John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 4:7

"A lion is gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations; he is on his way, he is gone forth from his place, to make thy land desolate, that thy cities be laid waste, without inhabitant." — Jeremiah 4:7 (ASV)

The Prophet more fully declares the meaning of the threat which we briefly considered yesterday; for God said in the previous verse that He would bring an evil from the north. The Prophet now describes the kind of evil it was to be, comparing the king of Babylon to a lion, and afterwards, without a figure of speech, calls him the destroyer of nations.

By the simile of a lion, he means that the Israelites would not be able to resist; and when he adds that he would be the desolator of nations, he implies that they would perish with the rest: for if Nebuchadnezzar was powerful enough to destroy many nations, how could the Jews escape a similar calamity?

He shall come, he says, the desolator of nations. But the Prophet uses the past tense throughout in order to show the certainty of the prediction, and thus to shake complacent men with fear, who had become numb in their hypocrisy. They would have otherwise considered all threats as nothing, for as long as God spared them, they despised His judgment and promised themselves impunity in their sins.

Therefore, the Prophet, in order to awaken them, set the matter before them as though Nebuchadnezzar had already come with a strong and powerful army to lay waste Judea. For he says that a lion had ascended from his hiding—places: the term for this last word means an entangled thicket, as when trees are entwined, or when a place is filled with thorns.

But the simile is most suitable, because the Jews never thought that the king of Babylon would come forth from such remote places. For the passage was difficult, and the expedition involved great toil; yet the Prophet says that the lion would come from his recesses, and that nothing would hinder him from breaking out and coming to the open country. He finally concludes by saying that cities would be laid waste, so as to be without an inhabitant.