Jeremiah16chapter 16

Jeremiah 16:1

“The word of the Lord came unto me, saying. The Targum is, the word of prophecy from the Lord: whether this is a new prophecy, or the former continued, is not certain; the latter seems probable. This introduction is omitted in the Septuagint and Arabic versions.”

Jeremiah 16:2

“Elijah lived a virgin life; so also did Elisha and many of the sons of the prophets. To Jeremiah the command came: "You will not take a wife." He had been sanctified in his mother's womb, and now he was forbidden to take a wife because the captivity was near. The apostle gives the same counsel in different words: "I think, therefore, that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely, that it is good for a person to be as he is." What is this distress that does away with the joys of wedlock?”

Jeremiah 16:2

“Thou shall not take thee a wife,.... Not because it was unlawful; for it was lawful for prophets to marry, and they did; but because it was not advisable, on account of the calamities and distresses which were coming upon the nation; which would be more bearable by him alone, than if he had a wife, which would increase his care, concern, and sorrow.”

Jeremiah 16:3-4

“As for those that have wives and children, 1. They will have such a clog upon them that they cannot flee from those deaths. A single man may make his escape and shift for his own safety, when he that has a wife and children can neither find means to convey with them nor find in his heart to go and leave them behind him.”

Jeremiah 16:4

“They shall die of grievous deaths,.... Such as the sword, famine, and pestilence. The Targum particularly adds famine. It may be rendered, "deaths of diseases, or sicknesses" (u); such as are brought on by long sickness and lingering distempers; by which a man consumes gradually, as by famine, and is not snatched away at once; and which are very grievous to bear.”

Jeremiah 16:4

“This is the import of this prophecy. It may however be asked, whether the Prophet was unmarried? But this has nothing to do with the subject, for he received this command in a vision; and though he might not have been unmarried, he might still have proclaimed this prophecy, that God had forbidden him to marry and to beget children.”

Jeremiah 16:5

“Enter not - Do not go to comfort such as mourn for any relations dead, (for their feastings upon those occasions were upon a consolatory account) those that die are most happy, for I will take away the peace of this people, and deprive them of all my mercy and loving-kindness.”

Jeremiah 16:6

“Nor cut themselves - A custom of the heathen forbidden to the Jews, Lev 19:28; Deu 14:1, and which appears now to have prevailed among them; because, having become idolaters, they conformed to all the customs of the heathen. They tore their hair, rent their garments, cut their hands, arms, and faces. These were not only signs of sorrow but were even supposed to give ease to the dead, and appease the angry deities.”

Jeremiah 16:6-7

“He had little reason to lament those who died now just before the judgments entered which he saw at the door, but rather to think those happy who were seasonable taken away from the evil to come. This was to be a type of what was coming, when there should be such universal confusion that all neighbourly friendly offices should be neglected.”

Jeremiah 16:7

“Neither shall men tear themselves,.... Either their flesh, or their clothes: or, "stretch out" (y); that is, their hands, and clap them together, and wring them, as persons in great distress do: or "divide", or "break", or "deal unto them" (z); that is, bread, as at their funeral feasts.”

Jeremiah 16:7

“Tear themselves - Better as in the margin; “break broad for them.” It was customary upon the death of a relative to fast, and for the friends and neighbors after a decent delay to come and comfort the mourner, and urge food upon him 2Sa 12:17; food was also distributed at funerals to the mourners, and to the poor. Cup of consolation - Marginal reference note.”

Jeremiah 16:7

“Deal bread - It was a custom among them, when they had any friend, that had lost his relations, to send them some meat (for among the Hebrew all things they ate were called bread) and then to go and sup with them, and speak comfortably to them. The cup - They were also wont to send wine, that they might forget their sorrows; this is called, The cup of consolation.”

Jeremiah 16:8

“Thou shalt not also go into the house of feasting - Funeral banquets were made to commemorate the dead, and comfort the surviving relatives; and the cup of consolation, strong mingled wine, was given to those who were deepest in distress, to divert their minds and to soothe their sorrows. These kinds of ceremonies were common among almost all the nations of the world on funeral occasions. The Canaanites, the Jews, the Persians, Arabians, New Zealanders, Huns, etc., etc.”

Jeremiah 16:8

“God called aloud to weeping, and mourning, and fasting; he was coming forth against them in his judgments; and it was time for them to humble themselves; and it well became the prophet who gave them the warning to give them an example of taking the warning, and complying with it, and so to make it appear that he did himself believe it.”

Jeremiah 16:9

“The voice of God's prophets was not heard, was not heeded, among them, and therefore no longer shall the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride, of the songs that used to grace the nuptials, be heard among them. Causes of Divine Judgments.”

Jeremiah 16:10

“Note, It is amazing to see how hardly sinners are brought to justify God and judge themselves when they are in trouble, and to own the iniquity and the sin that have procured them the trouble.”

Jeremiah 16:11

“The severe sentence passed upon them is the consequence of idolatry persisted in through many generations until it has finally deepened into national apostasy.”

Jeremiah 16:12

“And ye have done worse than your fathers,.... Not only committed the same sins, but greater, or, however, attended with more aggravating circumstances; they were wilfully and impudently done, and obstinately persisted in; and therefore deserving of the great evil of punishment pronounced against them. For, behold, ye walk everyone after the imagination of his evil heart; they walked not as the word of God directs, but as their own evil heart dictated; the imagination of which was evil, and that continually, Gen 6:”

Jeremiah 16:12

“And ye have done worse than your fathers - The sins of the fathers would not have been visited on the children, had they not followed their example, and become even worse than they.”

Jeremiah 16:13

“There is a mixture of mercy and judgment in these verses, and it is hard to know to which to apply some of the passages here--they are so interwoven, and some seem to look as far forward as the times of the gospel. God will certainly execute judgment upon them for their idolatries.”

Jeremiah 16:14

“These two verses, by promising a deliverance greater than that from Egypt, implied also a chastisement more terrible than the bondage in the iron furnace there. Instead of their being placed in one land, there was to be a scattering into the north and many other countries, followed finally by a restoration.”

Jeremiah 16:14-15

“They are cast out, but they are not cast off, they are not cast away. They shall be brought up from the land of the north, the land of their captivity, where they are held with a strong hand, and from all the lands whither they are driven, and where they seemed to be lost and buried in the crowd; nay, I will bring them again into their own land, and settle them there.”

Jeremiah 16:15

“But the Lord liveth,.... Or they shall swear by the living Lord; or declare his power, as the Targum: "that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north"; that is, from Babylon, which lay north of Judea. The Jews (d) gather from hence, that the land of Israel was higher than all other lands, because it is said, that "brought up", or "caused to ascend"; as out of the land of Egypt as before, so out of all other lands.”

Jeremiah 16:15

“The land of the north - Chaldea: and their deliverance thence will be as remarkable as the deliverance of their fathers from the land of Egypt.”

Jeremiah 16:15

“In this there was more of pardoning mercy (the most glorious branch of divine mercy) than in that; for their captivity in Babylon had more in it of the punishment of sin than their bondage in Egypt; and therefore that which comforts Zion in her deliverance out of Babylon is this, that her iniquity is pardoned, Isa. xl.”

Jeremiah 16:16

"He rains on the wicked snares." Without any doubt, it is the Lord who contrives snares for sinners, in order to entrap those who abuse their freedom and to compel them to tread the right path under his bridle, thereby making it possible for them to advance through him who says, "I am the way." Wherefore, in Jeremiah, the Lord sends fishers and hunters to spread nets for the lost fish tossed about in whirlpools and to hunt down and save the beasts that wander through mountains and hills.

Jeremiah 16:16

“I will send for many fishers - for many hunters - I shall raise up enemies against them some of whom shall destroy them by wiles, and others shall ruin them by violence. This seems to be the meaning of these symbolical fishers and hunters.”

Jeremiah 16:16

“It is remarkable, the same image is used in a good sense of the Jews' restoration, implying that just as their enemies were employed by God to take them in hand for destruction, so the same shall be employed for their restoration (Eze 47:9, 10).”

Jeremiah 16:17

“For "my eyes," he says, "are upon all their ways." Upon such as these, who make their haunts in the mountains and in the hills and in the clefts of the rocks, upon all their ways God has his eyes. "And they were not hidden from my face," such as these; for the wicked are hidden from the face of God.”

Jeremiah 16:18

The following words are going to produce a struggle for us. For whether we understand them as consequent, we shall take careful thought concerning the recompense of sins; or whether they seem not to be consequent upon the things previously set forth concerning those fished up and hunted, in that way too they cast us into no ordinary struggle. For he says: "And I will first repay double their iniquities and their sins, whereby they profaned my land with the carcasses of their abominations and with their lawlessnesses, with which they filled my inheritance."

Jeremiah 16:18

“I will recompense - Before I will restore them, I will plentifully punish them, (for so double here signifies, not the double of what their sins deserve.) Defiled - By their idolatry, blood and cruelty.”

Jeremiah 16:19

“The Gentiles shall come - Even the days shall come when the Gentiles themselves, ashamed of their confidence, shall renounce their idols, and acknowledge that their fathers had believed lies, and worshipped vanities. This may be a prediction of the calling of the Gentiles by the Gospel of Christ; if so, it is a light amidst much darkness. In such dismal accounts there is need of some gracious promise relative to an amended state of the world.”

Jeremiah 16:20

“Shall a man make gods unto himself? - Can any be so silly, and so preposterously absurd? Yes, fallen man is capable of any thing that is base, mean, vile, and wicked, till influenced and converted by the grace of Christ.”

Jeremiah 16:21

“This once - Whether we consider the greatness of the national disgrace and suffering caused by it, or its effect upon the mind of the Jews, the burning of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, followed by the captivity of the people at Babylon, stands out as the greatest manifestation of God’s “hand” in all His dealings with them.”

Jeremiah 16:21

“Note, So stupid are we that nothing less than the mighty hand of divine grace, known experimentally, can make us know rightly the name of God as it is revealed to us. Their deliverance out of captivity shall be a type and figure of this great salvation to be wrought out by the Messiah, who shall gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.”