Jeremiah 8:10

8:4-13 What brought this ruin? 1. The people would not attend to reason; they would not act in the affairs of their souls with common prudence. Sin is backsliding; it is going back from the way that leads to life, to that which leads to destruction. 2. They would not attend to the warning of conscience. They did not take the first step towards repentance: true repentance begins in serious inquiry as to what we have done, from conviction that we have done amiss. 3. They would not attend to the ways of providence, nor understand the voice of God in them, ver. 7. They know not how to improve the seasons of grace, which God affords. Many boast of their religious knowledge, yet, unless taught by the Spirit of God, the instinct of brutes is a more sure guide than their supposed wisdom. 4. They would not attend to the written word. Many enjoy abundance of the means of grace, have Bibles and ministers, but they have them in vain. They will soon be ashamed of their devices. The pretenders to wisdom were the priests and the false prophets. They flattered people in sin, and so flattered them into destruction, silencing their fears and complaints with, All is well. Selfish teachers may promise peace when there is no peace; and thus men encourage each other in committing evil; but in the day of visitation they will have no refuge to flee unto.

Therefore will I give their wives unto others,.... To strangers, to the Gentiles; than which nothing could be more disagreeable to them, or a sorer punishment, of a temporal one: and their fields to them that shall inherit them; or, to the heirs (i); other and new ones; and who should possess them as if they were the true and rightful heirs of them. For everyone from the least even to the greatest is given to covetousness; from the prophet even to the priest everyone dealeth falsely; covetousness and false dealing, which prevailed in all ranks and orders of men among them, were the cause of their ruin: covetousness is the root of all evil; and to deal falsely, or make a lie, as the words may be rendered, is diabolical and abominable in the sight of God, and especially in men of such characters, who were to preach truth to others; See Gill on Jeremiah 6:13. (i) "haeredibus", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus.

Jeremiah 8:10-12 . Therefore will I give their wives unto others — See on Jeremiah 6:12 ; and their fields to them, that shall inherit, or possess, them — For the word inherit is sometimes taken for any sort of possession. See Psalm 32:8 . So Israel is called the Lord’s inheritance, chap. Jeremiah 10:16 , and elsewhere. The expression, however, implies that their fields should not only be taken possession of by the victorious Chaldeans, should be ravaged and stripped of their crops and cattle, but that these their enemies should possess their fields as their own, and acquire a property in them which they should transmit to their posterity. For every one is given to covetousness, &c. — For the elucidation of this and the two following verses, see notes on Jeremiah 6:13-15 .

Verses 10-12. - These verses are almost the same as Jeremiah 6:12-15 ; the differences are in Ver. 10. They are omitted in the Septuagint, and Hitzig regards them as an interpolation, at any rate from the point where the present passage coincides verbally with its parallel. His grounds are: (1) that Ver. 13 follows more naturally on Ver. 10 ("... them that shall inherit them") than on Ver. 12; (2) that Ver. 10 is deficient in symmetry; and (3) that the deviations from Jeremiah 6:13-15 sometimes loosen the connection of the clauses, sometimes sink into the colloquial style. The arguments seem to be inconclusive. Jeremiah is apt to repeat himself (Graf refers to Ver. 14 = Jeremiah 4:5 ; Ver. 15 - Jeremiah 14:19 ; Jeremiah 5:9 = 5:29, 9:8; Jeremiah 7:16 = 11:14; Jeremiah 50:41-43 = 6:22-24; Jeremiah 1 :44 - 46 = 49:19-21); and the element which is common to this paragraph and to oh: 6:12-15 seems equally appropriate in both connections. It should be added, however, that the cautious and reverent block has come to the same conclusion as Hitzig. To them that shall inherit them; rather, to them that shall take possession of them , i . e . by violence. Jeremiah 8:10

(10-12) Every one from the least . . . —The prophet reproduces, though not verbally, what he had already said in Jeremiah 6:12-15 . (Comp. Notes there.) It is as though that emphatic condemnation of the sins of the false teachers were burnt into his soul, and could not but find utterance whenever he addressed the people.

Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall inherit them; a paraphrastical description of the miseries of war: God doth here insinuate that their misery shall not be for a short time, but so long, as that strangers, viz. the Chaldeans, shall enjoy their land by inheritances, so far should they be from possessing their land for ever. Every one is given to covetousness; so greedy after their own private gain, that they took no care of equity or justice, in which word is comprised all their fraudulent dealings one among another. Of this and the two next verses, see on Jeremiah 6:13-15 .

Those who held themselves wise will come to shame, will be dismally disabused of their hopes. When the great calamity comes on the sin-hardened people, they shall be confounded and overwhelmed in ruin (cf. Jeremiah 6:11 ). They spurn at the word of Jahveh; whose wisdom then have they? None; for the word of the Lord alone is Israel's wisdom and understanding, Deuteronomy 4:6 . The threatening in Jeremiah 8:10 includes not only the wise ones, but the whole people. "Therefore" attaches to the central truth of Jeremiah 8:5 and Jeremiah 8:6, which has been elucidated in Jeremiah 8:7-9. The first half of Jeremiah 8:10 corresponds, in shorter compass, to what has been said in Jeremiah 6:12, and is here continued in Jeremiah 8:10-12 in the same words as in Jeremiah 6:13-15. יורשׁים are those who take possession, make themselves masters of a thing, as in Jeremiah 49:2 and Micah 1:15. This repetition of the three verses is not given in the lxx, and Hitz. therefore proposes to delete them as a supplementary interpolation, holding that they are not only superfluous, but that they interrupt the sense. For he thinks Jeremiah 8:13 connects remarkably well with Jeremiah 8:10, but, taken out of its connection with what precedes as we have it, begins baldly enough. To this Graf has made fitting answer: This passage is in no respect more superfluous or awkward than Jeremiah 6:13.; nor is the connection of Jeremiah 8:13 with Jeremiah 8:10 at all closer than with Jeremiah 8:12.

And Hitz., in order to defend the immediate connection between Jeremiah 8:13 and Jeremiah 8:10, sees himself compelled, for the restoration of equilibrium, to delete the middle part of Jeremiah 8:13 (from "no grapes" to "withered") as spurious; for which proceeding there is not the smallest reason, since this passage has neither the character of an explanatory gloss, nor is it a repetition from any place whatever, nor is it awanting in the lxx. Just as little ground is there to argue against the genuineness of the two passages from the variations found in them. Here in Jeremiah 8:10 we have מקּטן ועד־גּדול instead of the מקּטנּםof Jeremiah 6:13; but the suffix, which in the latter case pointed to the preceding "inhabitants of the land," was unnecessary here, where there is no such reference. In like manner, the forms הכּלם for הכלים, and עת פּקדּתם for עת־פּקדתּים, are but the more usual forms used by Jeremiah elsewhere. So the omission of the א in ירפּוּ for ירפּאוּ, as coming either from the writer or the copyist, clearly does not make against the genuineness of the verses.