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17. Keeping the Sabbath

¹ “Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool,
   inscribed with a flint point,
on the tablets of their hearts
   and on the horns of their altars.
² Even their children remember
   their altars and Asherah poles That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah
beside the spreading trees
   and on the high hills.
³ My mountain in the land
   and your Or hills / and the mountains of the land. / Your wealth and all your treasures
I will give away as plunder,
   together with your high places,
   because of sin throughout your country.
⁴ Through your own fault you will lose
   the inheritance I gave you.
I will enslave you to your enemies
   in a land you do not know,
for you have kindled my anger,
   and it will burn forever.”

⁵ This is what the LORD says:

   “Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
   who draws strength from mere flesh
   and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
⁶ That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
   they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
   in a salt land where no one lives.

    ⁷ “But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
   whose confidence is in him.
⁸ They will be like a tree planted by the water
   that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
   its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
   and never fails to bear fruit.”

    ⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things
   and beyond cure.
   Who can understand it?

    ¹⁰ “I the LORD search the heart
   and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
   according to what their deeds deserve.”

    ¹¹ Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay
   are those who gain riches by unjust means.
When their lives are half gone, their riches will desert them,
   and in the end they will prove to be fools.

    ¹² A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning,
   is the place of our sanctuary.
¹³ LORD, you are the hope of Israel;
   all who forsake you will be put to shame.
Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust
   because they have forsaken the LORD,
   the spring of living water.

    ¹⁴ Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed;
   save me and I will be saved,
   for you are the one I praise.
¹⁵ They keep saying to me,
   “Where is the word of the LORD?
   Let it now be fulfilled!”
¹⁶ I have not run away from being your shepherd;
   you know I have not desired the day of despair.
   What passes my lips is open before you.
¹⁷ Do not be a terror to me;
   you are my refuge in the day of disaster.
¹⁸ Let my persecutors be put to shame,
   but keep me from shame;
let them be terrified,
   but keep me from terror.
Bring on them the day of disaster;
   destroy them with double destruction.

Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy

¹⁹ This is what the LORD said to me: “Go and stand at the Gate of the People, Or Army through which the kings of Judah go in and out; stand also at all the other gates of Jerusalem. ²⁰ Say to them, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah and all people of Judah and everyone living in Jerusalem who come through these gates. ²¹ This is what the LORD says: Be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. ²² Do not bring a load out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your ancestors. ²³ Yet they did not listen or pay attention; they were stiff-necked and would not listen or respond to discipline. ²⁴ But if you are careful to obey me, declares the LORD, and bring no load through the gates of this city on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy by not doing any work on it, ²⁵ then kings who sit on David’s throne will come through the gates of this city with their officials. They and their officials will come riding in chariots and on horses, accompanied by the men of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever. ²⁶ People will come from the towns of Judah and the villages around Jerusalem, from the territory of Benjamin and the western foothills, from the hill country and the Negev, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and incense, and bringing thank offerings to the house of the LORD. ²⁷ But if you do not obey me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying any load as you come through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses.’”

This discourse is no doubt to be separated from the preceding one, and whosoever divided the chapters was deficient in judgment as to many other places as well as here. Now the meaning is, that so great and so gross was the contempt of the law, that they neglected even the observance of the Sabbath; and yet we know that hypocrites are in this respect very careful, nay, Isaiah upbraided the men of his day that they made so much of their sanctity to consist in the outward observance of days. (Isaiah 1:13.) But, as I have already said, the Jews were so audacious in the time of Jeremiah that they openly violated the Sabbath, men were become so lost, as we commonly say, as not to pretend any religion. The licentiousness of the people was so great that they had no shame; nay, they all openly shewed that they had wholly cast away the yoke of God and of his law. When this was the case at Jerusalem, wlmt can we think was done in obscure villages where so much religion did not exist? for if there was any right teaching, if there was any appearance of religion, it must have been at Jerusalem.

We now then see that the Prophet was sent by God to charge the people with this gross and base contempt of the law; as though he had said, “Go to now, and pretend that you retain at least some religion: yet even in this small matter, the observance of the Sabbath, ye are deficient, for ye bring burdens, that is, ye carry on business on the Sabbath as on other days. As then there is not among you even an external sanctity as to the Sabbath, why do you go on with your evasions? for your impiety is sufficiently proved.” We now see what the Prophet means, and what the import of this discourse is which we are now to explain.

He says first, that he was sent, go, to bring this message. He had been indeed chosen before a prophet; but he speaks here of a special thing which he was commissioned to do: and he says that he was sent to the chief gate of the city, through which the kings entered in and went out and the whole people ¹⁸⁶¹⁸⁶ There is a peculiarity in the phraseology of the original as to the relative “which,” after “the gate of the city;” literally it is, “which they enter through it the kings of Judah, and which they go out through it.” In Welsh there is exactly the same form of expression, — Yr hwn yr a trwyddo frenhinoedd Iwda, etc. Had this been the Welsh version, it would have been literally the Hebrew, and more consonant than the present version with the idiom of the language. — Ed. and then that he was sent to all the gates. By these words he means, that it was not God’s will that the profanation of the Sabbath should be partially made known, but be everywhere proclaimed, in order that he might shame not only the king but also the whole people. The prophets usually spoke first in the Temple, and then they went to the gates, where there was a larger concourse of people. But Jeremiah had here something unusual; for God intended most clearly to condemn the Jews for their base and inexcusable contempt of the Sabbath.