The Word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah the second time, while he was yet shut up in the court of the prison.
A Divine message sent into a prison
I. A true child of God and an honoured prophet in disgrace and affliction (verse 1). Let not the child of God think that his sorrows are always because of his Sins.
II. Though despised of man, the prophet was honoured of God (verses 1, 2).
1. To receive communications from the Divine mind is the highest honour.
2. He whom God honours and owns as His child need not fear what man can do.
III. Divine consolation to an afflicted servant (verse 3).
1. The most precious of all privileges, that of prayer: “Call unto Me.”
2. The most marvellous of all assurances: “And I will answer thee.”
3. The most encouraging of all promises: “I will show thee great and mighty things.”
IV. The adversity and prosperity of nations are under the control of God (verses 4-7).
1. It is impossible properly to construe the history of a nation without reference to the moral government of God.
2. National prosperity or adversity has always been in the line of national virtue or vice.
V. The essential conditions of national as well as individual healing (verses 8, 9).
1. It is essential that God come to do the work. “I will cleanse,” &c.
2. It is essential that God work upon our moral natures. “I will cleanse them from all their iniquity.”
3. It is essential that God work upon our moral natures by the assurance of the forgiveness of sin. “I will pardon all,” &c.
4. This moral and spiritual cleansing and pardon are essential for the appreciation of the Divine goodness: “And they shall fear,” &c.
5. This spiritual healing shall manifest forth the glory of God: “It shall be to Me a name,” &c. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
The method of Divine procedure
The prophet, when the Word of the Lord came unto him, was in a good hearing place, “shut up in the court of the prison.” Shut up unjustly, it was no prison to him, but a sanctuary, with God’s altar visibly in it, and God Himself irradiating the altar with a light above the brightness of the sun. How hardly shall they that have riches hear the Gospel. Their ears are already filled; their attention is already occupied. What keen ears poverty has I What eyes the blind man has!--inner eyes, eyes of expectation. We should have had no world worth living in but for the prison, the darkness, the trouble, the blindness, the sorrow, which have constituted such precious elements in our lot. There would have been no poetry written if there had been no sorrow. Jeremiah heard more in the prison than he ever heard in the palace. God knows where His children are. There are a thousand prisons in life. We must not narrow words into their lowest meanings, but enlarge them into their broadest significance, He is in prison who is in trouble, who is in fear, who is in conscious penitence, without having received the complete assurance of pardon; he is in prison who has sold his liberty, is lying under condemnation, secret or open; and he is in prison who has lost his first love, his early enthusiasm that was loaded with dew like a flower in the morning. Whatever our prison is, God knows it, can find us, can send a word of His own directly to us, and can make us forget outward circumstances in inward content and peace and joy. (J. Parker, D. D.)