Jeremiah 33:26

Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

33:14-26 To crown the blessings God has in store, here is a promise of the Messiah. He imparts righteousness to his church, for he is made of God to us righteousness; and believers are made the righteousness of God in him. Christ is our Lord God, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. But in this world prosperity and adversity succeed each other, as light and darkness, day and night. The covenant of priesthood shall be secured. And all true believers are a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood, they offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God; themselves, in the first place, as living sacrifices. The promises of that covenant shall have full accomplishment in the gospel Israel. In Ga 6:16, all that walk according to the gospel rule, are made to be the Israel of God, on whom shall be peace and mercy. Let us not despise the families which were of old the chosen people of God, though for a time they seem to be cast off.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The ordinances of heaven and earth - i. e., the whole order of nature Nature is not more firmly established than God's purposes in grace.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

26. Isaac—(Ps 105:9; Am 7:9, 16).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

By

the seed of Jacob, and of Abraham and Isaac, are meant the body of the Jews, to whom these three patriarchs were common heads; by the seed of David, persons lineally descended from David, who should rule over the Israel of God. The sum of these two verses is plainly no more than God had said before, that a restoration of them to their own land should as certainly succeed their captivity as the night succeedeth the day, or the day succeedeth the night. God had as certainly established and ordained the one as the other, though not as yet so established, the one in the order of natural causes as the other. God would certainly have mercy on them, and in showing his mercy would take care that one of the seed of David should be their ruler, which was fulfilled in the Messiah.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant,.... R. Jonah thinks that Jacob is put instead of Aaron, because of the two families of David and Aaron before mentioned; but in this latter part of the chapter no mention is made of priests at all; and by the "seed" is meant one and the same, the spiritual seed of Christ, the antitypical David, and servant of the Lord; and which are no other than the seed of Jacob, over whom the Messiah reigns; or the spiritual Israel of God, whether Jews or Gentiles, and whom the Lord never casts away, so as to perish; but they shall all be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: See Gill on Jeremiah 31:37; and even the seed of Jacob, and of David, who was of Jacob, in the line of Judah, shall not be in such sense rejected:

so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that is, any of the seed of David taken literally; from whom the Lord has taken one, or raised up one of his seed, even the Messiah, to be a ruler over all the spiritual seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; or of all that tread in their steps: but inasmuch as by the seed of Jacob and David may be meant the spiritual seed of Christ, by rulers taken from them may be intended spiritual rulers and governors of the church, or ministers of the Gospel:

for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them; not only their captivity from Babylon, and so the family of David restored and continued till the Messiah should spring out of it; but the spiritual captivity of the Israel of God, of which the other was a type, and would be brought about by the Messiah; who in his love and pity should redeem them, as he has, from sin, Satan, law, hell, and death.

Geneva Study Bible

Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Jeremiah 33:26

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In order to make still more impressive the pledge given, that the covenant with David and the Levitical priesthood can never be broken, the Lord adds the promise of a numerous increase of the seed of David and the Levites. אשׁר as correlative to כּן stands for כּאשׁר; for in the accusative lies the general reference to place, time, kind, and manner; cf. Ew. 360 a, 333 a. The comparison with the innumerable host of stars and the immeasurable quantity of the sand reminds us of the patriarchal promises, Genesis 15:5; Genesis 22:17. In this way, the promises that apply to all Israel are specially referred to the family of David and the Levites ("the Levites," Jeremiah 33:22, is abbreviated from "the Levites, the priests," Jeremiah 33:21). This transference, however, is not a mere hyperbole which misses the mark; for, as Jahn observes, an immense increase of the royal and priestly families would only have been a burden on the people (Graf). The import of the words of the verse is simply that the Lord purposes to fulfil the promise of His blessing, made to the patriarchs in favour of their whole posterity, in the shape of a numerous increase; but this promise will now be specially applied to the posterity of David and to the priests, so that there shall never be wanting descendants of David to occupy the throne, nor Levites to perform the service of the Lord. The question is not about a "change of the whole of Israel into the family of David and the tribe of Levi" (Hengstenberg); and if the increase of the family of David and the Levites correspond in multitude with the number of all the people of Israel, this increase cannot be a burden on the people. But the question, whether this promise is to be understood literally, of the increase of the ordinary descendants of David and the Levites, or spiritually, of their spiritual posterity, cannot be decided, as Hengstenberg and Ngelsbach think, by referring to the words of the Lord in Exodus 19:6, that all Israel shall be a kingdom of priests, and to the prophetic passages, Isaiah 66:6, Isaiah 66:23., according to which the whole people shall be priests to God, while Levites also shall be taken from among the heathen. For this prophecy does not treat of the final glory of the people of God, but only of the innumerable increase of those who shall attain membership in the family of David and the Levitical priests. The question that has been raised is rather to be decided in accordance with the general promises regarding the increase of Israel; and in conformity with these, we answer that it will not result from the countless increase of the descendants of Jacob according to the flesh, but from the incorporation, among the people of God, of the heathen who return to the God of Israel. As the God-fearing among the heathen will be raised, for their piety, to be the children of Abraham, and according to the promise, Isaiah 66:20., even Levitical priests taken from among them, so shall the increase placed in prospect before the descendants of David and Levi be realized by the reception of the heathen into the royal and sacerdotal privileges of the people of God under the new covenant.

This view of our verse is confirmed by the additional proof given of the promised restoration of Israel, Jeremiah 33:23-26; for here there is assurance given to the seed of Jacob and David, and therefore to all Israel, that they shall be kept as the people of God. The occasion of this renewed confirmation was the allegation by the people, that the Lord had rejected the two families, i.e., Israel and Judah (cf. Jeremiah 31:27, Jeremiah 31:31; Jeremiah 32:20), called, Isaiah 8:14, the two houses of Israel. With such words they despised the people of the Lord, as being no longer a people before them, i.e., in their eyes, in their opinion. That those who spoke thus were Jews, who, on the fall of the kingdom of Judah, despaired of the continuance of God's election of Israel, is so very evident, that Hengstenberg may well find it difficult to understand how several modern commentators could think of heathens - Egyptians (Schnurrer), Chaldeans (Jahn), Samaritans (Movers), or neighbours of the Jews and of Ezekiel on the Chebar (Hitzig). The verdict pronounced on what these people said, "they despise, or contemn, my people," at once relieves us from any need for making such assumptions, as soon as we assign the full and proper force to the expression "my people" equals the people of Jahveh. Just as in this passage, so too in Jeremiah 29:32, "this people" is interchanged with "my people" as a designation of the Jews. Moreover, as Graf correctly says, the expression "this people" nowhere occurs in the prophets of the exile as applied to the heathen; on the contrary, it is very frequently employed by Jeremiah to designate the people of Judah in their estrangement from the Lord: Jeremiah 4:10; Jeremiah 5:14, Jeremiah 5:23; Jeremiah 6:19; Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 8:5; Jeremiah 9:14; Jeremiah 13:10; Jeremiah 14:10; Jeremiah 15:1, Jeremiah 15:20, and often elsewhere. "My people," on the other hand, marks Judah and Israel as the people of God. In contrast with such contempt of the people of God, the Lord announces, "If my covenant with day and night does not stand, if I have not appointed the laws of heaven and earth, then neither shall I cast away the seed of Jacob." The לא is repeated a second time before the verb. Others take the two antecedent clauses as one: "If I have not made my covenant with day and night, the laws of heaven and earth." This construction also is possible; the sense remains unchanged. בּריתי יומם ולילה is imitated from Jeremiah 33:20. "The laws of heaven and earth" are the whole order of nature; cf. Jeremiah 31:35. The establishment, institution of the order of nature, is a work of divine omnipotence. This omnipotence has founded the covenant of grace with Israel, and pledged its continuance, despite the present destruction of the kingdom of Judah and the temporary rejection of the guilty people. But this covenant of grace includes not merely the choosing of David, but also the choosing of the seed of Jacob, the people of Israel, on the ground of which David was chosen to be the ruler over Israel. Israel will therefore continue to exist, and that, too, as a nation which will have rulers out of the seed of David, the servant of the Lord. "The mention of the three patriarchs recalls to mind the whole series of the promises made to them" (Hengstenberg). The plural משׁלים does not, certainly, refer directly to the promise made regarding the sprout of David, the Messiah, but at the same time does not stand in contradiction with it; for the revival and continued existence of the Davidic rule in Israel culminates in the Messiah. On כּי cf. Jeremiah 31:23; Jeremiah 30:3, Jeremiah 30:18, and the explanations on Jeremiah 32:44. The Qeri אשׁיב rests on Jeremiah 33:11, but is unnecessary; for אשׁוּב makes good enough sense, and corresponds better to ורחמתּים, in so far as it exactly follows the fundamental passage, Deuteronomy 30:3, where רחם is joined with שׁוּב את־שׁבוּת.