CHAPTER 4
"Break up your fallow ground"
GOD continues the call, by the prophet, of Israel and Judah to repentance, using figures of speech related to husbandry and to the ordinance of circumcision. He threatens the invasion of the land by the Babylonians and the reduction of the Jewish State to chaos, yet with the assurance that He will not make a full end. But a time of travail for the daughter of Zion was near.
"If thou wilt return, O Israel,saith the Lord, return unto me; and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. And thou shalt swear, The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory" (verses 1-2).
The "abominations" were in particular the worship of Baal with the licentious and cruel practices already spoken of. There was no hope for Israel or the nations while such things were current. The first principle of "the gospel of the kingdom of God" is that all nations shall be blessed in Abraham and his seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3: 8, 16). Thiscould never come to pass till Israel was purged and restored, and the fulness of the Gentiles brought in (Rom. 11: 25, 26). Then "all Israel shall be saved".
"Thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns'' (verse 3).
The figure was simple and intelligible, and often used by the prophets. Isaiah had threatened the kingdom of Judah in the days of Ahaz with invasion "because all the land shall become briars and thorns" (Isa. 7: 24). But it was said at the same time that the better cultivated ground should be spared. And when Immanuel came, of whom Isaiah at that time spoke to "the house of David", he likewise used this figure of various kinds of soil. His parable of the sower (Matt. 13: 2-9) which he himself expounded to his disciples (verses 19-23) was but the more elaborate appeal of God to humanity by His beloved Son. By another parable "the field is the world" (verse 38), the area of the gospel was widening out to the nations, and all these parables were to attain celebrity far beyond the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. "Sow not among thorns", said the spirit of God to Judah and Jerusalem by Jeremiah. "He that received the seed (word of the kingdom) among the thorns" (said Jesus) "is he that heareth the word; and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful". And an apostle exhorts those who "have tasted the good word of God" to advance beyond first-principles and "go on unto perfection". "For the earth that drinketh in the rain which cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. But that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to burned " (Heb. 6: 7-8).
"Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskin of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings" (verse 4).
Here the figure of the exhortation is changed, but the substance is the same, or similar. It was addressed to circumcised persons; but it is very evident that there was in the sight of God an uncircumcision of the circumcised. Paul reminded the Romans that the faith of Abraham was reckoned to him for righteousness when he was as yet uncircumcised. "And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, whichbe had being yet uncircumcised" (Rom. 4:11, 12). The literal observance of the rite was stringently required by God, the uncircumcised was to "be cut off from his people" (Gen. 17: 14). The neglect of Moses to circumcise his younger son nearly cost him (or Eliezer) his life (Exod. 4: 24, 25).
Nevertheless the mere outward form, apart from the faith and works of Abraham, was "nothing", as Paul declared (1 Cor. 7: 19; Gal. 5: 6; Rom. 2: 25-29). Such faithless and disobedient Jews were "uncircumcised in heart and ears", as Stephen told them (Acts 7:51). They persecuted the prophets and slew Jesus. When the "inhabitants of Jerusalem" found fault with Jesus for healing a man on the sabbath day (John 7: 21-23), he told them that none of them kept the law that Moses had given them. "Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers); and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?"
This incident illustrates the frame of mind of Jeremiah's contemporary "inhabitants of Jerusalem", who similarly withstood him, and were similarly rebuked by him, in the word of the Lord. The substance of "the token of the covenant" was "the putting off of the body of the sins ofthe flesh by the circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2: 11). This is accomplished symbolically in the baptism into Christ of repentant believers of the gospel that he preached. Such are said to be "circumcised with the circumcision made without hands... buried with him in baptism, wherein ye are risen with him, through faith in the operation of God who hath raised him from the dead". All this was signified beforehand in "the covenant of circumcision" that God gave to Abraham, and evidently applies to all "Abraham's seed", whether of Jewish or Gentile extraction according to the flesh. All "Jews inwardly" will read God's exhortation to Judah and Jerusalem by Jeremiah in the spirit of self-examination, lest they too become the objects of "the fury of the Lord".
Foreseeing the heedlessness of Judah and Jerusalem, judgment was divinely proclaimed against them.
"Declare ye in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow ye the trumpet in the land; cry, gather together, and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities. Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction. The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant" (verses 5-7).
The "lion" destroyer of the Gentiles in question appears to be "Nebuchadrezzar my servant" of chapter 25: 9, to whom Daniel presently revealed the fate of the kingdom of men, and whose dominion, "in the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon", Daniel saw in the night visions to be "like a lion" (Dan. 7: 1-4). Later, in the "books" which Daniel read and partly "understood" (Dan. 9: 1,2), Jeremiah wrote "the word of the Lord against Babylon" (Jer. 50: 1), in which he said, "Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away: first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and last this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones" (verse 17).
The monumental symbolic "lions" of both these powers are familiar to us through the explorations of the last century, and together with the long-continued desolation of the land attest the truth of the word of God. In these "latter days" some Gentile "lions" are friendly to Israel, and in Israel's land challenge the northern spoiler (Ezek. 38: 13). And by and by "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" will overcome all his enemies.
Jeremiah is in many respects "a man of sign", representing the Lord Jesus Christ. He is so in his lamentations over Judah and Jerusalem. Young and retiring, it was a great grief of mind to him to have to proclaim "destruction upon destruction".
"My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, 0 my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?" (verses 19-21).
There were many years' more testimony before Jeremiah saw the final "destruction" by Nebuchadnezzar; but like Jesus he saw the end by the spirit with painful clearness, and was "straitened till it was accomplished".
The figure of primeval chaos is introduced here, as in Isaiah, to denote the utter overthrow of the kingdom of Judah.
“Ibeheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form and void (Thohuvavolut, ' waste and void '— R.V.); and the heavens and they had no light. 1 beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved to and fro (R.V.). I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heaven were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place (the Carmel) was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the Lord said, The whole landshall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end" (verses 23-27).
The expression "waste and void" is the same as in Gen. 1: 2, and similar language is found in Isaiah's denunciation of Judah and Jerusalem (24: 1). There he says, "The Lord maketh the earth (' land,' verse 3) empty",— Eretz Israel, as the Jews now call it. The English words "earth" and "land", both in Isaiah and Jeremiah, represent the one Hebrew word eretz. Isaiah in verse 10 calls Jerusalem "the city of confusion" (thohu). But as in Jeremiah there was hope in Israel's end, for Isaiah's vision here ends with "the Lord reigning in mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before his ancients gloriously".
It is symptomatic of the temper of modern criticism that it does not in the least believe this. Thus a standard comment on Jer. 4: 27 runs as follows:—"This clause is probably added by a later hand (so perhaps is verse 10), for not only does it interrupt the metre in the original, but it also breaks the connection between the pronouncements of verses 27, 28".
Yet there is Israel still with us, and actually going back to the land in these latter days ; and nothing is plainer in the prophets than God's declaration that He will not make a full end of Israel, but will save him with "everlasting salvation" (Isa. 45: 17 ; Jer. 30: 11 ; Ezek. 37: 28 ; Dan. 12: 1 ; Hos. 3:5; etc.).