EXPOSITION
This chapter may be illustrated by a comparison of it with Jeremiah 46:1-28. There Jeremiah exults ever the destruction of a nation (Egypt) which was one of the chief enemies of God's people, and on hearing or reading the inspired eloquence of the prophet the heart of a Jew could not but be moved with the liveliest sympathy. But it is another strain which meets us in this chapter, and one which to a Jew would certainly neutralize the favorable feelings which prophecies like that referred to must have awakened. Here Jeremiah announces that the last moment of grace for Judah is past, and the time for judgment come. The long-suffering of Jehovah has been exhausted; the fall of the commonwealth cannot any longer be delayed. Such was the strange destiny of the prophet; he was sent to "pull down" and "to build," but the destructive element (as Jeremiah 1:10 suggests) was largely predominant. Specially predominant is it in this important chapter, in which the prophet begins to fulfill the mission to the heathen with which twenty-three years ago he had been entrusted. One by one, "all the nations" directly or indirectly connected with Israel are called up to hear their punishment. There is no indulgence, no respite; only a gleam of hope in the promised final destruction of the tyrant-city Babylon (verses 12-14). The prophecy falls naturally into three parts, verses 15-29 forming the center. The date assigned to this chapter in the first verso is remarkable; it is the fatal year of the battle of Carchemish, which brought Syria and Palestine within the grasp of Babylon.