14:10-16 The Lord calls the Jews this people, not his people. They had forsaken his service, therefore he would punish them according to their sins. He forbade Jeremiah to plead for them. The false prophets were the most criminal. The Lord pronounces condemnation on them; but as the people loved to have it so, they were not to escape judgments. False teachers encourage men to expect peace and salvation, without repentance, faith, conversion, and holiness of life. But those who believe a lie must not plead if for an excuse. They shall feel what they say they will not fear.

Verse 13. - "Pleading with Providence, the good prophet lays the blame on ill teaching, but the stern answer (Ver. 14), admitting the plea as true, rejects it as inadequate (Ver. 14), and denounces sorrows which (Vers. 17-22) the prophet passionately deprecates" (Rowland Williams). Ah, Lord God! rather, Alas! O Lord Jehovah (see on Jeremiah 1:6). The prophets say unto them. The greater part of the prophetic order had not kept pace with its more spiritual members (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.). They still traded on those natural gifts of divination (Micah 3:6) which were, no doubt, where genuine, of Divine origin, but which, even then, needed to be supplemented and controlled by a special impulse from the Spirit of holiness. Jeremiah, however, declares, on the authority of a revelation, that these prophets did not divine by any God-given faculty, but "the deceit of their own heart" (Ver. 14). The Deuteronomic Torah, discovered after a period of concealment at the outset of Jeremiah's ministry, energetically forbids the practice of the art of divination (Deuteronomy 18:10).

Then said I, Ah, Lord God!.... Being grieved at heart for the people, because he was forbid to pray for them, and because the Lord had resolved on the ruin of them; and the rather he pitied them, because they were deceived by the false prophets, and therefore he tries to excuse them, and lay the blame upon them, as follows:

behold, the prophets say unto them; that is, the false prophets, as the Targum; Jeremiah does not call them so, being willing to make the best of it:

ye shall not see the sword; the sword of the enemy drawn in your country, or fall by it:

neither shall ye have famine; by which it appears, that it was not yet come, only foretold; the contrary to which is here affirmed:

but I will give you assured peace in this place; so they spoke as from the Lord, and in his name, with all the confidence imaginable; assuring the people that they should have peace and prosperity, and be in the utmost safety in Jerusalem; and that neither famine nor sword would come to them, nor in the least hurt them. In the Hebrew text it is, "peace of truth" (l); that is, true peace, firm and lasting. The Septuagint render it "peace and truth"; see Isaiah 39:8.

(l) "pacem veritatis", Montanus, Schmidt.

13. Jeremiah urges that much of the guilt of the people is due to the false prophets' influence.

assured peace—solid and lasting peace. Literally, "peace of truth" (Isa 39:8).

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