John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 2:23

"How canst thou say, I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baalim? see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: [thou art] a swift dromedary traversing her ways;" — Jeremiah 2:23 (ASV)

Jeremiah continues here with his reproof and dissipates the clouds of hypocrites, under which they thought themselves to be sufficiently hidden. For hypocrites, when they offer their fallacious pretenses, think themselves already concealed from the eyes of God and from the judgment of all men. Therefore, the Prophet here sharply condemns this complacent self-security and says, "How dare you boast that you are not polluted? How dare you say that you have not walked after Baalim?"—that is, after strange gods.

I have already said that this word "Baalim" meant inferior gods. For though the Jews acknowledged one Supreme Being, they still sought patrons for themselves; and from this, as is usual, a great number of gods arose. The superstitious never lapsed into such a degree of impiety and madness that they did not always confess that there is some supreme Deity; but they added some inferior gods. And so they had their Baalim and patrons, much like the Papists, who call their patrons saints because, in their delusions, they dare not call them gods. Such was the sophistry of the Jews.

"How then," he says, "can you excuse yourself and say that you have not walked after Baalim? See," he adds, "your ways, see what you have done in the valley, and know at length that you have been like a swift dromedary."

The Prophet could not have fully expressed the furious passions that then raged in the Jews without comparing them to dromedaries. Since he addresses the people in the feminine gender, the female dromedary is mentioned. I consider that she is called swift, not only because of the speed of her course but also because of her impetuous lust, as we will soon see.

Now this passage teaches us that the people had become so hardened that they insolently rejected all reproofs given to them by the prophets. Their impiety was openly manifest, and yet they always dared to offer excuses to show that the prophets unjustly condemned them. Nor should we wonder that such stubbornness prevailed in that ancient people, since even today we find that the Papists, with no less perversity, resist the clear light of truth.

For however gross and shameful their idolatry appears, they still think that they evade the charge by merely saying that their statues and images are not idols, and that the people of Israel were indeed condemned for inventing statues for themselves, but that they did this because they were prone to superstition.

Therefore, they cry out against us and say that the worship that prevails among them is unjustly slandered. We see, and even children know, that under the Papacy every kind of superstition prevails; yet they seek to appear innocent and free from all blame.

The same was the case formerly. The temple continued, the people offered sacrifices there, and some kind of religion remained. So, whenever the prophets reproved the impious corruptions that were blended with and vitiated the pure worship of God—corruptions which the prophets everywhere declare were called adulteries—the people would retort, "What! Do we not worship God?"

This very perversity is what the Prophet now condemns by saying, How dare you say, I am not polluted, I have not walked after Baalim? So the Papists say today, "Do we not believe in one God? Have we devised various gods for ourselves?"

Yet they rob God of all His power and dishonor Him in a thousand ways. At the same time, they assert against us, with seductive rhetoric and a brazen front, that they worship the one true God.

The case was exactly the same with the Jews. But the Prophet here proves their boasting to be vain and grossly false. "See," he says, "your ways in the valley; see what you, a swift dromedary, have done."

Since their willfulness was so great that they could not be overcome by reason, the Prophet compares them to wild animals. "You are," he says, "like lascivious dromedaries that are so carried away by lust that they forget everything while pursuing their own courses."