Jeremiah 12

9. speckled bird--Many translate, "a ravenous beast, the hyena"; the corresponding Arabic word means hyena; so the Septuagint. But the Hebrew always elsewhere means "a bird of prey." The Hebrew for "speckled" is from a root "to color"; answering to the Jewish blending together with paganism the altogether diverse Mosaic ritual. The neighboring nations, birds of prey like herself (for she had sinfully assimilated herself to them), were ready to pounce upon her.
assemble . . . beasts of . . . field--The Chaldeans are told to gather the surrounding heathen peoples as allies against Judah ( Isaiah 56:9 , Ezekiel 34:5 ).

10. pastors--the Babylonian leaders (compare Jeremiah 12:12 , Jeremiah 6:3 ).
my vineyard--( Isaiah 5:1 Isaiah 5:5 ).
trodden my portion--( Isaiah 63:18 ).

11. mourneth unto me--that is, before Me. EICHORN translates, "by reason of Me," because I have given it to desolation ( Jeremiah 12:7 ).
because no man layeth it to heart--because none by repentance and prayer seek to deprecate God's wrath. Or, "yet none lays it to heart"; as in Jeremiah 5:3 [CALVIN].

12. high places--Before, He had threatened the plains; now, the hills.
wilderness--not an uninhabited desert, but high lands of pasturage, lying between Judea and Chaldea ( Jeremiah 4:11 ).

13. Description in detail of the devastation of the land ( Micah 6:15 ).
they shall be ashamed of your--The change of persons, in passing from indirect to direct address, is frequent in the prophets. Equivalent to, "Ye shall be put to the shame of disappointment at the smallness of your produce."

14-17. Prophecy as to the surrounding nations, the Syrians, Ammonites, &c., who helped forward Judah's calamity: they shall share her fall; and, on their conversion, they shall share with her in the future restoration. This is a brief anticipation of the predictions in the forty-seventh, forty-eighth, and forty-ninth chapters.
touch--( Zechariah 2:8 ).
pluck them out . . . pluck out . . . Judah--(Compare end of Jeremiah 12:16 ). During the thirteen years that the Babylonians besieged Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar, after subduing Coelo-Syria, brought Ammon, Moab, &c., and finally Egypt, into subjection [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 10:9.7]. On the restoration of these nations, they were to exchange places with the Jews. The latter were now in the midst of them, but on their restoration they were to be "in the midst of the Jews," that is, as proselytes to the true God (compare Micah 5:7 , Zechariah 14:16 ). "Pluck them," namely, the Gentile nations: in a bad sense. "Pluck Judah": in a good sense; used to express the force which was needed to snatch Judah from the tyranny of those nations by whom they had been made captives, or to whom they had fled; otherwise they never would have let Judah go. Previously he had been forbidden to pray for the mass of the Jewish people. But here he speaks consolation to the elect remnant among them. Whatever the Jews might be, God keeps His covenant.

15. A promise, applying to Judah, as well as to the nations specified ( Amos 9:14 ). As to Moab, compare Jeremiah 48:47 ; as to Ammon, Jeremiah 49:6 .

16. swear by my name--( Jeremiah 4:2 , Isaiah 19:18 , 65:16 ); that is, confess solemnly the true God.
built--be made spiritually and temporally prosperous: fixed in sure habitations (compare Jeremiah 24:6 , 42:10 , 45:4 , Psalms 87:4 Psalms 87:5 , Ephesians 2:20 Ephesians 2:21 , 1 Peter 2:5 ).

17. ( Isaiah 60:12 ).