At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.
~ Jeremiah 8:1-2
I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the LORD of hosts.
~ Isaiah 14:23
Various Meditations on the Holy Scriptures, by Jonathan Edwards.
174. Jeremiah 7:33. “And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away.” As this Tophet here spoken of represents hell, so those fowls and wild beasts, that feed upon the carcasses of those men, represent the devils who shall feed upon the souls of the wicked. The devils, we know, are compared to fowls of the air in the parable of the sower and the seed, as Christ himself explains it (Matthew 13:3–23). Those fowls of the air that devoured those carcasses were ravens, and eagles, and other unclean and ravenous birds, that do fitly represent the impure spirits of the air; and those ravenous beasts do well represent him who is “as a roaring lion, going about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
175. Isaiah 13:20–22. “It shall never be inhabited… But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces.” See Isaiah 34:11–15. Babylon represents the whole church of the wicked; by her being to be destroyed, never to be built or inhabited again, is represented the eternal destruction of the congregation of the wicked. By those “doleful creatures” here mentioned, their possessing of Babylon, are represented devils, which the church of the wicked shall be left to the possession of forever. Babylon, after its destruction, full of these creatures, represents the church of the wicked in its state of punishment. Therefore, the apostle John, when speaking of the destruction of mystical Babylon, and alluding to this that is said of old Babylon, says expressly, she “is become the habitation of devils, the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (Revelation 18:2).
176. Jeremiah 10:16. “Israel is the rod of his inheritance.” Deut. called “the cord of inheritance,”חֶבֶל נַחֲלָתוֹ. which in our translation is rendered, “the lot of his inheritance”; that is, he is the inheritance as it were measured by a cord, or by a rod. Sometimes they were wont to lay out and measure land by a cord, sometimes by a rod or pole.
177. Jeremiah 12:3. THE PROPHETS PRAY FOR EVIL TO THEIR ENEMIES. When we find passages of this kind in the Psalms or the Prophets, we are to look upon them as prophetical curses. They curse them in the name of the Lord, as Elisha did the children that mocked him (2 Kings 2:24), as Noah cursed Canaan (Genesis 9:25). We have instances of this kind, even in the apostles and the disciples of the Lamb of God, as Paul curses Alexander the coppersmith (2 Timothy 4:14), and Peter says to Simon Magus, “Thy money perish with thee” (Acts 8:20); or else they wish them ill, not as personal but as public enemies to the church. Sometimes what they say is in the name of the church (Jeremiah 51:34–35). See “Miscellanies,” no. 600.This reference and the preceding sentence are a later addition. In no. 600, entitled “CHRISTIAN RELIGION. LOVE OF ENEMIES. PRAYING AGAINST THEM,” JE writes, “It was not a thing allowed of under the Old Testament, nor approved by the Old Testament saints, to hate personal enemies, to wish ill to them, to wish for revenge, or to pray for their hurt, except it was as prophets, and as speaking in the name of the Lord; so that there is no inconsistence between the religion of the Old Testament and New in this respect.” He then cites examples from both testaments, and closes the entry by suggesting that “some of the most terrible imprecations that we find in all the Old Testament are in the New spoken of as prophetical.”
178. Jeremiah 13:12. “Therefore shalt thou speak unto them this word, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Every bottle shall be filled with wine. And they shall say unto thee, Do we not certainly know that every bottle shall be filled with wine?” Quasi dicat,I.e. “as if he should say.” bottles were made, prepared to be filled with wine; they are fitted for it. You tell us no news in saying so. But so are wicked men vessels fitted to be filled with the wine of God’s wrath, as bottles are fitted to be filled with wine; they are vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.
179. Jeremiah 31:33. “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” I think the difference here pointed forth between these two covenants lies plainly here, that in the old covenant God promised to be their God upon condition of hearty obedience; obedience was stipulated as a condition, but not promised But in the new covenant, this hearty obedience is promised if a man be but of the house of Israel, as by faith he becomes so. God promises expressly in this new dispensation that he shall perform a hearty obedience, and so have God for his God. That old covenant they broke, as it is said in the foregoing (verse). The house of Israel, those (that) were called so under the old testament,I.e. old covenant. could break that; but the new covenant is such as cannot be broke by the spiritual house of Israel, because obedience is one thing that God engages and promises. And therefore this is called an everlasting covenant upon this account, as is plain by Jeremiah 32:40. ‘Tis true the true saints in the Old Testament could not fall away any more than they can now, but they were not the Old Testament Israel; and though God had engaged in his covenant with Christ that they should not fall away, yet he had not expressly revealed that to them. God had not in those days so plainly revealed the primary and fundamental condition of the covenant of grace, viz. faith, but insisted more upon the secondary condition, universal and persevering obedience, the genuine and certain fruit of faith.
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