17 But your eyes and your heart are fixed only on profit for yourself, on causing the death of him who has done no wrong, and on violent and cruel acts.
Having eyes full of evil desire, never having enough of sin; turning feeble souls out of the true way; they are children of cursing, whose hearts are well used to bitter envy;
And he went up and down among the lions and became a young lion, learning to go after beasts for his food; and he took men for his meat.
This is what the Lord has said: Do what is right, judging uprightly, and make free from the hands of the cruel one him whose goods have been violently taken away: do no wrong and be not violent to the man from a strange country and the child without a father and the widow, and let not those who have done no wrong be put to death in this place.
And because of the death of those who had done no wrong, for he made Jerusalem full of the blood of the upright; and the Lord had no forgiveness for it.
And they come to you as my people come, and are seated before you as my people, hearing your words but doing them not: for deceit is in their mouth and their heart goes after profit for themselves.
Or is a thief, or the worse for drink, or makes use of strong language, or takes by force what is not his, will have any part in the kingdom of God.
Have no love for the world or for the things which are in the world. If any man has love for the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Because everything in the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world.
But every man is tested when he is turned out of the right way by the attraction of his desire. Then when its time comes, desire gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is of full growth, gives birth to death.
But those who have a desire for wealth are falling into danger, and are taken as in a net by a number of foolish and damaging desires, through which men are overtaken by death and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all evil: and some whose hearts were fixed on it have been turned away from the faith, and been wounded with unnumbered sorrows.
But evil acts of the flesh and all unclean things, or desire for others' property, let it not even be named among you, as is right for saints; And let there be no low behaviour, or foolish talk, or words said in sport, which are not right, but in place of them the giving of praise. Being certain of this, that no man who gives way to the passions of the flesh, no unclean person, or one who has desire for the property of others, or who gives worship to images, has any heritage in the kingdom of Christ and God.
But for the rest, take from among the people able men, such as have the fear of God, true men hating profits wrongly made; and put such men over them, to be captains of thousands, captains of hundreds and of fifties and of tens;
No man may be a servant to two masters: for he will have hate for the one and love for the other; or he will keep to the one and have no respect for the other. You may not be servants of God and of wealth. And the Pharisees, who had a great love of money, hearing these things, were making sport of him.
And he said to them, Take care to keep yourselves free from the desire for property; for a man's life is not made up of the number of things which he has. And he said to them, in a story, The land of a certain man of great wealth was very fertile: And he said to himself, What is to be done? for I have no place in which to put all my fruit. And he said, This I will do: I will take down my store-houses and make greater ones, and there I will put all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have a great amount of goods in store, enough for a number of years; be at rest, take food and wine and be happy. But God said to him, You foolish one, tonight I will take your soul from you, and who then will be the owner of all the things which you have got together? So that is what comes to the man who gets wealth for himself, and has not wealth in the eyes of God.
Because from inside, from the heart of men, come evil thoughts and unclean pleasures, The taking of goods and of life, broken faith between husband and wife, the desire of wealth, wrongdoing, deceit, sins of the flesh, an evil eye, angry words, pride, foolish acts:
Her rulers are like loud-voiced lions in her; her judges are wolves of the evening, crushing up the bones before the morning.
And Jehoiakim the king sent Elnathan, the son of Achbor, and certain men with him, into Egypt. And they took Uriah out of Egypt and came back with him to Jehoiakim the king; who put him to death with the sword, and had his dead body put into the resting-place of the bodies of the common people. But Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, gave Jeremiah his help, so that he was not given into the hands of the people to be put to death.
If my steps have been turned out of the way, or if my heart went after my eyes, or if the property of another is in my hands;
Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and the disgusting things he did, and all there is to be said against him, are recorded in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah; and Jehoiachin his son became king in his place.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 22
Commentary on Jeremiah 22 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 22
Upon occasion of the message sent in the foregoing chapter to the house of the king, we have here recorded some sermons which Jeremiah preached at court, in some preceding reigns, that it might appear they had had fair warning long before that fatal sentence was pronounced upon them, and were put in a way to prevent it. Here is,
Jer 22:1-9
Here we have,
Jer 22:10-19
Kings, though they are gods to us, are men to God, and shall die like men; so it appears in these verses, where we have a sentence of death passed upon two kings who reigned successively in Jerusalem, two brothers, and both the ungracious sons of a very pious father.
Jer 22:20-30
This prophecy seems to have been calculated for the ungracious inglorious reign of Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, who succeeded him in the government, reigned but three months, and was then carried captive to Babylon, where he lived many years, ch. 52:31. We have, in these verses, a prophecy,