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Scott's Reference Library
Jeremiah 17:5 through Jeremiah 17:10 (NIV)
5This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
7 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
10 “I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve.”
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible
VERSES 5-11
He who puts confidence in man, shall be like the heath in a desert, a naked
tree, a sorry shrub, the product of barren ground, useless and worthless. Those
who trust to their own righteousness and strength, and think they can do without
Christ, make flesh their arm, and their souls cannot prosper in graces or
comforts. Those who make God their Hope, shall flourish like a tree always
green, whose leaf does not wither. They shall be fixed in peace and satisfaction
of mind; they shall not be anxious in a year of drought. Those who make God
their Hope, have enough in him to make up the want of all creature-comforts.
They shall not cease from yielding fruit in holiness and good works. The heart,
the conscience of man, in his corrupt and fallen state, is deceitful above all
things. It calls evil good, and good evil; and cries peace to those to whom it
does not belong. Herein the heart is desperately wicked; it is deadly, it is
desperate. The case is bad indeed, if the conscience, which should set right the
errors of other faculties, is a leader in the delusion. We cannot know our own
hearts, nor what they will do in an hour of temptation. Who can understand his
errors? Much less can we know the hearts of others, or depend upon them. He that
believes God’s testimony in this matter, and learns to watch his own heart, will
find this is a correct, though a sad picture, and learns many lessons to direct
his conduct. But much in our own hearts and in the hearts of others, will remain
unknown. Yet whatever wickedness there is in the heart, God sees it. Men may be
imposed upon, but God cannot be deceived. He that gets riches, and not by right,
though he may make them his hope, never shall have joy of them. This shows what
vexation it is to a worldly man at death, that he must leave his riches behind;
but though the wealth will not follow to another world, guilt will, and
everlasting torment. The rich man takes pains to get an estate, and sits
brooding upon it, but never has any satisfaction in it; by sinful courses it
comes to nothing. Let us be wise in time; what we get, let us get it honestly;
and what we have, use it charitably, that we may be wise for eternity.