Jeremiah 15:17,18 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I sat not in the assembly of the mockers Or, of those that make merry, as משׂחקים is elsewhere rendered: see Jeremiah 30:19; Jeremiah 31:4. Jeremiah soon found that the joy which he had conceived in being called to the prophetic office, and favoured with extraordinary communications from God, was turned into heaviness, God continually filling his mouth with dreadful messages, and his prophecies containing nothing but terrible denunciations of wrath against a sinful people. Hence his whole prophetical life was to him a time of sorrow and solitude, a time when he sat alone mourning and weeping, in secret, for the indignation of God, revealed to him against his people; nor rejoiced I did not, with the deriders and scorners of thy word, give a loose to joy and mirth at a time when thy severe judgments were denounced, and when the most dreadful calamities hung over the country. Because of thy hand God's hand may be understood of his judgments, which, being denounced by the prophet, might be resembled to a hand stretched out, and just ready to strike; or else of the prophetical impulse which was strong upon Jeremiah, and, in a manner, forced him to be the messenger of evil tidings. God's judgments, as they were represented to the prophets, often raised such dreadful ideas in their minds as affected them in an extraordinary manner, especially if their threatenings concerned their own country, or the church of God. Why is my pain perpetual, &c. These seem evidently to be the words of Jeremiah, complaining of the hard task which God had put upon him, continually filling his mouth with such bitter words of evil against the people as exposed him to their most implacable rage, so that his misery seemed like an incurable wound, attended with excruciating pain, for which there was no remedy but patience. Wilt thou be altogether to me as a liar, and waters that fail? No, I know thou wilt not. God is not a man that he should lie. The fountain of life will never be to his people as waters that fail. The sense is, “Thou hast promised to be my defence against mine enemies; and wilt thou altogether deceive me? like little brooks, which are dried up in summer, when they are most wanted, and so disappoint the thirsty traveller: see Job 6:15. The prophet here sets down the perplexities he laboured under, by reason of the opposition he continually met with from ungodly men, in the execution of his office; just as the psalmist relates the misgivings of his mind when he was under great troubles and temptations. But then presently he checks such thoughts, calls to mind God's gracious promises, and encourages himself to rely upon him. And the like encouragements are recorded in the following verses of this chapter.” Lowth.