John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 31:28

"And it shall come to pass that, like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to overthrow and to destroy and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build and to plant, saith Jehovah." — Jeremiah 31:28 (ASV)

By these words the Prophet confirms what he had said. The Israelites and the Jews might have always made this objection: “Why should God promise to be the liberator of his people, whom he had allowed to be oppressed with such great evils? For it would have been easier to prevent them.”

The Jews, then, might have raised this complaint: “You give us here the hope of a return, but why does God allow us to be driven into exile? Why then does he not apply the remedy in time? For now, too late, he declares that he will be a help to us after our ruin.” Since the Jews thought that a restoration was promised to them at an inappropriate time, the Prophet says that it was God who chastised them and punished them for their sins, and that he could also relieve them whenever it pleased him.

For if the Chaldeans, according to their own pleasure, had ruled over the Jews and had obtained the victory over them, who could have ever hoped that the miserable people, thus reduced, could have been delivered by God’s hand? But now the Prophet shows that there was no reason for the Jews to despair, as if it were difficult for God to free them from the tyranny of their enemies. For nothing had happened to them by chance, or through the power of their enemies, but through the righteous judgment of God.

We now, therefore, perceive the design of the Holy Spirit in what the Prophet says: As I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to break in pieces and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch, etc. God then presents himself as the judge who had punished them for their sins, so that he might convince them that he would also become their Physician. It is as if he had said, “I who have inflicted the wound can therefore heal it,” according to what is said elsewhere: God is he who kills and brings to life, who leads down to the grave and brings up (1 Samuel 2:6).

But the Prophet employs many words, because the great mass of so many evils might have plunged the Jews into the abyss of despair. Hence, the Prophet anticipates them and shows that, though they had been reduced to extremities, yet so many and so severe calamities could not prevent God from restoring them when it seemed good to him. He yet reminds them that it was not without cause that they suffered such grievous things, for God takes no delight in the miseries of his people. The people then should have learned from the fact that they had been chastised with so much rigor and severity that they had been guilty of great sins. He now adds, So will I watch over you to build and to plant.

As for the verb destroy, if we read הרם erem, it ought to be rendered and to take away. The verb רם rem, as is well known, means to elevate, but metaphorically, to take away. But the received reading, as I have said, is הרס eres. He says that he would watch to build and to plant them, as he had watched to destroy them. It is as if he had said that they had already been taught by experience how great was the power of God’s hand to save as well as to destroy. They had disregarded threats as long as God had spared them, and they thought that they could sin with impunity; indeed, we see how insolently they rejected all the Prophets. But God had at length shown by severe proofs how his judgments ought to have been dreaded. He now, therefore, inspires them with hope, for his watching would no less avail for their preservation.