Jeremiah 2:17

Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(17) Hast thou not procured this . . .?—The secret cause of the calamities is brought to light. Jehovah was leading Israel, but Israel has chosen another path, and so has procured sorrow upon sorrow to himself. The “way” here is scarcely the literal path through the wilderness, but much rather the true way of life.

Benson Commentary

Jeremiah 2:17. Hast thou not procured this unto thyself? — Are not all these calamities owing to thy sins, thy known and wilful sins? By their sinful confederacies with the nations, and especially their conformity to them in their idolatrous customs and usages, they had made themselves very mean and contemptible, as all those do that have made a profession of religion, and afterward throw it off. Nothing now appeared of that which, by their constitution, made them both honourable and formidable, and therefore the neighbouring nations neither respected nor feared them. But this was not all: they had provoked God to give them up into the hands of their enemies, who, after becoming a dreadful scourge to them, at last subdued them, and overturned their government. And thus they brought their miseries upon themselves, in forsaking the Lord their God, in revolting from their allegiance to him, and so throwing themselves out of his protection; for protection and allegiance go together. When he led thee, &c. — Hebrew, מולכךְ בעת בדרךְ, at the time, the very time, he was leading thee by the way. Then, when he was leading thee on to a happy peace and settlement, and thou wast arrived at the very borders of it, thou didst draw back, and forsake thy guide. We may observe here, that although Josiah was a very pious prince, and exerted himself to the utmost to restore the worship of God, breaking down the altars and groves, and beating the graven images into powder, &c., 2 Chronicles 34., 35., nevertheless, from the complaints of Jeremiah, and his reproofs of their idolatry, it sufficiently appears that the people were far from being reformed.

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

The way - Either, the journey through the wilderness, or the way of holiness.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

17. Literally, "Has not thy forsaking the Lord … procured this (calamity) to thee?" So the Septuagint: the Masoretic accents make "this" the subject of the verb, leaving the object to be understood. "Has not this procured (it, that is, the impending calamity) unto thee, that hast forsaken?" &c. (Jer 4:18).

led—(De 32:10).

the way—The article expresses the right way, the way of the Lord: namely, the moral training which they enjoyed in the Mosaic covenant.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Hast thou not procured this unto thyself? here God by his prophet shows that they may thank themselves for all that is hastening upon them. See Numbers 32:23.

In that thou hast forsaken the Lord: here he shows wherein, viz. in forsaking God: not that he left them, but they him, and that without any temptation or provocation; and therefore were the more inexcusable.

When he led thee by the way, viz. by the conduct of his providence in the wilderness, keeping thee in safety from all dangers, Exodus 13:21,22 Isa 63:12,13; or in the way of his counsels, which the ways of their own carnal wisdom were so opposite unto.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Hast thou not procured this unto thyself,.... All this desolation and destruction, both from the Egyptians and the Babylonians; their sin was the cause of it, their idolatry and forsaking the Lord their God, as follows: and so the Targum,

"is not this vengeance taken upon thee?''

that is, by the Lord, for their sins and transgressions; he suffered these nations to make them desolate on that account: to which agrees the Septuagint version, "hath not he done these things unto thee?" for what the Egyptians and Babylonians did were done by the will of the Lord, who suffered them for their correction: and the Arabic version renders it, "have not I done these things unto thee?" and the Syriac as a prophecy, as indeed so is the whole, "lo, so it shall be done to thee"; as is predicted in the foregoing verses, and that for the following reason:

in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God; as in Jeremiah 2:13; see Gill on Jeremiah 2:13, that is, as the Targum interprets it, the worship of the Lord thy God, his service, his statutes, and his ordinances; and followed after idols, and the worship of them; which is aggravated by the circumstance of time in which this was done:

when he led thee by the way? who showed thee the right way, and thou walkedst not in it, as the Targum; the way in which they should have gone, the way of their duty, and his commandments; and which would have been pleasant and profitable to them, and secured them from ruin and destruction.

Geneva Study Bible

Hast thou not procured this to thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he {b} led thee by the way?

(b) Showing that God would have still led them correctly, if they would have followed him.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

17. when he led thee by the way] If the text be right, the reference is to wilderness journeyings. But there can be little doubt that the words (omitted by LXX) have arisen from a scribe’s error in writing twice over the first four Hebrew words of Jeremiah 2:18.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 17. - Hast not thou procured this? rather, Is it not this that doth procure it unto thee (namely) that thou hast forsaken, etc.? or, Is it not thy forsaking Jehovah that pro. cureth thee this? When he led thee by the way. The prophet thinks, perhaps, of the rebellion of the forefathers of Israel, who too soon ceased to "go after" Jehovah (comp. ver. 2), and whose fickleness was imitated but too well by their descendants. This view is favored by the phraseology of Deuteronomy 1:33; Deuteronomy 8:2, 15. But we may, if we prefer it, explain "by (or, rather, in) the way," on the analogy of the promise in Jeremiah 31:9, "I will lead them... in a straight way," i.e. I will grant them an uninterrupted course of prosperity. The omission of the adjective in the present passage may be paralleled by Psalm 25:8, "Therefore will he instruct sinners in the (right) way." Jeremiah 2:17

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In Jeremiah 2:17 the question as to the cause of the evil is answered. זאת is the above-mentioned evil, that Israel had become a prey to the foe. This thy forsaking of Jahveh makes or prepares for thee. תּעשׂה is neuter; the infin. עזבך is the subject of the clause, and it is construed as a neuter, as in 1 Samuel 18:23. The fact that thou hast forsaken Jahveh thy God has brought this evil on thee. At the time when He led thee on the way. The participle מוליך is subordinated to עת in the stat. constr. as a partic. standing for the praeterit. durans; cf. Ew. 337, c. בּדּרך is understood by Ros. and Hitz. of the right way (Psalm 25:8); but in this they forget that this acceptation is incompatible with the בּעת, which circumscribes the leading within a definite time. God will lead His people on the right way at all times. The way on which He led them at the particular time is the way through the Arabian desert, cf. Jeremiah 2:6, and בּדּרך is to be understood as in Deuteronomy 1:33; Exodus 18:8; Exodus 23:20, etc. Even thus early their fathers forsook the Lord: At Sinai, by the worship of the golden calf; then when the people rose against Moses and Aaron in the desert of Paran, called a rejecting (נאץ) of Jahveh in Numbers 14:11; and at Shittim, where Israel joined himself to Baal Peor, Numbers 25:1-3. The forsaking of Jahveh is not to be limited to direct idolatry, but comprehends also the seeking of help from the heathen; this is shown by the following 18th verse, in which the reproaches are extended to the present bearing of the people. ' מה־לּך לדרך וגו, lit., what is to thee in reference to the way of Egypt (for the expression, see Hosea 14:9), i.e., what hast thou to do with the way of Egypt? Why dost thou arise to go into Egypt, to drink the water of the Nile? שׁחור, the black, turbid stream, is a name for the Nile, taken from its dark-grey or black mud. The Nile is the life-giving artery of Egypt, on whose fertilizing waters the fruitfulness and the prosperity of the country depend. To drink the waters of the Nile is as much as to say to procure for oneself the sources of Egypt's life, to make the power of Egypt useful to oneself. Analogous to this is the drinking the waters of the river, i.e., the Euphrates. What is meant is seeking help from Egyptians and Assyrians. The water of the Nile and of the Euphrates was to be made to furnish them with that which the fountain of living water, i.e., Jahveh (Jeremiah 2:14), supplied to them. This is an old sin, and with it Israel of the ten tribes is upbraided by Hosea (Hosea 7:11; Hosea 12:2). From this we are not to infer "that here we have nothing to do with the present, since the existing Israel, Judah, was surely no longer a suitor for the assistance of Assyria, already grown powerless" (Hitz.). The limitation of the reproach solely to the past is irreconcilable with the terms of the verse and with the context (Jeremiah 2:19). מה־לּך לדרךcannot grammatically be translated: What hadst thou to do with the way; just as little can we make תּיסּרך hath chastised thee, since the following: know and see, is then utterly unsuitable to it. תּיסּרך and תּוכיחך are not futures, but imperfects, i.e., expressing what is wont to happen over again in each similar case; and so to be expressed in English by the present: thy wickedness, i.e., thy wicked work, chastises thee. The wickedness was shown in forsaking Jahveh, in the משׁבות, backslidings, the repeated defection from the living God; cf. Jeremiah 3:22; Jeremiah 5:6; Jeremiah 14:7. As to the fact, we have no historical evidence that under Josiah political alliance with Egypt or Assyria was compassed; but even if no formal negotiations took place, the country was certainly even then not without a party to build its hopes on one or other of the great powers between which Judah lay, whenever a conflict arose with either of them. - וּדעי, with the Vav of consecution (see Ew. 347, a): Know then, and at last comprehend, that forsaking the Lord thy God is evil and bitter, i.e., bears evil and bitter fruit, prepares bitter misery for thee. "To have no fear of me" corresponds "to forsake," lit., thy forsaking, as second subject; lit.,: and the no fear of me in thee, i.e., the fact that thou hast no awe of me. פּחדּתי, awe of me, like פּחדּך in Deuteronomy 2:25.