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Jeremiah’s Celibacy and Message

The word of the L ord came to me: ²You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. ³For thus says the L ord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bear them and the fathers who beget them in this land: ⁴They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall become like dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall become food for the birds of the air and for the wild animals of the earth.

⁵ For thus says the L ord: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the L ord, my steadfast love and mercy. ⁶Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them; there shall be no gashing, no shaving of the head for them. ⁷No one shall break bread for the mourner, to offer comfort for the dead; nor shall anyone give them the cup of consolation to drink for their fathers or their mothers. ⁸You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. ⁹For thus says the L ord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to banish from this place, in your days and before your eyes, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰ And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the L ord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the L ord our God?” ¹¹then you shall say to them: It is because your ancestors have forsaken me, says the L ord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law; ¹²and because you have behaved worse than your ancestors, for here you are, every one of you, following your stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me. ¹³Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

God Will Restore Israel

¹⁴ Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the L ord, when it shall no longer be said, “As the L ord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” ¹⁵but “As the L ord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors.

¹⁶ I am now sending for many fishermen, says the L ord, and they shall catch them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. ¹⁷For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. ¹⁸And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

O L ord, my strength and my stronghold,

my refuge in the day of trouble,

to you shall the nations come

from the ends of the earth and say:

Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies,

worthless things in which there is no profit.

Can mortals make for themselves gods?

Such are no gods!

²¹ “Therefore I am surely going to teach them, this time I am going to teach them my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the L ord.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Some frigidly explain this verse, as though the Prophet said that men are doubly foolish, who form for themselves gods from wood, stone, gold, or silver, because they cannot change their nature; for whatever men may imagine, the stone remains a stone, the wood remains wood. The sense then they elicit from the Prophet’s words is this — that they are not gods who are devised by the foolish imaginations of men. But the Prophet reasons differently, — “Can he who is not God make a god?” that is, “can he who is created be the creator?” No one can give, according to the common proverb, what he has not; and there is in man no divine power. We indeed see what our condition is; there is nothing more frail and perishable: as man then is all vanity, and has in him nothing solid, can he create a god for himself? This is the Prophet’s argument: it is drawn from what is absurd, in order that men might at length acknowledge, not only their presumption, but their monstrous madness. For when any one is asked as to his condition, he must necessarily confess that he is a creature, and that he is also, as the ancients have said, all ephemeral animal, that his life is like a shadow. Since then men are constrained, by the real state of things, to make such a confession, how comes it that they dare to form gods for themselves? God does not create a god, he creates men; he has created angels, he has created the heavens and the earth, but yet he does not put forth his power to create a new god. Now man, what is he? nothing but vanity; and yet he will create a god though he is no God. ¹⁶⁸¹⁶⁸     Calvin in this instance follows the Syriac version, which is different from all the other ancient versions, and also the Targum. Blayney gives the same meaning with Calvin, which Horsley wholly disapproves, and which the Hebrew can hardly admit. The literal rendering is, —
   Shall man make for himself gods? But they are no gods.
   As the future may often be rendered potentially, the better version would be this, —
   Can man make for himself gods When they are no gods?
   That is, can he make gods of those who are not gods? This is, in my view, a continuation of the confession in the previous verse, which I render as follows, —
   “Truly, falsehood have our fathers inherited — vanity, And they had nothing that profited: Can man make for himself gods, When they are no gods?”
   “Falsehood” was false religion, the character of which was “vanity,” an empty and useless thing: and this is more fully asserted in the next line, which is literally, “And nothing in them,” or with them, i.e., the fathers, “that was profitable.” — Ed.

There is no doubt but that the Prophet here, as with new rigor, boldly attacks the Jews. For it seems evident that, when this temptation assailed him — “What can this mean t what will at length happen when God rejects the race of Abraham whom he had chosen?” he turned to God: but now, having recovered confidence, he inveighs against the ungodly, and says, can man create gods for himself while yet he is not a god? The change in the number ought not to be deemed strange; for when there is an indefinite declaration the nmnber is often changed, both in Greek and Latin. If some particular person was intended, the Prophet would not have said, And they themselves are not gods; but as he speaks of mankind generally and indefinitely, the sentence reads better when he says, “Shall man make a god? and they,” that is men, “are not gods.” This remark I have added, because it is probable, that those who consider idols to be intended in the last clause have been led astray by the change that is made in the number. It follows, —

¹⁶⁸ Calvin in this instance follows the Syriac version, which is different from all the other ancient versions, and also the Targum. Blayney gives the same meaning with Calvin, which Horsley wholly disapproves, and which the Hebrew can hardly admit. The literal rendering is, — Shall man make for himself gods? But they are no gods. As the future may often be rendered potentially, the better version would be this, — Can man make for himself gods When they are no gods? That is, can he make gods of those who are not gods? This is, in my view, a continuation of the confession in the previous verse, which I render as follows, — “Truly, falsehood have our fathers inherited — vanity, And they had nothing that profited: Can man make for himself gods, When they are no gods?” “Falsehood” was false religion, the character of which was “vanity,” an empty and useless thing: and this is more fully asserted in the next line, which is literally, “And nothing in them,” or with them, i.e., the fathers, “that was profitable.” — Ed.