Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD.
All Commentaries on Jeremiah 1:8 Go To Jeremiah 1
Gregory the Theologian
AD 390
Some readily complied with the call, others deprecated the gift... Isaiah readily submitted (Is 6:8), but Jeremiah was afraid of his youth.
Ah, ah, ah, Lord God: What is it that has induced this fear in me, that, instead of supposing me to be needlessly afraid, you may highly commend my foresight? I hear from Moses himself, when God spoke to him, that, although many were bidden to come to the mount, and Moses alone to draw near, and the people were not to go up with him. Exodus 24:1-2 For it is not everyone who may draw near to God, but only one who, like Moses, can bear the glory of God. Moreover, before this, when the law was first given, the trumpet-blasts, and lightnings, and thunders, and darkness, and the smoke of the whole mountain, and the terrible threats that if even a beast touched the mountain it should be stoned, Hebrews 12:18 and other like alarms, kept back the rest of the people, for whom it was a great privilege, after careful purification, merely to hear the voice of God. But Moses actually went up and entered into the cloud, and was charged with the law, and received the tables, which belong, for the multitude, to the letter, but, for those who are above the multitude, to the spirit.
