THOUGH all around may perish in the governmental dealings of God, the believer has yet Himself as his bulwark; God will not forsake those who trust in Him. So the sorrowing Jeremiah found after witnessing the burning of Jerusalem, including the temple that Solomon had built, and the breaking down of the city’s walls. He had been singled out for exceptional treatment by the king of Babylon (verses 11, 12, chapter 39) through God’s overruling, and was now set free at Ramah, the place of weeping (chapter 31, verse 15), 5 miles north of Jerusalem. We are not told what “word” (verse 1) it was that God gave to His servant, but it must have been-a word of encouragement for that dark hour in. Judah’s history. Our thoughts turn to the apostle Paul, when, in similar case, his path of service apparently ended (See Acts 23:11).
The Babylonian soldier was more intelligent than the leaders of Judah had been, in regard to the cause of Jerusalem’s downfall (verses 2 and 3). And we may say, the world is always ready to point out the inconsistencies and faults and even grievous sins into which believers, or those who only pro-fess to be Christians, fall. When the finger can thus be pointed at a believer, the power of his testimony is gone. Judah’s sins were of the blackest, though Jeremiah had not shared in them; nevertheless, silence became him before Nebuzar-adan. Jeremiah was in the blessed place of one who walked with God, though the nation outdid all others in evil.
The prophet chose to remain amid the desolation of Judah’s land, rather than to seek the security and comfort which Babylon could afford him. And in this we may well judge that he had the mind of God. Ezekiel was among the captives transported to Babylonia 11 years before this, and Daniel had now been in the king’s palace 18 years, each serving God in his different place and circumstances. There were left in the land of Judah, and near it, certain children of Israel, and among these Jeremiah appears to have finished his course, a witness for God and against themselves.
In verse 5, “reward” is, in the present day meaning of words, “a present”, given to Jeremiah on leaving the party bound for Babylon. Verse 6 reveals the presence in the land, of men of Judah who had, by reason of being outside of Jerusalem and the other towns, escaped the hand of the king of Babylon; so also does verse 11 bring out the fact that there were others living in the adjoining countries of Moab, Ammon, and Edom, and in other lands, who now returned to the land of Israel. All these came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, a place a few miles north of Jerusalem whose location is not now exactly known (see 2 Chron. 16:6 which may refer to the place of that name to which Samuel called the children of Israel; 1 Samuel 7 and 10). The state before God of these people—one trusts there were exceptions, however—was bad indeed, as we shall Not all the miseries that had come on their king and nation, under God’s judgment because of the almost universal turning to idolatry and the other evil ways of the heathen, moved these to return to the true God. Does the reader know what will cause men to turn to God?
A plot of the king of Amnion to have Gedaliah killed (verse 14) became known, and Johanan the son of Kareah (whose after life does not commend him) warned him, but in vain., as the next chapter shows. Why should the Ammonite king wish to put an end to the man left in charge of Judah’s poor and feeble few? Hatred of the people of God, and desire to possess their land may have been the reason (see Ezek. 25:1-7 and 2 Chron. 20:10,11).
The human heart, where God is not known, is capable of anything, but the day of judgment will come for all who have not salvation through Christ.
ML-03/31/1935