The Pulpit Commentary on Jeremiah 34:17

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Liberal punishment for illiberal conduct.

The Jews will not set free their enslaved fellow citizens; God therefore liberates sword, pestilence, and famine upon them. If they are illiberal in their conduct, God will not be stinted in his punishment of them.

I. THE EVILS OF LIFE ARE UNDER THE RESTRAINT OF GOD. They appear to be uncontrolled, but they are really God's slaves. He holds in the hounds of retribution with his leash. They would fain tear their victim. But they vent their rage in vain till their Master lets them loose. Men can only be tormented by Satan when they are delivered over to Satan (1 Corinthians 5:5).

II. OUR CONDUCT DETERMINES OUR FATE. The terrible doom is no chance accident, nor is it a cruel act of despotism. It depends upon our behaviour whether or no God will liberate the powers of evil to do their fell work upon us.

III. ILLIBERAL CONDUCT WILL LEAD TO PERSONAL LOSS, The mean man overreaches himself. "There is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty" (Proverbs 11:24). History has proved that slavery is a commercial failure. Slave labour is most expensive. But beyond this it may bring upon itself justly earned calamities. Slavery was the curse of the ancient world—the scene of its blackest iniquity, and the root of its direst misery. Few things are more terrible in the history of Rome than the social wars rising out of slavery. The persistent clinging to slavery by the Southern States of America caused the evils of war to be set free amongst them.

HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR

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