Jer 18:18-23 | KD | STEP | Enmity displayed against the prophet by the people for this discourse, and prayer for protection from his enemies. - Jer 18:18. "Then said they: Come and let us plot schemes against Jeremiah; for law shall not be lost to the priest, and counsel to the wise, and speech to the prophet. Come and let us smite him with the tongue and not give heed to all his speeches. Jer 18:19. Give heed to me, Jahveh, and hearken to the voice of them that contend with me! Jer 18:20. Shall evil be repaid for good, that they dig a pit for my soul? Remember how I stood before Thee to speak good for them, to turn away Thy wrath from them! Jer 18:21. Therefore give their sons to the famine and deliver them to the sword, that their wives become childless and widows, and their men slaughtered by death, their young men smitten by the sword in battle. Jer 18:22. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when Thou bringest troops upon them suddenly; for they have digged a pit to take me and laid snares for my feet. Jer 18:23. But Thou Jahveh knowest all their counsels against me for death: forgive not their iniquity and blot not out their sin from before Thy face, that they be overthrown before Thee; in the time of Thine anger deal with them." Even the solemn words ( ) of the prophet were in vain. Instead of examining themselves and reforming their lives, the blinded sinners resolve to put the troublesome preacher of repentance out of the way by means of false charges. The subject of "and they said" is those who had heard the above discourse; not all, of course, but the infatuated leaders of the people who had. They call on the multitude to plot schemes against him, cf. Jer 11:18. For they have, as they think, priests, wise men, and prophets to give them instruction out of the law, counsel, and word, i.e., prophecy - namely, according to their idea, such as advise, teach, and preach otherwise than Jeremiah, who speaks only of repentance and judgment. Recent scholars render תּורה doctrine, which is right etymologically, but not so when judged by the constant usage, which regards the Torah, the law, as containing the substance of all the doctrine needed by man to tell him how to bear himself towards God, or to make his life happy. The Mosaic law is the foundation of all prophetic preaching; and that the speakers mean תּורה in this sense is clear from their claiming the knowledge of the Torah as belonging to the priests; the law was committed to the keeping and administration of the priests. The "counsel" is that needed for the conduct of the state in difficult circumstances, and in it is attributed to the elders; and "speech" or word is the declarations of the prophets. On that subject, cf. -10. To smite with the tongue is to ruin by slanders and malicious charges, cf. , , , where the tongue is compared to a lying bow and deadly arrow, Psa 64:4., , etc. That they had the prophet’s death in view appears from ; although their further speech: We will not give heed to his words, shows that in the discourse against which they were so enraged, he had said "nothing that, according to their ideas, was directly and immediately punishable with death" (Hitz.); cf. , Jer 26:11. Against these schemes Jeremiah cries to God in for help and protection. While his adversaries are saying: People should give no heed to his speeches, he prays the Lord to give heed to him and to listen to the sayings of his enemies. "My contenders," who contend against me, cf. ; Isa 49:25. - In support of his prayer he says in : Shall evil be repaid for good? cf. Psa 35:12. In his discourses he had in view nothing but the good of the people, and he appeals to the prayers he had presented to the Lord to turn away God’s anger from the people, cf. Jer 14:7., -22. (On "my standing before Thee," cf. Jer 15:1.) This good they seek to repay with ill, by lying charges to dig a pit for his soul, i.e., for his life, into which pit he may fall; cf. , where, however, instead of שׁוּחה ( ; ; ), we have שׁיחה, as in , Chet . - He prays the Lord to requite them for this wickedness by bringing on the people that which Jeremiah had sought to avert, by destroying them with famine, sword, and disease. The various kinds of death are, , distributed rhetorically amongst the different classes of the people. The sons, i.e., children, are to be given up to the famine, the men to the sword, the young men to the sword in war. The suffix on הגּרם refers to the people, of which the children are mentioned before, the men and women after. On הגּר על ידי ח, cf. ; Psa 63:11. "Death," mentioned alongside of sword and famine, is death by disease and pestilence, as in Jer 15:2.

‏ Jeremiah 18:18-23

Jer 18:18 Enmity displayed against the prophet by the people for this discourse, and prayer for protection from his enemies. - Jer 18:18. "Then said they: Come and let us plot schemes against Jeremiah; for law shall not be lost to the priest, and counsel to the wise, and speech to the prophet. Come and let us smite him with the tongue and not give heed to all his speeches. Jer 18:19. Give heed to me, Jahveh, and hearken to the voice of them that contend with me! Jer 18:20. Shall evil be repaid for good, that they dig a pit for my soul? Remember how I stood before Thee to speak good for them, to turn away Thy wrath from them! Jer 18:21. Therefore give their sons to the famine and deliver them to the sword, that their wives become childless and widows, and their men slaughtered by death, their young men smitten by the sword in battle. Jer 18:22. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when Thou bringest troops upon them suddenly; for they have digged a pit to take me and laid snares for my feet. Jer 18:23. But Thou Jahveh knowest all their counsels against me for death: forgive not their iniquity and blot not out their sin from before Thy face, that they be overthrown before Thee; in the time of Thine anger deal with them."

Even the solemn words (Jer 18:15-17) of the prophet were in vain. Instead of examining themselves and reforming their lives, the blinded sinners resolve to put the troublesome preacher of repentance out of the way by means of false charges. The subject of "and they said" is those who had heard the above discourse; not all, of course, but the infatuated leaders of the people who had. They call on the multitude to plot schemes against him, cf. Jer 11:18. For they have, as they think, priests, wise men, and prophets to give them instruction out of the law, counsel, and word, i.e., prophecy - namely, according to their idea, such as advise, teach, and preach otherwise than Jeremiah, who speaks only of repentance and judgment. Recent scholars render תּורה doctrine, which is right etymologically, but not so when judged by the constant usage, which regards the Torah, the law, as containing the substance of all the doctrine needed by man to tell him how to bear himself towards God, or to make his life happy. The Mosaic law is the foundation of all prophetic preaching; and that the speakers mean תּורה in this sense is clear from their claiming the knowledge of the Torah as belonging to the priests; the law was committed to the keeping and administration of the priests. The "counsel" is that needed for the conduct of the state in difficult circumstances, and in Eze 7:26 it is attributed to the elders; and "speech" or word is the declarations of the prophets. On that subject, cf. Jer 8:8-10. To smite with the tongue is to ruin by slanders and malicious charges, cf. Jer 9:2, Jer 9:4,Jer 9:7, where the tongue is compared to a lying bow and deadly arrow, Psa 64:4., Psa 59:8, etc. That they had the prophet’s death in view appears from Jer 18:23; although their further speech: We will not give heed to his words, shows that in the discourse against which they were so enraged, he had said "nothing that, according to their ideas, was directly and immediately punishable with death" (Hitz.); cf. Jer 26:6, Jer 26:11. Against these schemes Jeremiah cries to God in Jer 18:19 for help and protection. While his adversaries are saying: People should give no heed to his speeches, he prays the Lord to give heed to him and to listen to the sayings of his enemies. "My contenders," who contend against me, cf. Jer 35:1; Isa 49:25. - In support of his prayer he says in Jer 18:20 : Shall evil be repaid for good? cf. Psa 35:12. In his discourses he had in view nothing but the good of the people, and he appeals to the prayers he had presented to the Lord to turn away God’s anger from the people, cf. Jer 14:7., Jer 18:19-22. (On "my standing before Thee," cf. Jer 15:1.) This good they seek to repay with ill, by lying charges to dig a pit for his soul, i.e., for his life, into which pit he may fall; cf. Psa 57:7, where, however, instead of שׁוּחה (Jer 2:6; Pro 22:14; Pro 23:27), we have שׁיחה, as in Jer 18:22, Chet. - He prays the Lord to requite them for this wickedness by bringing on the people that which Jeremiah had sought to avert, by destroying them with famine, sword, and disease. The various kinds of death are, Jer 18:21, distributed rhetorically amongst the different classes of the people. The sons, i.e., children, are to be given up to the famine, the men to the sword, the young men to the sword in war. The suffix on הגּרם refers to the people, of which the children are mentioned before, the men and women after. On הגּר על ידי ח, cf. Eze 35:5; Psa 63:11. "Death," mentioned alongside of sword and famine, is death by disease and pestilence, as in Jer 15:2. Jer 18:22

To the terrors of the war and the siege is to be added the cry rising from all the houses into which hostile troops have burst, plundering and massacring. To lay snares, as in Psa 140:6; Psa 142:4. פּח is the spring of the bird-catcher. Jer 18:23

Comprehensive summing up of the whole prayer. As the Lord knows their design against him for his death, he prays Him not to forgive their sin, but to punish it. The form תּמחי instead of תּמח (Neh 13:14) is the Aramaic form for תּמחה, like תּזני, Jer 3:6; cf. Ew. §224, c. The Chet. והיוּ is the regular continuation of the imperative: and let them be cast down before Thee. The Keri ויהיוּ would be: that they may be cast down before Thee. Hitz. wrongly expounds the Chet.: but let them be fallen before Thee (in Thine eyes), i.e., morally degraded sinners; for the question is not here one of moral degradation, but of the punishment of sinners. In the time of Thine anger, i.e., when Thou lettest loose Thy wrath, causest Thy judgments to come down, deal with them, i.e., with their transgressions. On עשׂה ב, cf. Dan 11:7.

On this prayer of the prophet to God to exterminate his enemies Hitz. remarks: "The various curses which in his bitter indignation he directs against his enemies are at bottom but the expression of the thought: Now may all that befall them which I sought to avert from them." The Hirschberg Bible takes a deeper grasp of the matter: "It is no prayer of carnal vengeance against those that hated him, Jer 18:18, Jer 18:23, Psa 9:18; Psa 55:16; but as God had commanded him to desist (Jer 14:11, Jer 14:12) from the prayers he had frequently made for them, Jer 18:20, and as they themselves could not endure these prayers, Jer 18:18, he leaves them to God’s judgments which he had been already compelled to predict to them, Jer 11:22; Jer 14:12, Jer 14:16, without any longer resisting with his entreaties, Luk 13:9; 2Ti 4:14." In this observation that clause only is wrong which says Jeremiah merely leaves the wicked to God’s judgments, since he, on the other hand, gives them up thereto, prays God to carry out judgment on them with the utmost severity. In this respect the present passage resembles the so-called cursing psalms (Psa 35:4-10; Psa 109:6-20; Psa 59:14-16; Psa 69:26-29, etc.); nor can we say with Calvin: hanc vehementiam, quoniam dictata fuit a spiritu sancto, non posse damnari, sed non debere trahi in exemplum, quia hoc singulare fuit in propheta. For the prophet’s prayer is no inspired דבר יהוה, but the wish and utterance of his heart, for the fulfilment of which he cries to God; just as in the psalms cited. On these imprecations, cf. Del. on Ps 35 and 109; as also the solid investigation of this point by Kurtz: Zur Theologie der Ps. IV. die Fluch-und Rachepsalmen in the Dorpat Ztschr. f. Theol. u. Kirche, vii. (1865), S. 359ff. All these curses are not the outcome and effusions of personal vengeance against enemies, but flow from the pure spring of a zeal, not self-regarding at all, for the glory of God. The enemies are God’s enemies, despisers of His salvation. Their hostility against David and against Jeremiah was rooted in their hostility against God and the kingdom of God. The advancement of the kingdom of God, the fulfilment of the divine scheme of salvation, required the fall of the ungodly who seek the lives of God’s servants. In this way we would seek to defend such words of cursing by appealing to the legal spirit of the Old Testament, and would not oppose them to the words of Christ, Luk 9:55. For Christ tells us why He blamed the Elias-like zeal of His disciples in the words: "The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them." In keeping with this, the peculiar end of Christ’s coming on earth, we find no curses from Him against His enemies and the enemies of the kingdom of God. But just as the word, "I am not come," etc. (Luk 9:56), does not exclude the truth that the Father hath given all judgment to Him, so, as Kurtz very justly remarks, "from our hearing no word of cursing from the mouth of Christ during His life on earth we cannot infer the absolute inadmissibleness of all such; still less can we infer that Christ’s apostles and disciples could not at all be justified in using any words of cursing." And the apostles have indeed uttered curses against obdurate enemies: so Peter against Simon the Magian, Act 8:20; Paul against the high priest Ananias, Act 23:3, against the Jewish false teachers, Gal 1:9 and Gal 5:12, and against Alexander the coppersmith, 2Ti 4:14. But these cases do not annihilate the distinction between the Old and the New Testaments. Since grace and truth have been revealed in Christ, the Old Testament standpoint of retribution according to the rigour of the law cannot be for us the standard of our bearing even towards the enemies of Christ and His kingdom.