The steel - "brass," i. e., bronze. By the "iron" is meant Jeremiah's intercession; but this cannot alter the divine purpose to send Judah into exile, which is firm as steel and brass. For "brass" see Exodus 25:3 note. The alloy of copper and zinc now called brass was entirely unknown to the ancients.

Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel? - Shall our weak forces be able to oppose and overcome the powers of the Chaldeans? נחשת nechasheth, which we here translate steel, property signifies brass or copper united with tin, which gives it much hardness, and enables it to bear a good edge.

Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel? Can iron break iron, especially that which comes from the north, which was harder than the common iron; or steel, the hardest of all? though the Jews were hard as iron, they could not prevail against and overcome Jeremiah, who was made an iron pillar and brasen walls against them, Jeremiah 1:18, and so these words are spoken for his comfort and encouragement: or they may respect the Jews and the Chaldeans; and the sense be, that the Jews, as mighty and as strong as they fancied themselves to be, and boasted that they were, they could not find themselves a match for the Chaldean army, which came out of the north; and may be said to be as hard as the northern iron, which came from the Chalybes, a people in the north, near Pontus, from whom steel has its name in the Latin tongue; and this sense agrees with what follows.

That the case will turn out so is intimated by Jeremiah 15:12-14, the exposition of which is, however, difficult and much debated. Jeremiah 15:12 is rendered either: can iron (ordinary iron) break northern iron and brass (the first "iron" being taken as subject, the second as object)? or: can one break iron, (namely) iron of the north, and brass ("iron" being taken both times as object, and "break" having its subject indefinite)? or: can iron...break (ירוע intrans. as in Jeremiah 11:16)? Of these three translations the first has little probability, inasmuch as the simile of one kind of iron breaking another is unnatural. But Hitz.'s view is wholly unnatural: that the first "iron" and "brass" are the object, and that "iron from the north" is subject, standing as it does between the two objects, as in Sol 5:6, where, however, the construction alleged is still very doubtful. Nor does the sense, which would in this way be expressed, go far to commend this rendering. By iron and brass we would then have to understand, according to Jeremiah 6:28, the stiff-necked Jewish people; and by iron from the north, the calamity that was to come from the north. Thus the sense would be: will this calamity break the sullen obstinacy of the prophet's enemies? will it make them pliable? The verse would thus contain an objection on the part of the prophet against the concession vouchsafed by God in Jeremiah 15:11. With this idea, however, Jeremiah 15:11-14 are emphatically not in harmony. The other two translations take each a different view of the sense. The one party understand by iron and brass the prophet; the other, either the Jewish people or the northern might of the Chaldean empire. Holding that the prophet is so symbolized, L. de Dieu and Umbr. give the sense thus: "Let him but bethink him of his immoveable firmness against the onsets of the world; in spite of all, he is iron, northern iron and brass, that cannot be broken." Thus God would here be speaking to the prophet. Dahl., again, holds the verse to be spoken by the prophet, and gives the sense: Can I, a frail and feeble man, break the determination of a numerous and stiff-necked nation? Against the later view the objection already alleged against Hitz. is decisive, showing as it did that the verse cannot be the prophet's speech or complaint; against the former, the improbability that God would call the prophet iron, northern iron and brass, when the very complaint he has making showed how little of the firmness of iron he had about him. If by the northern iron we understand the Jewish people, then God would here say to the prophet, that he should always contend in vain against the stiff-neckedness of the people (Eichh.). This would have been but small comfort for him. But the appellation of northern iron does not at all fit the Jewish people. For the observation that the hardest iron, the steel made by the Chalybes in Pontus, was imported from the north, does not serve the turn; since a distinction between ordinary iron and very hard iron nowhere else appears in the Old Testament. The attribute "from the north" points manifestly to the iron sway of the Chaldean empire (Ros., Ew., Maur., and many others); and the meaning of the verse can only be this: As little as a man can break iron, will the Jewish people be able to break the hostile power of the north (Jeremiah 13:20). Taken thus, the pictorial style of the verse contains a suggestion that the adversaries of the prophet will, by the crushing power of the Chaldeans, be reduced to the condition of turning themselves in supplication to the prophet.

Shall {n} iron break the northern iron and the steel?

(n) As for the people, though they seemed strong as iron, yet they would not be able to resist the hard iron of Babylon, but would be led captives.

15:12 The northern iron - As the northern iron and steel is the hardest, and no iron could break that, so God having edged and hardened their enemies, the Chaldeans, all opposition to them would signify nothing.

12. steel-rather, brass or copper, which mixed with "iron" (by the Chalybes near the Euxine Pontus, far north of Palestine), formed the hardest metal, like our steel. Can the Jews, hardy like common iron though they be, break the still hardier Chaldees of the north (Jer 1:14), who resemble the Chalybian iron hardened with copper? Certainly not [Calvin]. Henderson translates. "Can one break iron, (even) the northern iron, and brass," on the ground that English Version makes ordinary iron not so hard as brass. But it is not brass, but a particular mixture of iron and brass, which is represented as harder than common iron, which was probably then of inferior texture, owing to ignorance of modern modes of preparation.

15:10-14 Jeremiah met with much contempt and reproach, when they ought to have blessed him, and God for him. It is a great and sufficient support to the people of God, that however troublesome their way may be, it shall be well with them in their latter end. God turns to the people. Shall the most hardy and vigorous of their efforts be able to contend with the counsel of God, or with the army of the Chaldeans? Let them hear their doom. The enemy will treat the prophet well. But the people who had great estates would be used hardly. All parts of the country had added to the national guilt; and let each take shame to itself.