Jeremiah 31:18-21 I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke… We have in this passage two speakers, two personalities. It is so everywhere. All religion which is worthy the name is the meeting, the intercourse, the converse and conversation of two spirits; till they come into communication and contact there is no religion, no possibility of religion in any but a barren and lifeless sense — the spirit of the man, and the Spirit of his God. Ephraim is bemoaning himself, but it is in God's presence. "I have surely heard him," God says, and that, not only because He who made the ear must hear all things, but because the self-bemoaning is addressed to God, as concerned, and interested, and acting in all. "Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised; turn Thou me, and I shall be turned." Oh, let Ephraim never bemoan himself in solitude. Let him shut the world out, but not shut self in. Let God hear him. Let him lay bare the sins and the sorrows which follow the sins, in the presence, consciously, discerningly — in the presence of the God against whom the sins are committed, and from whom the consequent sorrows come. We know not how it is, yet we do know that the whole character of the self-bemoaning is changed at once by the thought that God hears it. Oh, when I bemoan myself upon my knees, for the darkness in which sin has wrapped me round and round, for the chain which binds me, for the misery which chills me, for the weakness which bathes, and the experience of evil which paralyses me — when I do this upon my knees, there is a glimmering at once, and peradventure at least, at once of hope that I am so made as to feel that there is light in heaven, and that He before whom I kneel is already, in virtue of creation, Himself what Ephraim here called Him, the Lord my God. We pass from the one speaker of the text, and the one personality to the other, and, having listened to the self-bemoaning of Ephraim in God's presence, have yet to give audience to the most pathetic words in all the Bible: "Is Ephraim My dear son?" God is the speaker. "Is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: My heart is troubled for him: I must surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." You will not easily persuade us that the words were spoken of Ephraim the tribe, or of even the ten tribes, and not of Ephraim the individual and the man. It is because God feels thus towards man, that He feels thus towards the nation. Never let us lose the collective life in the individual; never let us rob the collective life. whether of Israel or of England, of the precious promises written of it in the Word. On the other hand, let us see an argument, as it were a fortiori, of the love of God to the responsible sin-suffering soul in all that He speaks in the Bible of that aggregate of souls which is the corporate being. We cannot err in taking the words home. We honour God when we clasp to our bosom any one of His utterances. It was for us if we can make it our own — and we can make this our own. There is something unspeakably affecting in that thought, that the very heart of God is, as He here says, troubled for the sinner that He has been obliged to speak against. He would not have been true, He would not have been righteous, He would not have been gracious, He would not have been God, if He had not spoken against him whilst he was going astray. He must speak against him while he is bent upon his own ruin; but oh! to hear Him saying that He earnestly remembers him still, even while He speaks. Earnestly remembers him! What about him? We can answer that question. He remembers that He made him in His own image; He remembers what He made him for — holiness, happiness, a delightful life, full of love and joy, and growing, maturing, expanding beauty, one day to shine as the sun in the kingdom of his Father. But more, and much more than this. He remembers the man himself, just as a parent remembers a son far away serving his country in India or Egypt; or a son gone into the unseen country, oh! how to be missed and mourned; or a son — for this is more appropriate — a son who has given him trouble, for whom he has had endless anxiety, for whom his own pillow has been wet, night after night, with tears. Yes, Ephraim has given God trouble. For Ephraim God left heaven, went after him into his exile, shed His life's blood for him. St. Paul said so at Miletus. What more could He have done for him that He has not done! and, though it has been for a long time in vain, though neither gentleness nor severity has succeeded with him, though He might, if He had been a human parent, long ago have given him up, yet, being God and not man, He earnestly remembers him still (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God. |
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