19 Sorrow is mine for I am wounded! my wound may not be made well; and I said, Cruel is my disease, I may not be free from it.
I will undergo the wrath of the Lord, because of my sin against him; till he takes up my cause and does what is right for me: when he makes me come out into the light, I will see his righteousness;
I was quiet, and kept my mouth shut; because you had done it.
A voice has come to my ears like the voice of a woman in birth-pains, the pain of one giving birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, fighting for breath, stretching out her hands, saying, Now sorrow is mine! for my strength is gone from me before the takers of life.
And you are to say this word to them, Let my eyes be streaming with water night and day, and let it not be stopped; for the virgin daughter of my people is wounded with a great wound, with a very bitter blow.
What protest may a living man make, even a man about the punishment of his sin? Let us make search and put our ways to the test, turning again to the Lord;
And I will be waiting for the Lord, whose face is veiled from the house of Jacob, and I will be looking for him.
My soul, my soul! I am pained to my inmost heart; my heart is troubled in me; I am not able to be quiet, because the sound of the horn, the note of war, has come to my ears.
If only my head was a stream of waters and my eyes fountains of weeping, so that I might go on weeping day and night for the dead of the daughter of my people!
O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who give you up will be put to shame; those who go away from you will be cut off from the earth, because they have given up the Lord, the fountain of living waters.
Come to me, all you who go by! Keep your eyes on me, and see if there is any pain like the pain of my wound, which the Lord has sent on me in the day of his burning wrath. From on high he has sent fire into my bones, and it has overcome them: his net is stretched out for my feet, I am turned back by him; he has made me waste and feeble all the day. A watch is kept on my sins; they are joined together by his hand, they have come on to my neck; he has made my strength give way: the Lord has given me up into the hands of those against whom I have no power. The Lord has made sport of all my men of war in me, he has got men together against me to send destruction on my young men: the virgin daughter of Judah has been crushed like grapes under the feet of the Lord. For these things I am weeping; my eye is streaming with water; because the comforter who might give me new life is far from me: my children are made waste, because the hater is strong. Zion's hands are outstretched; she has no comforter; the Lord has given orders to the attackers of Jacob round about him: Jerusalem has become like an unclean thing among them. The Lord is upright; for I have gone against his orders: give ear, now, all you peoples, and see my pain, my virgins and my young men have gone away as prisoners. I sent for my lovers, but they were false to me: my priests and my responsible men were breathing their last breath in the town, while they were looking for food to give them new life. See, O Lord, for I am in trouble; the inmost parts of my body are deeply moved; my heart is turned in me; for I have been uncontrolled: outside the children are put to the sword, and in the house there is death. Give ear to the voice of my grief; I have no comforter; all my haters have news of my troubles, they are glad because you have done it: let the day of fate come when they will be like me. Let all their evil-doing come before you; do to them as you have done to me for all my sins: for loud is the sound of my grief, and the strength of my heart is gone.
My eyes are wasted with weeping, the inmost parts of my body are deeply moved, my inner parts are drained out on the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because of the young children and babies at the breast who are falling without strength in the open squares of the town. They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? when they are falling like the wounded in the open squares of the town, when their life is drained out on their mother's breast. What example am I to give you? what comparison am I to make for you, O daughter of Jerusalem? what am I to make equal to you, so that I may give you comfort, O virgin daughter of Zion? for your destruction is great like the sea: who is able to make you well? The visions which your prophets have seen for you are false and foolish; they have not made clear to you your sin so that your fate might be changed: but they have seen for you false words, driving you away. All who go by make a noise with their hands at you; they make hisses, shaking their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, and saying, Is this the town which was the crown of everything beautiful, the joy of all the earth? All your haters are opening their mouths wide against you; making hisses and whistling through their teeth, they say, We have made a meal of her: certainly this is the day we have been looking for; it has come, we have seen it. The Lord has done that which was his purpose; he has put into force the orders which he gave in the days which are past; pulling down without pity, he has made your hater glad over you, lifting up the horn of those who were against you. Let your cry go up to the Lord: O wall of the daughter of Zion, let your weeping be flowing down like a stream day and night; give yourself no rest, let not your eyes keep back the drops of sorrow. Up! give cries in the night, at the starting of the night-watches; let your heart be flowing out like water before the face of the Lord, lifting up your hands to him for the life of your young children who are falling down, feeble for need of food, at the top of every street. Look! O Lord, see to whom you have done this! Are the women to take as their food the fruit of their bodies, the children who are folded in their arms? are the priest and the prophet to be put to death in the holy place of the Lord? The young men and the old are stretched on the earth in the streets; my virgins and my young men have been put to the sword: you have sent death on them in the day of your wrath, causing death without pity. As in the day of a holy meeting you have made fears come round me on every side, and no one got away or was kept safe in the day of the Lord's wrath: those who were folded in my arms, whom I took care of, have been sent to their destruction by my hater.
And I said, My strength is cut off, and my hope from the Lord. Keep in mind my trouble and my wandering, the bitter root and the poison. My soul still keeps the memory of them; and is bent down in me. This I keep in mind, and because of this I have hope.
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."