Jeremiah 9:4 - Exposition

Take ye heed every one of his neighbor . Such was the result of clinging to an unprogressive religion—one which refused to be spiritualized by the prophets. Certainly, if the established religion was so inefficacious, it was self-condemned. Hero we find the prophet depicting a state of society in which the elementary bonds are already dissolved, and suspicion becomes the natural attitude even of a good man. We find a very similar picture in the last chapter of Micah—a chapter, it is true, which stands apart from the rest of the book, as it implies a greater development of wickedness than the rest of Micah and the contemporary prophecies of Isaiah would lead us to expect. Are these prophetic descriptions just and accurate? We may allow something, no doubt, for the warmth of feeling natural to every human preacher, even under the influence of inspiration; but we must not allow ourselves to explain away the obvious meaning of the prophets. The latter and their disciples were "the salt" of their country; and in proportion as their influence declined, the natural effects of a non-moral, purely ritualistic religion showed themselves on a larger scale. Every brother ; i . e . every fellow-tribesman or fellow-citizen. Will utterly supplant . There is nothing in the context to suggest an allusion to Genesis 27:36 (Jacob). The verb has its common sense of deceiving. The tense should be the present, not the future, both here and in the next verse. Will walk ; rather, goeth about (see Jeremiah 6:28 ).