an earnest enquiry into whether this forbidding to pray means that God has utterly forsaken the nation. Jeremiah is trying to understand how this can be, given Israel’s history and relationship with the Lord. He explores the possible explanations for this. Has there been a change in God? Having entered into a covenant with Israel, has he utterly rejected the nation? Has God who once declared his love for this people (Deuteronomy 7:7), now come to loathe them? Is this discipline something which Judah can never recover from, something intended only to destroy and not to correct? He is still pleading for the nation, and strongly identifying with them. He will try to move the heart of God with these pitiful please, if it can be done. He knows that God is very merciful, and that there is no stronger plea than to appeal to his mercy. At the same time he presents Judah as helpless without the help of God. He appeals to the name of God, which is the revelation of his being. He argues that the reputation of God would be harmed if he was to cast off his people. It was hard for the Old Testament saints to understand how this could ever be. In Jeremiah’s mind, Israel the nation was the true people of God. He had no concept of the New Testament church. It took the coming of the Messiah and the preaching of the gospel and the crucifixion of our Lord by his own people; it took all this for the pious Jew to understand that the national covenant was never intended to last for ever. The eternal aspects of it were fulfilled in the remnant and in the spiritual seed of Abraham, those who are born of God, and who belong to the kingdom of heaven which is from above. ‘Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.’ The idols are without power; they can do nothing either to create or to direct events in creation. They are therefore not worthy of respect. Thers is no point in asking them for anything, because they cannot hear, cannot answer, have no power, and have no life within them. They are rightly called the vanities of the Gentiles, for the they are vain and they turn their adherents into empty and blind beings. Help comes from him who has made all out of nothing, by the word of his power, and therefore Jeremiah says, ‘we will wait upon thee.’ The majority did not look to God for help, so he is speaking for himself and for the small number of faithful men and women in Judah.