19 Woe is me because of my hurt! my wound is grievous: but I said, Truly this is [my] grief, and I must bear it.
I will bear the indignation of Yahweh, Because I have sinned against him, Until he pleads my case, and executes judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light. I will see his righteousness.
I was mute. I didn't open my mouth, Because you did it.
You shall say this word to them, Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound.
Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to Yahweh.
I will wait for Yahweh, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.
My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart; my heart is disquieted in me; I can't hold my peace; because you have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Yahweh, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be disappointed. Those who depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken Yahweh, the spring of living waters.
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see if there be any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me, With which Yahweh has afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger. From on high has he sent fire into my bones, and it prevails against them; He has spread a net for my feet, he has turned me back: He has made me desolate and faint all the day. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand; They are knit together, they are come up on my neck; he has made my strength to fail: The Lord has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand. The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men in the midst of me; He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men: The Lord has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah. For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water; Because the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me: My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed. Zion spreads forth her hands; there is none to comfort her; Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob, that those who are round about him should be his adversaries: Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing. Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: Please hear all you peoples, and see my sorrow: My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity. I called for my lovers, [but] they deceived me: My priests and my elders gave up the spirit in the city, While they sought them food to refresh their souls. See, Yahweh; for I am in distress; my heart is troubled; My heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: Abroad the sword bereaves, at home there is as death. They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me; All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that you have done it: You will bring the day that you have proclaimed, and they shall be like me. Let all their wickedness come before you; Do to them, as you have done to me for all my transgressions: For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city. They tell their mothers, Where is grain and wine? When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, When their soul is poured out into their mothers' bosom. What shall I testify to you? what shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you? Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions; They have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captivity, But have seen for you false oracles and causes of banishment. All that pass by clap their hands at you; They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, [saying], Is this the city that men called The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you; They hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed her up; Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it. Yahweh has done that which he purposed; he has fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old; He has thrown down, and has not pitied: He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you; he has exalted the horn of your adversaries. Their heart cried to the Lord: wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night; Give yourself no respite; don't let the apple of your eye cease. Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches; Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord: Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children, that faint for hunger at the head of every street. Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus! Shall the women eat their fruit, the children that are dandled in the hands? Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets; My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: You have killed them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered, [and] not pitied. You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side; There was none that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh's anger: Those that I have dandled and brought up has my enemy consumed.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 10
Commentary on Jeremiah 10 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Warning against idolatry by means of a view of the nothingness of the false gods (Jeremiah 10:1-5), and a counter-view of the almighty and everlasting God (Jeremiah 10:6-11) and of His governing care in the natural world. This warning is but a further continuation of the idea of Jeremiah 9:23, that Israel's glory should consist in Jahveh who doth grace, right, and justice upon earth. In order thoroughly to impress this truth on the backsliding and idolatrous people, Jeremiah sets forth the nullity of the gods feared by the heathen, and, by showing how these gods are made of wood, plated with silver and gold, proves that these dead idols, which have neither life nor motion, cannot be objects of fear; whereas Jahveh is God in truth, a living and everlasting God, before whose anger the earth trembles, who has created the earth, and rules it, who in the day of visitation will also annihilate the false gods.
(Note: This whole passage is declared by Movers ( de utr. rec. Jer . p. 43), de W., Hitz., and Näg. to be spurious and a late interpolation; because, as they allege, it interrupts the continuity, because its matter brings us down to the time of the Babylonian exile, and because the language of it diverges in many respects from Jeremiah's. Against these arguments Küper, Haev., Welte, and others have made a Stand. See my Manual of Introd. §75, 1. - By the exhibition of the coherence of the thought given in the text, we have already disposed of the argument on which most stress is laid by the critics referred to, the alleged interruption of the connection. How little weight this argument is entitled to, may over and above be seen from the fact that Graf holds Jeremiah 9:22-25 to be an interpolation, by reason of the want of connection; in which view neither Movers preceded him, nor has Hitz. or Näg. followed Him. The second reason, that the subject-matter brings us down to the time of the exile, rests upon a misconception of the purpose in displaying the nothingness of the false gods. In this there is presupposed neither a people as yet unspotted by idolatry, nor a people purified therefrom; but, in order to fill the heart with a warmer love for the living God and Lord of the world, Israel's own God, the bias towards the idols, deep-seated in the hearts of the people, is taken to task and attacked in that which lies at its root, namely, the fear of the power of the heathen's gods. Finally, as to the language of the passage, Movers tried to show that the whole not only belonged to the time of the pseudo-Isaiah, but that it was from his hand. Against this Graf has pronounced emphatically, with the remark that the similarity is not greater than is inevitable in the discussion of the same subject; whereas, he says, the diversity in expression is so great, that it does not even give us any reason to suppose that the author of this passage had the pseudo-Isaiah before him when he was writing. This assertion is certainly an exaggeration; but it contains thus much of truth, that along with individual similarities in expression, the diversities are so great as to put out of the question all idea of the passage's having been written by the author of Isa 40-56. In several verses Jeremiah's characteristic mode of expression is unmistakeable. Such are the frequent use of הבל for the idols, Jeremiah 10:3 and Jeremiah 10:15, cf. Jeremiah 8:19; Jeremiah 14:22, and עת פּקדּתם , Jeremiah 10:15, cf. Jeremiah 8:12; Jeremiah 46:21; Jeremiah 50:27, neither of which occurs in the second part of Isaiah; and הובישׁ , Jeremiah 10:14, for which Isaiah uses בּושׁ , Isaiah 42:17; Isaiah 44:11. Further, in passages cognate in sense the expression is quite different; cf. Jeremiah 10:4 and Jeremiah 10:9 with Isaiah 40:19-20; Isaiah 41:7, where we find ימּוט instead of יפיק , which is not used by Isaiah in the sense of "move;" cf. Jeremiah 10:5 with Isaiah 46:7 and Isaiah 41:23; Jeremiah 10:12 with Isaiah 45:18. Finally, the two common expressions cannot prove anything, because they are found in other books, as שׁבט נחלתו , Jeremiah 10:16 and Isaiah 63:17, derived from Deuteronomy 32:9; or יהוה צבאות , which is used frequently by Amos; cf. Amos 4:13; Amos 5:27, Amos 5:8; Amos 9:6, cf. with Jeremiah 33:2. - Even נסך in the sense of molten image in Jeremiah 10:14, as in Isaiah 41:29; Isaiah 48:5, is found also in Daniel 11:8; consequently this use of the word is no peculiarity of the second part of Isaiah.)
Jeremiah 10:1-2
The nothingness of the false gods. - Jeremiah 10:1. "Hear the word which Jahveh speaketh unto you, house of Israel! Jeremiah 10:2. Thus saith Jahveh: To the ways of the heathen use yourselves not, and at the signs of the heaven be not dismayed, because the heathen are dismayed at them. Jeremiah 10:3. For the ordinances of the peoples are vain. For it is wood, which one hath cut out of the forest, a work of the craftsman's hands with the axe. Jeremiah 10:4. With silver and with gold he decks it, with nails and hammers they fasten it, that it move not. Jeremiah 10:5. As a lathe-wrought pillar are they, and speak not; they are borne, because they cannot walk. Be not afraid of them; for they do not hurt, neither is it in them to do good."
This is addressed to the house of Israel, i.e., to the whole covenant people; and "house of Israel" points back to "all the house of Israel" in Jeremiah 9:25. עליכם for אליכם , as frequently in Jeremiah. The way of the heathen is their mode of life, especially their way of worshipping their gods; cf. ἡ ὁδὸς , Acts 9:2; Acts 19:9. למד c . אל , accustom oneself to a thing, used in Jeremiah 13:21 with the synonymous על , and in Psalms 18:35 (Piel) with ל . The signs of heaven are unwonted phenomena in the heavens, eclipses of the sun and moon, comets, and unusual conjunctions of the stars, which were regarded as the precursors of extraordinary and disastrous events. We cannot admit Hitz.'s objection, that these signs in heaven were sent by Jahveh (Joel 3:3-4), and that before these, as heralds of judgment, not only the heathen, but the Jews themselves, had good cause to be dismayed. For the signs that marked the dawning of the day of the Lord are not merely such things as eclipses of sun and moon, and the like. There is still less ground for Näg. 's idea, that the signs of heaven are such as, being permanently there, call forth religious adoration from year to year, the primitive constellations (Job 9:9), the twelve signs of the zodiac; for תּחתּוּ ( נחת ), to be in fear, consternari, never means, even in Malachi 2:5, regular or permanent adoration. "For the heathen," etc., gives the cause of the fear: the heathen are dismayed before these, because in the stars they adored supernatural powers.
Jeremiah 10:3-5
The reason of the warning counsel: The ordinances of the peoples, i.e., the religious ideas and customs of the heathen, are vanity. הוּא refers to and is in agreement with the predicate; cf. Ew. §319, c . The vanity of the religious ordinances of the heathen is proved by the vanity of their gods. "For wood, which one has hewn out of the forest," sc. it is, viz., the god. The predicate is omitted, and must be supplied from הבל , a word which is in the plural used directly for the false gods; cf. Jeremiah 8:19; Deuteronomy 32:21, etc. With the axe, sc. wrought. מעצד Rashi explains as axe, and suitably; for here it means in any case a carpenter's tool, whereas this is doubtful in Isaiah 44:12. The images were made of wood, which was covered with silver plating and gold; cf. Isaiah 30:22; Isaiah 40:19. This Jeremiah calls adorning them, making them fair with silver and gold. When the images were finished, they were fastened in their places with hammer and nails, that they might not tumble over; cf. Isaiah 41:7; Isaiah 40:20. When thus complete, they are like a lathe-wrought pillar. In Judges 4:5, where alone this word elsewhere occurs. תּמר means palm-tree (= תּמר ); here, by a later, derivative usage, = pillar, in support of which we can appeal to the Talmudic תּמּר , columnam facere , and to the O.T. תּימרה , pillar of smoke. מקשׁה is the work of the turning-lathe, Exodus 25:18, Exodus 25:31, etc. Lifeless and motionless as a turned pillar.
(Note: Ew., Hitz., Graf, Näg. follow in the track of Movers, Phöniz . i. S. 622, who takes מקשׁה se acc. to Isaiah 1:8 for a cucumber garden, and, acc. to Epist. Jerem . v. 70, understands by תּמר מקשׁה the figure of Priapus in a cucumber field, serving as a scare-crow. But even if we admit that there is an allusion to the verse before us in the mockery of the gods in the passage of Epist. Jerem. quoted, running literally as follows: ω ̔͂σπερ γὰρ ἐν οἰκυηράτῳ προβασκάνιον οὐδὲν φυλάσσον, οὕτως οἱ θεοὶ αὐτῶν εἰσὶ ξύλινοι καὶ περίχρυσοι καὶ περιάργυροι ; and if we further admit that the author was led to make his comparison by his understanding מקשׁה in Isaiah 1:8 of a cucumber garden; - yet his comparison has so little in common with our verse in point of form, that it cannot at all be regarded as a translation of it, or serve as a rule for the interpretation of the phrase in question. And besides it has yet to be proved that the Israelites were in the habit of setting up images of Priapus as scare-crows.)
Not to be able to speak is to be without life; not to walk, to take not a single step, i.e., to be without all power of motion; cf. Isaiah 46:7. The Chald. paraphrases correctly: quia non est in iis spiritus vitalis ad ambulandum . The incorrect form ינּשׂוּא for ינּשׂאוּ is doubtless only a copyist's error, induced by the preceding נשׂוא . They can do neither good nor evil, neither hurt nor help; cf. Isaiah 41:23. אותם for אתּם , as frequently; see on Jeremiah 1:16.
Jeremiah 10:6-9
The almighty power of Jahveh, the living God. - Jeremiah 10:6. "None at all is like Thee, Jahveh; great art Thou, and Thy name is great in might. Jeremiah 10:7. Who would not fear Thee, Thou King of the peoples? To Thee doth it appertain; for among all the wise men of the peoples, and in all their kingdoms, there is none at all like unto Thee. Jeremiah 10:8. But they are all together brutish and foolish; the teaching of the vanities is wood. Jeremiah 10:9. Beaten silver, from Tarshish it is brought, and gold from Uphaz, work of the craftsman and of the hands of the goldsmith; blue and red purple is their clothing; the work of cunning workmen are they all. Jeremiah 10:10. But Jahveh is God in truth, He is living God and everlasting King; at His wrath the earth trembles, and the peoples abide not His indignation. Jeremiah 10:11. Thus shall ye say unto them: The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens."