Verse 5
5. If… they have wearied thee In this beautiful verse Jehovah rebukes Jeremiah’s impatience. It consists of two proverbial sayings, unlike in form and specific import, but alike relevant to the object of the address. The present trials of Jeremiah at Anathoth are a mere running with foot-men, but there will soon be a contending with horses. And if he can be tranquil and truthful only in a land of peace, where there is no difficulty and no danger, how can he tread the jungly banks of the Jordan, where is the lair of ravenous beasts? In this God foreshadows the prophet’s swiftly-coming trials. See Jeremiah 26:8-9; Jeremiah 32:2; Jeremiah 38:8. What be was then experiencing was but the beginning of sorrows merely an ordinary trial as compared with the appalling calamities before him.
Swelling of Jordan Literally, pride of Jordan. The same phrase is used in Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:44, and in Zechariah 11:3, in all of which places it is mentioned as the haunt of lions. Hence it cannot mean, as the Authorized Version has it, the “swelling,” or inundation, “of Jordan,” but rather the jungly thicket on its banks.
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