John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 23:38-39

"But if ye say, The burden of Jehovah; therefore thus saith Jehovah: Because ye say this word, The burden of Jehovah, and I have sent unto you, saying, Ye shall not say, The burden of Jehovah; therefore, behold, I will utterly forget you, and I will cast you off, and the city that I gave unto you and to your fathers, away from my presence:" — Jeremiah 23:38-39 (ASV)

Here the Prophet confirms what he had said, for God might have seemed to be too indignant, having been so grievously offended at one short expression. The Jews had borrowed from the prophets themselves when they called prophecies burdens, as we have already said, and as we find in many places.

Now, as the slipperiness of language is great, though the Jews might have done wrong regarding one word, it might still have appeared an insufficient reason for the punishment God threatened to inflict. But the Prophet here shows that God was justly angry with them, for he had sent to them and often warned them not to use this form of speaking, which was a manifest evidence of their impiety.

Since they had thus disregarded God and his warnings, was it an excusable mistake? In short, Jeremiah shows that they had not erred inconsiderately, as often happens to those who speak rashly and thoughtlessly. Instead, this perverted way of speaking proceeded from determined wickedness, from a wish to affix some mark of disgrace to God’s word; and thus they acted in disdain towards God himself. This then is the meaning of the words.

If ye shall say, even when I warn you not to speak in this manner; if then you persevere in this obstinacy, Behold I, etc.; God here declares that he would take vengeance. Regarding this sentence, most interpreters derive the verb from נשה, nushe, making ה, he, the final letter; but I doubt the correctness of this. Yet if this explanation is adopted, we must still hold that the Prophet alludes to the verb “to take away,” which immediately follows.

But I am disposed to take another view: that God would by removing remove them. It must be noticed that the word משא, mesha, which has often been mentioned, comes from the same root; משא, mesha, a burden, is derived from נשא, nusha, to remove or take away.

Therefore, as this proverb was commonly used—that prophetic doctrine always brought some burden and trouble—God answers, “I will take you away;” that is, “You shall find by experience how grievous and burdensome your wickedness is to me; it shall rebound on your heads. You have burdened and treated my word with indignity, and I will treat you with indignity,” but in what manner?

I will take you away even by taking you away. If anyone approves more of the sense of forgetting, let him follow his own judgment. However, that explanation appears to me meaningless—“I will forget you”—unless נשא, nusha, is taken in the second place as signifying “to take away”: “I will forget you, that I may take you away.”

He adds, And I will pluck you up; which some render, “I will forsake you,” but they seem not to understand what the Prophet intended, for he declares something more grievous and more dreadful than before when he says, I will pluck you up; yet this sense does not satisfy me. The verb נטש, nuthash, means “to extend,” and metaphorically “to cast far off”; and “casting off” or “casting away” seems to suit the passage best.

God then would not only remove or take away the Jews from their own place but would also cast them far off into distant countries. He thus denounces on them an exile by which they were to be driven, as it were, into another world.

For had they lived in the neighborhood, it would have been more tolerable for them; but as they were to be driven away, as by a violent storm, to the farthest and remotest regions, it was much more grievous.

He afterwards says, And the city also which I gave to you and to your fathers. The verbs “to cast away” and “to pluck up” do not suit stones well; but regarding the meaning, it may rightly be said that God would take away the city with its inhabitants, as though they were driven away by the wind.

This was added intentionally because the Jews, relying on this promise, This is my rest for ever, here will I dwell, thought it impossible that God’s sanctuary would ever be destroyed. Since this vain confidence deceived them—that the city God had chosen as his habitation would always stand—the Prophet expressly adds that the city itself would perish.

And it is also added that it was given to them and their fathers. He anticipates all objections and shakes off from the Jews the vain hope by which they were inebriated: namely, that the city was given perpetually to them and that God resided there to defend them.

“This gift,” he says, “will not keep you or the city itself from destruction.” He adds, From my presence; for it was customary for them to use God’s name as a pretext when they sought to harden their hearts against the threats of the prophets.

But God here answers them, saying, from my presence; as though he had said, “In vain do you harbor the thought concerning the perpetuity of the city and the Temple, for this depends on my will and good pleasure. Since you stand or fall as it seems right to me, I now declare that you shall be ejected and wholly removed from my presence.”