Volume III
The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah.
With John Brown’s marginal references, notes and reflections · Vol. III, p. 1228
Jeremiah was a priest descended from Aaron, very early called to the prophetical office (ch. i.), and continued forty or fifty years faithfully discharging it. Living in a period of great dissimulation with God, and of notorious rebellion against him, the miseries which he foresaw, and the persecutions which he endured, rendered his condition extremely afflicted and sorrowful, ch. ix. 1; xi. 18, 19; xv. 10, 15; xvii. 14-18; xviii. 18-23; xx. 7-18; and, excepting some promises of deliverance from Babylon, or redemption through Jesus Christ, and happiness to his church, in ch. iii. xxx.-xxxiii.; xxiii. 3-8; xxiv. 4-7; xxix. 10-14; l. 4-8, 19, 20, 33, 34, he is continually engaged in charging men's sins upon them, or denouncing the judgments of God against them;—as the ruin of the Jewish nation, Egyptians, Philistines, Tyrians, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Syrians, Arabians, and Persians, by the Chaldeans; and then of the Chaldeans themselves, ch. xxv. xxvii. xlvi.-li. &c. His first four sermons are generally plain, ch. ii.-xii. The following sixteen are generally introduced by some typical emblem, ch. xiii.-xxxv. [It is the opinion of the most learned commentators that the prophecies of Jeremiah, having been written upon separate parchments, have not been placed as they were delivered, and the following, among other attempts, has been made to arrange them in chronological order:—after ch. xx., xxii. xxiii. xxv. xxvi. xxxv. xxxvi. xlv. xxiv. xxix.-xxxi. xxvii. xxviii. xxi. xxxiv. xxxvii. xxxii. xxxiii. xxxviii. xxxix. 15-19, xxxix. 1-14, lx.-lxiv. lxvi. (Blayney). After ch. xx., xxii. 1-24, xxvi. xlvi. 1-13, xxxv. xxv. xxxvi. 1-9, xlv. xxxvi. 9 to end, xxii. 24 to end, lii. 1-4, xxiv. xxix. 1-15, xxix. 16-21, xxix. 15, xxix. 21 to end, xxx. xxxi. xxvii. xxviii. xlviii. xlix. 1-51, xxxix. 1, xxxvii. 1-5, xxxiv. 1-11, xxxii. xxxiii. xxxvii. 5-47, xxxvii. 6-11, xxxiv. 11 to end, xxxvii. 11 to end, xxi. xxxviii. xxxix. 15 to end, lii. 5, 6, xxxix. 3, lii. 7-12, xxxix. 11-15, lii. 24-28, lii. 12-15, lii. 17-24, lii. 15, 16, xxxix. 10, lii. 4, xxxix. 2-10 (Townsend). Of the comparative value of these suggested arrangements, it is unnecessary to speak, inasmuch as they are at best conjectural; but they are important as specimens of the indefatigable pains bestowed by their respective authors in "searching the Scriptures." C.]