Jeremiah 13:23

Can the Ethiopian change his skin?.... Or, "the Cushite"; either, as the Arabic version, the "Abyssine", the inhabitant of the eastern Ethiopia; properly an Ethiopian, as the Septuagint and Vulgate

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. Ethiopian - the Cushite of Abyssinia.

In the Hebrew it is, Can the Cushite, & c.? from whence it is well concluded, as learned men judge, that the Ethiopians are of the posterity of Cush the son of Ham, brother to Mizraim, the father of the Egyptians, . For these were the only people of old noted for their black colour in Scripture, as the Ethiopians are now. God showeth that the Jews by their continued customary sinning had so inured themselves to wicked practices, that it was as much labour in vain to endeavour to reclaim them, as to go about to wash a blackamoor, or to take out the natural spots of the beasts called leopards.

Jeremiah 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? [then] may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.Ver. 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin?] Proverbial speeches arguing a very great difficulty, if not an utter impossibility, Aethiopem abluo ut candidum reddam, said Diogenes, when he reproved an ill man to no purpose; I do but wash a blackamore. And the like said Nazianzen concerning Julian the apostate. It is said that the negroes paint the devil white, as being a colour contrary to their own, and which they less well affect. Will the Ethiopian change his skin? so the Hebrew hath it. Or the leopard his spots.] Sin is in us as the spots of a leopard, not by accident, but by nature, which no art can cure, no water wash off; because they are not in the skin, but in the flesh and bones, in the sinews and in the most inner parts. Where then is man’ s freewill to good? &c. Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.] Custom in sin takes away the sense of it, and becomes a second nature; which, though expelled with a fork, as it were, will yet return again. It looks for continual entertainment where it hath once gotten a haunt, as humours fall toward their old issue. Canis qui semel didicerit edere corium, nunquam desistet, A dog who at times learns to eat flesh, will never stop, saith Lucian; an evil custom is not easy left. Nothing so weak as water; yet let much water (so sin, Satan, and custom) be joined together, and nothing stronger. It was not for nothing, therefore, that the Cretans, when they would curse their enemies with most bitter execrations, they wished that they might take delight in some or other evil custom. Modestoque voti genere efficacissimum ultionis genus reperiunt, saith the historian; by a modest kind of wish they sufficiently avenged themselves. Val. Max.

(23) Can the Ethiopian . . .?—Literally, the Cushite. The meaning of the question is obvious. The evil of Judah was too deep-ingrained to be capable of spontaneous reformation. There remained nothing but the sharp discipline of the exile. The invasion of Tirhakah and Pharaoh-nechoh, the presence of Ethiopians among the servants of the royal household (Jeremiah 38:10), the intercourse with the upper valley of the Nile implied in Zephaniah 3:10 and Psalms 68:31; Psalms 87:4, had made the swarthy forms of Africa familiar objects. Possibly the use of leopard-skins by Ethiopian princes and warriors, as seen on Egyptian monuments and described by Herodotus (vii. 69), had associated the two thoughts together in the prophet’s mind. If the king’s household were present (as in Jeremiah 13:18), he may have pointed to such an one, Ebedmelech (Jeremiah 38:10), or another so arrayed, in illustration of his words.

Verse 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin] Can a black, at his own pleasure, change the colour of his skin? Can the leopard at will change the variety of his spots? These things are natural to them, and they cannot be altered; so sin, and especially your attachment to idolatry, is become a second nature; and we may as well expect the Ethiopian to change his skin, and the leopard his spots, as you to do good, who have been accustomed to do evil. It is a matter of the utmost difficulty to get a sinner, deeply rooted in vicious habits, brought to the knowledge of himself and God. But the expression does not imply that the thing is as impossible in a moral as it is in a natural sense: it only shows that it is extremely difficult, and not to be often expected; and a thousand matters of fact prove the truth of this. But still, what is impossible to man is possible to God. See Clarke on Jeremiah 13:27.

23. The v. need not mean that Judah’s sin was innate (see on Jeremiah 6:7), but that habits of evil preclude a return to righteousness. the Ethiopian] Through the Jews’ intercourse with Egypt the Ethiopians were familiar to them. See Jeremiah 38:7. They were acquainted with the “merchandise of Ethiopia” (Isaiah 45:14), which consisted of gold, ebony, and elephants’ tusks (Herod. III. 97, 114), and jewels (Job 28:19). the leopard] See ch. Jeremiah 5:6.

This verse answers the question, May not Judah avert this calamity by repentance? No: because her sins are too inveterate. By the Ethiopian (Hebrew: Cushite) is meant not the Cushite of Arabia but of Africa, i. e., the negro.

23. The hopelessness of Judah’s case consists in the fact that her sin has become her nature. Her momentum in evil is practically resistless. But with God all things are possible.