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2 lines
11 KiB
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<p>Here, 1. Jeremiah persists in his plain preaching; what he had many a time said, he still says (<a class="bibleref" title="Jer.38.3" href="/passage/?search=Jer.38.3">Jer. 38:3</a>): <i>This city shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon</i>; though it hold out long, it will taken at last. Nor would he have so often repeated this unwelcome message but that he could put them in a certain way, though not to save the city, yet to save themselves; so that every man might have his own life given him for a prey if he would be advised, <a class="bibleref" title="Jer.38.2" href="/passage/?search=Jer.38.2">Jer. 38:2</a>. Let him not stay in the city, in hopes to defend that, for it will be to no purpose, but let him <i>go forth to the Chaldeans</i>, and throw himself upon their mercy, before things come to extremity, and then he <i>shall live</i>; they will not put him to the sword, but give him quarter (<i>satis est prostrasse leoni—it suffices the lion to lay his antagonist prostrate</i>) and he shall escape the <i>famine and pestilence</i>, which will be the death of multitudes within the city. Note, Those do better for themselves who patiently submit to the rebukes of Providence than those who contend with them. And, if we cannot have our liberty, we must reckon it a mercy to have our lives, and not foolishly throw them away upon a point of honour; they may be reserved for better times. 2. The princes persist in their malice against Jeremiah. He was faithful to his country and to his trust as a prophet, though he had suffered many a time for his faithfulness; and, though at this time he ate the king’s bread, yet that did not stop his mouth. But his persecutors were still bitter against him, and complained that he abused the liberty he had of walking in the court of the prison; for, though he could not go to the temple to preach, yet he vented the same things in private conversation to those that came to visit him, and therefore (<a class="bibleref" title="Jer.38.4" href="/passage/?search=Jer.38.4">Jer. 38:4</a>) they represented him to the king as a dangerous man, disaffected to his country and to the government he lived under: <i>He seeks not the welfare of this people, but the hurt</i>—an unjust insinuation, for no man had laid out himself more for the good of Jerusalem than he had done. They represent his preaching as having a bad tendency. The design of it was plainly to bring men to repent and turn to God, which would have been as much as any thing a strengthening to the hands both the soldiery and of the burghers, and yet they represented it <i>as weakening their hands</i> and discouraging them; and, if it did this, it was their own fault. Note, It is common for wicked people to look upon God’s faithful ministers as their enemies, only because they show them what enemies they are to themselves while they continue impenitent. 3. Jeremiah hereupon, by the king’s permission, is put into a dungeon, with a view to his destruction there. Zedekiah, though he felt a conviction that Jeremiah was a prophet, sent of God, had not courage to own it, but yielded to the violence of his persecutors (<a class="bibleref" title="Jer.38.5" href="/passage/?search=Jer.38.5">Jer. 38:5</a>): <i>He is in your hand</i>; and a worse sentence he could not have passed upon him. We found in Jehoiakim’s reign that the princes were better affected to the prophet than the king was (<a class="bibleref" title="Jer.36.25" href="/passage/?search=Jer.36.25">Jer. 36:25</a>); but now they were more violent against him, a sign that they were ripening apace for ruin. Had it been in a cause that concerned his own honour or profit, he would have let them know that the king is he who can do what he pleases, whether they will or no; but in the cause of God and his prophet, which he was very cool in, he basely sneaks, and truckles to them: <i>The king is not he that can do any thing against you</i>. Note, Those will have a great deal to answer for who, though they have a secret kindness for good people, dare not own it in a time of need, nor
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