Jeremiah 5:1-9 Run you to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if you can find a man… 1. Deliberate and wilful perjury (ver. 2). So familiarised with oaths as not to care whether the matter sworn to was true or false. 2. Idolatry. Strange to see how madly this people ran after the lying vanities of the Gentiles, after they had received such manifold and undeniable proofs of the power, wisdom, and goodness of a living God, who was present with them; after so many laws enacted against idolatry, so many signal judgments inflicted on them for falling into this sin, such a hedge set about them to keep them from mingling with other nations, lest they should learn their ways. 3. Adulteries and fornications. This was a crime of a high nature, a complication of sins, and productive of so many sad consequences that death was the just punishment allotted to it. 4. Their shameful prevaricating with God's Word, and torturing it to make it speak contrary to its genuine meaning. To this end they encouraged false prophets, who would prophesy smooth things, etc. 5. They were very unthankful to God, and insensible of His blessings conferred upon them. 6. They were very fraudulent in their dealings one with another, both in word and deed. 7. That which portended the extirpation of these Jews was, that not only all the fore cited iniquities were notorious in practice, but were moreover approved of, as it were, and settled among them by common consent. 8. This is enough to prove that it was fit for nothing but the fire, and it hath received that just recompense of reward. And the history of it is recorded for the instruction of all other cities who have the sacred Scriptures to instruct them. They may hear Jerusalem warning them, saying, "Look upon me, and learn to fear God. Will ye steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and sacrifice to the idols of your own imagination, and hope to escape the wrath of God better than I have done? Let my calamities conduce to your salvation, and put away those sins from among you which have laid me in ruinous heaps, and turned me into a monument of the Divine fury. Look upon me, and learn to fear God." 9. Those who are enemies to religion, and help to banish the fear of God out of the world, by denying the authority of His Word, or by putting a wrong sense and construction upon it, are as bad members as can be found in any society of men, because they do what they can to subvert the very foundations of truth, and deprive us of the last remedy which is left to repair the breaches of piety and virtue in a sinful world. (W. Reading, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it. |
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