Jeremiah 30:11

Though I make a full end of all nations. — On the phrase, see Notes on Jeremiah 4:27; Jeremiah 5:10; Jeremiah 5:18. It is eminently characteristic of the prophets of Jeremiah’s time (Ezekiel 11:13; Ezekiel 20:17; Nahum 1:8). Here the thought, implied elsewhere, and reproduced in Jeremiah 46:28, is expressed more fully than before, that while the destruction of the national life of the heathen nations on whom judgment was to fall should be complete and irreversible, so that Moab, Ammon, Edom, should no more have a place in the history of the world, the punishment of Israel should be remedial as well as retributive, working out, in due time, a complete restitution. In “correcting in measure” we trace an echo of Psalms 6:1 (see Note on Jeremiah 10:24). That thought sustains the prophet in his contemplation of the captivity and apparent ruin of his people. To be left “altogether unpunished” would be, as in the “let him alone “of Hosea 4:17, the most terrible of all punishments.