Jeremiah 31:2 Thus said the LORD, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel… The people which were... wilderness. The sword by which Israel had been decimated, her ranks thinned, her homes desolated - what a trouble was that! And now it is to be followed by "the wilderness" - that "waste howling wilderness" so vividly described by Moses (Deuteronomy 1:19; Deuteronomy 8:15; Deuteronomy 32:10). This would seem another, a new, a sore trouble, but it was to be the means of healing the wound caused by the first. Cf. "I have given the valley of Achor for a door of hope" (Hosea 2:15). I. THE MEANING OF THESE WORDS. It is not easy to say certainly what sword and what wilderness the prophet had in his mind when he thus wrote. Perhaps the sword of Pharaoh and the wilderness of Sinai. Yet more likely the sword of their Babylonian conquerors; and the wilderness, that great Syrian desert across which they must travel on their homeward way - a wilderness far more deserving of the dread epithets which Moses applied to the wilderness of Sinai. Or the wilderness may mean the whole condition of the Jews in their exile, the deep sorrow, shame, and distress which their captivity seemed to threaten them with. II. But, let it be understood how it may, THE PROPHETIC STATEMENT IS TRUE. In the wilderness of Sinai what grace God's people found there! Blessings in basket and in store, in guidance, governance, guardianship; in instruction, discipline, and development as a nation: how they were welded together, trained for duty, qualified for the high honour God designed for them! And in the wilderness which they had to cross on their return from their exile, infested, then as now, with robber tribes, to whom their comparatively scant numbers, their unwarlike character, and above all their treasures of gold and silver destined for the temple of God, would offer an irresistible temptation, how could the exiles have escaped this peril of the wilderness, to say nothing of many others, but for the grace of God? It was emphatically true that they "found grace in the wilderness." Those dreary leagues of burning sand, the awful dangers of the way, might well have daunted them, and no doubt did deter the majority of the people from all attempt at return; for it was but a remnant that came back. But all these perils were surmounted. Day after day for four months the caravan of the exiles crept along the wilderness way. "Unlike that of Sinai, it was diversified by no towering mountains, no delicious palm groves, no gushing springs. A hard gravel plain from the moment they left the banks of the Euphrates till they reached the northern extremity of Syria, with no solace except the occasional wells and walled stations. Ferocious hordes of Bedouin robbers then, as now, swept the whole trail." But like their great ancestor, "they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the laud of Canaan they came." "They," as he, "found grace in the wilderness." And so abundant was that grace that their perilous enterprise became a veritable march of triumph. "The redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away." "As before some royal potentate, there would go before them an invisible Protector, who should remove the hard stones from the bare feet of those that ran beside the camels, and cast them up in piles on either side to mark the broad track seen for miles along the desert." (Cf. Isaiah 40:1-4, for description of this grace found in the wilderness.) And so what seemed so sore a trouble added on to the sword of the exile, was in reality the healing of the wound caused by that sword. But this is often the Divine plan. The second trouble heals the first, and so trouble is lessened by increase. Note - III. FURTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. The plague of London was followed by the fire, but that fire purged the city as nothing else could, and no such plague has visited it since. In medical science it is well known how often one disease is driven out by another. In the hot, close valleys of mountainous lands the wild storm is welcomed, notwithstanding its fierce might, overturning and destroying in ruthless manner, for it purges the whole atmosphere and drives away the seeds of disease and death. The heat was terrible, and the storm, but the second trouble lessened the first. To have to leave Paradise and to go out into a wilderness in which thorns and briars should abound was another trouble, but the labour the second demanded was to be the healing force whereby the first loss should be lessened and the curse turned into a blessing. What a tissue of troubles Jacob's life seems to have been made up of! and yet once and again the new trouble healed the old. The imprisonment of his sons in Egypt led to his recovery of his lost son Joseph. Death follows on disease. Ah! what a new trouble is death in instances not a few! but in that wilderness of the grave what grace the departed soul finds there! Take our Lord's illustration of the birth of children: how the last sorrows of the birth throes, the dread hour of travail, because thereby a new life is born, are with all the pain that went before forgotten, "remembered no more"! And in things spiritual the law of our text is true. The prodigal's outward misery was followed by the inward pangs of shame, remorse, and sorrow. But they led to the "I will arise and go," etc. And to a renewed soul what misery there is in the return of temptation! and if it have overcome the soul, what yet greater misery haunts the soul then! "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord." But that new distress is to render the recurrence of the first less and less possible, and by and by impossible. In God's providential ordering of our affairs, this same law is often shown. The straitened means that follow bereavement of the breadwinner of the household - that poverty often develops character, compels the mind to turn from perpetual brooding over its loss, which it is so apt to do, draws forth sympathy of friends, and in innumerable ways works good. "All things" do, as a fact, "work together for good to them that love God." IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THIS. (Cf. Romans 5:3, 4.) The outward ills may not always be removed, but their power to do aught else than bless the believer is taken away. Instead of casting him down, they lead him into the full possession of that hope, having which the soul is independent of all that man or hell can do against it. V. ITS LESSON. If "the wilderness" should follow "the sword," we need not fear; that is to say, if a second sorrow should come upon the steps of a former one, we may regard it as a probable means of lessening the former, and not increasing it. The long sorrow of no Isaac born to Abraham was followed by the awful command to slay him; but that led to an issue that swallowed up in glory and joy all the darkness and sorrow of all the past, and lit up all the future of the long ages to come with a light whose radiance is as bright today as ever. Then let our song be, "Father, I wait thy daily will," etc. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Thus saith the LORD, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. |
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