'Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful Witness, and the first begotten of

the dead' (Rev. 1:5).

'These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the

Beginning of the creation of God' (Rev. 3:14).

'And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat

upon him was called Faithful and True' (Rev. 19:11).

Here we have the faithfulness of the Lord operating

in twelve different spheres.  In fellowship, temptation, sanctification,

keeping, failure, profession, human weakness, suffering, confession, and in

the great prophetic future.  He cannot lie.  His faithfulness will not fail.

Emunah Hebrew.  Amen Greek and English.  'He Faileth Not'.

There is something wonderfully frank and moving in the evident nearness

of Jeremiah to the Lord, that he could dare to utter his thoughts as he does

in chapter 15.  Jeremiah says that he had found the words of the Lord, and

eaten them, that he was called by the name of the Lord, that he had avoided

the assembly of the mocker, and asks why it is that his pain is perpetual and

his wound incurable:

'Wilt Thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail?'

(Jer. 15:18).

This sounds worse in the English version than it does in the original.

The Revised Version is nearer to Jeremiah's intentions:

'Wilt Thou indeed be unto me as a deceitful brook, as waters that

Job used this figure when he said,

'My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of

brooks they pass away; which are blackish by reason of the ice, and

wherein the snow is hid: what time they wax warm, they vanish: when it

is hot, they are consumed out of their place' (Job 6:15 -17).

Job refers to the torrents that pour down from the hills when the snow melts,

but which vanish in the summer when they are most wanted.  Schulten says that

this phenomenon has given rise to many proverbs in the East.  Thus the Arabs

say of a treacherous friend,

'I put no trust in thy torrent' and 'O torrent, thy flowing subsides'.

Jeremiah would be acquainted with similar proverbs and this he uses in his

remonstrance with the Lord.  The words translated 'fail' in Jeremiah 15:18,

are lo aman.  Aman comes from the root word that gives us our 'Amen' and

means true, reliable, sure.  Let us acquaint ourselves with the usage of this

word.  One of the earliest meanings is 'to make steady' as in Exodus 17:12.

We have already referred to this verse in illustrating the word 'uphold' in

Isaiah 42:1; we turn to it again to illustrate the word that is used in

Jeremiah 15:18:

'His hands were steady (emunah)' (Exod. 17:12).