Jeremiah (1-31) 9:13 Commentary and Bible Study

How great was God’s patience towards Israel! How many times he had warned them, and sent his prophets to them, and given them every opportunity to turn from their evil ways! He had set his law before them again and again. When we ignore the correction of the Lord and go on doing the same thing, even though he has warned us in the clearest possible terms, we reach the point where he says, enough. It is true that none will turn unless the Spirit works in the heart, and so God was not surprised that they behaved in this way, but among God dealt with Israel in this way as a demonstration of the intransigence of the human heart. As an unconverted people, they were no better than an of the other unbelieving nations. The light that they had received made them more guilty that others who had less light. They owed God obedience as his creatures, but they also owed God obedience as the people who had been redeemed physically out of Egypt. Furthermore they owed him reverence and worship and thanks as the one people on earth with whom he had made a covenant, and to whom he had given his laws and the temple worship. This was a privilege which no other nation had, and yet they walked after the imagination of their own hearts, and after Baalim. They carried doing evil as their fathers had done, and did not learn from the judgments that came upon their fathers. The time had therefore come when God was going to punish them as he had never punished them before. He was going to bring catastrophe on the nation, which would appear to be final, and yet there were promises included in what the prophets said, which showed that a remnant would return from Babylon, giving the spiritual a measure of hope in all this confusion. But the majority it would seem that God fed them with bitter wormwood, and gave the gall or poison to drink.They had chosen the gods of the nations around them, and so according to justice God would scatter them among people even further afield who they did not know. How great a judgment that was on Israel! To lose the land which they had been given, and been enabled to occupy with the help of God; to have God become silent and unresponsive to their prayers for help, and remove his protection from them which had been promised! This was to be the final and most severe of the judgments threatened on the nation so long ago by Moses. ‘And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. ⁶⁵ And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.’ (Deuteronomy 28:64-65).