But for now I will send for many fishermen, declares the LORD, and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill, even from the clefts of the rocks.
Some explain this of the apostles; but it is wholly foreign to the subject: they think that Jeremiah pursues here what he had begun to speak of; for they doubt not but that he had been speaking in the last verse of a future but a near deliverance, in order to raise the children of God into a cheerful confidence.
There is a mixture of mercy and judgment in these verses, and it is hard to know to which to apply some of the passages here - they are so interwoven, and some seem to look as far forward as the times of the gospel. I. God will certainly execute judgment upon them for their idolatries. Let them expect it, for the decree has gone forth. 1.
Commenting on Jeremiah 16:14-21
For mine eyes are upon all their ways,.... Not only which they may take to hide themselves from their enemies, and where they should be directed to find them; but their evil ways in which they walked, and which were the cause of their calamities; these, how secret soever they were, were under the eye of God, whose eyes are in every place, and upon...