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I. WE HAVE HERE REGRETFUL THOUGHTS OF THE PAST. We can see what the prophet once hoped and desired. Not only what he had hoped and desired in those dreams of youth before God had touched his heart and claimed the service of his lips, but also what he had hoped and desired since becoming a prophet. Dear as Anathoth with its inhabitants may have been before, it would become dearer still when he thought of impending calamities to the whole land. There are cherished objects indicated by the words "house," "inheritance," and "desire of the soul." What is precisely indicated by these words it is of course impossible for us to say; but any of us, thinking for a little of the objects that lie nearest to our hearts, will comprehend that the prophet is here speaking of separations he had found it very hard to achieve. He did not pretend that alienation from house and heritage and kindred was an easy thing. Then we must bear in mind that the references here have a deeper meaning than to Jeremiah's purely human relations. It is pretty well agreed that the full truth of these words is only reached when we think of Jeremiah as representative of Jehovah. God's separation from his people was the thing of most serious moment. God had a house; God had an inheritance; God had a beloved object, an object of desire (Deuteronomy 32:9). God had been with these people now for many centuries, and there was much to make them precious in his sight. They were the seed of Abraham, the descendants of those whom he had delivered from Egypt and guided through the wilderness into the land where they now dwelt. Things might have been so different, if only the people had been of a different spirit. There was no necessity in the nature of things that. Israel should have become so idolatrous, so hostile to Jehovah, any more than there was necessity that Anathoth should become a place of mortal snares and perils to the prophet. What a fall there was from the triumphal march across Jordan, under Joshua, to the march at the heels of a conqueror all the way from Jerusalem to Babylon! Again we say things might have been so different. That which God had cherished might have become a rich earthly manifestation of His glory. The vineyard on a fruitful hill might have become what it was intended to be - a fruitful vineyard.

II. PRUDENT AND DECISIVE ACTION IN PRESENT NECESSITIES. Natural affection must yield to spiritual duty. Jeremiah might doubtless have kept the good will of his kinsfolk, such as it was worth, if only he had been able and disposed to remain silent as a prophet. Happily there is no hesitation, there is no sign of its even being possible. Let us seize on every record that illustrates how strong, how immovable, those become who put their trust in God. The path that Jeremiah had to tread was trodden afterwards by Jesus himself. His kinsfolk would have interfered with main force to stop what they reckoned the vagaries of one who was beside himself; and so as far as Jesus could be said to have had any abiding-places, they were in Capernaum and Bethany, not in Nazareth. So with Jeremiah. He had to give up all that on earth he had any natural claim to, and throw himself on God, and those who perchance might help him for the sake of God. Nor was he disappointed. There is certainly no indication here of the compensations that came to the prophet for his fidelity and self-denial. It is hardly the place to mention them. But we do see this clearly, that when once the lower is relinquished, decisively relinquished, and a higher station taken up, the lower is seen to be lower. Temporal and natural relations, that count for so much when one is in the midst of them, are seen then in their comparative unimportance. Let it not be supposed that, after cutting off the right hand, one must of necessity wait for the fullness of life eternal to get anything like compensation. The compensation begins in the very act of self-sacrifice. Does not the prophet here say that what had once been so loved had come to put on such a threatening, maleficent aspect that he also had come to hate it? What has had to be relinquished for Christ only leaves so much the more of opportunity to grasp and to use the spiritual wealth which is in him. - Y.

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KJV: I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.

WEB: I have forsaken my house, I have cast off my heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.