Jeremiah 22:23

captivity of Shallum, the son of Josiah, is declared to be irreversible, Jer 22:10-12 ; and the miserable and unlamented end of Jeconiah, contemptuously called Coniah, is foretold, Jer 22:13-19 . His family is threatened with the like captivity, and his seed declared to be for ever excluded from the throne, Jer 22:20-30 . Verse 1 Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak there this word - This is supposed by Dahler to have been published in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah. Verse 2 O king of Judah - thou, and thy servants - His ministers are here addressed, as chiefly governing the nation; and who had counselled Zedekiah to rebel. Verse 6 Thou art Gilead unto me, and the head of Lebanon - Perhaps in allusion, says Dahler, to the oaks of Gilead, and the cedars of Mount Lebanon, of which the palace was constructed. Lebanon was the highest mountain in Israel, and Gilead the richest and most fertile part of the country; and were, therefore, proper emblems of the reigning family. Though thou art the richest and most powerful, I, who raised thee up, can bring thee down and make thee a wilderness. Verse 7 They shall cut down thy choice cedars - The destruction of the country is expressed under the symbol of the destruction of a fine forest; a multitude of fellers come against it, each with his axe; and, there being no resistance, every tree is soon felled to the earth. "These destroyers," God says, "I have prepared, קדשתי kiddashti, I have sanctified - consecrated, to this work. They have their commission from me." Verse 8 Many nations shall pass - These words seem borrowed from Deu 29:22 , etc. Verse 10 Weep ye not for the dead - Josiah, dead in consequence of the wound he had received at Megiddo, in a battle with Pharaoh-necho, king of Egypt; but he died in peace with God. But weep sore for him that goeth away - Namely, Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, called below Shallum, whom Pharaoh-necho had carried captive into Egypt from which it was prophesied he should never return, 2Kgs 23:30-34 . He was called Shallum before he ascended the throne, and Jehoahaz afterwards; so his brother Eliakim changed his name to Jehoiakim, and Mattaniah to Zedekiah. Verse 13 Wo unto him that buildeth his house - These evils, charged against Jehoiakim, are nowhere else circumstantially related. We learn from 2Kgs 23:35-37 , that he taxed his subjects heavily, to give to Pharaoh-necho, king of Egypt: "He exacted the silver and gold of the people of the land, and did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord." The mode of taxation is here intimated; he took the wages of the hirelings, and caused the people to work without wages in his own buildings, etc. Verse 15 Shalt thou reign, etc - Dost thou think thou art a great king, because thou dwellest in a splendid palace? Verse 18 They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! - These words were no doubt the burden of some funeral dirge. Alas! a brother, who was our lord or governor, is gone. Alas, our sister! his Queen, who has lost her glory in losing her husband. הדה hodah is feminine, and must refer to the glory of the queen. The mournings in the east, and lamentations for the dead, are loud, vehement, and distressing. For a child or a parent grief is expressed in a variety of impassioned sentences, each ending with a burden like that in the text, "Ah my child!" "Ah my mother!" as the prophet in this place: הוי אחי hoi achi, "Ah my brother!" הוי אחות hoi achoth, "Ah sister!" הוי אדון hoi adon, "Ah lord!" הוי הדה hoi hodah "Ah the glory." Mr. Ward, in his Manners and Customs of the Hindoos, gives two examples of lamentation; one of a mother for the death of her son, one of a daughter for her departed mother. "When a woman," says he, "is overwhelmed with grief for the death of her child, she utters her grief in some such language as the following: - Ah, my Hureedas, where is he gone? - 'Ah my child, my child!' My golden image, Hureedas, who has taken? - 'Ah my child, my child!' I nourished and reared him, where is he gone? - 'Ah my child, my child!' Take me with thee. - 'Ah my child, my child!' He played round me like a golden top. - 'Ah my child, my child!' Like his face I never saw one. - 'Ah my child, my child!' The infant continually cried, Ma Ma! - 'Ah my child, my child!' Ah my child, crying, Ma! come into my lap. - 'Ah my child, my child!' Who shall now drink milk? - 'Ah my child, my child!' Who shall now stay in my lap? - 'Ah my child, my child!' Our support is gone! - 'Ah my child, my child!' "The lamentations for a mother are in some such strains as these: - Mother! where is she gone? - 'Ah my mother, my mother!' You are gone, but what have you left for me? - 'Ah my mother, my mother!' Whom shall I now call mother, mother? - 'Ah my mother, my mother!' Where shall I find such a mother? - 'Ah my mother, my mother!'" From the above we may conclude that the funeral lamentations, to which the prophet refers, generally ended in this way, in each of the verses or interrogatories. There is another intimation of this ancient and universal custom in 1Kgs 13:30 , where the old prophet, who had deceived the man of God, and who was afterwards slain by a lion, is represented as mourning over him, and saying, הוי אחי hoi achi, "Alas, my brother!" this being the burden of the lamentation which he had used on this occasion. Similar instances may be seen in other places, Jer 30:7 ; Eze 6:11 ; Joe 1:15 ; and particularly Amo 5:16 , Amo 5:17 , and Rev 18:10-19 . Verse 19 With the burial of an ass - Cast out, and left unburied, or buried without any funeral solemnities, and without such lamentations as the above. Verse 20 Go up to Lebanon - Probably Anti-Libanus, which, together with Bashan and Abarim, which we here translate passages, were on the way by which the captives should be led out of their own country. Verse 21 I spake unto thee in thy prosperity - In all states and circumstances I warned thee by my prophets; and thou wilt only be ashamed of thy conduct when thou shalt be stripped of all thy excellencies, and reduced to poverty and disgrace, Jer 22:22 . Verse 22 The wind shall eat up all thy pastors - A blast from God's mouth shall carry off thy kings, princes, prophets, and priests. Verse 23 How gracious shalt thou be - A strong irony. Verse 24 Though Coniah - Called Jeconiah, probably on ascending the throne. See on Jer 22:10 (note). The signet upon my right hand - The most precious seal, ring, or armlet. Though dearer to me than the most splendid gem to its possessor. Verse 26 I will cast thee out, and thy mother - See all this fulfilled, 2Kgs 24:12 , 2Kgs 24:13 . All were carried by Nebuchadnezzar into captivity together. Verse 28 Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? - These are probably the exclamations of the people, when they heard those solemn denunciations against their king and their country. Verse 29 O earth - These are the words of the prophet in reply: O land! unhappy land! desolated land! Hear the judgment of the Lord! Verse 30 Write ye this man childless - Though he had seven sons, 1Chr 3:17 , yet having no successor, he is to be entered on the genealogical tables as one without children for none of his posterity ever sat on the throne of David. Introduction Sequel of the discourse which commenced in the preceding chapter. The prophet denounces vengeance against the pastors of Israel who have scattered and destroyed the flock of the Lord, Jer 23:1 , Jer 23:2 . He concludes with gracious promises of deliverance from the Babylonish captivity, and

y lovers are destroyed. 21 I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear. This hath been thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not my voice. 22 The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness. 23 O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail! 24 As I live, saith the Lord , though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence; 25 And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. 26 And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die. 27 But to the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return. 28 Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not? 29 O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord . 30 Thus saith the Lord , Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah. This prophecy seems to have been calculated for the ungracious inglorious reign of Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, who succeeded him in the government, reigned but three months, and was then carried captive to Babylon, where he lived many years, ch. lii. 31 . We have, in these verses, a prophecy, I. Of the desolations of the kingdom, which were now hastening on apace, v. 20-23 . Jerusalem and Judah are here spoken to, or the Jewish state as a single person, and we have it here under a threefold character:—1. Very haughty in a day of peace and safety ( v. 21 ): " I spoke unto thee in thy prosperity, spoke by my servants the prophets, reproofs, admonitions, counsels, but thou saidst, I will not hear, I will not heed, thou obeyedst not my voice, and wast resolved that thou wouldst not, and hadst the front to tell me so." It is common for those that live at ease to live in contempt of the word of God. Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked. This is so much the worse that they had it by kind: This has been thy manner from thy youth. They were called transgressors from the womb, Isa. xlviii. 8 . 2. Very timorous upon the alarms of trouble ( v. 20 ): "When thou seest all thy lovers destroyed, when thou findest thy idols unable to help thee and thy foreign alliances failing thee, thou wilt then go up to Lebanon, and cry, as one undone and giving up all for lost, cry with a bitter cry; thou wilt cry, Help, help, or we are lost; thou wilt lift up thy voice in fearful shrieks upon Lebanon and Bashan, two high hills, in hope to be heard thence by the advantage of the rising ground. Thou wilt cry from the passages, from the roads, where thou wilt ever and anon be in distress." Thou wilt cry from Abarim (so some read it, as a proper name), a famous mountain in the border of Moab. "Thou wilt cry, as those that are in great consternation use to do, to all about thee; but in vain, for ( v. 22 ) the wind shall eat up all thy pastors, or rulers, that should protect and lead thee, and provide for thy safety; they shall be blasted, and withered, and brought to nothing, as buds and blossoms are by a bleak or freezing wind; they shall be devoured suddenly, insensibly, and irresistibly, as fruits by the wind. Thy lovers, that thou dependest upon and hast an affection for, shall go into captivity, and shall be so far from saving thee that they shall not be able to save themselves." 3. Very tame under the heavy and lasting pressures of trouble: "When there appears no relief from any of thy confederates, and thy own priests are at a loss, then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness, " v. 22 . Note, Many will never be ashamed of their sins till they are brought by them to the last extremity; and it is well if we get this good by our straits to be brought by them to confusion for our sins. The Jewish state is here called an inhabitant of Lebanon, because that famous forest was within their border ( v. 23 ), and all their country was wealthy, and well-guarded as with Lebanon's natural fastnesses; but so proud and haughty were they that they are said to make their nest in the cedars, where they thought themselves out of the reach of all danger, and whence they looked with contempt upon all about them. "But, how gracious wilt thou be when pangs come upon thee! Then thou wilt humble thyself before God and promise amendment. When thou art overthrown in stony places thou wilt be glad to hear those words which in thy prosperity thou wouldst not hear, Ps. cxli. 6 . Then thou wilt endeavour to make thyself acceptable with that God whom, before, thou madest light of." Note, Many have their pangs of piety who, when the pangs are over, show that they have no true piety. Some give another sense of it: "What will all thy pomp, and state, and wealth avail thee? What will become of it all, or what comfort shalt thou have of it, when thou shalt be in these distresses? No more than a woman in travail, full of pains and fears, can take comfort in her ornaments while she is in that condition." So Mr. Gataker. Note, Those that are proud of their worldly advantages would do well to consider how they will look when pangs come upon them, and how they will then have lost all their beauty. II. Here is a prophecy of the disgrace of the king; his name was Jeconiah, but he is here once and again called Coniah, in contempt. The prophet shortens or nicks his name, and gives him, as we say, a nickname, perhaps to denote that he should be despoiled of his dignity, that his reign should be shortened, and the number of his months cut off in the midst. Two instances of dishonour are here put upon him:— 1. He shall be carried away into captivity and shall spend and end his days in bondage. He was born to a crown, but it should quickly fall from his head, and he should exchange it for fetters. Observe the steps of this judgment. (1.) God will abandon him, v. 24 . The God of truth says it, and confirms it with an oath: " Though he were the signet upon my right hand (his predecessors have been so, and he might have been so if he had conducted himself well, but he being degenerated) I will pluck him thence. " The godly kings of Judah had been as signets on God's right hand, near and dear to him; he had gloried in them, and made use of them as instruments of his government, as the prince does of his signet-ring, or sign manual; but Coniah has made himself utterly unworthy of the honour, and therefore the privilege of his birth shall be no security to him; notwithstanding that, he shall be thrown off. Answerable to this threatening against Jeconiah is God's promise to Zerubbabel, when he made him his people's guide in their return out of captivity ( Hag. ii. 23 ): I will take thee, O Zerubbabel! my servant, and make thee as a signet. Those that think themselves as signets on God's right hand must not be secure, but fear lest they be plucked thence. (2.) The king of Babylon shall seize him. Those know not what enemies and mischiefs they lie exposed to who have thrown themselves out of God's protection, v. 25 . The Chaldeans are here said to be such as had a spite to Coniah; they sought his life; no less than that, they thought, would satisfy their rage; they were such as he had a dread of (they are those whose face thou fearest ) which would make it the more terrible to him to fall into their hands, especially when it was God himself that gave him into their hands. And, if God deliver him to them, who can deliver him from them? (3.) He and his family shall be carried to Babylon, where they shall wear out many tedious years of their lives in a miserable captivity— he and his mother ( v. 26 ), he and his seed ( v. 28 ), that is, he and all the royal family (for he had no children of his own when he went into captivity), or he and the children in his loins; they shall all be cast out to another country, to a strange country, a country where they were not born, nor such a country as that where they were born, a land which they know not, in which they have no acquaintance with whom to converse or from whom to expect any kindness. Thither they shall be carried, from a land where they were entitled to dominion, into a land where they shall be compelled to servitude. But have they no hopes of seeing their own country again? No: To the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return, v. 27 . They conducted themselves ill in it when they were in it, and therefore they shall never see it more. Jehoahaz was carried to Egypt, the land of the south, Jeconiah to Babylon, the land of the north, both far remote, the quite contrary way, and must never expect to meet again, nor either of them to breathe their native air again. Those that had abused the dominion they had over others were justly brought thus under the dominion of others. Those that had indulged and gratified their sinful desires, by their oppression, luxury, and cruelty, were justly denied the gratification of their innocent desire to see their own native country again. We may observe something very emphatic in that part of this threatening ( v. 26 ), In the country where you were not born, there shall you die. As there is a time to be born and a time to die, so there is a place to be born in and a place to die in. We know where we were born, but where we shall die we know not; it is enough that our God knows. Let it be our care that we die in Christ, and then it will be well with us, wherever we die, though it should be in a far country. (4.) This shall render him very mean and despicable in the eyes of all his neighbours. They shall be ready to say ( v. 28 ), " This is Coniah a despised broken idol? Yes, certainly he is, and much debased from what he was." [1.] Time was when he was dignified, nay, when he was almost deified. The people who had seen his father lately deposed were ready to adore him when they saw him upon the throne, but now he is a despised broken idol, which, when it was whole, was worshipped, but, when it is rotten and broken, is thrown by and despised, and nobody regards it, or remembers what it has been. Note, What is idolized will, first or last, be despised and broken; what is unjustly honoured will be justly contemned, and rivals with God will be the scorn of man. Whatever we idolize we shall be disappointed in and then shall despise. [2.] Time was when he was delighted in; but now he is a vessel in which is not pleasure, or to which there is no desire, either because grown out of fashion or because cracked or dirtied, and so rendered unserviceable. Those whom God has no pleasure in will, some time or other, be so mortified that men will have no pleasure in them. 2. He shall leave no posterity to inherit his honour. The prediction of this is ushered in with a solemn preface ( v. 29 ): O earth, earth, earth! hear the word of the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world take notice of these judgments of God upon a nation and a family that had been near and dear to him, and thence infer that God is impartial in the administration of justice. Or it is an appeal to the earth itself on which we tread, since those that dwell on earth are so deaf and careless, like that ( Isa. i. 2 ), Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! God's word, however slighted, will be heard; the earth itself will be made to hear it, and yield to it, when it, and all the works that are therein, shall be burnt up. Or it is a call to men that mind earthly things, that are swallowed up in those things and are inordinate in the pursuit of them; such have need to be called upon again and again, and a third time, to hear the word of the Lord. Or it is a call to men considered as mortal, of the earth, and hastening to the earth again. We all are so; earth we are, dust we are, and, in consideration of that, are concerned to hear and regard the word of the Lord, that, though we are earth, we may be found among those whose names are written in heaven. Now that which is here to be taken notice of is that Jeconiah is written childless ( v. 30 ), that is, as it follows, No man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David. In him the line of David was extinct as a royal line. Some think that he had children born in Babylon because mention is made of his seed being cast out there ( v. 28 ) and that they died before him. We read in the genealogy ( 1 Chron. iii. 17 ) of seven sons of Jeconiah Assir (that is, Jeconiah the captive) of whom Salathiel is the first. Some think that they were only his adopted sons, and that when it is said ( Matt. i. 12 ), Jeconiah begat Salathiel, no more is meant than that he bequeathed to him what claims and pretensions he had to the government, the rather because Salathiel is called the son of Neri of the house of Nathan, Luke iii. 27 , 31 . Whether he had children begotten, or only adopted, thus far he was childless that none of his seed ruled as kings in Judah. He was the Augustulus of that empire, in whom it determined. Whoever are childless, it is God that writes them so; and those who take no care to do good in their days cannot expect to prosper in their days. In this chapter the prophet, in God's name, is dealing his reproofs and threatenings, I. Among the careless princes, or

Lebanon - Jerusalem is called an inhabitant of Lebanon, because their houses were built of wood cut down out of the forest of Lebanon. Cedars - Their houses were built of the Cedars of Lebanon. How gracious - What favour wilt thou find when my judgments come upon thee, as the pains of a woman in travail come upon her.