Jeremiah 16:19,20 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

O Lord, my strength To support and comfort me; my fortress To protect and shelter me; and my refuge in the day of affliction To whom I may flee for deliverance and consolation; the Gentiles, the nations, shall come to thee from the ends of the earth The prophet, shocked at the apostacy of Israel, and concerned for God's honour, here comforts himself by looking forward to the time when even the Gentiles themselves should become sensible of the absurdity of their hereditary idolatry, and be converted to the acknowledgment of the one living and true God: and this remarkable and desirable event he predicts, the more emphatically to demonstrate the unreasonableness and folly of forsaking him for idols. And shall say That is, the Gentiles shall say, Surely our fathers, our ancestors, have inherited lies, vanity, &c. And did not receive the satisfaction they promised themselves and their children; we are now sensible of the folly and deception of their idolatrous worship, by which they were cheated to their ruin, and therefore we will entirely and for ever renounce it, and in all our wants address ourselves to the true God as our only refuge and protection. Shall a man make gods unto himself? Thus the prophet represents the Gentiles, when enlightened by the truth, as reasoning with themselves. Shall a man be so ignorant and foolish; so perfectly void of reason and discernment, as to make gods to himself, the creatures of his own fancy, the work of his own hands, which are really no gods? Can a man be so infatuated, so entirely lost to human understanding, as to expect any divine blessing or favour from that which pretends to no divinity but what it first received from him? Observe, reader, that reformation is likely to be sincere and durable which results from a rational conviction of the gross absurdity which there is in sin, and the service of Satan.