John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 2:30

"In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion." — Jeremiah 2:30 (ASV)

Some interpret the beginning of this verse as if the meaning were—that God chastised the Jews on account of their folly, because they accustomed themselves to falsehoods. However, the latter clause does not correspond. Therefore, there is no doubt that God here expostulates with the Jews, because He had tried to lead them to the right way and found them completely irreclaimable. A similar expostulation is found in Isaiah.

“In vain,” he says, “have I chastised you; for from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness” (Isaiah 1:6).

There God shows that He had tried every remedy, but that the Jews, being completely refractory in their spirit, were completely incurable. Jeremiah now speaks on the same subject, and God thus exaggerates the wickedness of the people; for He testifies that He had tried if they would be taught, not only by words, but also by scourges and chastisements, but that His labor in both instances had been in vain. He spoke before of teaching, “Keep your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst.” The Prophets, then, had exhorted the Jews by God’s command to rest quietly. This teaching had been useless and unfruitful. God now adds that He had tried in another way to bring them back to a right mind, but this effort had also been useless and in vain: In vain have I chastised you; for you have not received correction.

But He speaks of children to show that the whole people were unteachable. For though lusts boil more in youth, yet their obduracy is not so great as in the old; as one who has throughout his whole life hardened himself in the contempt of God can hardly ever be healed and amended by correction. For old age is by nature morose and difficult to please, and the old also think that a wrong is, in a way, done to them when they are reproved. But when the insolence and obduracy of the young are so great that they reject all correction, it is more strange and monstrous.

The Prophet then shows that there was nothing sound or right in that people, since their very children refused correction.

We now perceive His object—that, as God had sent His prophets, and as their labor availed nothing, He now shows that not only had the ears of the people been deaf to wholesome teaching, but that they were hard-necked and untamable. For He had tried to correct them by scourges, but effected nothing. It follows, their sword has devoured the prophets. But I cannot finish now.

Prayer:

Grant, Almighty God, that since You, in Your paternal kindness, daily invite us to Yourself, we may not harden ourselves against Your holy and salutary admonitions. And whenever You chastise us with scourges, may we not become obdurate against You, but learn humbly to submit to Your word, and receive Your chastisement, and so profit by both, that we may not be exposed to the extreme judgment which You denounce on the obstinate. But may we, on the contrary, open a way for Your paternal goodness, so that You may kindly deal with us, until You receive us into that blessed rest which has been prepared for us in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[Exposition continues from previous day's lecture]

In yesterday’s lecture, God complained that He had spent labor in vain in chastising the children of Israel, for they were of a nature utterly untamable and refractory, incapable of being improved. Hence He says, “I have in vain endeavored by punishments to bring you back to the right way.”

But He now exaggerates their crime of obduracy, as they not only had rejected wholesome instruction but had also shed innocent blood and persecuted as their enemies the prophets who had been sent to them from above to promote their well-being.

God then condemns them here not only for perverseness but also for cruelty. For He says that He had not gained His object in leading them to repentance, and also, that they had not only been refractory and incorrigible, but that they had furthermore cruelly raged against the prophets. And Jerusalem, we know, had been a slaughterhouse where many of the prophets had been killed.

Some interpret the passage as referring to false teachers, as if the Prophet had said that it was to be ascribed to the wickedness of the people that prophets, who were false and deceitful, suffered just punishment. They seize upon one word, specifically because they are called their prophets. Hence Jerome says that they were called your prophets, and not My prophets, as if God thereby denied that He had given them any commission. But this view is forced and strained.

We must, then, understand the meaning to be what I have stated—that when God used means to heal the vices of the people, the very prophets, the ministers of salvation, were cruelly slain by the people. And this interpretation best suits the expressions that follow, such as as a devouring lion. For God says that the Jews raged against the prophets as if they had entered a forest full of lions.