Jeremiah 17:19-20

EXHORTATION TO HALLOW THE SABBATH Jeremiah 17:19-27.

19, 20. The connexion here is certainly not close: but the theme introduced is related to the general drift in that it lays bare another of the causes of Judah’s ruin.

Gate of the children of the people Was this a gate of the city or the temple? As we find elsewhere no intimation of a gate with such a designation, we must fall back on general conjecture. The force of the phrase would seem to be, the people’s gate; and yet it is said that the kings of Judah come in… by these gates. This would suggest a gate into the people’s court of the sanctuary, the priests gaining admission to their court by means of another gate. The “children of the people,” then, must mean the people as distinguished from the priests; or, in other words, the laity. It is possible that even then the traffic by which the temple was defiled in our Lord’s time had commenced, and that there was a violation of the law of the sabbath even at the sanctuary itself.