Jeremiah 2:14

Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(14) Is Israel a servant?—The word “servant,” we must remember, had become, through its frequent use in Isaiah (Isaiah 20:3; Isaiah 41:8, et al.), a word not of shame, but honour; and of all servants, he who was born in the house—as in the case of Eleazar (Genesis 15:3)—occupied the most honourable place, nearest to a son. The point of the question is accordingly not “Is Israel become a slave,” kidnapped, as it were, and spoiled, but rather this: “Is Israel the servant of Jehovah, as one born in His house? Why, then, is he treated as one with no master to protect him?”

Benson Commentary

Jeremiah 2:14. Is Israel a servant? is he a home-born slave? — Is he of a condition to be delivered as a prey to his enemies? Is he of those people whom God regards as slaves and strangers? These interrogations imply, and have the force of, a negative. As if he had said, Is not Israel the son, the chosen and peculiar people of God? Why then hath the Lord treated him as a common slave, and given him up into the power of tyrannical lords and masters? The sense is, God redeemed Israel from the bondage of Egypt, and adopted him to be his son, Exodus 4:22. So that the servitude he now undergoes, and his being made a prey to so many foreign enemies, cannot be owing to his birth, or primitive condition, but must be imputed to his sins, of which his slavery is the consequence. Compare Isaiah 50:1; Isaiah 52:3.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:14-19 Is Israel a servant? No, they are the seed of Abraham. We may apply this spiritually: Is the soul of man a slave? No, it is not; but has sold its own liberty, and enslaved itself to divers lusts and passions. The Assyrian princes, like lions, prevailed against Israel. People from Egypt destroyed their glory and strength. They brought these calamities on themselves by departing from the Lord. The use and application of this is, Repent of thy sin, that thy correction may not be thy ruin. What has a Christian to do in the ways of forbidden pleasure or vain sinful mirth, or with the pursuits of covetousness and ambition?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

It was Israel's glory to be Yahweh's servant Jeremiah 30:10, and slaves born in the house were more prized than those bought with money as being more faithful Genesis 14:14. Cannot Yahweh guard His own household? How happens it that a member of so powerful a family is spoiled? In the next verse the prophet gives the reason. Israel is a runaway slave, who has deserted the family to which he belongs by right of birth, and thereby brought upon himself trouble and misery.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

14. is he a homeborn slave—No. "Israel is Jehovah's son, even His first-born" (Ex 4:22). Jer 2:16, 18, 36, and the absence of any express contrast of the two parts of the nation are against Eichorn's view, that the prophet proposes to Judah, as yet spared, the case of Israel (the ten tribes) which had been carried away by Assyria as a warning of what they might expect if they should still put their trust in Egypt. "Were Israel's ten tribes of meaner birth than Judah? Certainly not. If, then, the former fell before Assyria, what can Judah hope from Egypt against Assyria? … Israel" is rather here the whole of the remnant still left in their own land, that is, Judah. "How comes it to pass that the nation which once was under God's special protection (Jer 2:3) is now left at the mercy of the foe as a worthless slave?" The prophet sees this event as if present, though it was still future to Judah (Jer 2:19).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Is Israel a servant? is he a home-born slave? did I ever account him so? or did I not rather always reckon him my first-born? so some, as Jeremiah 2:31. But it may better relate to his sad condition and abuses from others, as Jeremiah 49:1, which God or the prophet doth here inquire into; and slave is here rightly added to

home-born, ( though not in the text,) to express the baseness of his service, because the master had power to make those slaves who were born of slaves in his house; which argues his condition very low, whether he were thus born, or had been forced to sell himself to be a slave.

Why is he spoiled? He speaks either of the thing that is to be as if it were already done, because of the certainty of it, as of that devastation made by the Assyrians and Chaldeans, who afflicted the remnant of the Jews; or of that havoc that was made of them formerly by Sennacherib, the Assyrians, and Egyptians. Why is he thus tyrannized over, Isaiah 42:24, as if strangers had the same right over him as owners over their slaves? He removes here the false causes of Israel’s misery, that he may the more aggravate and set home the true, as Jeremiah 2:17,19. He was my son; if he now become a slave, he may thank himself:

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Is Israel a servant?.... That he does not abide in the house, in his own land, but is carried captive, becomes subject to others, and is used as a slave; so the Targum,

"as a servant;''

is he not the Lord's first born? are not the people of Israel called the children of the living God? how come they then to be treated not as children, as free men, but as servants? this cannot be owing to any breach of covenant or promise on God's part, or to the failure of the blessing of national adoption bestowed on them; but to some sin or sins of theirs, which have brought them into this miserable condition:

is he a home born slave? or born in the house, of the handmaid, and so in the power of the master of the family in whose house he was born, Exodus 21:4 or the sense is, either Israel is a servant,

or a son of the family (d), as some render the words; not the former, being not only the son of a free woman, but Jehovah's firstborn; if the latter,

why is he spoiled? why is he delivered up to the spoilers? as the Targum; why should he be given up into the hands of the Babylonians, and become their prey? is it usual for fathers to suffer their children, or those born in their house, to be so used? some reason must be given for it.

(d) "filius familias", Munster.

Geneva Study Bible

Is Israel a {u} servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he laid waste?

(u) Have I ordered them like servants and not like dearly beloved children? Ex 4:22 therefore it is their fault only, if the enemy spoil them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

14. Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave?] An emphatic negative is the reply expected, as in Jeremiah 2:31. Israel is not a slave but a son. Why then is he spoiled? If (which is however doubtful) the early legislation, as given in Exodus 21:1-3, still held good, children born to a slave who married one of the slave girls in his master’s house, remained the permanent property of their owner. The meaning here will be, Is Israel permanently subjected to each whim of a cruel master? Cp. the somewhat similar passages, Jeremiah 8:4, Jeremiah 14:19; and specially Jeremiah 22:28, Jeremiah 49:1.

14–30. Israel’s sin and obstinacy under punishment

14–17. Co. points out that Jeremiah 2:13 connects naturally with Jeremiah 2:18. The cisterns from which Israel has sought water proving unavailable, she has tried the rivers of Egypt and Assyria. Accordingly, while holding that the vv. are genuine utterances of Jeremiah, he thinks with some considerable probability that they are misplaced here.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 14-19. - Israel's punishment and its cause. Verse 14. - Is Israel a servant? The speaker is evidently the prophet, who exclaims in surprise at the view which his prophetic insight opens to him: "quasi de re nova et absurda sciscitatur" (Calvin). For Israel is a member of Jehovah's family; he is not a servant (except in the same high sense as in Isaiah 40-53, where "servant" is virtually equivalent to "representative"), but rather in the highest degree a free man, for he is Jehovah's "firstborn son" (Exodus 4:22). How is it, then, that he is dragged away into captivity like a slave who has never known freedom? The view of some, that "servant" means "servant of Jehovah" (comp. Jeremiah 30:10), and that the question therefore is to be answered in the affirmative, is less natural. "Servant," by itself, never has this turning; and there is a precisely similar term in the discourse at ver. 31, where the negative answer of the question does not admit of a doubt. Jeremiah 2:14

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

By this double sin Israel has drawn on its own head all the evil that has befallen it. Nevertheless it will not cease its intriguing with the heathen nations. Jeremiah 2:14. "Is Israel a servant? is he a home-born slave? why is he become a booty? Jeremiah 2:15. Against him roared the young lions, let their voice be heard, and made his land a waste; his cities were burnt up void of inhabitants. Jeremiah 2:16. Also the sons of Noph and Tahpanes feed on the crown of thy head. Jeremiah 2:17. Does not this bring it upon thee, thy forsaking Jahveh thy God, at the time when He led thee on the way? Jeremiah 2:18. And now what hast thou to do with the way to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Nile? and what with the way to Assur, to drink the waters of the river? Jeremiah 2:19. Thy wickedness chastises thee, and thy backslidings punish thee; then know and see that it is evil and bitter to forsake Jahveh thy God, and to have no fear of me, saith the Lord Jahveh of hosts." The thought from Jeremiah 2:14-16 is this: Israel was plundered and abused by the nations like a slave. To characterize such a fate as in direct contradiction to its destiny is the aim of the question: Is Israel a servant? i.e., a slave or a house-born serf. עבד is he who has in any way fallen into slavery, יליד בּיתa slave born in the house of his master. The distinction between these two classes of salves does not consist in the superior value of the servant born in the house by reason of his attachment to the house. This peculiarity is not here thought of, but only the circumstance that the son of a salve, born in the house, remained a slave without any prospect of being set free; while the man who has been forced into slavery by one of the vicissitudes of life might hope again to acquire his freedom by some favourable turn of circumstances. Another failure is the attempt of Hitz. to interpret עבד as servant of Jahveh, worshipper of the true God; for this interpretation, even if we take no account of all the other arguments that make against it, is rendered impossible by .יליד That expression never means the son of the house, but by unfailing usage the slave born in the house of his master. Now the people of Israel had not been born as serf in the land of Jahveh, but had become עבד, i.e., slave, in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15); but Jahveh has redeemed it from this bondage and made it His people. The questions suppose a state of affairs that did not exist. This is shown by the next question, one expressing wonder: Why then is he it become a prey? Slaves are treated as a prey, but Israel was no slave; why then has such treatment fallen to his lot? Propheta per admirationem quasi de re nova et absurda sciscitatur. An servus est Israel? atqui erat liber prae cunctis gentibus, erat enim filius primogenitus Dei; necesse est igitur quaerere aliam causam, cur adeo miser sit (Calv.). Cf. the similar turn of the thought in Jeremiah 2:31. How Israel became a prey is shown in Jeremiah 2:15 and Jeremiah 2:16. These verses do not treat of future events, but of what has already happened, and, according to Jeremiah 2:18 and Jeremiah 2:19, will still continue. The imperff. ישׁאגוּ and ירעוּך alternate consequently with the perff. נתנוּ and נצּתה, and are governed by היה לבז, so that they are utterances regarding events of the past, which have been and are still repeated. Lions are a figure that frequently stands for enemies thirsting for plunder, who burst in upon a people or land; cf. Micah 5:7; Isaiah 5:29, etc. Roared עליו, against him, not, over him: the lion roars when he is about to rush upon his prey, Amos 3:4, Amos 3:8; Psalm 104:21; Judges 14:5; when he has pounced upon it he growls or grumbles over it; cf. Isaiah 31:4. - In Jeremiah 2:15 the figurative manner passes into plain statement. They made his land a waste; cf. Jeremiah 4:7; Jeremiah 18:16, etc., where instead of שׁית we have the more ordinary שׂוּם. The Cheth. נצּתה from יצת, not from the Ethiop. נצה (Graf, Hitz.), is to be retained; the Keri here, as in Jeremiah 22:6, is an unnecessary correction; cf. Ew. 317, a. In this delineation Jeremiah has in his eye chiefly the land of the ten tribes, which had been ravaged and depopulated by the Assyrians, even although Judah had often suffered partial devastations by enemies; cf. 1 Kings 14:25.