Jer. 16 The prophet is commanded to abstain from marriage, from mourning, or festival assemblies; hereby representing to them their approaching misery, Jer. 16:1–9. Their sins which caused it, Jer. 16:10–13. Their strange deliverance from Babylon, Jer. 16:14–15.

It is uncertain whether what we have in this chapter be a new revelation, or a continuance of his former prophecy. God commandeth the prophet in it under certain types to foretell their utter ruin and destruction. First he commandeth him to marry no wife, nor have sons or daughters.

God in these verses opens the reason why he would not have the prophet marry nor multiply relations. In evil and calamitous times, those who multiply relations do but multiply sorrows and afflictions to themselves; the apostle in evil times tells the Corinthians that married persons should have…

Mourning, מרזח There is so great a difference in the translation of this word, that, Amos 6:7, the very same word signifieth a banquet, and is so translated; yet is there no contradiction, for banquets are now (and probably anciently were) in the houses of mourning, as well as in the houses of…

There shall so many of all ranks and sizes die in this land, that men shall have no time to bury them, or there shall not be enough left living to bury the dead; nor shall men, for their own miseries, have leisure to lament for the miseries of other men.

Neither shall men tear themselves for them in mourning to comfort them for the dead: if we allow our translation here of the word כּ֣וֹס with the word supplied, themselves, it will be hard to give a tolerable sense of these words, for then tearing is the same with the cutting themselves mentioned…

God did not only forbade his prophet to go into houses of mourning, to eat and to drink according to their custom, to comfort those who had lost their friends; but he forbade him also to go into houses where they were wont to eat and to drink upon a more cheerful account.

And he declares that he laid this injunction upon him as a type that his countrymen, by such his forbearance, might understand that God in his providence was about to put an end to all their civil mirth in their days.

When thou shalt show this people all these words, or all these things; when thou shalt be observed by this people to refuse marriage, and to go to the houses of mourners, according to the custom, to eat or to drink with mourners, to make them to forget their sorrows, or to go into the house of…

Your fathers; the idolatrous kings of Judah that were before Manasseh’s time, since whose time there were hardly forty years yet elapsed.

Ye in latter ages, in the time of Manasseh, have done worse than your fathers did, and now in the time of Jehoiakim you run on much in the same course of idolatry and superstition, which in this is worse in you, because for thirty years together you had the better example of good Josiah the father…

You would not hearken to me to obey my voice in that good land which I gave you, and which you have known and inherited now many years; therefore I will throw you out into a land which you know not, and which your fathers knew not.

Therefore; it were better translated Notwithstanding, for that is manifestly the sense. God sweeteneth the dreadful threatenings preceding with a comfortable promise of their restoration.

Which he saith should be so grateful a mercy to them, that either in regard of the newness of this deliverance, or in regard of the great misery they should be in during the captivity of Babylon, when they should be delivered from it, they should not so much remember their deliverance front the…

Though some interpreters make these words a promise, either of God’s restoration of this people, and making use of Cyrus, who, as a fisherman or huntsman, by his proclamation fetched the Jews out of all parts of his dominions, to return to Jerusalem; or of the calling of God’s elect by the…

God is of purer eyes than that he can behold iniquity in any so as to approve it, and therefore though he be long patient, yet he will at last punish evil-doers; for his eyes behold them, their sins are open in his sight, and he particularly observeth men’s actions, that he may render unto every…

Before I will restore them, and return in my wonted favour to them, I will punish them for their ways which 1 have seen, which are ways of iniquity, and will plentifully punish them; (for so double here signifies, not the double of what their sins deserve;) because by their idolatry, blood, and…

The prophet hearing God’s resolution, before he showed this people any mercy, to be avenged on them for their sins, leaves off speaking to him upon that argument; but applieth himself to God for mercy for himself, and, to confirm his faith in him, gives him names suited to his hopes in him, and…

It is doubtful whether these be to be understood as the words of God, showing the unreasonableness of the sin of idolatry, or, as others make them, the continued speech of the Gentiles, who after their conversion should see the unreasonableness of worshipping the works of their own hands.

Because all the goodness and mercy that I have showed them will not learn them to know me, my power and might, I will once for all make them to understand it by the dreadful strokes of my vengeance.