John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 18:14-15

"Shall the snow of Lebanon fail from the rock of the field? [or] shall the cold waters that flow down from afar be dried up? For my people have forgotten me, they have burned incense to false [gods]; and they have been made to stumble in their ways, in the ancient paths, to walk in bypaths, in a way not cast up;" — Jeremiah 18:14-15 (ASV)

As I have just said, God here highlights the sin of the people by a twofold comparison. For when one can draw water in his own field and find a spring there, what folly it will be for him to run to a distance to seek water! And then, when water does not spring up near but flows from a distance in a pure and cold stream, who will not be satisfied with such water? And if he seeks to find the spring, will not all laugh at such madness?

Now God was like a living fountain, and at Jerusalem was the spring where the Jews might drink to their fill. God’s blessings also flowed to them, as it were, through various channels, so that they lacked nothing. We then see that here a twofold madness in the people is condemned: that they despised God’s kindness which was nearby, as though one close to Mount Lebanon refused its cold waters, or as though one would not draw water from a river without going to its source. Since God offered Himself to them in every way and presented His bounty to them, it was an extremely base and inexcusable madness to reject flowing waters and the fountain itself.

We now perceive the meaning of this passage. It is doubtless natural for all to be satisfied with present blessings, especially when nothing better can anywhere else be found. When one has a fountain in his own field, why should he go elsewhere to drink? This would be monstrous. Do you want water?

God supplies you with it; take it from your own fountain. If one objects and says, “That fountain I dislike; I wish to know whether better waters can be found at a distance,” this, we see, is a proof of brutal stupidity. For if the water which flows is cold and pure, and he dislikes it because he wishes to go to the spring, he shows his own folly, whoever he may be.

If, for instance, anyone today would not drink the waters of the Rhone, which flows by here, and would not taste of the springs, but would run to the fountain and source of the Rhone, would he not deserve to perish through thirst? God then shows that the Jews were so devoid of all sense and reason that they ought to have been considered detestable by all.

Therefore, in the application, when He says, My people have forgotten me, both clauses ought to be repeated. This indeed by itself would have been obscure, or at least not sufficiently explicit; but God here in substance repeats what He had said before: that He is the fountain of living water which was offered to the Jews, and also that His bounty flowed through various channels like living and cold waters.

Since the people forgot God, they were doubly ungrateful, for they refused to drink of the fountain itself and disdained the cold and flowing waters, which were not hot enough to cause nausea; they were also pure and liquid, having no impure mixture in them.

He again calls them his people, but for the sake of reproaching them, for the less excusable was their perverseness when God in a special manner offered Himself to them, and they refused His offered bounty. Had this been done by heathens it would have been no small sin, though God had not favored them with any remarkable privilege. But when the Jews had been chosen in preference to all others, it was a monstrous thing, as it were, that they forgot God, even Him whom they had known. He was unknown to heathens, but He had made Himself known to the Jews; hence this forgetfulness, with which the Prophet charged them, could not have proceeded from ignorance, but from determined perverseness.

He afterwards adds, In vain they burn incense to me, since to stumble, etc. (the copulative is to be rendered as a causal particle). When He says, in vain they burn incense, it is to anticipate an objection.

For we know that the Jews trusted in their ceremonial rites, so when they were reproved by the Prophets they always had this answer ready: “We are the worshippers of God, for we constantly go up to the Temple, and He has promised that the incense which we offer shall be to Him a sweet odor.” He at the same time includes under this word all the sacrifices, for it is said generally of them all, A sweet odor shall ascend before the Lord. Then by mentioning one thing, he denotes all that external worship in which the Jews were sufficiently assiduous.

But as the whole was nothing but hypocrisy when the integrity of the heart was absent, the Prophet here dissipates this vain objection and says, “In vain do they set forth their ceremonial rites, that they attend very regularly to their sacrifices, and that they do not neglect anything in the external worship of God: it is all in vain,” he says.

This truth is often referred to by the Prophets and should be well known by the godly; yet we see how difficult it is to bring the world to believe it. Hypocrisy always prevails, and men think that they perform all that is required of them when some kind of religion appears among them. But God, as we have before seen, regards the heart itself or integrity; yet this is what the world cannot comprehend. Therefore, it is not without reason that the Prophets so often inculcate the truth that inward piety, connected with integrity of heart, alone pleases God.

He afterwards mentions the cause—that they made them to stumble in their ways. He means here, no doubt, the false teachers, who allured the people from the true and simple worship of God and corrupted wholesome doctrine by their many fictions. And it is a common thing in Hebrew to leave a word to be understood, as we have said elsewhere: they then made them to stumble, or to fall. The meaning is that the sacrifices of the people could not be approved by God because the whole of religion was corrupted. And the crime the Prophet names was that the people were drawn aside from the right way, that is, from the law, which is alone the rule of piety and uprightness.

From this we learn how frivolous is the excuse of those who say that they follow what they have learned from the fathers, and what has been delivered to them from the ancients and received by universal consent; for God here declares that the destruction of the people would follow because they suffered themselves to be deceived by false prophets.

As to the words in their ways, or 'in their own ways,' interpreters differ. Many apply the pronoun הם, em, to the false prophets, but I prefer the other view: that they made them stumble in their right ways, for by errors they led them away from the right course.

When, therefore, he says, in their ways, the words are to be taken in a good sense, for God had pointed out the right way to the people. He then calls the doctrine of the law 'the ways' to which the people had been accustomed. Then follows the expression, the paths of ages, which is to be taken in the same sense. But we must notice the contrast between those paths and the way not trodden.

This brevity may be considered obscure; I will therefore give a more explicit explanation. The Prophet calls those 'the ways of the people' in which they had been fully taught; and this took away any semblance of a defense, for the people could not object and say that they had been deceived, as though they had not known what was right. For they had not only been taught but had also been led by the hand, as it were, so that the way of the law should have been well known to them.

Then he adds, the paths of ages; for as the law had not been introduced a short time before but for many ages, this antiquity should have strengthened their faith in God’s law. We now see how these two things bear on what is said: that the Jews, being deceived by false teachers, fell or stumbled in those ways to which they had been accustomed, and then in the paths of ages, that is, in the doctrine long before received, and whose authority had been for many ages established.

On the other hand, he says that the Jews had been drawn to paths and to a way not trodden, that is, had been led from the right way into error. And he further aggravates their sin by saying that they preferred to go astray rather than to keep the way which had been trodden by their fathers.

But it may be here asked whether this change in itself should be condemned, since we despise antiquity, or rather regard what is right? To this the easy reply is that the Prophet speaks here in the name of God; therefore, this principle should be maintained, that there is no right way but what God Himself has pointed out.

Had anyone else come and boasted antiquity, the Prophet would have laughed to scorn such boasting. And why? For what antiquity can be in men who vanish away? And when we count many ages, there is nothing constant and sure among men.

It should, therefore, be noted that God was the author of that way which the Prophet complains had been forsaken by the people, and how the things which follow harmonize together: that the people had strayed from the way which they had long kept.

For the Jews, as has been said, had not followed any men, but God Himself, who had been pleased to stretch forth His hand to them and to show them the sure way of salvation. We must also observe what sort of people the fathers were—namely, those who had followed God. Since they had such examples, they should have been more and more stimulated to imitate them.

It was therefore an inexcusable wickedness to forsake a way found good by long experience—the way of ages, which had been approved for a long time—and to depart into paths not trodden. For no example from the saints, who alone were the true fathers, had led them to devise for themselves new and fictitious modes of worship or to depart from the plain doctrine of the law.

Had anyone answered that these ways had been long trodden because they had both the Assyrians and the Egyptians as associates in their superstitions, such an exception could not be admitted. For the Prophet, as I have said, does not speak indiscriminately of any kind of examples, but of the examples of the fathers, who had been ruled and led by the Lord.