Jeremiah 12

Expository Notes of Dr. Thomas Constable - Jeremiah 12:17

If they would not respond to the Lord positively, the Lord promised to destroy these nations again (cf. Jeremiah 12:14; Zechariah 14:9; Zechariah 14:16-19)."This passage gives us a rare glimpse into the consternation and anguish that evil causes God. The anguish is especially acute for him when his own people are responsible for it. In these verses the Lord expresses both love and hate for his people, emotions we usually consider mutually exclusive, at least for God. When the Lord opened... read more

John Dummelow

John Dummelow's Commentary on the Bible - Jeremiah 12:1-17

1-4. The prosperity of the wicked perplexes Jeremiah.1. Wherefore, etc.] The question was one which much exercised men of pre-Christian times who had no clear view of any but temporal rewards and punishments. See Psalms 37, 39, 49, 73, and Job (specially Jeremiah 21:7) The plots of his fellow-townsmen at Anathoth (see Jeremiah 11) were probably the occasion of this outburst of Jeremiah’s. 2. Near in their mouth, etc.] They honour God with their lips but their heart is far from Him. 4. A drought... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12

XII.The sequence of the several sections is not very clear, and possibly we have a series of detailed prophecies put together without system. Jeremiah 12:1-3 seem to continue the address to the men of Anathoth, Jeremiah 12:4 points to a drought, Jeremiah 12:12 to the invasion of the Chaldeans, Jeremiah 12:14 to the “evil neighbours”—Edomites, Moabites, and others—who exulted in the fall of Judah. read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:1

(1) Yet let me talk with thee.—The soul of the prophet is vexed, as had been the soul of Job (Jeremiah 21:7), of Asaph (Psalms 73:0), and others, by the apparent anomalies of the divine government. He owns as a general truth that God is righteous, “yet,” he adds, I will speak (or argue) my cause (literally, causes) with Thee. He will question the divine Judge till his doubt is removed. And the question is the ever-recurring one, Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? (Comp. Psalms 37:1;... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:2

(2) Thou hast planted them.—The words express, of course, the questioning distrust of the prophet. The wicked flourish, so that one would think God had indeed planted them. Yet all the while they were mocking Him with hypocritical worship (here we have an echo of Isaiah 29:13), uttering His name with their lips while He was far from that innermost being which the Hebrew symbolised by the “reins.” read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:3

(3) Thou, O Lord, knowest me.—Like all faithful sufferers from evil-doers before and after him, the prophet appeals to the righteous Judge, who knows how falsely he has been accused. In words in which the natural impatience of suffering shows itself as clearly as in the complaints of Psalms 69, 109, he asks that the judgment may be immediate, open, terrible. As if recalling the very phrase which he had himself but lately used (Jeremiah 11:19), he prays that they too may be as “sheep for the... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:4

(4) How long shall the land mourn . . .—The Hebrew punctuation gives a different division, How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole field (i.e., all the open country) wither? For the wickedness of them that dwell therein, cattle and birds perish, for, say they, he (i.e., the prophet) will not see our latter end (i.e., we shall outlive him, though he prophesies our destruction). A slightly different reading, however, adopted by the LXX. and by some modern scholars, would give... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:5

(5) If thou hast run with the footmen.—The prophet is compelled to make answer to himself, and the voice of Jehovah is heard in his inmost soul rebuking his impatience. What are the petty troubles that fall on him compared with what others suffer, with what might come on himself? The thought is not unlike that with which St. Paul comforts the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 10:13), or what we find in Hebrews 12:4. The meaning of the first clause is plain enough. The man who was wearied in a... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:6

(6) Thy brethren.—It is not certain whether we are to think actually of the sons of the same father, or only of the men of Anathoth (Jeremiah 11:23), as belonging to the same section of the priesthood. The language of Jeremiah 9:5 favours the more literal rendering. In any case, it is interesting to note that the proverb which our Lord more than once quotes, “A prophet is not without honour save in his own country and in his own house” (Matthew 13:57; Luke 4:24; John 4:44), probably had its... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Jeremiah 12:7

(7) I have forsaken mine house.—The speaker is clearly Jehovah, but the connection with what precedes is not clear. Possibly we have, in this chapter, what in the writings of a poet would be called fragmentary pieces, written at intervals, and representing different phases of thought, and afterwards arranged without the devices of headings and titles and spaces with which modern bookmaking has made us familiar. So far as a sequence of thought is traceable, it is this, “Thou complainest of thine... read more

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