In the latter days ye shall consider it— Ye shall consider and understood it. This and the preceding verse are found in chap. Jeremiah 23:19-20. The latter days may signify the time to come; but they commonly imply the times under the gospel, as being the last dispensation, and what should continue to the end of the world. In this sense the words import, "When all these evils are come upon you, which God hath threatened for your disobedience, and particularly for your heinous crime in rejecting the Messiah, and you have found the denunciations verified in the several captivities that you have undergone, then you will understand the import of this and several other prophesies, and the event will perfectly instruct you in their meaning." See Lowth and Houbigant.
REFLECTIONS.—1st, To perpetuate the memory of the great and gracious promises, God commands the prophet to write in a book all the words that he had spoken to him; either all the preceding prophesies, or those which he had now spoken to him, relative to the enlargement of the Jews from their captivity, and the coming of the Messiah; and this to support the faith and hope of the people of God, both of Israel and Judah.
1. They are represented as under the greatest terror and distress. It was a strange sight, but descriptive of the acuteness of their pains, to behold the men of war, like women in travail, with their hands on their loins, trembling, pallid, and crying out in their pangs, Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it, so terrible and afflictive; and this may refer to the destruction of the Jews by the Chaldeans, or to their more terrible desolations by the Romans: and some suppose, that it has a farther respect even to the reign of Antichrist, when the witnesses should be slain, and the church of Christ reduced to great distress.
2. The prophet must write a word of comfort for that gloomy and dark day. Though it is the time of Jacob's trouble, he shall be saved out of it; God will stand by his suffering people, and rescue them from the hands of their enemies. He will break their yoke, deliver them from the Babylonish chains, or rather from their present state of bondage, when strangers in all nations whither they are dispersed shall no more serve themselves of them, oppress and harass them no more; or, best of all, from the bondage of sin and Satan, their unbelief and impenitence, when they shall be turned unto the Lord, and serve the Lord their God, and David their king; which has certainly a farther view than to the restoration of the temple-service, and to the governors who presided over them after the captivity in Babylon—even to the adored Messiah, David's son, raised up to sit on his throne; and David's Lord, whose divine character they should acknowledge, submit to his government, and join with his church in his worship; whom I will raise up unto them; God, according to his promises, having constituted him to be a prince and saviour, to whom every knee must bow, and whom every tongue must confess. Note; They who take Christ for their king are bound to prove their professions by their fidelity. Loyalty consists not in words but deeds.
2nd, When God visits his people, he still in wrath remembers mercy.
1. Their state appears very deplorable; yea, to human view, utterly desperate; their bruise incurable, their wound grievous, so that all restoration was despaired of; God himself seemed to be their enemy, their cruel enemy. So severe, so long continued were the strokes of his judgments upon them; they had not a friend in their troubles to plead for them, either with God or man; or so much as a kind hand stretched out to bind up their gaping wounds, or administer the healing medicine of consolation or advice. Their lovers, the neighbouring nations who courted them in their prosperity, deserted them in the day of their distress, and looked upon their case as desperate, regarding Zion as an outcast, whom no man seeketh after, abandoned to destruction; all which extorted from them bitter complaints; not that they had any cause to charge God as severe; for, because of the multitude of their iniquities and their aggravated sins, had these visitations been sent upon them, and their sufferings were less than they deserved; for, heavy as the visitation seemed to them, God corrected them in measure, and for their good, that he might not leave them altogether unpunished; as a father chastising them, that they might be reformed, and not ruined. Note; (1.) In our sufferings we are too apt to call the rod of a father the chastisement of a cruel one. (2.) Sin has a mortal sting; and none but God can heal the guilty soul. (3.) Whatever burden God lays upon us, we are bound to acknowledge it less than our iniquity has deserved. (4.) When the sinner is reduced to the depths of self-despair, then is the time when God magnifies the riches of his grace in his salvation.
2. The Lord declares his purpose of mercy towards them. Desperate as their case seemed, both from their sins and sufferings, God bids them not fear, nor be dismayed; he owns them still as his servants, and engages to save them, if they will return to him. Though far dispersed in distant lands, he will bring them back, and give them, for all the wars and tumults with which they had been harassed, peace and quiet in their own land; which seems more applicable to their last recovery, when they shall be gathered into the gospel church, than to their return from Babylon, when their settlement met with many obstructions. As for their enemies, God threatens to destroy them utterly; but adds, Though I will make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: the mightiest monarchies have been long since utterly subverted, and all other nations, among whom they had been captives, devoured, destroyed, and incorporated with their conquerors; but to this hour we see the people of the Jews as much a distinct and separate people, as if they had been still shut up from all other nations in their own land, preserved for the promised mercy: and, notwithstanding all their sins and dire calamities, God promises, in a national view, to pardon the one and heal the other; to restore their health, and heal their wounds; bringing them into a state of temporal prosperity, and saving those who will accept of the offers of his gospel from the power of corruption; converting their souls, and causing them to partake of all the blessings of his spiritual kingdom in Christ Jesus. Note; (1.) No sinner's case is so far gone, as to be past the divine physician's ability to cure. (2.) They who believe God's promises, will be delivered from distressing fears. (3.) The present state of the Jewish people is a great and constant evidence of the inspiration of the prophetic word.
3rdly, The same subject is pursued, and the promises delivered have a twofold respect:
1. To the return of the Jews from Babylon. Then their city should be rebuilt on the same spot, the temple raised from its ashes, the sacred festivals be restored, their numbers be multiplied, their nation be respected, their children be playing in the streets in peace, their congregation at the temple undisturbed, their oppressors punished; their rulers, of themselves, not strangers; their governor one of their own nation, appointed of God, accepted of him, a pattern of devotion and piety to his subjects. The covenant of national peculiarity shall be re-established, God again the God of Judah, and they his peculiar people as a nation; whilst all the wicked, who had persecuted them, shall be swept away as with a whirlwind, through the fierce anger of the Lord, which shall not return until he have done it, fully established his people in their own land, and destroyed their foes.
2. To their return to the church of God from their present dispersion; and this seems chiefly intended.
[1.] They shall be recovered from their captivity. Some suppose, literally, that they shall be collected in Judaea (which is my own opinion), and that the city of Jerusalem shall be rebuilt in all its former magnificence; however, they shall come into the church of Christ, the city of the living God, the spiritual Jerusalem, and the voice of thanksgiving for gospel-grace shall sound louder than the songs which accompanied the sacred festivals.
[2.] Their numbers will be great in the day of their conversion, and a most glorious appearance will they make, when they shall be rapidly brought to the faith of the Gospel, and a nation be born in a day. At that day the children of the church shall be multiplied in a more astonishing manner than at the first preaching of the Gospel, and no more persecuting powers remain to disturb the congregation of the saints.
[3.] They will then be brought to know and acknowledge the true Messiah. His noble one, his glorious, or mighty one, as the word may be rendered, shall be of themselves; and their governor, the Prince of Peace, able to save and to destroy, shall proceed from the midst of them, rise up from the stock of Israel; I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me as Mediator between God and man, appointed to be the friend and advocate of his faithful people, and ever living in heaven to make intercession for them, in consequence of his having engaged his heart to God, to draw near to him by an obedience to death, even the death of the cross. And this may well deserve a note of admiration, Who is this! This is Jesus, by whom lost souls are restored to the favour of the justly-offended Jehovah, and he becomes their God, and they his people, which will be the case with the Jews at the latter day.
[4.] All the wicked will be cut off; they who will not submit to the Messiah's government, must perish under his wrath terrible and irresistible, which sinners will be made to feel, if not before, at least at the great day of his appearing and glory; and then it will be too late to consider, when wrath comes upon them to the uttermost: or, in the latter days ye shall. consider it, shall see this prophesy accomplished, all the purposes of God's love to his faithful people, and of wrath to his enemies, fully performed.