How wilt thou vie with the horse?
If in peaceful country thou can'st not trust,
How wilt thou do in the rankness of Jordan?
For even thy brothers, the house of thy father, 6
Even they have betrayed thee.
Even they have called after thee loudly,
Trust them not, though they speak thee fair.[738]
The rankness or luxuriance of Jordan is the jungle on both sides of the river, in which the lions lie. This then is all the answer that the wearied and perplexed servant gets from his Lord. The troubles of which he complains are but the training for still sorer. The only meaning of the checks and sorrows of life is to brace us for worse. It is the strain that ever brings the strength. Life is explained as a graded and progressively strenuous discipline, the result of it a stronger and more finely tempered soul. But this surely suggests the questions: Is that the whole result? Is the soul thus to be trained, braced and refined, only at last to be broken and vanish? These are natural questions to the Lord's answer, but Jeremiah does not put them. Unlike Job he makes no start, even with this stimulus, to break through to another life.