30 "I have struck your children in vain. They received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Some expound the beginning of this verse as though the meaning were, -- that God chastised the Jews on account of their folly, because they habituated themselves to falsehoods: but the latter clause does not correspond. There is therefore no doubt but that God here expostulates with the Jews, because he had tried to bring them to the right way and found them wholly irreclaimable. A similar expostulation is found in Isaiah, "In vain," he says, "have I chastised you; for from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness." (Isaiah 1:6) There God shews that he had tried every remedy, but that the Jews, being wholly refractory in their spirit, were wholly incurable. Jeremiah speaks now on the same subject: and God thus exaggerates the wickedness of the people; for he testifies that he had tried whether they would be taught, not only by words, but also by scourges and chastisements, but that his labor in both instances had been in vain. He spoke before of teaching, "Keep thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst." The Prophets, then, had exhorted the Jews by God's command to rest quietly. This teaching had been useless and unfruitful. God now adds, that he had tried in another way to bring them back to a right mind; but this effort had been also useless and in vain: In vain have I chastised you; for ye have not received correction But he speaks of children, in order to shew that the whole people were unteachable: for though lusts boil more in youth, yet their obduracy is not so great as in the old; as he who has through his whole life hardened himself in the contempt of God, can hardly be ever healed and be amended by correction; for old age is of itself morose and difficult to be pleased, and the old also think, that wrong is in a manner done them when they are reproved: but when the insolence and obduracy of the young are so great that they reject all correction, it is more strange and monstrous. The Prophet then shews that there was nothing sound or right in that people, since their very children refused correction. [1] We now perceive his object, -- that, as God had sent his prophets, and as their labor availed nothing, he now shews, that not only the ears of the people had been deaf to wholesome teaching, but that they were hard -- necked and untamable; for he had tried to correct them by scourges, but effected nothing. It follows, their sword has devoured the prophets But I cannot finish now.
1 - Blayney renders the word "instruction." The Septuagint have "paideian -- discipline: "the Syriac, Vulgate, and the Targum are the same; but the Arabic has "instruction -- eruditionem." The strict meaning of the word mvsr, is restraint, check, discipline, correction. Not to receive restraint or correction, is not to be thereby improved or reformed, but to proceed in the same course, see Jeremiah 5:3. The word has also a secondary meaning, instruction, as the effect of correction, see Zephaniah 3:7. But here it clearly means correction. -- Ed
Your own sword hath detoured your prophets - An allusion probably to Manasseh 2-Kings 21:16. Death was the usual fate of the true prophet Nehemiah 9:26; Matthew 23:37.
In vain have I smitten your children; they have received no correction: your (r) own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.
(r) That is, you have killed your prophets, that exhorted you to repentance, as Zechariah, Isaiah, etc.
In vain have I smitten your children,.... Or, "for vanity" (g); for vain speaking, for making vain oaths and vows; so it is explained in the Talmud (h); but the sense is, that the rod of chastisement was used in vain; the afflictions that came upon them had no effect on them to amend and reform them; they were never the better for them:
they received no correction; or instruction by them; see Jeremiah 5:3,
your own sword hath devoured your prophets; as Isaiah, Zechariah, and Uriah, who were sent to them to reprove and correct them, but they were so far from receiving their correction, that they put them to death; though Kimchi mentions it as the sense of his father, and which he approves of, that this is to be understood, not of the true prophets of the Lord, but of false prophets; wherefore it is said, "your prophets"; and they had no prophets but false prophets, whose prophecy was the cause of the destruction of souls, and this brought ruin upon the prophets themselves; and this sense of the words Jerom gives into; it follows:
like a destroying lion; that is, the sword of the Lord, according to the latter sense; the judgments of God, by which the people fall, and their false prophets with them, were like a lion that destroys and devours all that come near it. The Septuagint and Arabic versions add,
and ye were not afraid; which confirms what was before said, that chastisement and correction were in vain.
(g) "propter vanitatem, sive vaniloquentiam", Vatablus. (h) T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 32. 2. & Cetubot, fol. 72. 1.
(Jeremiah 5:3; Jeremiah 6:29; Isaiah 1:5; Isaiah 9:13).
your children--that is, your people, you.
your . . . sword . . . devoured . . . prophets-- (2-Chronicles 36:16; Nehemiah 9:26; Matthew 23:29, Matthew 23:31).
Children - Your inhabitants in every city, they being frequently called the children of such a city. Correction - Instruction: though they were corrected, yet they would not be instructed. Your sword - You have been so far from receiving instruction, that you have, by the sword, and other ways of destruction, murdered those that I have sent to reprove you.
*More commentary available at chapter level.