Jeremiah 7:11

A den of robbers. — The words had a special force in a country like Palestine, where the limestone rocks presented many caves, which, like that of Adullam (1 Samuel 22:1), were the refuge of outlaws and robbers. Those who now flocked to the courts of the Temple, including even priests and prophets, were as such robbers, finding shelter there, and soothing their consciences by their worship, as the brigands of Italy do by their devotions at the shrine of some favourite Madonna. It had for them no higher sanctity than “a den of robbers.” The word for “robber” implies the more violent form of lawless plunder. The words are memorable, as having re-appeared in our Lord’s rebuke of the money-changers and traffickers in the Temple (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46); and, taken together with the reference at the last Supper to the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31:31, suggest the thought that our Lord was leading His disciples to see in the prophet’s work a foreshadowing of His own relation to the evils of His time, and more than a foreshadowing of the great remedy which He was to work out for them.