John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 33:8

"And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against me, and whereby they have transgressed against me." — Jeremiah 33:8 (ASV)

He says first, that He would cleanse them from all iniquity, and then, that He would be propitious to all their iniquities. He no doubt repeats the same thing; but the words are not superfluous, for it was necessary to seriously remind the Jews of their many vices, of which they were indeed conscious, and yet they did not repent.

Since they then perversely followed their own wills, it was needful for the Prophet to goad them sharply, so that they might know that they were exposed to eternal destruction, if God’s mercy, and that by no means common, did not come to their aid. Here, then, he represents the greatness of their sins, so that he might, on the other hand, extol the mercy of God.

By the word cleanse, one might understand regeneration, and this may seem probable to those who are not well acquainted with the language of Scripture; but טהר, theer, means properly to expiate.

This then does not refer to regeneration, but to forgiveness; hence I have said, that the Prophet mentions two things here in the same sense: that God would cleanse them from iniquity, and that He would pardon all their iniquities. We see now the reason why the Prophet used so many words in testifying that God would be so merciful to them as to forgive their sins; it was because, though loaded with many vices, they nevertheless extenuated their heinousness, as hypocrites always do.

The favor of God, then, would never have been appreciated by the Jews if the atrocity of their guilt had not been clearly made known to them. And this also was the reason why He said, I will pardon all their iniquities. He had said before, I will cleanse them from all iniquity; then He added, I will pardon all their iniquities. For by this change in the number the Prophet shows the mass and variety of their sins, as though he had said that the heaps of evils were so multiplied that there was need of no common mercy in God to receive them into favor.

He says further, By which they have sinned against Me, and by which they have acted wickedly against Me. These words confirm what I have already said: that the Jews were severely reproved by the Prophet, in order that they might first consider and reflect on what they deserved, and secondly, that they might extol the favor of God according to its value.

We must at the same time observe that the Jews had their attention directed to the first and chief ground of confidence, so that they might have some hope of a restoration. For the origin of all God’s blessings, or the fountain from which all good things flow, is the favor of God in being reconciled to us.

He may, indeed, supply us bountifully with whatever we may wish, while He Himself is alienated from us, as we see to be the case with the ungodly, who often abound in all good things. Hence, they glory and boast as though they had God, as it were, in a manner, bound to them.

But whatever God grants and bestows on the ungodly cannot, properly speaking, be deemed as an evidence of His favor and grace; rather, He thus renders them more inexcusable while He treats them so indulgently.

There is then no saving good except what flows from the paternal love of God.

We must now see how God becomes propitious to us. He becomes so when He does not impute our sins to us. For unless pardon goes before, He must necessarily be adverse to us; for as long as He looks on us as we are, He finds in us nothing but what deserves vengeance.

We are therefore always accursed before God until He buries our sins. Hence I have said that the first fountain of all the good things that are to be hoped for is here briefly made known to the Jews: namely, the gratuitous favor of God in reconciling them to Himself.

Let us then learn to direct all our thoughts to God’s mercy whenever we seek what seems necessary to us. For if we catch, as it were, at God’s blessings, and do not consider from where they proceed, we shall be caught by a bait.

As fish through their voracity strangle themselves (for they snatch at the hook as though it were food), so also the ungodly, who with avidity seize on God’s blessings and do not care that He should be propitious to them, swallow them, as it were, to their own ruin.

That all things then may turn to our salvation, let us learn always to make a beginning with the paternal love of God, and let us know that the cause of that love is His immeasurable goodness, through which it comes that He reconciles us freely to Himself by not imputing our sins to us.

We may also gather another doctrine from this passage: that if the grievousness of our sins terrifies us, yet all diffidence ought to be overcome, because God does not promise His mercy only to those sinners who have fallen slightly, either through ignorance or error, but even to those who have heaped sins on sins.

There is therefore no reason why the greatness of our sins should overwhelm us; rather, we may always venture to flee to the hope of pardon, since we see that it is offered indiscriminately to all—even to those who had been extremely wicked before God, and had not only sinned, but had also become, in a manner, apostates, so that they did not cease in all ways to provoke God’s vengeance.