Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.
Him - Egypt.
Hands upon thine head - expressive of mourning (2 Samuel 13:19).
In them - in those stays and 'confidences' in which thou trusteth.
Remarks:
(1) There is nothing which so much aggravates the heinousness of sin as that it is an offence against the God who from our youth has lavished so many kindnesses upon us.
(2) God might justly cast off His people on account of their many backsliding; but He remembers His own love from everlasting, which chose them as His own special treasure, consecrated to His service as "a kind of first-fruits of His creatures." He calls to mind also the special tokens of His favour which He has vouchsafed to them in times past, when first He called them out of the Egypt of this world, and delivered them from all the spiritual enemies who sought to "devour" them (Jeremiah 2:3).
(3) How infinitely happier were God's people when they "walked after" Him than now when they have turned aside from Him, and "walked after vanity." They who pursue vanity become vain themselves (Jeremiah 2:5). Our character never rises higher than our aim. So long as we keenly follow earthly objects of desire, we are, like them, earthly and grovelling. The pleasure-seeker becomes light and volatile as the butterfly-phantom which he chases. The mammon-worshipper becomes sordid and mean as the idol which he bows down to. Our prayer, therefore, should be "Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way" (Psalms 119:37).
(4) When we have declined from the God whose grace we have experimentally tasted, let us take to heart God's touching appeal to us, "What iniquity have ye found in me, that ye are gone far from me? Nay, not only has there been no iniquity in God in relation to us, but His whole dealings with us, as with Israel, have been marked by the most tender and considerate love, from the day that He first called us by His grace out of the bondage of sin in which we had lain, doomed not merely to "the shadow of death," but to its awful reality (Jeremiah 2:6).
(5) The transgression of God's people is much more grievous than that of those who never knew God. God pleads with His people in order that they may plead with themselves (Jeremiah 2:9): Consider, He says (Jeremiah 2:10-11), even pagan nations do not change their idol-gods for those of another country: How awful and monstrous, therefore, is the perversity of "my people" who "have changed their glory for that which doth not profit!" God is the glory of His children; whatever else we gain, we lose our true glory when we lose Him. To lose Him is to lose our souls; and what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26). It is enough to make all nature stand aghast with horror to witness man's suicidal perversity in a professedly God-fearing land. They who are, by calling, the people of God, and who yet forsake Him for earthly objects of pursuit, "commit two evils" (Jeremiah 2:13); they both "forsake God, the fountain of living waters," and "hew them out broken cisterns which can hold no water." Man, made originally in the likeness of God, can find his only satisfying portion in God. David might well say to God (Psalms 36:9), "With thee is the fountain of life." Without God i n the soul, this world is an arid wilderness.
`In vain I seek for rest In every earthly good, It leaves me still unblest, And makes me thirst for God; And sure at rest I cannot be Until my soul finds rest in thee.'
Man, who is by creation and redemption "the firstborn" of God, when severed from his heavenly Father, becomes a prey to every evil (Jeremiah 2:14-16).
(6) What will at last prove especially mortifying to the lost sinner will be the self-tormenting reflection I procured this unto myself (Jeremiah 2:17). The Lord would have led me on the way to heaven but I deliberately forsook Him for earthly confidences, even as Israel forsook God, and leant upon human stays, Egypt and Assyria (Jeremiah 2:18). Men's "own wickedness" (Jeremiah 2:19) shall be their punishment, in righteous retribution; and no more awful punishment can be conceived than that they should be given up wholly, without any intervention of preventing grace, to the unrestricted workings of their own sin: if in this life the passionate, envious, and malicious man is his own tormentor while he seeks to hurt others, much more so in the region of the damned: then, indeed, it shall be fully seen that "the way of the transgressor is hard," and that "it is, an evil thing and bitter, to forsake the Lord God."
(7) Men of the world exhaust their ingenuity in devising novelties, shifting from change to change (Jeremiah 2:36), in order to escape from care But they who change their position do not thereby change their disposition. Wherever they flee to, they cannot flee from themselves. The only true happiness is to be found in Christ. All our other "confidences" (Jeremiah 2:37) fail "in our time of trouble" (Jeremiah 2:28): then sinners will in vain appeal to God, who turn their back on him now. But the grace which His Spirit bestows on believers is like everflowing water from a fountain, refreshing, cleansing, and making fruitful: it quickens the dead in sin, it revives the drooping, it maintains spiritual life, and issues in eternal life.
(8) In vain we wash in all other self-devised means of cleansing (Jeremiah 2:22), our iniquity remains marked before God. Correction is lost on the degenerate apostate (Jeremiah 2:21; Jeremiah 2:30): he gives himself up to his own way, casting aside all hope (Jeremiah 2:25) of repentance and reconciliation with God. Yet even for him there is hope, if he will but hearken to the loving Spirit who still waits to be gracious, and who "pleads with" him by chastisements (Jeremiah 2:9). Then shall there be joy in heaven over the reclaimed backslider: and God shall say, This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.