Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 30

Write you all the words ... — The opening words emphasise the fact that what follows was not spoken at first, like Jeremiah 27 and 28, in the presence of the people, but was from the first committed to writing. There is no definite point at which we may be certain that the section ends, and there is room for many conjectures as to interpolations here and there, but the opening of Jeremiah 32 suggests the conclusion that it takes in the whole of Jeremiah 30 and 31.

The general character of the prophecy, probably in part resulting from the acceptance of the prophet’s teaching by the exiles of Babylon, is one of blessing and restoration. He is thus led on to the great utterance which, from one point of view, makes him more the prophet of the Gospel even than Isaiah. It is here that we find that promise of a New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) which, both as a word and a fact, has been prominent in the history of Christendom.

I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah ... —The oracle of Jeremiah 29:10-14 becomes, as it were, the text of a new utterance, and that with a wider range more distinctly including the ten tribes of Israel as well as the two of Judah and Benjamin. There is no narrow provincialism in the prophet’s heart. He yearns for the exiles who are far off on the Euphrates; he yearns also for those who are yet farther in Assyria and the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:6).

Thus saith the Lord; We have heard a voice of trembling ... —There is a strange mingling of the divine and human elements in these words. The prophet speaks with the sense that the words are not his own, and yet what he utters is, at first, the expression of his own horror and astonishment at the vision of woe that is opening before his eyes. He sees, as it were, the famine-stricken people, their faces gathering blackness, the strong men giving way to a woman’s anguish, wailing with their hands on their loins.

In horror rather than in scorn, he asks the question, What does all this mean? Are these men in the pangs of childbirth? (Jeremiah 6:24; Jeremiah 13:21.) In Lamentations 2:19-22 we have a fuller picture of a similar scene. By some commentators the three verses (5-7) are referred to the alarm caused in Babylon by the advance of Cyrus, and “that day” is the day of his capture of the city, but there seems no sufficient reason for such an interpretation.

For it shall come to pass in that day ... —Better, And it shall come. Herein lies the basis of the hope expressed in the words he shall be saved out of it, which keeps the prophet from sinking under the burden of his sorrow.

The second and third person are strangely mingled. Jehovah speaks to Israel, your bonds, your yoke, and his yoke is that of the oppressor, that is, of the Babylonian ruler; and then, the person changing, strangers shall no more get service done for them by him, that is, by Israel. The prophet echoes the words of Isaiah 10:27.

David their king ... —The name of the old hero-king appears as that of the new representative of the house who is to restore the kingdom. There is to be a second David for Israel, a true king answering to the ideal which he imperfectly represented. Zerubbabel, in whom some interpreters have seen the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s words, was, in his measure, another partial representative of such a king (Haggai 2:21–23). The same mode of speech appears in Hosea 3:5 and Isaiah 55:4, and was probably deliberately reproduced by Jeremiah.