Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 6:15
Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time [that] I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.
15. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?] They shall be put to shame, because they have committed abomination (so mg.). This part of the verse is made interrogative in the English in order to avoid the difficulty which the seeming contradiction contained in the following words produces. Co. and Du., however, omit the v., as failing both in metre and in harmony with its context.
nay, they were not at all ashamed ] yea, they are not, etc.
among them that fall ] They shall not escape, when their countrymen whom they have led astray suffer.
be cast down ] better, as mg., stumble.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
They are brought to shame because
They have committed abomination:
Shame nevertheless they feel not;
To blush nevertheless they know not;
Therefore they shall fall among the falling;
At the time when I visit them, they shall stumble,
Saith Yahweh.
The fact is expressed that their conduct was a disgrace to them, though they did not feel it as such. Abomination has its usual meaning of idolatry Jer 4:1.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Jer 6:15
They were not at all ashamed.
Shamelessness in sin, the certain forerunner of destruction
He who has thus sinned himself past feeling, may be justly supposed to have sinned himself past grace.
1. Extraordinary guilt. Committed abomination.
2. Deportment under guilt. Not at all ashamed, etc.
3. Gods high resentment of their monstrous shamelessness. Were they ashamed?
4. The consequent judgment. Therefore shall they fall, etc.
I. What shame is and what influence it has upon the government of mens manners.
1. Shame is a grief of mind springing from the apprehension of some disgrace brought upon a man. And disgrace consists properly in mens knowledge or opinion of some defect, natural or moral, belonging to them. So that when a man is sensible that anything defective or amiss, either in his person, manners, or the circumstances of his condition, is known, or taken notice of, by others; from this sense or apprehension of his, there naturally results upon his mind a certain grief or displeasure, which grief properly constitutes the passion of shame.
2. From this, that shame is grounded upon the dread man naturally has of the ill opinion of others, and that chiefly with reference to the turpitude or immorality of his actions, it is manifest that it is that great and powerful instrument in the soul of man whereby Providence both preserves society and supports government, forasmuch as it is the most effectual restraint upon him from the doing of such things as more immediately tend to disturb the one and destroy the other.
3. He whom shame has done its work upon, is, ipso facto, stripped of all the common comforts of life. The light is to him the shadow of death; he has no heart nor appetite for business; his very food is nauseous to him. In which wretched condition having passed some years, first the vigour of his intellectuals begins to flag and dwindle away, and then his health follows; the hectic of the soul produces one in the body, the man from an inward falls into an outward consumption, and death at length gives the finishing stroke, and closes all with a sad catastrophe.
II. By what ways men come to cast off shame and grow impudent in sin.
1. By the commission of great sins. For these waste the conscience, and destroy at once. They are, as it were, a course of wickedness abridged into one act, and a custom of sinning by equivalence. They steel the forehead, and harden the heart, and break those bars asunder which modesty had originally fenced and enclosed it with.
2. Custom in sinning never fails in the issue to take away the sense and shame of sin, were a person never so virtuous before. First, he begins to shake off the natural horror and dread which he had of breaking any of Gods commands, and so not to fear sin; next, finding his sinful appetites gratified by such breaches of the Divine law, he comes to like his sin and be pleased with what he has done; and then, from ordinary complacencies, heightened and improved by custom, he comes passionately to delight in such ways. Finally, having resolved to continue and persist in them, he frames himself to a resolute contempt of what is thought or said of him.
3. The examples of great persons take away the shame of anything which they are observed to practise, though never so foul and shameful in itself. Nothing is more contagious than an iii action set off with a great example; for it is natural for men to imitate those above them, and to endeavour to resemble, at least, that which they cannot be.
4. The observation of the general and common practice of anything takes away the shame of that practice. A vice a la mode will look virtue itself out of countenance, and it is well if it does not look it out of heart too. Men love not to be found singular, especially where the singularity lies in the rugged and severe paths of Virtue.
5. To have been once greatly and irrecoverably ashamed renders men shameless. For shame is never of any force but where there is some stock of credit to be preserved. When a man finds that to be lost, he is like an undone gamester, who plays on safety, knowing he can lose no more.
III. The several degrees of shamelessness in sin.
1. A showing of the greatest respect, and making the most obsequious applications and addresses to lewd and infamous persons; and that without any pretence of duty requiring it, which yet alone can justify and excuse men in it.
2. To extenuate or excuse a sin is bad enough, but to defend it is intolerable. Such are properly the devils advocates.
3. Glorying in sin. Higher than this the corruption of mans nature cannot possibly go. This is publicly to set up a standard on behalf of vice, to wear its colours, and avowedly to assert and espouse the cause of it, in defiance of all that is sacred or civil, moral or religious.
IV. Why it brings down judgment and destruction upon the sinner.
1. Because shamelessness in sin always presupposes those actions and courses which God rarely suffers to go unpunished.
2. Because of the destructive influence which it has upon the government of the world. It is manifest that the integrity of mens manners cannot be secured, where there is not preserved upon mens minds a true estimate of vice and virtue, that is, where vice is not looked upon as shameful and opprobrious, and virtue valued as worthy and honourable. But now, where vice walks with a daring front, and no shame attends the practice or the practisers of it, there is an utter confusion of the first dividing and distinguishing properties of mens actions; morality falls to the ground, and government must quickly follow. And whenever it comes to fare thus with any civil State, virtue and common honesty seem to make their appeal to the supreme Governor of all things, to take the matter into His own hands, and to correct those clamorous enormities which are grown too big and strong for law or shame, or any human coercion.
V. What those judgments are.
1. A sudden and disastrous death; and, indeed, suddenness in this can hardly be without disaster.
2. War and desolation.
3. Captivity. (R. South, D. D.)
The shamelessness of sinners
The legend says that, a sinner being at confession, the devil appeared, saying, that he came to make restitution. Being asked what he would restore, he said, Shame; for it is shame that I have stolen from this sinner to make him shameless in sinning; and now I have come to restore it to him, to make him ashamed to confess his sins.
Neither could they blush.
Blushing
(with Ezr 9:6):–Just fancy, said Tom, who had been doing a bit of word study by the aid of his newly-acquired Skeat, to blush is, in its origin, the same word as to blaze, or to blast, and a blush in Danish means a torch. And a very good origin too, said his sister, who got red in the face and hot all over on the slightest provocation. Yes, youth is the blushing time of life. Said Diogenes to a youth whom he saw blushing: Courage, my boy, that is the complexion of virtue.
I. There is the blush of guilt. Who broke the window? All were silent; but one boy looked uneasy. His blush was the blast of his red-hot conscience, condemning the dumb tongue.
II. There is the blush of shame. It was such a mean thing to tell that lie to ones own father. It was a shabby trick I played my chum. And that nasty word I spoke yesterday to a girl, too, it makes me sick-ashamed of myself to think of it. Yes; you ought to think shame. But the man that blushes is not quite a brute.
III. There is the blush of modesty. Tom said nothing about his splendid score at the match, until his sister read aloud at breakfast next morning the flattering report given in the newspaper, at which Tom blushed like a girl. He had his revenge, however, when more than one letter came to Shena from Dr. Barnardo, and Tom protested that he knew now why she had no money to spend on sweets, and poor Shena got very red in the face and went out of the room.
IV. There is the blush of honest indignation at the meanness of the cheat, the cruelty of the bully, the greed of the glutton, and the indifference of selfish souls. This blush of virtuous anger must have come into the meek face of Christ, when He rebuked the disciples for keeping the mothers from bringing their children to Him.
V. Just twice, I think, do we read of blushing in the Bible, and the solemn thing is that the blush in both cases is not before men, but under the eye of God.
1. One of the most remarkable prayers in the Bible is the prayer of Ezra, the scribe–the brave, good, holy man who led a company of his Israelite brethren from Babylon to Jerusalem. It rises hot and passionate out of his very heart; for, like all priestly souls, he makes all the sins of the people his own. O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God. He loved his people so dearly that their faults seemed to be his own, and he blushed before the Holy God for shame of them.
2. Quite at the opposite pole of feeling is the other place in the Bible where blushing is spoken of. For Jeremiah, the broken-hearted prophet of the Lord, uses it when he has to describe the utter callousness of the people, in spite of all their sins and sorrows. They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. That is surely the most hopeless state of all, when one has lost the very power to feel shame and sorrow before God. The Florentines used to point to Dante in the street, whispering, Theres the man who has been in hell. But hell has come into the heart of the man who cannot blush. Oh, it is better, as Mahomet said in his old age, to blush in this world than in the next. St. John of the eagle eye and loving heart tells us that in the great day of judgment we shall either have the boldness or liberty and confidence of children, or we shall shrink away with shame like a guilty thing surprised. (A. N. Mackray, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Were they, viz. the false prophets, ashamed? Some read it actively, as sometimes it is taken, Did they put the people to shame? but that is not so proper here; it rather notes how bold and confident, or rather impudent, they were in their flatteries, and deceiving the people, a great aggravation of their sin. The form of the interrogation chargeth them home with the guilt, as do also the next words,
neither could they blush; q.d. they had not the least show of shame, usually discovered by blushing.
Committed abomination; or, the thing to be abominated, (a metonymy of the effect,) both by encouraging the people, and joining with them in their idolatries. See Jer 3:3.
Therefore they shall fall among them that fall; therefore they shall perish with those whom they have deceived, as in the following expressions. To fall signifies to be slain, Psa 63:10; Luk 21:24. Visit them, viz. punish them, inflict punishment on them: see Jer 6:6.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. ROSENMULLERtranslates, “They ought to have been ashamed, because . .. but,” c. the Hebrew verb often expressing, not theaction, but the duty to perform it (Gen 20:9;Mal 2:7). MAURERtranslates, “They shall be put to shame, for they commitabomination; nay (the prophet correcting himself), there is no shamein them” (Jer 3:3; Jer 8:12;Eze 3:7; Zep 3:5).
them that fallTheyshall fall with the rest of their people who are doomed to fall, thatis, I will now cease from words; I will execute vengeance [CALVIN].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?…. This seems chiefly, and in the first place, to respect the false prophets and wicked priests; who when they committed idolatry, or any other sin, and led the people into the same by their doctrine and example, yet, when reproved for it, were not ashamed, being given up to a judicial hardness of heart:
nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush; they were men of impudent faces, they had a whore’s forehead; there was not the least sign or appearance of shame in them; when charged with the foulest crimes, and threatened with the severest punishment, they were not moved by either; they had neither shame nor fear:
therefore they shall fall among them that fall; meaning that the prophets and priests should perish among the common people, and with them, who should be slain, and fall by the sword of the Chaldeans; the sacredness of their office would not exempt them; they should fare no better than the rest of the people:
at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord; that is, when the city and temple should be destroyed by the Chaldeans, these would be cast down from their excellency, the high office in which they were, and fall into ruin, and perish with the rest.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Jeremiah turns now his discourse to the whole people. In the last verse he reproved only the priests and the prophets; he now speaks more generally, and says, that they had put off all shame. “Behold,” he says, “they are sufficiently proved guilty, their wickedness is manifest, and yet there is no shame. Their disgrace is visible to heaven and earth; angels and all mortals are witnesses of their corruption; but they have such a meretricious front that they are touched by no sense of shame.” He means, in these words, that the wickedness of the people was past all remedy; for they had arrived to that degree of stupor, of which Paul speaks, when he calls those ἀπηλγηκότας, who were obstinate in their vices, who saw no difference between right and wrong, between white and black. (Eph 4:19.)
This, then, is what the Prophet means when he says, Have they been ashamed? But a question is much more emphatical, than if it was a simple reprobation or affirmation. They have not been even ashamed, he says. In their very shame, they knew not what it was to be touched by any shamefacedness. This may be classed with those reproofs, by which they had not been subdued; as though he had said, “Efforts having been made to expose their effrontery, in not humbling themselves under the hand of God; they shall therefore fall among the fallen;” that is, “I will dispute no longer with them, nor contend in words, but will execute on them my judgment.” Fall, then, shall they among the fallen; as though he had said, “I have more than sufficiently denounced war on them: had they been healable it would have availed to their conversion, that they had been so often warned; and still more, that I have so sharply stimulated them to come to me: but I will now no more employ words, on the contrary, I will execute my vengeance, so that the calamity which they have derived may devour them.” (176)
They shall wholly fall, he says, in the day of their visitation From this second clause we understand more clearly what it is or what he means when he speaks of falling among the fallen, which is, that they should wholly fall, when God would come as it were with a drawn sword to destroy them, having been wearied with giving them so many warnings.
(176) The Syriac is the only version that puts the first verb in an interrogatory form. “They have been confounded,“ is the Septuagint and Vulgate; and similar is the rendering of the Arabic and the Targum. The verb, taken literally, it being in Huphal, may be rendered, “They have been put to shame,“ or have been made to be ashamed; that is, they had been exposed to shame; but this shame they felt not, according to what follows. Their previous evils were enough to make them feel ashamed; but they had not that effect: hence entire ruin is denounced on them at the end of the verse. The rendering of the whole is as follows, —
15. Exposed to shame have they been, Because abomination have they wrought: Neither with shame are they ashamed, Nor how to be abashed do they know; Therefore fall shall they with the fallen; At the time when I shall visit them, They shall perish, saith Jehovah.
There is no necessity to make this verse and the 12th of chap. 8 (Jer 8:12) the same in every particular, as Blayney attempts to do. Both passages are the same in meaning, with a little variety in some of the words. The particle גם, repeated, may be rendered by, either and nor. See Num 23:5. The verb הכלים is an infinitive Huphal. It is rendered as an infinitive by the Vulgate. “ They shall perish,“ which is according to the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Arabic, is literally, “They shall be made to stumble.” — Ed
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(15) Were they ashamed . . .?The Hebrew gives an assertion, not a questionThey are brought to shame (as in Jer. 2:26), because they have committed abominations. And yet, the prophet adds, they were not ashamed (the verb is in a different voice). There was no inward feeling of shame even when they were covered with ignominy and confusion. They had lost the power to blush, and were callous and insensible. This was then, as always, the most hopeless of all states. To fall among them that fall was its inevitable sequel.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. The first sentence is not interrogative but declarative: “They are put to shame because they have done abomination, yet they take not shame to themselves,” etc.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jer 6:15 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time [that] I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.
Ver. 15. Were they at all ashamed ] Their shamelessness was no small aggravation of their sin. Ita licet multas abominationes commiserunt Papistae sine verecundia, verecundari tamen non possunt, saith Dr John Raynolds. a Papists are frontless and shameless. Dr Story, for instance: – I see nothing, said he, before the parliament in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth, to be ashamed of, so less I see to be sorry for; but rather because I have done no more, &c.; wherein he said there was no default in him, but in the higher powers, who much against his mind had laboured only about the young and little sprigs and twigs, whiles they should have struck at the root and rooted it out, meaning thereby the Lady Elizabeth, whom also he afterwards daily cursed in his grace before his meal. And concerning his persecuting and burning the Protestants, he denied not but that he was once at the burning of an earwig (for so he termed it) at Uxbridge (Mr Denley, martyr), where he tossed a faggot at his face as he was singing psalms, and set a spiny evergreen bush of thorns under his feet, a little to prick him, &c. b
a De Idolat. Rom., p. 85.
b Acts and Mon., fol. 1925.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
could they = knew they how to.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Were: Jer 3:3, Jer 8:12, Isa 3:9
blush: Eze 2:4, Eze 16:24, Eze 16:25, Eze 24:7, Zep 3:5, Phi 3:19
therefore: Jer 23:12, Pro 29:1, Isa 10:4, Eze 14:9, Eze 14:10, Mic 3:6, Mat 15:14
at the time: Jer 5:9, Jer 5:29, Exo 32:34, Eze 7:6-9, Hos 9:7, Mic 7:4
Reciprocal: Gen 2:25 – ashamed Gen 19:5 – General Gen 19:9 – Stand Gen 19:34 – General 1Ki 2:5 – put Ezr 9:6 – I am ashamed Jer 2:34 – I Jer 8:9 – The wise men are Jer 14:15 – Sword and famine shall not Jer 16:13 – will I Eze 13:14 – ye shall be Eze 21:24 – your transgressions Mic 2:6 – that they Luk 6:39 – shall Act 23:14 – General 2Th 3:14 – that he
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
FAILURES
They shall fall among them that fall.
Jer 6:15
How many men start in London with the fairest possible promise, but who ultimately, alas, become occasional inmates of the casual ward! You have no need to be told of their failuresome dragged down by the horrible curse of drink, others degraded by impurity. But it seems to me as though such cases as these were, after all, not the very saddest illustration of our subject. The saddest failures, it appears to me, are those whom the world regards as successesthe men who get on in life, who make large fortunes, who attain to a lofty social position, and who, all the while, have been injuring and even ruining their own moral nature by their very process of advancement. They are rich, successful, and externally fortunate, but, none the less, mean, sordid, greedy, avaricious. They are what the world calls successes, and they must be very bad indeed if the world does not recognise them as such. But how does a man of that description appear in the eyes of the Eternal God who made him? A shrivelled, withered thing, bereft of nearly all that goes to make man God-like; not unlike the autumn leaf swept by the October blastwho shall say where!
I. Perhaps the saddest part of the matter is that many who belong to this class do not recognise the fact that they are failures.A very large number of them are on extremely good terms with themselves. They settle down into a condition of self-complacency.
One man, perhaps, has made many thousands of pounds, and in a few months he is going to retire from business, and he will have his respectable place in the church, and, as he puts it, make the church a little more respectable by going there. And so it is that, as frequently happens, our desire in early days to lead a good life gradually fades away amidst the humdrum routine of commercial life, which we allow to drag us down instead of our elevating it into a position of sanctity; and we become more and more gross in our aims, and content with our moral failure. On the whole, peradventure, such a man calls himself a very fair specimen of the genus humanum. I will succeed, he seems to say, in passing muster in the court of my self-consideration, and I appear to pass muster pretty fairly in the circle in which I live; and if I do that, I do not see why I should trouble myself about any nobler aims. He does not realise that he is selling his spiritual birthright for the paltry mess of pottage offered him by the world. Hence, you see that there may be abundant activity in our lives, and that many a man who has led an active life in the way just described will go so far as to affirm that he has always endeavoured to do his duty. But what is duty? Duty is to produce what God intended you should, and to become true to the Divine ideal. Otherwise, a man does not, and cannot, rise to the proper level of true activity.
II. How do we become failures?By abusing the world instead of using it as God would have us use it. A mans commercial life is part of the mechanism that God employs for rendering him what God intended him to be. What, then, is your commercial career doing for you in your manhood? Are you learning lessons of self-control? Are you learning how to master your disposition in the direction of avarice, greed, and impurity? If so, you are getting something out of your business which you will have to thank God for through all eternity.
Many of our commercial men mistake the proper purpose of life, forgetting that the making of money should be a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The man who looks at the matter in the right light regards each fresh thousand that comes into his possession as something that God has entrusted to him in order that he may employ it for his Masters glory and the benefit of his fellow-men. The secret of moral failure lies in an absence of Divine co-operationnot in the reluctance of God to co-operate, but in the indisposition of man to claim, and ensure, and make use of the co-operation. I would just as soon expect to see a structure like the Forth Bridge turned out without modern appliances as expect to see a saint produced otherwise than by Divine co-operation. I stand in this pulpit, my fellow-men, because I believe in the reformative power of God. God knows how to make a saint just as much as He knows how to make a star. But to make a saint, man needs to surrender his human will into the Divine hands; whereas, in the case of a star, the matter obeys the behests of the Divine.
Gehenna, or Hell, is the common receptacle of rubbish, the place of loss, where those who are not fit to share the Divine society, and to exercise the proper functions of manwhere those who are branded with Gods failure, drop down into the dark and are lost in utter night. What is the only alternative to this miserable, tragic issue? It is that of surrendering ourselves completely to the control of God, Who is able to turn our spiritual weaknesses into impregnable forts against the powers of evil.
Canon Aitken.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Jer 6:15. They still has special reference to (be prophets and priests who were encouraging the people in their idolatrous practices. Were not ashamed means they were stubborn and bold in their false teaching and did not seem to regret tile evil influence they were having on the common people. Fan among them that fall denotes that no special favors will be shown to them when the siege and capture takes place. Their position as prophet and priest will be ignored and they will have to go along with them that fall which means the citizens In general.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
These leaders did not even feel ashamed or embarrassed by their actions; they were completely insensitive to their sins (cf. 1Sa 15:22-23). Consequently they would fall along with the rest of the population when the Lord brought judgment.
"When evil is pursued and practiced regularly and devotedly, it produces eventually a moral blindness in the perpetrator." [Note: Craigie, p. 104.]