Jeremiah 2:11

2:9-13 Before God punishes sinners, he pleads with them, to bring them to repentance. He pleads with us, what we should plead with ourselves. Be afraid to think of the wrath and curse which will be the portion of those who throw themselves out of God's grace and favour. Grace in Christ is compared to water from a fountain, it being cooling and refreshing, cleansing and making fruitful: to living water, because it quickens dead sinners, revives drooping saints, supports and maintains spiritual life, and issues in eternal life, and is ever-flowing. To forsake this Fountain is the first evil; this is done when the people of God neglect his word and ordinances. They hewed them out broken cisterns, that could hold no water. Such are the world, and the things in it; such are the inventions of men when followed and depended on. Let us, with purpose of heart, cleave to the Lord only; whither else shall we go? How prone are we to forego the consolations of the Holy Spirit, for the worthless joys of the enthusiast and hypocrite!

Jeremiah STIFF-NECKED IDOLATERS AND PLIABLE CHRISTIANSJeremiah 2:11 . The obstinacy of the adherents of idolatry is in striking contrast with Israel’s continual tendency to forsake Jehovah. It reads a scarcely less forcible lesson to many nominal and even to some real Christians. I. That contrast carries with it a disclosure of the respective origins of the two kinds of Religion. The strangeness of the contrasted conduct is intensified when we take into account the tremendous contrast between the two Objects of worship. Israel’s God was Israel’s ‘Glory’; the idol-worshipper bowed down before ‘that which doth not profit,’ and yet no experience of God could bind His fickle worshippers to Him, and no experience of the impotence of the idol could shake its votaries’ devotion. They cried and were not heard. They toiled and had no results. They broke their teeth on ‘that which is not bread,’ and filled their mouths with gritty ashes that mocked them with a semblance of nourishment and left them with empty stomachs and excoriated gums, yet by some strange hallucination they clung to ‘vanities,’ while Israel was always hankering after opportunity to desert Jehovah. The stage of civilisation partly accounts for the strange fascination of idolatry over the Israelites.

But the deeper solution lies in the fact that the one religion rises from the hearts of men, corresponds to their moral condition, and is largely moulded by their lower nature; while the other is from above, corresponds, indeed, with the best and deepest longings and needs of souls, but contravenes many of their most clamant wishes, and necessarily sets before them a standard high and difficult to reach. Men make their gods in their own image, and are conscious of no rebuke nor stimulus to loftier living when they gaze on them. The God of Revelation bids men remake themselves in His image, and that command requires endless effort. The average man has to put a strain on his intellect in order to rise to the apprehension of God, and a still more unwelcome strain on his moral nature to rise to the imitation of God. No wonder, then, if the dwellers on the low levels should cleave to them, and the pilgrims to the heights should often weary of their toil and be distressed with the difficulty of breathing the thin air up there, and should give up climbing and drop down to the flats once more. II. That contrast carries with it a rebuke. Many voices echo the prophet’s contrast nowadays. Our travelling countrymen, especially those of them who have no great love for earnest religion, are in the habit of drawing disparaging contrasts between Buddhists, Brahmins, Mohammedans, any worshippers of other gods and Christians.

Verse 11. - Hath a nation changed their gods ? Has any heathen nation ever changed its idol-god for another? The prophet clearly implies a negative answer; and yet it must be admitted that the adoption of a new religion, under the pressure of conquest or a higher foreign civilization is not an unknown phenomenon in the ancient world. Glory; i . e . source of all outward prosperity (comp. Psalm 3:3 ," my Glory, and the Lifter up Of my head"). Religion was, in fact, the root of national life in antiquity; contrast our own division between the sacred and the secular Jehovah elsewhere receives the title "the Pride of Israel" -Authorized Version, rather weakly, "the Excellency of Israel" -( Amos 8:7 ; Hosea 5:5 . Comp. the parallel passages, Psalm 106:20 ; Romans 1:23 ). Jeremiah 2:11

11 . a nation ] i.e. a heathen nation. which yet are no gods ] Therefore it need not have occasioned surprise, if their worshippers had at some time deserted them. Heathen nations are loyal to their gods, unreal though they be. For reference to the question whether Jeremiah was a ‘speculative,’ or only a practical , monotheist, see Intr. ii. § 3 ( a ). their glory ] Jehovah, Whose very nature is glory, makes that glory known to Israel as His chosen people, and gives them a share in it. Cp. Deuteronomy 10:21 ; also 1 Samuel 4:21 ; Psalm 106:20 . be horribly afraid ] lit. shudder, bristle with horror.

Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their {q} glory for that which doth not {r} profit. (q) That is, God who is their glory, and who makes them glorious above all other people, reproving the Jews that they were less diligent to serve the true God, than were the idolaters to honour their vanities. (r) Meaning the idols who were their destruction, Ps 106:36.

(11) Hath a nation . . . —Emphatically a heathen “nation,” as contrasted with the “people” of Jehovah. They were faithful to their false gods; Israel was unfaithful to the true. The words “changed their glory” find an echo in Romans 1:23 , though here they express the thought that the worship of Jehovah was the true glory of Israel as a people, and that they had wilfully abandoned it.

A nation - A Gentile nation, in strong antithesis to people, the appellation of Israel. Their glory - Though the worship of the one true God is a nation's greatest glory, yet it is irksome because it puts a constraint on human passions. That which doth not profit - Israel had exchanged the prosperity which was God's reward of obedience for the calamities which resulted from idol-worship.

Hath a nation changed their gods? q.d. No, they are unmovable and fixed to their idols, although they are false gods; what they receive from their fathers they tenaciously hold. Their glory, viz. the true God, who was their glory; a metonymy of the adjunct, Psalm 106:20 ; and who always did them good, giving them cause to glory in him, and to make their boast of him. For that which doth not profit; for those which never did or can do them good, that have no essence or power; but of whom they must necessarily be ashamed, as Jeremiah 2:26 .