44:1-14 God reminds the Jews of the sins that brought desolations upon Judah. It becomes us to warn men of the danger of sin with all seriousness: Oh, do not do it! If you love God, do not, for it is provoking to him; if you love your own souls, do not, for it is destructive to them. Let conscience do this for us in the hour of temptation. The Jews whom God sent into the land of the Chaldeans, were there, by the power of God's grace, weaned from idolatry; but those who went by their own perverse will into the land of the Egyptians, were there more attached than ever to their idolatries. When we thrust ourselves without cause or call into places of temptation, it is just with God to leave us to ourselves. If we walk contrary to God, he will walk contrary to us. The most awful miseries to which men are exposed, are occasioned by the neglect of offered salvation.And I will take the remnant of Judah,.... Such as remained of that tribe in the land of Judea after the captivity: and not all of them, but such that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there: who were bent upon going thither, notwithstanding all the remonstrances made to them to the contrary; and were gone thither, and were now actually sojourners there: this describes such persons who wilfully, and of their own accord, went thither; and excepts those who were over-persuaded or over-powered to go along with them: and they shall all be consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; not by natural death, one after another; but by the judgments of God, as follows: they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine; by the sword of the king of Babylon; and by famine, occasioned by a foreign army and sieges: they shall die; from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine; which is repeated for the confirmation of it, and to express the universality of the destruction; that it should reach to persons of every age, state and condition, rank and degree, young and old, high and low, rich and poor: and they shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach; See Gill on Jeremiah 42:18. |
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