Jeremiah 12:17

Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 12:14–end

The prophets sometimes, in God's name, delivered messages both of judgment and mercy to the nations that bordered on the land of Israel: but here is a message to all those in general who had in their turns been one way or other injurious to God's people, had either oppressed them or triumphed in their being oppressed. Observe, I. What the quarrel was that God had with them. They were his evil neighbours (Jer 12:14), evil neighbours to his church, and what they did against it he took as done against himself, and therefore called them his evil neighbours, that should have been neighbourly to Israel, but were quite otherwise. Note, It is often the lot of good people to live among bad neighbours…

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown on Jeremiah 12:17

(Isa 60:12). Many of these figurative acts being either not possible, or not probable, or decorous, seem to have existed only in the mind of the prophet as part of his inward vision. [So CALVIN]. The world he moved in was not the sensible, but the spiritual, world. Inward acts were, however, when it was possible and proper, materialized by outward performance but not always, and necessarily so. The internal act made a naked statement more impressive and presented the subject when extending over long portions of space and time more concentrated. The interruption of Jeremiah's official duty by a journey of more than two hundred miles twice is not likely to have literally taken place. Next…

John Gill on Jeremiah 12:17

But if they will not obey,.... Or "hear" (k); the word of the Lord, and hearken to the ministers of the Gospel, and be subject to the ordinances of it; or as the Targum, "will not receive instruction:'' I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation, saith the Lord: root it up from being a nation, strip it of all its privileges and enjoyments, and destroy it with an everlasting destruction; see Zechariah 14:16. (k) "audierint", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus; "audient", Cocceius.

John Calvin