Jeremiah 33:24-26

(24-26) Considerest thou not what this people have spoken... — The words that follow have been regarded by many commentators as the taunt of the heathen nations — Chaldæans, Egyptians, Edomites, and others — as they beheld what seemed to them the entire downfall of the kingly and the priestly orders, such as we find put into the lips of the heathen in Ezekiel 35:10; Ezekiel 36:20. The words “this people,” however, used as they are invariably of that to which the prophet himself belonged (Jeremiah 4:10; Jeremiah 5:14; Jeremiah 5:23; Jeremiah 6:19, and elsewhere), and indeed in the hundred or more passages in which the phrase occurs in the Old Testament, lead to a different conclusion. The prophet’s declaration of the steadfastness of God’s covenant was made in answer, not to the taunts of the heathen, but to the despair of Israel, such as had found utterance in the words recorded in Jeremiah 33:10 and Jeremiah 32:43. If the words “thus they have despised my people” seem to favour the former interpretation, it must be remembered that the subject of the verb is not necessarily the same as that of the previous clause, and that the scorn of other nations would be the natural outcome of the despondency into which Israel had fallen; or they might emphasise the fact that the despondency was itself, as it were, suicidal. Those who despised their own nation were despising the people of Jehovah. In contrast with this despondency, the prophet renews his assurance of the permanence of the kingly and priestly lines, and strengthens it by reference to the three great patriarchs of the race, with whom the truth of Jehovah’s promises was identified (Exodus 3:15), and by connecting it with the promise of a return from the captivity. When that return came, it would be the pledge and earnest of the yet greater blessings which were involved in the new and everlasting covenant.