Page:Messianic Prophecies - Delitzsch - 1880.djvu/95

Rh and this is the name with which they will call him, Jehovah Our Righteousness." This prediction is repeated (XXXIII, 14 16), in the midst of the promise of Israel's future restoration, which Jeremiah, when he was imprisoned in the tenth year of Zedekiah by the princes of Judah, received as a divine consolation. The naming of the Messiah as points back to 2 Sam. XXIII, 3; Is. IV, 2; and his name  is designed to indicate, that Jehovah as just and the one who justifies dwells in him, and reveal's Himself through him; for in XXXIII, 15 the new Jerusalem receives this name as the city in which Jehovah as the source of justice to Israel will have His dwelling (compare Gen. XXXIII, 10; Ex. XVII, 5; Ezech. LVIII, 35). The notion of justice ( or ) has two sides, a legal and an evangelical. It is therefore called either the justice, which rewards men according to their works (justitia recompensativa or punitiva), or the justice, which exactly follows the decree and order of salvation (justitia justificans, compare Rom. I, 17; III, 26). The one side can be called the side of fire and the other the side of light. In the expression: "Jehovah our justice" the justice is meant as the manifestation of the light. In this sense therefore we translate the phrase "Jehovah our righteousness".

After Jerusalem had fallen, Jeremiah was compelled in the midst of the rest of the exiles, and in fetters to migrate with them to Ramah, there however his fortune took a more favorable turn. The decision being left to him, he preferred to remain in the country and betook himself to Gedaliah, son of Ahikam (XXVI, 24), as is related more briefly in chapter XXXIX, and more fully in XL. In the first verse of this chapter the word of Jehovah is introduced, which at that time came to Jeremiah in Ramah, but the prediction does not follow. Without doubt this word of Jehovah is that which is introduced with the same formula in chapters XXX and XXXI consisting of the comforting predictions which the prophet wrote down by the special command of God: respecting Israel's future restoration, the second David, Rachel's lamentation in Ramah because of her departing children, the promise of their future return, and