O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations shall come unto you from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things in which there is no profit.
All Commentaries on Jeremiah 16:19 Go To Jeremiah 16
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
As in the provocation and in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your ancestors put me to the test, let such no more be your ancestors: do not imi-tate them. They were your ancestors, but if you do not imitate them, they shall not be your ancestors. Yet as you were born of them, they were your ancestors. And if the heathen who came from the ends of the earth, in the words of Jeremiah, “To thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: ‘Our fathers have inherited nought but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit,’ ” if the heathen forsook their idols to come to the God of Israel, ought Israel, whom their own God led from Egypt through the Red Sea, in which he overwhelmed their pursuing foes, whom he led out into the wilderness, fed with manna, never took his rod from correcting them, never deprived them of the blessings of his mercy, ought they to desert their own God, when the heathen have come to him?
