Jeremiah — Chapter 5
Synopsis: Jeremiah searches Jerusalem for one just man (like Diogenes with a lantern), finds none. Three sins described: obstinacy (v.3), lust (v.7-8), atheism (v.12). God threatens a terrible foreign nation from afar — the Chaldeans, ferocious as lions and leopards.
Verse 1
Go about through the streets of Jerusalem, and see, and consider, and seek in the broad places thereof, if you can find a man that executeth judgment, and seeketh faith: and I will be merciful unto it. Lapide compares this to Abraham's bargaining for Sodom (Gen.18) and Diogenes's daylit search for a true man. The city so corrupt that a single just man cannot be found — the depth of moral desolation. Applied to the rarity of true justice in human society.
Verse 3
O Lord, thy eyes are upon truth: thou hast struck them, and they have not grieved: thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock, and have refused to return. The obduracy of those whom even punishment cannot correct. Lapide: the worst form of spiritual disease is to be incapable of learning from suffering. God's chastisements are medicines; those who resist them become incurable.
Verse 22
Will you not then fear me, saith the Lord: and will you not repent at my presence? I have set the sand as the border of the sea, an everlasting ordinance, which it shall not pass over. God's power over creation compared to Israel's failure to observe His limits: the ocean obeys the sand boundary God set; Israel does not obey its God. Lapide: the order of nature preaches eloquently the obligation of human obedience.