Jeremiah 5:18

Nevertheless in those days, saith the LORD, I will not make a full end with you.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(18) I will not make a full end.—As before, in Jeremiah 4:27, and in this chapter, Jeremiah 5:10, what seems the extremest sentence is tempered by the assurance that it is not absolutely final. It is intended to be reformatory, and not merely penal.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:10-18 Multitudes are ruined by believing that God will not be so strict as his word says he will; by this artifice Satan undid mankind. Sinners are not willing to own any thing to be God's word, that tends to part them from, or to disquiet them in, their sins. Mocking and misusing the Lord's messengers, filled the measure of their iniquity. God can bring trouble upon us from places and causes very remote. He has mercy in store for his people, therefore will set bounds to this desolating judgment. Let us not overlook the nevertheless, ver. 18. This is the Lord's covenant with Israel. He thereby proclaims his holiness, and his utter displeasure against sin while sparing the sinner, Ps 89:30-35.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Or,

It shall eat "thine harvest and thy bread:"

They shall eat "thy sons and thy daughters."

It shall eat thy sheep and thy cattle:

It shall eat "thy vines and thy fig-trees."

They shall impoverish ... - Or, It shall batter thy "fortified cities, wherein thou" trustest, with weapons of war. There is probably reference here to an instrument like a battering-ram, with which the Assyrians beat down the walls of their enemies.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18. Not even in those days of judgments, will God utterly exterminate His people.

I will not make a full end with you—(Jer 5:10; Jer 4:27).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See this verse explained Jeremiah 4:27, save only that I think here it is taken in the first sense there mentioned; for it is not said only, as in that verse,

I will not make a full end, or a full end of you, but a full end with you: q.d. I have not done with you yet. See Leviticus 26:14-40.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Nevertheless, in those days,.... When these things should be done by the king of Babylon and his army:

saith the Lord, I will not make a full end with you: this was to be done at another time, not now; See Gill on Jeremiah 4:27, Jeremiah 5:10, though some think that this is a threatening of more and greater calamities; that this would not be all he would do to them; he had not yet done; he had other evils and calamities, to bring upon them, particularly a long captivity.

Geneva Study Bible

Nevertheless in those days, saith the LORD, I will not make a full end with {q} you.

(q) Here the Lord declares his unspeakable favour toward his Church, as in Jer 4:27.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

18. Du. for metre and style excludes the whole remainder of the ch. from Jeremiah’s authorship. Without such drastic treatment of the text, we may yet hesitate to accept this v. as it seems an unwarranted interruption of the sequence of thought. See on Jeremiah 4:27.

Jeremiah 5:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

This people will devour the harvest and the bread, the children, the cattle, and the best fruits of the land. Devour, here as often, in the wider sense, destroy; cf. e.g., Jeremiah 3:24 and Jeremiah 10:25, where the first half of the present verse is compressed into the words: they ate up Jacob. We need not wait to refute Hitz.'s absurd remark, that the author imagined the enemy, the assumed Scythians, to be cannibals. In the second half of the verse the words, "the fenced cities wherein thou trustest,"are a reminiscence of Deuteronomy 28:52; and hence we may see, that while our prophet is describing the enemy in Jeremiah 5:15-18, Moses' threatening, Deuteronomy 28:49-52, was in his mind. רשׁשׁ, break in pieces, as in Malachi 1:4. With the sword, i.e., by force of arms; the sword, as principal weapon, being named, instead of the entire apparatus of war. In Jeremiah 5:18 the restriction of Jeremiah 5:10 (cf. Jeremiah 4:27) is repeated, and with it the threatening of judgment is rounded off.