Jeremiah 18:18 - Exposition

The law —or rather, direction , instruction, which was a special function of the priests ( Deuteronomy 33:10 ; Deuteronomy 17:9-11 )— shall not perish from the priest . The Jews were but obeying the Deuteronomic Law (on which Jeremiah, as we have seen, laid so much stress) in alluding to the priests. Unhappily, the priests in Jeremiah's time ( Jeremiah 2:26 ), as in Isaiah's ( Isaiah 28:7 ), were forgetful of their high mission. Nor counsel from the wise . The wise men formed an important order in Jewish society, the importance of which in the Divine education of Israel has not been sufficiently recognized. It was their custom to sit in public places, generally in the chambered recess in the city gate, and give advice on questions of moral practice to those who applied for it. But there were wise men and wise men. Some appear, to have "mocked" at the earnest preaching of the prophets (hence the solemn rebukes in the Book of Proverbs), others to have as it were prepared the way for the latter by a more or less distinct recognition of the religious foundation of morality, and of these we have ample monuments in the canonical Proverbs. There may also have been other shades and varieties of wise men, for their characteristic was not a faculty of intuition, but rather of reflectively applying fundamental moral principles. One highly esteemed branch of "wisdom" would, of course, be political, and this would be the most liable to perversion. It is of such ( Proverbs 29:14 ). Nor the word from the prophet . "The word" is a general term for prophesying. Of course, the speakers take no account of the advance in prophecy from the time, at any rate, of Amos. They are satisfied with the lower order of prophets; but still they are afraid of Jeremiah, much as Balak was afraid of Balaam, when that soothsayer was blessing Israel ( Numbers 23:25 ). Smite him with the tongue; i.e. by slanderous accusations . The same figure as in Jeremiah 9:3 , Jeremiah 9:8 .