Jeremiah 10:16

10:1-16 The prophet shows the glory of Israel's God, and exposes the folly of idolaters. Charms and other attempts to obtain supernatural help, or to pry into futurity, are copied from the wicked customs of the heathen. Let us stand in awe, and not dare provoke God, by giving that glory to another which is due to him alone. He is ready to forgive, and save all who repent and believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. Faith learns these blessed truths from the word of God; but all knowledge not from that source, leads to doctrines of vanity.

Jeremiah POSSESSING AND POSSESSEDJeremiah 10:16 Here we have set forth a reciprocal possession. We possess God, He possesses us. We are His inheritance, He is our portion. I am His; He is mine. This mutual ownership is the very living centre of all religion. Without it there is no relation of any depth between God and us. How much profounder such a conception is than the shallow notions about religion which so many men have! It is not a round of observance; not a painful effort at obedience, not a dim reverence for some vague supernatural, not a far-off bowing before Omnipotence, not the mere acceptance of a creed, but a life in which God and the soul blend in the intimacies of mutual possession. I. The mutual possession. God is our portion. That thought presupposes the possibility of our possessing God. It presupposes the fact that He has given Himself to us, and the answering fact that we have taken Him for ours. We are God’s inheritance. We give ourselves to Him-we do so where we apprehend that He has given Himself to us; it is His giving love that moves men to yield themselves to God. He takes us for His. What a wonderful thought that He delights in possessing us!

The all-sufficiency of our portion is guaranteed because He is ‘the former of all things.’ The safety of His inheritance is secured because ‘the Lord of Hosts is His name.’ And that name accentuates the wonder that He to whom all the ordered armies of the universe submit and belong should still take us for His inheritance. Mark the contrast of this true possession with the false and merely external possessions of the world. Those outward things which a man has stand in no real relation with him. They fade and fleet away, or have to be left, and, even while they last, are not his in any real sense. Only what has indissolubly entered into, and become one with, our very selves is truly ours. Our possession of God suggests a view of our blessedness and our obligation. It secures blessedness-for we have in Him an all-sufficient object and a treasure for all our nature. It imposes the obligation to let our whole nature feed upon, and be filled by, Him, to see that the temple where He dwells is clean, and not to fling away our treasure. His possession of us suggests a corresponding view of our blessedness and our obligation. We are His-as slaves are their owners’ property. So we are bound to submission of will. To be owned by God is an honour. The slave’s goods and chattels belong to the master. His possession of us binds us to consecrate ourselves, and so to glorify Him in ‘body and spirit which are His.’ It ensures our safety.

Jeremiah 10:16. The portion of Jacob is not like them — There is no comparison between senseless idols and the great Creator of all things, who has chosen the posterity of Jacob for his peculiar people, and has promised to be their God, and that they should always have an especial interest in his favour, if they continued steadfast in their worship of, and obedience to, him. The rod of his inheritance — Is an expression taken from the first division of the land of Canaan, when the inheritance of each tribe and family was meted out with a line or rod.

Verse 16. - The portion of Jacob ; i . e . Jehovah. The phrase appears to have been coined at a lower level of religion, when every nation was supposed to have its own patron deity; just as the prophet says, ironically, to the fetish-worshippers of Israel, "Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion" ( Isaiah 57:5 ), and Moses, in Deuteronomy ( Deuteronomy 4:19 ), speaks of the host of heaven as having been "divided [ i . e . assigned] unto all nations under the whole heaven." But, of course, the phrase is susceptible of a high, spiritual application (comp. Psalm 16:5 ; Psalm 142:5 ). God's people are, by their very conception, an ἐκλογὴ , chosen out by God, and choosing him, and not the world, for their portion. "Making the best of both worlds" is an object implicitly condemned by this consecrated phrase. The former of all things . How much more forcible is the original phrase: "... of the whole," i . e . the universe! "To form" is a phrase constantly used of God in the second part of Isaiah. The rod of his inheritance . "Rod" should rather be tribe . The twelve tribes had an inner unity, as contrasted with other peoples; comp. Psalm 74:2 and Isaiah 63:17 ("tribes"). Jeremiah 10:16

The {i} portion of Jacob is not like them: for he is the former of all things; and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: The LORD of hosts is his name. (i) By these words, portion and rod, he signifies their inheritance, meaning that God would be all sufficient for them: and that their happiness consisted in him alone, and therefore they ought to renounce all other help and comfort as of idols, etc. De 32:9, Ps 16:5.

(16) The portion of Jacob. —As in Psalm 16:5 ; Psalm 119:57 , God is described as the “portion,” i.e., as the treasure and inheritance of His people. He is no powerless idol, but the former, i.e., the creator, of all things, or more literally of the all, i.e., of the universe. The rod of his inheritance.—The phrase was familiar in the poetry of Israel (Psalm 74:2; Isaiah 63:17—Heb.), but its exact meaning is not clear. The word may be “rod” in the sense of “sceptre,” as in Genesis 49:10; Micah 7:14. Israel is that over which, or by means of which, God rules. But the other meaning in which it stands for “stem,” “division,” “tribe” (as in Isaiah 19:13; Exodus 28:21), is equally tenable. The Lord of hosts is his name.—The time-honoured and awful name is obviously brought in as in emphatic contrast to all the names of the gods of the heathen. Among them all there was no name like “Jehovah Sabaoth,” the Lord of the armies of heaven, of the stars in their courses, of the angels in their ordered ranks, and of the armies of Israel upon earth.

The portion, of Jacob - i. e., Yahweh. He is not like gods made by a carpenter and goldsmith. Of all things - literally, of the all, the universe. The rod of his inheritance - See Psalm 74:2; compare Isaiah 63:17. The rod is the scepter, and Israel the people over whom Yahweh especially rules.