Jeremiah 50 - Introduction

L.

The long continuous prophecy which occupies the place of a great finale in the collection of Jeremiah’s writings (Jeremiah 50, 51.) is in many ways the most important of the whole book. It presents an aspect of the prophet’s mind and character which elsewhere is almost or altogether latent. For the most part, he appears as the supporter of the Chaldæans, opposing the policy of the kings and rulers who were bent on resistance, bidding the exiles to pray for the peace of Babylon (Jeremiah 29:7). Only once before, as in a germinal hint afterwards to be developed, and veiled beneath the cypher of the mysterious Sheshach (Jeremiah 25:26), had he given any intimation that it came within the horizon of his vision that she, too, was to drink of “the wine-cup of the Lord’s fury” (Jeremiah 25:15). It can scarcely be imagined, however, that the predictions of Isaiah against the Chaldæaan city in Jeremiah 13:1 to Jeremiah 14:22, or (if we acknowledge the later Chapter s of that book as authentic) those in Jeremiah 46, 47, were unknown to him; and we may well believe that when the great catastrophe had come upon Jerusalem, and the people were in exile by the waters of Babylon, he desired to comfort them with the thought that the righteous law of retribution under which they were suffering would in due time bring down the pride of their oppressor. When he had told them that their captivity would last for seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10), that lands should once again be bought and sold, and ploughed and planted in Judah (Jeremiah 32:15), there was an implied fore-knowledge of the doom of the golden city; and at last, probably as the closing vision of his life, the last case in which he was to “root out, and to pull down, and to destroy,” it was given to him to see how that destruction would be accomplished.

The authenticity of the chapter has, it is true, been questioned by some critics, partly on the assumption that prophecy cannot be prediction, and that the fulness of detail with which the apparent prediction is given implies a prophecy after the event, partly on the ground that the style differs from that of the other writings ascribed to Jeremiah’s name, and that it presents so many traces of acquaintance with Babylon and its customs that it must have been written by one who had been resident in that city. On this hypothesis Baruch has been named as its possible author.

The first ground of objection opens a wide question which cannot well be discussed on every occurrence of the principle which it involves. Here it will be enough to say that the assumption in question is at variance with the whole idea of their office which the prophets themselves recognised, and that it is not that on which the lines of interpretation followed in this Commentary have been based. Judgments based upon variations and differences in style are always more or less precarious. For my own part I do not see any such differences as to clash with the belief that these Chapter s were written by Jeremiah, and I find many parallelisms and coincidences, which will be noticed as we proceed, falling in with that belief. The third difficulty is sufficiently met by the thought that one who was in frequent intercourse both with the captive Jews at Babylon and with the Chaldæans as Jeremiah was (Jeremiah 29:1), to say nothing of his personal journeys to the Euphrates (Jeremiah 13:1), might well have acquired such a knowledge of the country as is indicated in these Chapter s.