Commentary Critical and Explanatory
Jeremiah 33:26
Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.
The seed of ... Isaac - (; ; , "Israel ... the house of Isaac").
Remarks:
(1) Jeremiah is directed by God to pray to Him for that which God himself has promised to grant, "Call upon me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not" (). The promises of God are not to do away with, but to encourage our prayers.
(2) However unlikely the restoration of Israel, nationally and spiritually, seemed at a time when God was about to overthrow and disperse the people on account of their sins, yet what God has promised He is sure to perform. Though the wound of Jerusalem was and is incurable to man (), yet God has engaged, "I will bring it health and cure" (). So as to the malady of the soul; man's efforts and labours are vain; but God of His gratuitous love brings life and health to the spiritually incurable, "cleansing His people from all their iniquity" By the blood of Jesus, and "revealing unto them the abundance of peace and truth" (), by the sanctifying and enlightening Spirit. Not only does the believer escape the punishment, but is also delivered from the defilement and dominion of iniquity ().
(3) The effect of God's manifested favours to Israel shall be to make the Gentile nations "fear," and stand in reverent awe of the God of Israel, "for all the goodness and prosperity which He procures unto it" (). So in the case of spiritual Israel, the Church, the goodness of God openly shown toward her in her early and purest days led many of the world outside to fear and worship God, "reporting that God was in her of a truth" (1 Corinthians 14:24; ; ; ; ). Such also still is the effect on the world of a consistent Christian walk with God. The believer is to God "a joy, a praise, and an honour" () before the world, so that many are awed by reverent fear, and at the same time attracted by the goodness of God to seek the believer's God as their God.
(4) The premises of future blessing, spiritual and temporal, to Jerusalem are inseparably connected with the future manifestation of Messiah, "the Branch of righteousness" who, springing from David, shall sit upon the throne of David forever (Jeremiah 33:15; Luke 1:32). As His name or revealed character to Israel His people is () "The Lord our Righteousness," so, by virtue of her mystical union with Him, she also shall be called "The Lord our Righteousness." How comforting to the Church, too, is this truth, which applies to her as really as it does to literal Israel, "because as He is, so are we in this world" (). His name is written on believers as "The Lord our Righteousness," being "of God made unto us righteousness" ().
(5) Messiah's literal priesthood shall never fail; and therefore His people's spiritual priesthood also shall never cease (): by Him, the grand Fulfiller of God's everlasting covenant with Levi, let all His people "offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name" (). The kingdom and the priesthood combined in the person of Messiah, about to be manifested on earth in the coming days, shall be the perpetual guarantee for the security and sanctity of Israel (Jeremiah 33:21). The same functions, exercised invisibly but really now, are the pledge for the eternal salvation and purification of the Israel of God, the Church. They are at utter variance with the mind of God who "despise" the people of God, whether the Israel after the flesh or that after the Spirit (); for He who governs the world of nature, "day and night, heaven and earth," by fixed laws, is the same God who has made an everlasting covenant with His people ().