I will scatter them with a winnowing fork at the gates of the land. I will bereave and destroy My people who have not turned from their ways.
He confirms here the same truth. The verb which I have rendered in the future may be rendered in the past tense, but I still think it to be a prediction of what was to come. But as to what follows, I have bereaved, I have destroyed, it must, I have no doubt, be referred to time past. He then says, I will fan or scatter them, for the verb.
We scarcely find any where more pathetic expressions of divine wrath against a provoking people than we have here in these verses. The prophet had prayed earnestly for them, and found some among them to join with him; and yet not so much as a reprieve was gained, nor the least mitigation of the judgment; but this answer is given to the prophet's prayers, that...
Commenting on Jeremiah 15:1-9
I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land,.... Either of their own land, the land of Judea; and so the Septuagint version, "in the gates of my people"; alluding to the custom of winnowing corn in open places; and by fanning is meant the dispersion of the Jews, and their being carried captive out of their own land into other...