Jeremiah 13:14

13:12-17 As the bottle was fitted to hold the wine, so the sins of the people made them vessels of wrath, fitted for the judgments of God; with which they should be filled till they caused each other's destruction. The prophet exhorts them to give glory to God, by confessing their sins, humbling themselves in repentance, and returning to his service. Otherwise they would be carried into other countries in all the darkness of idolatry and wickedness. All misery, witnessed or foreseen, will affect a feeling mind, but the pious heart must mourn most over the afflictions of the Lord's flock.

And I will dash them one against another,.... As drunken men fall foul on one another, and quarrel and fight; or in allusion to bottles and earthen vessels they are before compared to; and may denote the internal broils and contentions among themselves, that instead of assisting each other in their distress, they would be destroying one another; which was notorious in the last siege of Jerusalem: even the fathers and the sons together, saith the Lord; no relation, nor even age nor sex, being regarded: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them: the Lord's hand was in all this; everything was by his permission, and according to his will; he would not prevent the enemy's invading, besieging, and taking them, nor hinder themselves from destroying one another; but suffer a general calamity to come upon them, without showing the least mercy to them, so great were their sins, and such the provocation.

(14) One against another. —The rendering answers to the Hebrew idiom, but that idiom, as in the margin, a man against his brother, has a force which is lacking in the English, and forms a transition from the symbol to the reality. The words point to what we should call the “crash” of a falling kingdom, when all bonds that keep society together are broken.

And I will set them one against another, raising up an evil spirit of division amongst them, that they shall be like earthen bottles dashed one against another, which are easily broken in pieces. I will have no pity on them, therefore let them not presume upon my mercy, and pity, and compassion; for I am resolved to show them no mercy, but to bring them to utter ruin and destruction.

How the Lord will destroy His degenerate people, and how they may yet escape the impending ruin. - Jeremiah 13:12 . "And speak unto them this word: Thus hath Jahveh the God of Israel said, Every jar is filled with wine. And when they say to thee, Know we not that every jar is filled with wine? Jeremiah 13:13 . Then say to them: Thus hath Jahve said: Behold, I fill all inhabitants of this land - the kings that sit for David upon his throne, and the priests, and the prophets, and all inhabitants of Jerusalem - with drunkenness, Jeremiah 13:14 . And dash them one against another, the fathers and the sons together, saith Jahve; I will not spare, nor pity, nor have mercy, not to destroy them. - Jeremiah 13:15 . Hear ye and give ear! Be not proud, for Jahveh speaketh. Jeremiah 13:16 . Give to Jahveh, your God, honour, ere He bring darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the mountains of dusk, and ye look for light, but He turn it into the shadow of death and make it darkness. Jeremiah 13:17 . But if ye hear it not, then in concealment shall my soul weep for the pride, and weep and run down shall mine eye with tears, because the flock of Jahve is carried away captive." To give emphasis to the threatening conveyed in the symbolical action, the kind and manner of the destruction awaiting them is forcibly set before the various ranks in Judah and Jerusalem by the interpretation, in Jeremiah 13:12-14, of a proverbial saying and the application of it to them.

The circumstantial way in which the figurative saying is brought in in Jeremiah 13:12, is designed to call attention to its import. נבל, an earthenware vessel, especially the wine jar (cf. Isaiah 30:24; Lamentations 4:2), is here the emblem of man; cf. Jeremiah 18:6; Isaiah 29:16. We must not, as Ng. does, suppose the similar to be used because such jars are an excellent emblem of that carnal aristocratic pride which lacked all substantial merit, by reason of their being of bulging shape, hollow within and without solidity, and of fragile material besides. No stress is laid on the bulging form and hollowness of the jars, but only on their fulness with wine and their brittleness. Nor can aristocratic haughtiness be predicated of all the inhabitants of the land. The saying: Every jar is filled with wine, seemed so plain and natural, that those addressed answer: Of that we are well aware. "The answer is that of the psychical man, who dreams of no deeper sense" (Hitz.). Just this very answer gives the prophet occasion to expound the deeper meaning of this word of God's. As one fills all wine jars, so must all inhabitants of the land be filled by God with wine of intoxication. Drunkenness is the effect of the intoxicating wine of God's wrath, Psalm 60:5. This wine Jahveh will give them (cf. Jeremiah 25:15; Isaiah 51:17, etc.), so that, filled with drunken frenzy, they shall helplessly destroy one another.