John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 2:25

"Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, It is in vain; no, for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go." — Jeremiah 2:25 (ASV)

The words of the Prophet, as they are concise, may appear at first view obscure; but his meaning is simply this: that the insane people could by no means be reformed, however much God might try to check that excess by which they were led away after idols and superstitions.

In the first clause, God relates how he had dealt with the people. All the addresses of the prophets had this as their object: to make the people rest content under the protection of God. But God employs other words here: Keep your foot, he says, from unshodding, and your throat from thirst. For whenever there was any danger they ran, now to Egypt, then to Assyria, as we have already seen.

Hence God complains of their madness, because they did not obey his wise and salutary counsels. Had God commanded them to run here and there, either to the east or to the west, they might have raised an objection and said that the journey would be irksome to them; but he only commanded them to remain still and quiet.

How great, then, was their madness, that they would not quietly wait for the help of God, but weary themselves, and that with no benefit? Isaiah says nearly the same thing, but in other words, for he expostulated with them because they underwent every kind of weariness, when they might have been protected by God and not be wearied at all.

We now, then, comprehend the Prophet's design: for God first shows that the people had been admonished, and that in time; but that they were so taken up with their own perverse counsels that they could not endure the words of the prophets. It was the highest ingratitude in them that they refused to remain quiet at home, but preferred to undergo great and severe labors without any advantage, according to what is said by Isaiah in another place,

This is your rest, but you would not (Isaiah 30:15).

There is no one who does not desire rest and peace; indeed, all confess that it is the chief good, which all naturally seek. The Prophet now says that it was rejected by the people of Israel. Therefore, it follows that they were wholly insane, for they had lost a desire which is by nature implanted in all men.

The Prophet, then, does not here simply teach but reminds the Jews of what they had heard before from Isaiah, and also from Micah, and from all the other prophets. For God had often exhorted them to remain quiet; and the Prophet now upbraids them for their ingratitude, because they gave way to their own mad folly and rejected the unique benefit God offered them.

Let us then understand that the Prophet states here what others before him had taught: Keep back, he says, your foot from unshodding. Some render the last word “from nakedness,” because they wore out their shoes by long journeys; but this I think must be understood of what was commonly done, for they were accustomed to make journeys unshod. Keep then your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst.

We know that thirst is very grievous to people; hence the Prophet here reproves the madness of the people: that they were so seized with the ardor of an impious passion that they willfully exposed themselves to thirst, even by long journeys.

Since God then required nothing from the people but to ask his counsel, their sin was doubled by their unwillingness to obey his salutary direction. A plausible excuse, as I have already said, might have been alleged, had God dealt harshly and severely with the people; but as he was ready kindly and graciously to preserve them in complete quietness, no kind of excuse remained for them.

It then follows, You have said, There is not a hope, no. The Prophet shows here, concerning the people, how perverse they were, for they obstinately rejected the kind and friendly admonitions which had been given them.

They say first, There is not a hope, or, it is all over; for יאש iash, in Niphal, means to despair, or to be out of hope.

It may be rendered, “It is weariness”; and this would not be unsuitable if taken in this sense: “I have thoughtlessly tormented myself more than enough, so that weariness itself induces me to rest.”

No. The Prophet speaks concisely in order to express more strikingly the refractory conduct of the people. By saying, “There is not a hope,” it is the same as though he had said that they spurned all exhortations; and then he adds, No. No verb is used here; but an elliptical expression, as I have said, is more forcible to set forth the ferocity of the people.

Isaiah expostulated with them in another way, and blamed them because they did not say, “There is not a hope” (Isaiah 57:10). Thus Isaiah and Jeremiah seem to be inconsistent; for our Prophet here reproves the people for saying, “There is not a hope,” and Isaiah for not having said so.

But when the Jews expressly answered, according to this passage, “There is not a hope,” they meant that the prophets spent their labor in vain, as they were determined to follow their own course to the last. Hence this expression, “There is not a hope,” demonstrates the extreme perverseness of the people; and it shows that no hope of repentance remained, since they said openly and without any evasion that it was all over.

But Isaiah reproved the people for not saying that there was no hope, because they did not acknowledge, after long experience, that they were proven guilty of folly.

For after often running to Egypt and then to Assyria, and after the Lord had truly taught them how ill-advised they had been, they ought to have learned from their very disappointments that the Lord had frustrated their expectations in order to lead them to repentance.

Justly then does Isaiah say that the people were extremely besotted, because they always went on in their blind obstinacy and never perceived that God set many obstacles in their way, in order to compel them to go back and to cast aside all their vain hopes by which they deceived themselves.

We therefore see that there is complete agreement between the two prophets, though their manner of speaking is different.

Jeremiah then introduces the people here as saying expressly, and thus avowing their own perverseness, There is not a hope; as though they said, “You prophets do not cease to stun our ears, but vain and useless is your labor; for we have once for all made up our minds, and we can never be brought to revoke our resolution.”

But what does Isaiah say? He reproves the madness of the people that, having been so often deceived by the Egyptians as well as by the Assyrians, they did not understand that they ought, by such trials and experiments, to have been brought back to the right way, but continued obstinately to follow their own wicked counsels.

As to the passage before us, we perceive what the Prophet means: that God had kindly exhorted the Jews to rest quiet and dependent on his aid; but that they were not only stiff-necked but also insolently rejected the kindness offered to them.

It then follows, For I have loved strangers, and after them will I go. Here the Prophet exaggerates the sin of the people, for they gave themselves up to strangers; and he retains the similitude which we have already observed. For as God had taken the people under his own protection, so the obligation was mutual: both parties were connected as by a sacred bond, like that between a husband and his wife; as he pledges his faith to her, so she by the law of marriage is bound to him.

Jeremiah here retains this similitude and says that the people were like the basest prostitute, for they would not hear the voice of their husband, though he was willing and anxious to be reconciled to them. Now, a wife must be wholly irreclaimable when she spurns her own husband who is ready to receive her into favor and to forgive all the wickedness she may have done. The Prophet then shows that there was in the people such great and hopeless impiety that they closed their ears against God who kindly exhorted them to repent; and worse still, they shamelessly boasted that they were resolved to worship idols and their own fictions, and to reject the only true God.