[It is] for the sins of her prophets, [and] the iniquities of her priests, who have shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her.
Jerusalem lies in ruins, and verse 13 names the reason. The prophet does not point to the invading army outside the walls. He points to the prophets and priests inside the city — the men meant to represent God to the people.
Kelly reads the verse as the moment the prophet stops describing the disaster and names what caused it:
This prepares the way for a fresh exposure of the real causes of Jerusalem's ruin. Their sins were so glaring, and in the very place where they were most hateful and offensive. If God had not brought His people down to the dust and scattered them to the ends of the earth, He would have denied Himself... The greater the privilege in having such servants of Jehovah, the more distressing that they should pollute His name and people.
Ironside adds what the invading nations could never have done on their own:
In His righteous anger God had brought Zion to the lowest depths. Otherwise, what could the nations have done against her?
Verse 13 singles out prophets and priests, not the people as a whole. Writing on a similar charge in Micah, Kelly explains why a leader's sin weighs more:
We know, of course, that all the people carry responsibility. But the chief weight falls according to a person's position. Wickedness in a man who holds an office of trust is worse, and is rightly judged as more serious, than the same evil in someone under him. Wrongdoing in a judge, for example, is graver than dishonesty in a stable hand or his master. Corruption or tyranny in a king is deeper guilt than failings here and there in any of his subjects.
Darby recalls the earlier call to search Jerusalem's streets for one just man:
More than that: the one who would have had someone run through the streets of Jerusalem to find a just man now sees that the enemies have killed the just in her midst (see v. 13 and Jer. 5:1).
Ironside explains why that search failed, and names what happened to the victims:
Remember that in Jeremiah 5:1 the Lord promised to pardon the city if even one person could be found in it who did justice and sought the truth. You might wonder why a few righteous people could not be found in Jerusalem, as some were found long before in Sodom. But sadly, these godless priests and false prophets had killed them all or driven them away... The false prophets and false priests had put the just to death, or sent them into exile. These faithful men "suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword" (Heb. 11:36-37, ESV).
The blood was shed "in the midst of her" — inside the city. Kelly reads the defilement that followed as running through the whole population:
They wandered blindly in the streets and defiled themselves in the worst way possible — with blood. Their very clothes would pollute anyone who touched them. The defilement of the holy city was so complete that touching the clothes of its people spread the contamination to others. It was like a spreading leprosy through the whole body of the nation.
The killing of God's messengers did not end with Jerusalem's fall. Kelly traces the same spirit forward into Jesus' own day:
The Lord Himself has warned us that the same spirit of unbelief killed the prophet and the righteous man (who refused to overlook their sins), and then built and decorated their tombs once they were gone. The Jewish scribes and Pharisees took credit for this in His day. But He was soon proved right about their hypocrisy. He sent them apostles and prophets, teachers and preachers, and they killed some and drove others from city to city. So all righteous blood from Abel onward would fall on that Christ-rejecting generation.
- Privilege. Prophets and priests were Jerusalem's greatest privilege. The greater the trust, the worse the betrayal.
- Position. God weighs sin in an office of trust more heavily than the same sin in a person with no such trust.
- Purge. The just were not just ignored. They were killed or driven out, so the one righteous person who could have spared the city was gone.
- Pollution. The bloodshed did not stay with the guilty leaders. It spread through the whole city like a leprosy through a body.
- Penalty. Zion's ruin began inside the city, not with the armies outside. The same spirit lives on wherever people honour God's messengers in death but silence them in life.
They wandered about blind in the streets; they were polluted with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.
Jerusalem has fallen, and chapter 4 keeps asking why. Verse 14 answers with one grim picture: blind wandering in the streets, and clothes no one could touch.
Verse 14 follows straight on from a charge against Jerusalem's prophets and priests. William Kelly reads the two lines together as the real cause of the city's ruin:
This prepares the way for a fresh exposure of the real causes of Jerusalem's ruin. Their sins were so glaring, and in the places where they were most offensive, that God would have denied Himself if He had spared them. So He brought His people down to the dust and scattered them to the ends of the earth. "Because of the sins of her prophets, the iniquities of her priests that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her." The greater the privilege of having such servants of Jehovah, the more distressing that they should pollute His name and His people.
Henry Allan Ironside asks why no righteous people were left in the city to save it:
Remember that in Jeremiah 5:1 the Lord promised to pardon the city if even one person was found in it who did justice and sought the truth. You might wonder why no righteous people were left in Jerusalem, as a few were once found in Sodom. Sadly, these ungodly priests and false prophets had killed them all or driven them away.
The closing words have been read in more than one way. Kelly weighs one of them against the common translation:
I know of no reason for Calvin's version of the last clause: "They were defiled with blood, because they could not help touching their garments." That is an unfounded departure from the common and correct translation. It gives a reason where the text states a consequence, and it assumes a small word that is not there. I see no real meaning in the result either. One could understand pollution from such contact, but hardly pollution with blood from it.
On the reading Kelly defends, the second half of the verse states what the first half produced:
Wandering blindly in the streets, they defiled themselves in the worst way possible — with blood. Their very garments would then pollute anyone who touched them. The defilement of the holy city was so complete that the clothes of its people carried contamination to others. There was, as it were, a spreading leprosy through the whole nation.
The verse describes a ruin that looks like the work of an invading army. Ironside points past the enemy to the hand of God:
In His righteous anger God had brought Zion to the lowest depths. Otherwise, what could the nations have done against her?
Kelly reads the verse as proof that the people could not stay in the land:
The prophet shows in the most vivid way that the exile of the Jew from the land was unavoidable. It was not like the ordinary deportation of a people by a cruel conqueror or a jealous rival nation. Here was a people once holy, now profane. They were not honoured with a gracious service and a grave trust, but punished for dishonouring His law and His sanctuary. They were outcasts so shameful that they fled like lepers, announcing their own defilement and misery.
Kelly refuses to let the darkness of the chapter have the last word:
Satan can never defeat God in the long run, and evil can never defeat good. Appearances in this world always suggest otherwise, and unbelieving man is as ready to believe them as he is to doubt God. But in the middle of judgment God remembers mercy. So the more unsparing He might be, the more surely He would turn again with deliverance for His own name's sake.
- Cause — Jerusalem's own prophets and priests shed the blood of the righteous inside the city, and that sin ruined her.
- Betrayal — the higher the privilege of having such servants of God, the worse the offence when they pollute His name and His people.
- Contagion — the blood-stained clothes passed the stain to anyone who touched them, like a leprosy spreading through the whole nation.
- Consequence — with the righteous killed or driven out, no one remained to save the city, and exile from the land became unavoidable.
- Mercy — judgment is not God's final word. The more unsparing His hand, the more surely He returns with deliverance for His own name's sake.
They cried unto them, Depart! Unclean! Depart! depart, touch not! When they fled away, and wandered about, it was said among the nations, They shall no more sojourn [there].
Jerusalem has fallen. Jeremiah traces the ruin not to Babylon's strength but to the sin of the city's own religious leaders. Here is the result: people from the holy city are driven off like lepers, with nowhere left to settle.
The verses just before this one name the cause. Her prophets sinned and her priests did wrong; they shed innocent blood. One writer shows what that had already done to the city, long before Babylon arrived.
Remember Jeremiah 5:1. There the Lord promised to pardon the city if even one person in it did justice and sought the truth. You might wonder why Jerusalem held not even a few righteous people, as Sodom held some in an earlier day. Sadly, these godless priests and false prophets had killed them all or driven them away.
One writer explains why the scattering had to happen, and how far the pollution reached.
Their sins were glaring, hateful and offensive. God must have denied Himself if He had not brought His people down to the dust and scattered them to the ends of the earth... As the clause stands in the older translation, the meaning appears to be this. They wandered blind in the streets and defiled themselves in the worst way possible, with blood. So their very garments must pollute anyone who touched them. The defilement of the holy city was so complete that touching the people's clothes spread it to others. It was as if a spreading leprosy ran through the whole nation.
Under the law, a person with leprosy had to announce his own condition and live apart. One writer describes that life.
Here was the leper's condition, the leper's task, the leper's place. His clothes were torn, his head bare, his lip covered. He cried, Unclean, unclean. He lived outside, in the bleak, lonely emptiness of the desert. What could be more humiliating, what more depressing than this? "He shall dwell alone." He was unfit for fellowship or company. He was shut out of the one place in all the world where people knew and enjoyed the presence of Jehovah.
So the scattering was no honourable posting among the nations. Kelly says what it was instead, following an older translation that ends the verse, They shall no more sojourn there.
The prophet shows in vivid detail that the exile of the Jew from the land was unavoidable. It was also different in kind from the ordinary deportation of a people by a cruel conqueror or a jealous rival nation. It was useless for the Jews to flatter themselves that God was sending them out for a while as a missionary people. God will send them out — a few before the kingdom comes, and more widely as a nation once it is set up. But here is a people once holy, now profane. God is not honouring them with a gracious service and a serious trust. He is punishing them for dishonouring His law and His sanctuary. They are outcasts, so shamed that they flee like lepers themselves, announcing their own defilement and misery. The ruin is so complete that the nations say, They shall no more live in their land and city.
Israel stands here as the leper. One writer sets the judgment and the future side by side.
Their unbelief will not admit the truth. If it did, they would cry now, Unclean, unclean — as they will in a day that is hurrying on. They are without their inheritance, though Jehovah gave it to them. But their sins and wrongdoing — their uncleanness, in a word — made driving them out of it both right and necessary... Their pride rebels. Their distance from Him tries to hide it even from themselves. But their past and present history records it permanently — thank God, not forever. God will certainly cleanse leprous Israel, as prophecy declares in sure, abundant and glowing testimonies.
- Cause — Prophets and priests shed innocent blood. They killed or drove out the last righteous people in the city.
- Contagion — Even clothing carried the defilement. Commentators call it a leprosy in the whole nation, not the failing of a few.
- Cry — The shout is the leper's own warning. It cost him fellowship, home, and the one place where God's presence was known.
- Consequence — The exile was a sentence, not a mission. The nations said these wanderers would never settle again.
- Cure — Israel's uncleanness is written on their history, but not forever. Commentators hold that God will certainly cleanse leprous Israel.
The face of Jehovah hath divided them; he will no more regard them. They respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the aged.
Chapter 4 has traced Jerusalem's ruin to the sins of her own prophets and priests. Verse 16 names the hand behind the disaster: not Babylon, but the LORD Himself.
So why did God scatter His own people? One writer points to the men who held the highest privilege in Israel.
This prepares the way for a fresh exposure of the real causes of Jerusalem's ruin. Their sins were glaring, and they were committed in the very place where they were most hateful and offensive. So God must have denied Himself if He had not brought His people down to the dust and scattered them to the ends of the earth... The greater the privilege of having such servants of Jehovah, the more distressing that they should pollute His name and His people.
The ESV says the LORD "has scattered them." Older translations read "the face of Jehovah." Kelly explains what that face stands for, and why the enemy's contempt cut so deep.
"The face [that is, the anger] of Jehovah has divided them... they respected not the faces of the priests, they spared not the elders." Their overthrow was certainly complete, and the contempt of the enemy was all the sharper because their success went beyond their own hopes. This was because there had always been a lurking fear that God would avenge the wrongs of His people and take up their cause once more. But now that He gave them up to the will of His adversaries, their pleasure was to wound them deeply by striking the most honoured sons of Zion.
One writer asks a further question. Why was there not even one righteous person left in Jerusalem to save the city?
Remember that in Jeremiah 5:1 the Lord promised to pardon the city if even one person could be found in it who did justice and sought the truth. You might wonder why there were not a few righteous people in Jerusalem, as there once were in Sodom. But sadly, they had all been killed or driven away by these ungodly priests and false prophets.
Did the pattern stop with Babylon? One writer traces it into much later history.
Under the shepherds of Israel — the high priests and elders — the Jews had been led to refuse their Messiah and crucify Him. So came the terrible scattering, and with it the refusal to allow the shepherds to feed the flock. Where have the Jewish high priests been for many a long day? They have not existed.
"He will regard them no more" sounds final. Kelly answers that appearances in this world are no measure of God.
It is impossible that God should be defeated by Satan, or good by evil, in the long run. Appearances in this world always suggest it, and unbelieving man is as ready to believe them as he is to doubt God. But in the middle of judgment God remembers mercy. So the more unsparing He might be, the more surely He would turn again with deliverance for His own name's sake.
Darby reads the closing verses as a limit set on the judgment.
after_end:
The cup of God's wrath will pass on to Edom, who was rejoicing in the ruin of the city of Jehovah; and as for Zion, she has certainly drunk this cup to the dregs. But if she has done so, it was so that she might drink of it no more. The punishment of her iniquity is accomplished, and she will never be carried away into captivity again.
- Cause. Babylon did not scatter Israel; God did. Sin had settled in the very people who should have honoured Him best.
- Anger. Older translations read "the face of Jehovah" — His face turned in anger. That anger, not Babylon's strength, brought the city down.
- Contempt. When God gave His people up, the enemy aimed at the most honoured men in Zion. They struck where it would hurt most.
- Emptied. Not one righteous person was left to spare Jerusalem; her own priests and prophets had killed them or driven them out. In the end the priesthood itself ceased to exist.
- Limit. "No more regard" is not God's final word. Zion drank the cup to the dregs so that she would never drink it again.