John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 5:3

"O Jehovah, do not thine eyes look upon truth? thou hast stricken them, but they were not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return." — Jeremiah 5:3 (ASV)

Some give a strained interpretation of the beginning of the verse, or rather pervert it, as if the Prophet had said that God would not turn His eyes from what was right, because He would rigidly execute His vengeance on His people. But Jeremiah continues here with the same subject, for there is no importance to be attached to the division of the verses.

Those who have divided them have often unknowingly perverted the meaning. The divisions then are not to be heeded; only the number is to be retained as a help to the memory. But as to the context, they often are a hindrance to readers, for it is preposterous to blend things which are separate and to divide what is connected.

This remark has just occurred to me, and it is necessary, as this passage calls for it. For the Prophet, after having said that the Jews were perfidious and guilty of duplicity, and destitute of all integrity, immediately adds, "But the eyes of God regard fidelity;" as if he had said that they in vain pretended to profess God’s name and made a show of religion by ceremonies and by an outward display, for God searches the heart and cares nothing for those external masks by which men’s eyes are captivated.

The Prophet very significantly turns his discourse to God, to show that he was weary of addressing the people, for he saw that he achieved nothing with the obstinate. If there had been any teachable spirit in the Jews, he would no doubt have exhorted them to practice integrity. He might have said, “They are mistaken who swear falsely in God’s name and persuade themselves that He will be their Father, for His eyes regard fidelity and uprightness of heart.” This would have been a regular way of proceeding, and this mode of teaching would have been most suitable.

But Jeremiah abruptly breaks off his address and leaves his own people. "O God," he says, "your eyes look on fidelity;" as if he had said, “What more can I have to do with this wretched people? I address words to rocks and stones; therefore I bid you farewell and will have no more to do with you; I will now turn to God.” We now see how much more forcible and striking this turning from the people to God is than if the Prophet continued his address to the Jews and sought to instruct them.

For he now shows that he was broken down with weariness, because he saw that his labor was useless and that all whom he had addressed were altogether refractory. Nor did he, at the same time, intend to speak these words at random and to no purpose; nay, his object was more sharply to touch those who were stupid by letting them know that he left off addressing them because he had no hope respecting them.

But what I have said elsewhere should be kept in mind—that the Prophets did not write all that they preached, but collected the substance of what they had delivered to the people; and this collection now forms the prophetic books. There is therefore no doubt that Jeremiah had spoken at large on repentance—that he had exposed the sins of hypocrites, that he had exposed the fallacious pretenses of the people, and that he had severely reproved their obstinacy.

But after having done all these things, he found it necessary to desist from pursuing his course, for he saw that no fruit could be hoped for from his labors and his preaching. Now, when the Jews knew this, they should have been deeply affected; and this should be the case with us now, when we see that God’s Spirit is provoked by our perverseness. And as this is a dreadful thing, it is what should more than anything else touch our hearts.

Consider what it is: God daily invites us most kindly to Himself; but when He sees that our hearts and heads are so extremely hard, He leaves us, because we grieve His Spirit, as it is said by Isaiah (Isaiah 63:10). It was not, then, a usual or common mode of teaching which the Prophet adopted; but it was calculated to have more effect than plain instruction, for he shows that the wickedness of the people could no longer be endured.

Jehovah, he says, are not your eyes on the truth? In this address to God there is an implied contrast between God and men. The most wicked, we know, flatter themselves while they can retain the good opinion and applause of the world; and as long as they continue in honor, they slumber in their vices.

This foolish confidence is what the Prophet evidently exposes, for he intimates that the eyes of God are different from those of mortals: men can see a very little way, hardly three fingers before them; but God penetrates into the inmost and the most hidden recesses of the heart. And the Prophet speaks thus of God’s eyes in order to show how worthless are the opinions of men, who regard only a splendid outward appearance. By truth, the Prophet means, as in the first verse, integrity of heart. Hence, they philosophize here without reason who seek to prove from this passage that we are made acceptable to God by faith only, for the Prophet does not speak of the faith by which we embrace free reconciliation with God and become members of Christ.

The meaning indeed is in no way obscure, which is this—that God cares not for that external splendor by which men are captivated, according to what is said in 1 Samuel 16:7: Man sees what appears outwardly; but God looks on the heart.

There the Holy Spirit expresses the same thing by “heart” as He does here by fidelity or “truth.” For Samuel shows that David’s father was mistaken, because he brought forward his sons who excelled in their outward appearance: Man sees, he says, what appears outwardly; but God looks on the heart.

We now understand the true meaning of the Prophet—that though hypocrites flatter themselves, and the whole world encourages them by their adulations, all this will not avail them; for they must at last come before the tribunal of God, and before God truth only will be approved and honored.

He afterwards adds, You have smitten them, and they have not grieved. The Prophet here reproves the hardness of the people, for they had been smitten, but they did not repent. Experience, as they say, is the teacher of fools; and it is an old proverb that fools, when corrected, become wise.

Both poets and historians have uttered such sayings. Since, then, the Jews had such a perverse disposition that even scourges did not lead them to repentance, it was an evidence of extreme wickedness. And thus the Prophet here confirms what he had said before, that God would be merciful to them if one just man could be found in the city: he confirms that declaration when he says, You have smitten them, but they have not grieved. The Jews, no doubt, groaned under their scourges; yes, they howled and poured forth grievous complaints, for we know how petulantly they spoke evil of God.

They then had grieved; but grief here is to be taken in a special sense, according to what Paul says of repentance, that its beginning is grief or sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:9–10). In this sense it is that the Prophet says here that those who had disturbed minds did not grieve, for they did not feel that they had to do with God.

He then means by this word what another Prophet means when he says that they did not regard the hand of Him who struck them (Isaiah 9:13). For he does not say that they were so senseless as not to feel the strokes, but that the hand of God was not seen by them; and yet this is the principal thing in our sorrow.

For if we blindly and violently cry out in our troubles, and cry, "Woe," a hundred times, what is it all? Our lamentations are only those of brute animals. But when we regard the hand of Him who strikes us, our grief then is of the right kind. Jeremiah says that the Jews did not grieve in this manner, for they did not perceive that they were justly chastened by God’s hand.

He afterwards enlarges on the subject: You have consumed them, he says, and they refused to receive correction. By saying that they had been consumed, he proves them guilty of extreme perverseness; for when God lightly chides us, it is no great wonder if, through our tardiness and sloth, we are not immediately roused.

But when God doubles His strokes, yes, when He not only strikes us with His rods but draws His sword to consume us entirely; yes, when He thus deals with us and executes His vengeance by terrible judgments, if then we are still torpid in our sins and feel not how dreadful it is to endure His judgments, must we not be indeed wholly blinded by the devil?

This is then the stupor which the Prophet now deplores in the Jews; for not only were they without a right feeling of grief when God struck them, but when they were even consumed, they did not receive or admit correction. And in this second clause he shows what we have already said—that the grief he speaks of is not to be taken for any sort of grief, but for that which regards God’s judgment and proves that we fear Him.

He adds, They have hardened their faces as a rock, and lastly, they have refused to return. The Prophet means that the Jews were not only refractory but that they were also without any shame. If, indeed, they had given every evidence of being ashamed, it would have been still useless, unless there was, as we have said, an integrity of heart.

But it often happens that even the worst, though inwardly full of impiety and of contempt towards God, and of perverseness, do yet retain some measure of shame. In order to show that the Jews had arrived at extreme impiety, the Prophet says that they had hardened their faces, that is, that they were wholly without shame, for they had cast away everything like reason and made no difference between right and wrong, between honesty and baseness. As, then, they had cast off every human feeling, he says that nothing remained to be done but that God, as he had previously declared, should execute on them extreme vengeance.

And he repeats what he had said—that they refused to turn. He means that they sinned and went astray, not through mistake or want of knowledge, but that they disregarded their own safety through willful and deliberate wickedness, and that they knowingly and avowedly rejected God, so that they would not endure either His teaching or His corrections.

Prayer:

Grant, Almighty God, that as the devil does not cease to soothe us by his allurements, so that we may become torpid and stupefied—O grant, that Your word may so shine in our minds and hearts that we may not grow torpid in darkness. And do You also so rouse us by Your Spirit, that we may attend to those warnings of Your prophets, by which You would bring us to the right way, that we may not perish. And may we so assiduously exercise repentance through the whole course of our life, that we may ever be displeased with ourselves on account of our sins; and may we judge ourselves daily, that we may turn away Your wrath from us, until having at length finished our warfare, which we have to carry on continually with our sins, we will come to that blessed rest which has been procured for us in heaven by Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.