Jeremiah (1-31) 15:5 Commentary and Bible Study

‘For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall go aside to ask how thou doest?’ No one is going to pity them or come to their aid, or even enquire how they are doing. The Lord has abandoned them, and they have no other friends. ‘Thou hast forsaken me, saith the LORD, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting.’ They have tried his patience again and again, and have been given so many opportunities to turn from their ways. They have proven the stubbornness of their hearts, and shown how impossible it is for them to improve.‘And I will fan them with a fan’, or as most modern versions helpfully, usually translate it, ‘I will fan them with a winnowing fork’, and the picture is of a harvest and then the winnowing process. The corn crop is tossed into the air to blow away the chaff, and the corn cannot resist this processing as it is hurled in the air. The majority of the people are represented as this worthless chaff which is blown away. That is a picture of what will happen to the troops of Judah. They will be swept aside, and just hurled in the air by the Babylonian oppressor. This will take place at the gates of the land, everywhere that the enemy enters the land.‘I will bereave them of children.’ We might recoil a little when we read these constant references to children, but remember what is intended is the soldiers. The children of the people, the young men who are out there, trying to form some hopeless and belated defence; they will just be thrown aside. You won't have a succeeding generation as far as all those soldiers are concerned. ‘I will destroy my people, since they return not from their ways.’ The remnant was saved, but the majority of the nation was left to the hardness of their own hearts. They did not return from their ways, because they were in bondage to their sins, and could not come to God without the influence of his Spirit. But God is free to have mercy on some and to harden others. So the passage goes on describing what will come of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Of course, the invasion took place in three stages, starting in 605 BC, then 597 BC, and then the third stage in 586 BC. There were three attacks, culminating in the final, the third over a period of years, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and most of the people went into captivity. This is constantly prophesied by Jeremiah, who is even overwhelmed in the process as he speaks of these things. And there are some very sad verses here. ‘Their widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas: I have brought upon them against the mother of the young men a spoiler at noonday: I have caused him to fall upon it suddenly, and terrors upon the city.’ Two terrible consequences of the future slaughter are referred to in the verse. The wives would be bereft of their husbands, and the mothers would be bereft of their sons, the young men contracted into the army to engage in this hopeless fight against the enemy. They would all be killed in battle. The spoiler comes at noonday, because the terrible work of destruction is carried out on the battle field for all to see.‘She that hath borne seven.’ Why mention a mother who has had seven children? Because that was regarded as the ultimate blessing on a family: for a mother to have had seven children, the perfect number. But no matter how blessed she may think herself, as an idolater and part of a wayward nation she will languish, she may lose them all to the attackers when they come in and all the young men perish in the fighting. On hearing this news the mothers are become as dead people even while they live, and it is as if the sun has stopped shining in the middle of the day. She will be ashamed at the calamity which has overtaken her.