Domestic relations become a curse.
It is evidently implied that, even in the present deplorable state of Israel, there was much that appeared attractive and profitable in domestic relations. Jesus reminded his servants that, in the days before the Flood, there was "marrying and giving in marriage until the day that, Noah entered into the ark;" and so we may conclude that in the time of Jeremiah there was also marrying and giving in marriage, clown to the very coming of the invader on the land. Individuals would go on, following out the promptings of their affections, unable to discern the signs of the times, and the approach of a calamity such as would overwhelm every family existing when it came. When society is in its ordinary state, marriages ending in misery are believed to be exceptional but here there is a trouble which is to come upon every household. Every family is to be smitten, and Jeremiah, in. his loneliness, is called to notice how, though deprived of domestic relations, he is to gain a compensation in other ways: Perhaps at times he was inclined to murmur that he—a man of strife and contention to the whole land—had no home where he might turn and find some refuge and relief, if only for a short interval Even in these apostate days there must surely have been a few homes at least where there was fidelity to Jehovah; where the parents taught his truth to the children, and the children reverenced the parents according to his commandment. But Jeremiah's way was closed up, so that he had no opportunity of forming such a household for himself. His celibate life did not come by his own selfish resolution, but by the will of God, clearly expressed, and based on certain necessities of Jeremiah's prophetic mission. The prophet, therefore, while he lost some things, was spared some great sorrows when the long-predicted blow at last came on the nation. The external circumstances of life are wonderfully equalized, when the sum of them is able to be calculated. We can only be robbed of the best possessions by our own fault. Jeremiah, however lonely his path may have been, however like to that of him who had "not where to lay his head," was advancing to the state where "they neither marry nor are given in marriage."—Y.