Jeremiah 23:18 - Exposition

For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord ; rather, in the council . This verse is connected with Jeremiah 23:16 ; it gives the reason why the false prophets were not to be listened to. None of them had been admitted to the secret council of the Lord; the interrogation is here a form of denial. "To stand in the council" is not the same as "to sit" ( Psalms 1:1 ); the latter phrase implies taking an active part in the consultations. It is specially applicable to the true prophets, according to Jeremiah 23:22 , and this, as we gather from other passages, m a twofold sense. Sometimes the prophets had visions, in which their inner eye was granted a sight of Jehovah in consultation with his trusted servants ( Isaiah 6:1 , comp. Isaiah 6:8 ; 1 Kings 22:19 ); and the words of Eliphaz, "Weft thou listening in the council of God?" ( Job 15:8 ), appear to be descriptive of a similar experience. But the phrase may also be used in a wider sense of entirely unecstatic revelations. Amos says ( Amos 3:7 ), "Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret counsel unto his servants the prophets; ' and a psalmist extends the term "secret counsel" to the communion which God grants to the pious in general ( Psalms 25:14 ; comp. Proverbs 3:32 ). Thus there is no hard and-fast line between the experiences of the prophets and those of humbler believers. In so far as the latter are "disciples of Jehovah" ( Isaiah 54:13 ), they too may be truly said to "stand," at least in the doorway, "in the council of Jehovah;" just as a well-known collect inherited from the Latin Church beseeches that "by God's holy inspiration we may think those things that he good." Who hath marked his word ? A Jewish tradition, represented by the marginal notes in the Hebrew Bible, has taken offence at this variation in the expression, and would correct the reading to "my word." But such changes of person are of frequent occurrence, and we know that the prophets were thoroughly assured that the word which they spoke was not theirs, but that of him who sent them.