Bible Commentaries
Jeremiah 30

Verses 1-26

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THE PROPHECY OF JEREMIAH ON THE RESTORATION

Jeremiah 30-33

This prophecy may be called Jeremiah’s messianic prophecy, or the prophecy of the blessed age, the messianic age, that glorious age that was to come. Most of the teaching of Jeremiah up to this point is permeated with the note of sadness and of doom, the theme of which is destruction. From this Jeremiah might be called a thorough-going pessimist, but here we shall see that he was anything but a pessimist. He was one of the greatest optimists. When his nation seemed so determined to go on in sin and rebellion against God and hence to destruction, Jeremiah could be nothing but a pessimist, so far as the immediate future of his country was concerned. There is such a thing as a sane and sensible pessimism. The man who is a pessimist when he sees that sin is unbridled in its sway over the people, is the only man who takes a sane view of the situation. But in this passage we will see that Jeremiah was one of the greatest optimists that the world ever saw.

Blessed is the man who can mediate between the pessimist and the optimist. All the prophecies concerning the messianic age, and the restoration from the exile to Palestine were optimistic. Amos was a pre-exilic prophet, and he prophesied a return of the Jews and a glorious age; so did Hosea, Isaiah, Joel, Micah, and Zephaniah. All of these pictured the return to Jerusalem and the worship in Mount Zion. Isaiah puts it in the form of a reign of David’s son over a true and righteous Israel, at the time of the restoration from the Exile in Babylon. Joel pictures the messianic age and we are told in Acts 2 when it was fulfilled. Peter there declares that Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled in what was enacted at that time. Ezekiel pictures it also as a restored nation and a restored theocracy in Jeremiah 40-48.

Now, let us consider what Jeremiah has to say concerning the Jews and their glorious restoration. In these four chapters (Jeremiah 30-33) we have three great subjects:

1. The triumphal hymn of Israel’s salvation (Jeremiah 30-31)

2. The story of the purchase of a field by Jeremiah during his imprisonment, and the explanation (Jeremiah 32)

3. The promise of the restoration with the renewed glory of the house of David and the Levitical priesthood (Jeremiah 33)

Observe that this prophecy is not dated. It merely says, "The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah." It is altogether likely that it came in the latter part of the reign of Zedekiah, possibly during the imprisonment in the court of the guard, or it may have occurred a little earlier than that.

In the introduction the prophet is commanded to write these things (Jeremiah 30:1-3). The fact that God commanded Jeremiah to write this messianic prophecy shows that he put considerable value upon it and that he intended it to be preserved for his people, Israel. He said, "The days will come, saith Jehovah, that I will turn again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah; and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave their fathers, and they shall possess it." This is the essence of the prophecy contained in Jeremiah 30-31.

The prophecy relative to Judah in Jeremiah 30:4-11 is that there shall be an end of Judah’s troubles, for the foreign domination shall cease. Judah is pictured here as sorely troubled. Notice verse Jeremiah 30:5: "We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace." Then he pictures the nation in that figure, which is so many times used in the Scriptures, as in the pain of travail. Verse Jeremiah 30:7: "For that day is great, so that none is like unto it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble.” Then he adds, "But he shall be saved out of it." In verse Jeremiah 30:8: he describes how the foreign domination of Babylon shall be broken off. Verse Jeremiah 30:9: "They shall serve Jehovah their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them."

Of course, this is not David himself, in a literal sense, that shall be raised up. It means that one of David’s royal posterity shall reign over Israel. Israel shall have her kingdom restored and on the throne a king of the old royal line. In a large measure that promise was fulfilled in David’s greater son, Jesus Christ. In Jeremiah 30:10 he calls Israel by the name of "Servant," the word used so often in Isaiah 40-66, and promises return and rest. Jeremiah 30:11: "I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, but I will not make a full end of thee; but I will correct thee in judgment, and will in no wise leave thee unpunished."

Judah is pictured in Jeremiah 30:12-17 as incurably wounded. The hurt of the cities of Judah is incurably deep but she shall be restored to health. Verse Jeremiah 30:12: "Thy hurt is incurable, and thy wound grievous," therefore punishment must come to Judah. Then he pictures her as being despised among the nations, forgotten by her lovers, i.e., all those nations whom she followed after strange gods. He adds that their chastisement was a cruel one, but that it was because of the greatness of their iniquity; because their sins were so increased. Jeremiah 30:15 adds: "Why criest thou for thy hurt?" There is no use crying. Why do you cry unto me? "Thy pain is incurable." It was all because of the greatness of their iniquity. Verse Jeremiah 30:16: "They that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity." Verse Jeremiah 30:17: "I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds."

There is a promise respecting Jerusalem and other cities of Judah in Jeremiah 30:18-22. The city shall be rebuilt and shall be prosperous. Verse Jeremiah 30:18: "And the city shall be builded upon its own hill, and the palace shall be inhabited after its own manner." Now, that was particularly fulfilled under Ezra and Nehemiah, in their later history. Jeremiah 30:19 describes the happiness and merriment of the people. Jeremiah 30:20 says, "Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their congregation shall be established before me." Verse Jeremiah 30:21: "Their princes shall be of themselves and their ruler shall proceed from the midst of them." He shall be of the royal line; shall be of themselves. Their rulers shall proceed from their own blood. They shall be relieved from the domination of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon.

The prophecy of Jeremiah 30:23-24 is that there shall be a sweeping tempest upon her enemies: "Behold, the tempest of Jehovah, even his wrath, is gone forth, a sweeping tempest: it shall burst upon the head of the wicked." This undoubtedly refers to the nations that have harassed Judah so long.

The picture found in Jeremiah 31:1-6 is that Israel shall be restored to the worship of their own God, Jehovah. Verse I: "I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people." This was true when God brought them forth from Chaldea and from Egypt after the exile. The great motive expressed is that God might be their God and they his people. In the glory of the restoration he says, "I will be the God of all the families of Israel." In Jeremiah 31:3 we come to a great and glorious passage, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." That is a great text. We have here a vision of the fidelity and love of Jehovah for his people. He loves forever. "With lovingkindness have I drawn thee." That was true in Egypt. He drew them to himself. It will be true again when he shall draw them from among the nations. Jehovah loves the people of Israel now with the same jealous love as of old, and he is drawing them. The time is coming when he will draw them together to him with this everlasting love. This same truth applies to all Christians of the world, both Jew and Gentile.

Samaria shall be resettled and repeopled: "Again shalt thou plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria. . . . For there shall be a day that the watchman upon the hills of Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto Jehovah our God." Which means that there will be watchmen who will watch for the rising of the new moon and the time of the feasts, and then the word will go from mouth to mouth and the people will all observe the feasts together. Now, that prophecy has never been literally fulfilled.

Samaria was peopled by aliens from Babylon and Assyria mixed with Jews and when the Jews returned from the exile, these people wanted to help them in the work of rebuilding, but they were spurned. This made the Samaritans the bitter enemies of the Jews and of their leaders. In Jesus’ time "the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans," but many of them were converted in Christ’s ministry and through the apostles after Pentecost. The future will determine the glories of this prophecy.

There is a great promise in Jeremiah 31:7-9. A great company shall return from the north. Verse Jeremiah 31:8: "Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, and the woman with child." Verse Jeremiah 9: "I will cause them to walk by rivers of water, in a straight way wherein they shall not stumble; for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first born."

The announcement in Jeremiah 31:10-14 is that this return shall be proclaimed to the nations. This passage reminds us very much of Isaiah 40. The expressions are almost identical. Note the clause in Jeremiah 31:10 which is almost the same in both books, "As a shepherd doth his flock." Then in verse Jeremiah 31:12: "They shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow unto the goodness of Jehovah, to the grain, and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden." That is a beautiful picture; the people coming shall be like that of a flowing stream hurrying on to an experience of the goodness of Jehovah. All the nations shall see it.

And mourning Ephraim shall be comforted and restored (Jeremiah 31:15-20). Rachel is heard weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted. Rachel was the mother of Joseph and he was the father of Ephraim, the leading tribe of the Northern Kingdom, which finally absorbed all the rest of the tribes of that division of the kingdom west of the Jordan. Hosea calls Israel Ephraim. Rachel weeping over her children is a pathetic picture of the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, but there is hope for it. She shall not weep forever. Verse Jeremiah 31:16: "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith Jehovah: and they shall come again from the land of the enemy." Then he goes on to describe the repentance of Ephraim. Jeremiah 31:20 sounds much like Hosea in his great prophecy. Here Jeremiah says, "Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a darling child?"

In the exhortation in Jeremiah 31:21-22 the wanderer is asked to return. Speaking to Israel, he says, "Set thee up waymarks, make thee guide-posts; set thy heart toward the highway, even the way thou wentest." Jeremiah 31:22 is a remarkable prophecy: "How long wilt thou go hither and thither, O thou backsliding daughter? For Jehovah hath created a new thing in the earth: A woman shall encompass a man." In Jeremiah’s time the man must encompass the woman. But this prophecy predicts that there is going to be a new state of things: "A woman shall encompass a man," shall surround him, that is, she shall win him and also be his protector and safeguard. The Spiritual application of that seems to be that the time will come when Israel, this backsliding and wandering woman, shall be changed; shall be different; she shall have a new disposition. Instead of God having to go after her and surround her and induce her to keep herself true to him, she will take the initiative; she will surround the Lord and shall be true to him; shall go after him, and meet him more than half way. That was true to some extent when they came back from the exile. They were true to God and protected his cause, but the larger fulfilment is doubtless yet to come.

The prophecy as to the life of Israel after the restoration (Jeremiah 31:23-26) shows that the life of restored Israel shall be happy and blessed. Note verse Jeremiah 31:23: "Jehovah bless thee, O habitation of righteousness, O mountain of holiness." What a magnificent description of the city is that. That prophecy was fulfilled only to a very slight degree after the return from exile. Its true fulfilment is spiritual. Jeremiah was much pleased with the vision.

There shall be great material prosperity for the renewed people and there shall be individual responsibility. Great prosperity is shown in the verse Jeremiah 31:27: "I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast." The idea there is that it is going to be so thickly populated that it will be literally sown with men and with beasts, like a field. Then in Jeremiah 31:29, "In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge." That was a proverb based upon the fact that because of the father’s sins the children suffered. They kept saying that in the exile, because a multitude of those who were in exile never sinned as their fathers did, and had to suffer for the wickedness and sins of their fathers. Hence they kept saying, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge." They were suffering for the iniquities of their fathers, not their own. There was a note of bitterness and complaint in it. They regarded the law as unjust. The great law of individual responsibility is here asserted. That doctrine is worked out with great clearness in Ezekiel 18.

In the blessings of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34) we have the climax, the greatest of all Jeremiah’s prophecies. This is indeed the high-water mark of all the Old Testament prophecy. Jeremiah had come to the conclusion that the heart of the man was deceitful and above all things desperately wicked and that he could no more change it of himself than the leopard can change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin; that the people who are accustomed to do evil, cannot do good. They must be changed. There must be a new order of things, a new covenant. What is this new covenant? Jeremiah 31:33 lays down a new condition: "I will put my law in their inward parts." Moses wrote it on tablets of stone but the law to be effective must be written in the inward parts. It must be written on the tablets of the heart. On that condition "I will be their God, and they shall be my people," saith Jehovah.

Then the prophet asserted the doctrine of individual, or personal experience of the knowledge of God, verse Jeremiah 31:34: "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more." He does not mean by that that there shall be no more teaching but he does mean that each individual shall have a personal experience for himself. His parents cannot give it to him; each individual shall have a personal knowledge of God for himself. As regards their sins God provides a sacrifice so that he will remember their sins no more forever, consequently there shall be no more need for the sacrifices of atonement.

Now, that wonderful prophecy was not fulfilled in that restoration. When Nehemiah had completed the walls of Jerusalem, Ezra brought forth the book of the Law and read it before them and they made another covenant to keep the Law. That was 150 years after Jehovah had said, "I will make a new covenant." Ezra brought forth this same old covenant and the people adopted it again. That was not a new covenant, and in no sense a fulfilment of the prophecy here. The people asked Ezra to read it, which showed that it was in no sense in their hearts. This covenant is fulfilled in Christianity. Jesus preached the new birth and the principle of personal knowledge of God. It is the fundamental element of the gospel, that God’s law must be in the heart, not in mere ceremony.

It is said of the new people in Jeremiah 31:35-37 that they shall be perpetual. They shall abide forever. This is expressed by a comparison of the material universe with God’s eternal purpose concerning his people. The prophecy concerning Jerusalem in Jeremiah 31:38-40 is that the holy city shall be rebuilt. Jerusalem shall be holy unto Jehovah. Now, that was to some extent fulfilled in the restoration under Nehemiah and Ezra, but for 1900 years it has been trodden under foot. For the larger fulfilment we look to Christianity in the millennium.

The prophecy of Jeremiah 32 occurred in the tenth year of the reign of Zedekiah, during the siege, when Jeremiah was shut up in the court of the guard. In that condition, when the city was thus surrounded and seemed doomed to pass into the hands of the enemy and be destroyed, Jeremiah utters this prophecy. The following are the main points of it:

1. The announcement of the Oracle of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32:15). This section simply contains the record of the fact that the oracle came from God to Jeremiah at this time and the fate of the city is announced.

2. The purchase of an ancestral field (Jeremiah 32:6-15). Jeremiah received word from Jehovah that a certain man was coming to ask him to buy a field at Anathoth which belonged to Jeremiah’s family and was within his right. God told him to buy it. He tells us that he did so, and paid seventeen shekels for it. Doubtless property was cheap at that particular time, for all the land was overrun by the Chaldeans. The deed was signed and two copies made; then they were subscribed to before witnesses. They were then deposited in an earthen vessel to be kept, because seventy years or more was to pass before they could be used. Such is the story. It reminds us of the incident that occurred in the wars of Hannibal. When he was encamped before the gates of Rome, the very ground upon which he was encamped was bought by men in the city, for they believed in the future of Rome. They paid for it and believed that they would make use of it. So it was with Jeremiah; he believed in the future of Jerusalem and. Judah more truly than those men believed in the future of Rome.

3. His misgiving, with his retrospection of Jehovah’s’ power, justice, and lovingkindness, manifested in Israel’s history (Jeremiah 32:16-25). He closes that retrospection by summing up the situation. We find it in Jeremiah 32:24-25. The city is in a state of siege, and is going to be destroyed very soon.

4. Jehovah’s reply to Jeremiah’s misgivings (Jeremiah 32:26-35). The reply is this: "Because of the people’s sins Jerusalem shall be destroyed by the Chaldeans."

5. Jehovah gives an emphatic promise of future favor (Jeremiah 32:36-44). Again and again Jehovah says, "I will gather them out of all countries; I will give them one heart and one way; I will make an everlasting covenant with them." Men shall buy fields, shall subscribe deeds, seal them and call witnesses, etc.

Jeremiah gives the date of its deliverance, about the year 586 B.C., while the Chaldeans were besieging the city and Jeremiah was shut up in the court of the guard. The items of this chapter are as follows:

1. The call for a larger faith (Jeremiah 32:2-3). Jehovah will show them difficult things.

2. The city shall be reinhabited and shall be joyful (Jeremiah 32:4-9). [I am simply giving the substance of these portions. They are largely repetitions and details are not necessary.]

3. The land of Judah shall be repopulated (Jeremiah 32:10-13). Jeremiah 32:12 says, "Yet again there shall be in this place, which is waste, without man and without beast, and in all the cities thereof, a habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down." In the cities of the lowland, the hill country, the South, Benjamin, and Judah, shall the flocks again pass under the hands of the shepherd.

4. David shall have a righteous successor upon the throne (Jeremiah 32:14-18). Jeremiah 32:15 contains the substance, a glorious messianic picture, like Isaiah 11:1-2.

5. The royal line of David and of the Levitical priesthood shall certainly be perpetuated, Jeremiah 32:19-22.

6. The Davidic Dynasty shall certainly be re-established (Jeremiah 32:23-26). The seed of David shall sit upon the throne.

The fulfilment of this prophecy occurred partly in the restoration, partly in Christianity, and shall be completely fulfilled in the glorious reign of Christ when Christianity shall be triumphant throughout the world. In this we have a remarkable perspective of prophecy, a prophecy with several fulfilments stretching over a long period of time.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the nature of this section of Jeremiah?

2. How does it compare with his former prophecies?

3. How does it compare with the prophets before him?

4. What is the outline of these four chapters?

5. What is the date of this prophecy?

6. What is the nature of Jeremiah 30:1-3?

7. How is the importance of this section here indicated and what the reason assigned?

8. What the prophecy relative to Judah in Jeremiah 30:4-11?

9. How is Judah pictured in Jeremiah 30:12-17 and yet what hope is held out to Judah?

10. What is the promise respecting Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah in Jeremiah 30:18-22?

11. What is the prophecy of Jeremiah 30:23-24 and what is the fulfilment?

12. What is the picture found in Jeremiah 31:1-6 and when realized?

13. What is the great promise in Jeremiah 31:7-9?

14. What is the announcement in Jeremiah 31:10-14 and other Old Testament passage similar to it?

15. What is the prophecy here concerning Ephraim (Jeremiah 31:15-20)?

16. What is the exhortation in Jeremiah 31:21-22 and what the meaning of the "new thing" here?

17. What is the prophecy as to the life of Israel after the restoration (Jeremiah 31:23-26) and how did this prospect affect Jeremiah?

18. What are the material blessings for the renewed people and how is their individual responsibility set forth? (Jeremiah 31:27-30.)

19. What are the blessings of the new covenant? (Jeremiah 31:31-34.)

20. What is said of the new people in Jeremiah 31:35-37 and how is it expressed?

21. What is the prophecy concerning Jerusalem in Jeremiah 31:38-40 and when fulfilled?

22. What is the date of the prophecy of Jeremiah 32?

23. What are the main points of this prophecy?

24. What is the date and contents of Jeremiah 33?